[Peace] News notes for May 19 (part 1 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

	NOTES ON THE WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM" --
	FOR THE AWARE MEETING 02.05.19

	"News is what someone wants to suppress.  
	Everything else is advertising."  
	--Rubin Frank, former president of NBC News

[Summary of the week: a media backlash vs. Bush? intelligence
successes/failures past/future;  and in-depth coverage (e.g., a good bit
of the NYT front page) of the major threat facing all of out lives today,
sexual abuse by the RC clergy...  (I'm not defending sexual abuse -- just
noting what's talked about in the press, and what isn't.)
	In light of tonight's discussion, I append two articles on how
East Timor is related to the "War on Terrorism.  Comments in caps
throughout are mine.  --CGE]

SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2002

DEMO DOWNPLAYED IN US PRESS. Tens of thousands rallied in Tel Aviv's Kikar
Rabin last night to call for a withdrawal from the territories. Police
estimated the crowd at about 60,000, while organizers Peace Now put the
figure at above 150,000, calling it the biggest peace rally since the
current wave of violence broke out in October 2000. Opposition politicians
and artists addressed a throng waving a sea of banners saying "Leave the
territories for the sake of Israel" and "Two states for two peoples." Some
carried signs saying: "Get out of the territories ­ and save the economy,"
and "Conscientious objectors for the country." Some 1,500 security guards
and police officers secured the event . . . Peace Now leader Tzali Reshef
told the crowd that Foreign Minister Shimon Peres bears as much
responsibility for the current situation as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
and called on the Labor Party to leave the government for the sake of the
state. [JERUSALEM POST]

DESTROYING INFRASTRUCTURE. Israel Defense Forces sources have admitted
that Palestinian claims of the systematic destruction of property,
particularly computers, during the recent military operations in Ramallah
are, for the most part, true. "There were indeed wide-scale, ugly
phenomena of vandalism," a senior military sources told Ha'aretz
yesterday. And while another military source said that the army had yet to
undertake a full investigation into the matter, there are already many
individual cases that are being prosecuted through the military justice
system. Within the context of Operation Defensive Shield, an intelligence
unit specialized in systematically going through public institutions of
the Palestinian Authority and collecting hard disks from computers in
offices, for the purposes of examining them based on the assumption that
some would contain information on terrorist activity. The IDF sources
explained that because various PA institutions, including civil
authorities, were involved in terror, some of the computers had indeed
included valuable intelligence. However, the sources admitted that in many
cases the searches had turned into systematic vandalism, without any
justification. [HA'ARETZ]

THE WAR AGAINST WHATEVER. Money earned from the opium and heroin trade in
Afghanistan is what is allowing pro-US warlords in the country to operate,
a high-profile Washington lawyer and expert in international financial
crime said. "The revenue of poppies is essential for the warlords
supporting the United States," Jack Blum told a House panel focusing on
international corruption. The country's largest domestic product, Blum
explained, was heroin, and without the profit from the drug trade any
government would be hard-pressed to provide for its people and support the
war on terrorism . . . Afghanistan is thought to be responsible for 75 per
cent of the world's opium and 80 per cent of the heroin traded on the
streets of Europe. [AFP]

WAR AIMS. People in the US - and all over the world - were originally told
it was necessary to launch a military attack on Afghanistan to get rid of
the Taliban and to arrest Osama bin Laden. But as far back as December,
[Undersecretary of State Elizabeth Jones] said something quite different
in the media-free privacy of the U.S. Senate. She explained that no matter
what happened in Afghanistan, the US and its allies would stay and
"assist" the Central Asian Republics. However, "that assistance was
conditional on economic and democratic reforms and the observance of human
rights. Jones outlined US priorities in the region: combating terrorism;
reform; the rule of law; Caspian Sea energy resources." . . . In her
Senate testimony, Undersecretary Jones made it clear she wishes to
transform the Central Asia Republics into US protectorates. She didn't say
it outright, of course, but she used easily decipherable code. "The USA
believes, Jones said, that "certain countries" in the region should
noticeably step up their economic reforms and democratic processes, the
observance of human rights and the formation of a strong civil society." .
. . "Civil society" is strengthened when USAID, the National Endowment for
Democracy and other government agencies in the U.S., Norway, Holland and
Germany, as well as seemingly private groups, like the CIA-connected Open
Society Foundation of George Soros, move in. What do these agencies do?
They fund people who work for the Empire in the guise of "democratic" this
and "human rights" that and "institutes for economic reform" and
"independent media." In the words of Allen Weinstein, the man who
conceived the National Endowment of Democracy: "'A lot of what we do today
was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." [Jared Israel, EMPEROR'S
CLOTHES]

