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Secret N. Korea nuke site suspected
N. Korea repeats treaty call

WASHINGTON (CNN) --The United States suspects North Korea may be operating a second nuclear weapons facility, this one at a secret location, a senior U.S. defense official has told CNN.
Air sensors on North Korea's borders have detected elevated levels of krypton 85, a gas emitted in the processing of spent nuclear fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.
But the gas appeared not to be emanating from North Korea's known Yongbyon nuclear plant site, indicating the possibility of a second site, the official said.
While not ruling out its existence, South Korea played down the reports of a secret nuclear facility.
President Roh Moo-hyun "expressed concern about the phenomenon of unclear and groundless media reports throwing cold water on our economy," Kim Man-soo, a deputy spokesman of the presidential Blue House said on Monday.
South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-Hyuck said he doubted the reports of a secret facility would sway "the firm U.S. position of seeking a peaceful and diplomatic solution" to the nuclear standoff between Pyongyang and Washington that began in October.
"There is no conclusive information about such facilities," he told a domestic radio program.
The U.S. official told CNN that although computer analyses tracking the krypton 85 as well as other evidence suggest such a site, no other solid information exists, including satellite reconnaissance.
The gas "could be coming from somewhere other than Yongbyon," the official said, but "we're just not sure." He said the scientific method used was "not precise."
The official acknowledged North Korea has been digging a number of deep underground facilities in mountainous areas over the past several years but could not confirm if these sites might be the location of a nuclear facility.
Though North Korea has not yet responded to the reports, Pyongyang on Monday reissued its demand for a non-aggression treaty with the United States.
A commentary by North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency said talks based on "fairness, equality and trust" were the only way to resolve the nuclear crisis.
Russia has urged the United States and North Korea to start talks as soon as possible to avoid escalating the standoff.

Suspected site
The New York Times reported on Sunday that U.S. officials have long thought North Korea might try to build another plant in case of a U.S. airstrike.
A suspected underground site was inspected five years ago at U.S. insistence, but it was found empty, the Times reported.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan would not confirm the report. "We do not discuss intelligence matters," he said.
But he noted the North Koreans have taken "a number of escalating steps in recent months," including expelling international nuclear inspectors, restarting nuclear facilities and announcing in April that they would develop a nuclear weapons program.
North Korea recently told the United States it had finished processing 8,000 spent fuel rods into plutonium and intends to build nuclear weapons.
U.S. officials said they are "very concerned" about the claim, and while they have evidence North Korea is reprocessing some of the spent fuel rods, they can't say how many.
The isolated and impoverished nation is believed by the United States to possess at least one and perhaps as many as three nuclear weapons.
If 8,000 nuclear fuel rods have been reprocessed, the North Koreans may be able to produce six to 12 additional nuclear warheads, U.S. officials estimate.
North Korea also has an advanced ballistic missile capability that could potentially be able to deliver a nuclear warhead over a long distance.
-- CNN's Chris Plante contributed to this report.

U.S. Unsure if N. Korea Bluffing on Nukes
Wed Jul 16, 3:35 AM ET
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials say it's unclear whether North Korean officials were bluffing or telling the truth when they claimed to have finished producing enough plutonium for about a half-dozen nuclear bombs.
Bush plans to continue pressing for a diplomatic solution to the impasse with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, officials said, despite the North's claim to have finished extracting plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.
"I'm not in a position to characterize the intelligence assessment of what the North Koreans are telling us, but certainly what they've told us in the past has been worth paying attention to," Lawrence Di Rita, a top aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told reporters Tuesday.
North Korea declared completion of the plutonium extraction in New York last week at a meeting of North Korean diplomats with Jack Pritchard, a State Department official who handles North Korean issues.
A Pentagon official said Tuesday it was unlikely that the North had completed processing the fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, although officials from the United States and South Korea have said