BIOWEAPON TERROR. According to documents unearthed by a nonprofit
government watchdog, the United States military has proposed the
development of biological weapons that would violate international
treaties and federal law. In fact, they may have already developed some of
these illegal, treaty-busting bio-weapons. Using the Freedom of
Information Act, the Sunshine Project has recently pried loose some
damning documents from the Marine Corps, which seems to be overseeing this
area of research. Exhibit A is a 1997 proposal from the Naval Research
Laboratory to create genetically engineered bacteria and fungi that will
corrode and degrade enemy matériel, such as roads, runways, vehicles,
weapons, and fuel. Then we have the document from Armstrong Laboratories
at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas. The flyboys propose much the same thing
as the navyengineered microbes that can destroy enemy equipment, including
explosives and chemical weapons. The military scientists take great care
to point out that the germs they want to create would be "non-lethal." But
this doesn't matter. The international Biological and Toxin Weapons
Convention treaty absolutely bans member nations from possessing or
developing microbes, toxins, or any other biological agents for use in
battle or other hostile situations. (Under the treaty, bio weapons can
only be developed for defensive purposes, which is what lets the U.S.
government brew anthrax with the supposed goal of developing a vaccine.)
The U.S. was one of the original signatories, putting its John Hancock on
the treaty in 1972. [Russ Kick, VILLAGE VOICE]

WHO GETS THE SHIT? The Department of Energy blasted South Carolina Gov.
Jim Hodges (D) last week for launching a television advertising campaign
criticizing the Bush administration's plan to move more than 30 metric
tons of plutonium to his state. "It is well-established in this country
that matters of national security and foreign policy are viewed as
nonpartisan and certainly should never be politicized for personal gain,"
said department spokesman Joe Davis. "We strongly urge Governor Hodges to
pull his TV ad immediately out of respect for this national security
tradition." . . . Kevin Geddings, a former Hodges staffer who helped
produce the ads, said they will not be pulled and accused the Bush
administration of politicizing the issue. "They're taking dangerous
plutonium from Colorado to South Carolina because George Bush is rampantly
popular in South Carolina and probably not as popular in Colorado,"
Geddings said. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) is also running for reelection
this year. [WP]

CONSPIRACY MEANS 'BREATHING TOGETHER.' One of the key gatherings of the
world's robber barons - the Bilderberg conference - will take place May 30
at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, ground zero of the
military-industrial-spook complex including the home of various
intelligence agencies and headquarters of Dyncorp, mercenaries in the
service of American empire. The locale, however, is the most déclassé in
some time, as the Bilderbergers are used to meeting at castles and big
estates. The last time this particular subset of the grotesquely empowered
met near Washington was when they came to colonial Williamsbug in 1962.
The meeting follows an April gathering in DC of the Bilderbergers' Junior
League, the Trilateral Commission, which has about three times as many
members. The Bilderbergers claim they are a private group but no little
sum of public monies will be spent on keeping them that way at Westfields
Marriott, so don't plan to audit the sessions. Most of the media pretends
that they don't exist and when they do mention them it is usually to call
their critics "conspiracy theorists." In fact, it is the sort of people
who go to such conferences and the media that protects them who most
believe in conspiracies, which is why they so often meet in small groups
behind closed doors. They were raised on the great man theory of history
and consider themselves the contemporary incarnation of that theory
-entitled to cause pain and misery to millions to demonstrate their
entitlement. And like other secret fraternities, they are always
interested in new blood of the right sort. Thus it was, according to Marc
Fisher in the Washington Post, that it was Vernon Jordan "who first
introduced then-Gov. Clinton to world leaders at their annual Bilderberg
gathering in Germany in 1991. Plenty of governors try to make that scene;
only Clinton got taken seriously at that meeting, because Vernon Jordan
said he was okay." In fact, one needs no conspiracy at all to assure that
members of the Council on Foreign Relations or staffers of the Washington
Post or members of the Bilderberg conference will behave a certain way.
Given their educational and cultural provenance it is extraordinary when
they don't. But to understand this requires a little feel for social
history and anthropology, which is alien to their assumption that that
their words and actions are the fruits of their intellectual imagination
rather than the predictable product of elite education and acculturation.
MEMBERS OF THE US BILDERBERG STEERING COMMITTEE: United States of America:
Paul A. Allaire, Chairman, Xerox Corporation; John S Corzine, Chairman and
CEO, Goldman Sachs & Co; Marie-Josee Drouin, Senior Fellow, Hudson
Institute Inc; Louis V. Gerstner, Chairman, IBM Corporation; Richard C.
Holbrooke, Former Assistant Secretary for European Affairs; Vice Chairman
CS First Boston; Vernon E. Jordan, Jr, Senior Partner, Akin, Gump,
Strauss, Hauer & Field, (Attorneys-at-Law); Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman,
Kissinger Associates Inc; Former Secretary of State; Jack Sheinkman,
Chairman of the Board, Amalgamated Bank; Paul Wolfowitz, Dean, Nitze
School of Advanced International Studies; Former Under Secretary of
Defense for Policy; Casimir A. Yost, Director, Institute for the Study of
Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. [PROGRESSIVE
REVIEW]

WHAT DO FOREIGNERS KNOW? Here in Europe, you get a fresh view of the
United States. It is a country "increasingly in thrall to a very
particular conservatism"; it languishes in "the extraordinary grip of
Christian fundamentalism"; its democracy is "an offense to democratic
ideals." The aforementioned "overblown conservative rhetoric" sadly
"prevents self-knowledge and intelligent self-criticism." Indeed, this
"dominant conservatism is very ideological, almost Leninist." The U.S.
economy, meanwhile, "rests on an enormous confidence trick." It is
governed by "a Wall Street crazed by greed" with the result that
"corporate America now no longer principally seeks to innovate." It
produces "severe economic and social problems": There has been "a marked
growth in American selfishness and introversion"; "obesity has reached
unprecedented levels." All that before you get to the "tenacious endemic
racism" and the grim fact that "citizens routinely shoot each other."
These quotes do not come from some marginal fringe nut. They come from
"The World We're In," a new book by Will Hutton, a former editor of the
London Observer, a traditional beacon of Britain's high-brow left . . .
Alliances cannot withstand endless mutual acrimony, however deep their
roots are, which is why it's important to ignore the contrived demons
peddled by Hutton and his ilk. [Sebastian Mallaby, WASHINGTON POST]

CIVIL VICTORIES. A pair of high-profile lawsuits and the first signs of
skepticism from the courts, all within the past month, are posing new
challenges to Justice Department investigators who scoured the country for
suspected terrorists in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Lawyers
with the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a class-action
lawsuit on behalf of immigrant detainees, alleging that they have been the
victims of racial profiling and slurs. Lawyers for a Saudi man convicted
in the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Africa filed suit to challenge the
constitutionality of investigators being permitted to monitor his
conversations with his lawyers. In New York, a federal judge recently
ruled that the department should not jail material witnesses for the grand
jury. In New Jersey, a judge ruled that the names of jailed immigrants
should be disclosed. And a federal judge recently decided that department
lawyers could not keep secret the deportation proceedings of a Lebanese
man in Michigan who they said started a charity that helped fund
terrorists. Bush administration officials say the lawsuits and the legal
rulings are tied to specific circumstances and don't stand as an overall
indictment of federal investigative efforts. But civil libertarians and
immigration lawyers contend that American willingness to tolerate such
efforts, seen by some as a threat to long-cherished constitutional rights,
is beginning to ebb as the immediate shock of Sept. 11 fades. And lawyers
are increasingly willing to test the constitutionality of the department's
methods. In at least three cases, they have met with initial success.
[Wayne Washington, BOSTON GLOBE]

DENNY WANTS MORE DEAD. Before becoming House speaker, Rep. Dennis Hastert
told Colombian military officers that he was "sick and tired" of human
rights considerations controlling U.S. anti-drug aid, according to a newly
declassified government document. At the time, the Clinton administration
was pushing Colombia to improve its human rights performance as a
condition of receiving U.S. aid. Leading a May 1997 congressional
delegation to Colombia, Hastert also encouraged Colombian military and
police to bypass the White House and deal directly with Congress,
according to a cable signed by then-Ambassador Myles Frechette. [AP]

DANGEROUS CRIME FAMILY STILL AT LARGE. Bill and Hillary Clinton have
become fabulously wealthy since leaving the White House, but they're still
stiffing their lawyers, the Daily News has learned. Various documents and
sources familiar with the Clintons' legal debts reveal they have yet to
retire hefty bills from the Whitewater, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky
scandals, as well as Bill Clinton's impeachment battle. The former
President owes $1 million to Robert Bennett, his Paula Jones attorney.
Bennett's firm hasn't seen a nickel in nearly a year. The Clintons also
are believed to be in seven-figure hock to David Kendall. He and Bennett
refused to comment. A year ago, Clinton aides confirmed the former First
Couple still owed $3.9 million in legal fees. Since the Clintons left the
White House in January 2001, their legal defense fund has paid $254,000 to
Kendall's firm, Williams & Connolly, and $86,000 to Skadden Arps,
Bennett's firm. In all, about $7.7 million in legal debts have been paid
off. But the fund is now tapped out, and the Clintons haven't done any new
fund-raising for it. It's possible the Clintons may have paid some of
Kendall's outstanding tab from their own pockets, but a Clinton loyalist
said that was unlikely . . . Washington lawyer Tony Essaye, who ran the
defense fund for years, said he has not been informed that any of the
Clintons' outstanding $3.9 million debt has been paid down. [Timothy J.
Burger, NY DAILY NEWS]

MONDAY, MAY 13, 2002

THE US, THE MIDDLE EAST AND VENEZUELA. The Venezuelan president, Hugo
Chavez, had advance warning of last month's coup attempt against him from
the secretary general of Opec, Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an
extraordinary plan which saved both his government and his life, an
investigation has revealed. Mr Rodriguez, who is Venezuelan and a former
leftwing guerrilla, telephoned Mr Chavez from the Vienna headquarters of
the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Venezuela is
an important member, several days before the attempted overthrow in April.
He said Opec had learned that some Arab countries, later revealed to be
Libya and Iraq, planned to call for a new oil embargo against the United
States because of its support for Israel. The Opec chief warned Mr Chavez
that the US would prod a long-simmering coup into action to break any
embargo threat. It was likely to act on April 11, the day a general strike
was due to start. It was Venezuela which shattered the oil embargo of 1973
by replacing Arab oil with its own huge reserves. The warning - revealed
by a Newsnight investigation to be shown on BBC2 tonight - explains the
swift and safe return of Mr Chavez to power within two days of his April
12 capture by military officers under the direction of the coup leader,
Pedro Carmona. Until now, it was unclear why Mr Carmona - who had declared
himself president - and the military chiefs who backed the coup
surrendered without firing a shot. The answer to the mystery, Newsnight
was told by a Chavez insider, is that several hundred pro-Chavez troops
were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential palace.
Juan Barreto, a leader of Mr Chavez's party in the national assembly, was
with Mr Chavez when he was under siege. Mr Barreto said that Jose Baduel,
chief of the paratroop division loyal to Mr Chavez, had waited until Mr
Carmona was inside Miraflores. Mr Baduel then phoned Mr Carmona to tell
him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a hostage
as Mr Chavez. He gave Mr Carmona 24 hours to return Mr Chavez alive.
Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Mr Carmona. The building was
surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who,
alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from
the Ranchos, the poorest barrios. Mr Chavez told Newsnight that, after
receiving the warning from Opec, he had hoped to stave off the coup
entirely by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush adminstration. He
pledged that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a renewed oil
embargo. But Mr Chavez had already incurred America's wrath by slashing
Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding Opec, causing oil prices to nearly
double to over $20 a barrel. His opponents had made it clear that they
would not abide by Opec production limits and would reverse his plan to
double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela,
principally the US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil. The US government's panic
over the calls for an oil embargo, made public by Iraq and Libya on April
8 and 9, also explains what Venezuelans see as the state department's
ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt. Mr Chavez told
Newsnight: "I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of
two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters -
their names, whom they met with, what they said - proof on video and on
still photographs." Last month the Guardian reported a former US
intelligence officer's claims that the US had been considering a coup to
overthrow the Venezuelan president for nearly a year. [Greg Palast,
GUARDIAN]

WHO GETS THE MONEY? Whatever the fate of the Army's multibillion-dollar
Crusader mobile artillery system, it has already helped provide an ample
return for some of Washington's most prominent power brokers. Retired Army
generals, including a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
received six-figure payments after being placed on the board of United
Defense Industries Inc., the Arlington-based company that has been
developing the Crusader. Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), the late former
Rep. Marvin Leath (D-Tex.) and other lobbyists shared in more than $1
million that United paid in each of the past three years to promote the
Crusader and other weapons systems it was developing and producing. But
the biggest winner has been the Carlyle Group, the Washington investment
firm headed by former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and other stars
of past administrations, Republican and Democratic. Since purchasing
United in 1997 for roughly $173 million in cash and $700 million in
borrowed funds, Carlyle has reaped more than $400 million in dividends and
capital gains from United, according to government filings . . . Carlyle's
leadership is well known. In addition to Carlucci, it includes former
secretary of state James A. Baker III; former Office of Management and
Budget director Richard Darman; William E. Conway Jr., former chief
financial officer of MCI Communications Corp.; and David M. Rubenstein, a
former domestic policy adviser in the Carter White House . . . When it
came time for the 2000 elections, United made campaign contributions to no
fewer than 50 members of Congress -- including 15 on the House
Appropriations Committee and 26 on the House Armed Services Committee --
according to the company's campaign reports filed on Capitol Hill. United
Defense LP Employees Political Action Committee boosted its contributions
from $49,500 in the 1998 election cycle to $180,000 in 2000. [Walter
Pincus WASHINGTON POST]

THAT'LL FIX 'EM. Heshire, OH, would have been an ordinary little town
except for the bizarre blue plume that periodically emerged from the
gigantic power plant and stalked through the streets, leaving townspeople
complaining of raspy throats, burning eyes, sore lips, mouth blisters and
grime everywhere. . . . Two years after the Environmental Protection
Agency accused the plant's owner, American Electric Power, of violating
the Clean Air Act in this southeast Ohio hamlet, the company, which is
contesting that accusation, is solving at least some of its problems by
buying the town, for $20 million. Over the next few months, all 221
residents of Cheshire will pack up and leave. The 90 homeowners here will
get checks for about three times the value of houses they probably could
not have sold anyway. In return, they have signed pledges never to sue the
power company for property damage or health problems. The deal, announced
April 16, is believed to be the first by a company to dissolve an entire
town. It will help the company avoid the considerable expense and
public-relations mess of individual lawsuits, legal and environmental
experts said. [NYT]

WHO GETS THE MONEY (II)? Members of the National Family Farm Coalition
condemned the farm bill that was passed by the House and Senate and vowed
to continue to fight for legislation that helps family farmers. "The 2002
Farm Bill spells disaster for family farmers," said Bill Christison, a
Missouri grain farmer, President of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center and
the National Family Farm Coalition. "However, Cargill and ADM executives
must be dancing with joy today --- this legislation guarantees that they
can continue to buy grain at less than the cost of production, subsidized
by our tax dollars. And Smithfield brought back the pork once again: lack
of a packer ban in the bill means that processors can keep artificially
manipulating the market by using their own hogs to depress livestock
prices and drive family farmers out of business." [AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER]

AND AGAIN. About 150,000 American farmers will receive roughly 80% of the
money in the bill -- primarily industrialized farms in the South and
Midwest. Cotton and rice are also grown by a few large farms in
California's Central Valley. About 90% of California farmers, who grow
vegetables, fruits, nuts and other specialty crops, will see little aid
from the legislation. "It's not about American agriculture," said Rep. Sam
Farr, Dem.-Carmel. "It's about a few folks in agriculture, and it's
especially not about California agriculture." The subsidies are expected
to drive down world prices of key commodities, damaging the economies of
the world's poorest countries, and remove pressure on Europe and Japan to
reduce their subsidies. Agriculture provides about half of the gross
domestic product of the world's poorest countries, said Thomas Beierle, an
analyst with Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank. [Carolyn
Lochhead, SF CHRONICLE]

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2002

BUSH IS SAID TO CALL HIM "POOTIE-POOT." Heralding the Cold War's funeral,
NATO and Russia reached a historic agreement Tuesday to combat common
security threats in the post-Sept. 11 era. The deal establishing a
NATO-Russia council to set policy on counterterrorism and a range of other
issues was reached by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other NATO
foreign ministers after meeting in the Icelandic capital with their
Russian counterpart. "This is the last rites, the funeral of the Cold
War," said British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. "Fifteen years ago,
Russia was the enemy, now Russia becomes our friend and ally. There could
be no bigger change." NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said the
terror attacks in the United States had driven home the need for broad
international cooperation to defend common values and interests, which now
extend to Russia. "This is not some sentimental journey. It's a
hard-nosed, cold, calm exercise in collective self-interest," Robertson
said. The NATO-Russia pact, which arose from Russian President Vladimir
Putin's support for the West since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was the
second significant step Russia has taken this week toward its former
enemies. On Monday, Moscow and Washington agreed to reduce their nuclear
arsenals by two-thirds. "We not only can, but we are obliged to act as
partners in the face of this new threat," Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov said. The new NATO-Russia Council will set joint policy on a fixed
range of issues including counterterrorism, controlling the spread of
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, missile defense, peacekeeping
and management of regional crises, civil defense, search-and-rescue at
sea, promoting military cooperation and arms control. Straw emphasized the
cooperation was more than symbolic: "It could make an enormous difference
in the war on terrorism." NATO officials say the agreement will not affect
the alliance's core mutual defense role and that safeguards are built in
to ensure Moscow will not be able to veto NATO decisions if relations
sour. The foreign ministers also adopted what Robertson called "the agenda
of change." Buoyed by prospects for a new U.S.-Russia weapons treaty, the
ministers uniformly described an atmosphere of goodwill and consensus on
the first day of meetings. Capping an ambitious reform agenda to prepare
for a summit in Prague in November, the ministers reviewed the alliance's
plans to invite new members from eastern Europe, agreed to modernize
NATO's military capabilities to respond to evolving threats and establish
new relations with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. "NATO ...
must change once more to deal with the threats of a new century,"
Robertson said. "Threats that cannot be measured in fleets of tanks,
warships or combat aircraft. Threats no longer mounted by governments. And
threats that can come with little or no warning." NATO will inaugurate one
of the most significant changes since the fall of communism on May 28 when
President Bush joins other NATO leaders and Putin outside Rome for the
first meeting of the new Russian-NATO council. "Countries that spent four
decades glowering at each across the wall of hatred and fear now have the
opportunity to transform the future of Euro-Atlantic security for the
better," Robertson said. Before the meeting in Italy, Bush and Putin are
to sign a new treaty in Moscow to cut nuclear warheads. Bush said the deal
would "put behind us the Cold War once and for all." Under pressure from
Washington to narrow the "capabilities gap," the NATO allies also agreed
to improve the alliance's ability to move troops into conflict areas
quickly, enhance strike capabilities as well as shared communications and
intelligence - all areas viewed as essential to combat threats revealed by
the attacks on New York and Washington. "The United States, which has the
largest defense budget of all, is continuing to add more money to our
budget," Powell told reporters. "We think that all of our colleagues in
NATO should be doing likewise." Ministers had no quarrel with Washington's
push for modernization, but Straw said it would be difficult to secure
broad support for a big increase in defense budgets. "It will require a
lot of effort by European statesmen to persuade their public to increase
military spending," he told reporters. While specific recommendations will
be worked out by defense ministers next month, the foreign ministers
acknowledged that new threats mean NATO missions could be executed out of
alliance territory. "NATO must be able to field forces that can move
quickly to wherever they are needed, sustain operations over distance and
time, and achieve their objectives," the ministers said in a statement.
The ministers added Croatia to the list of nine candidates for expansion,
but did not indicate which were favored to receive invitations for
membership at the Prague summit. [AP]

[continued in part 2]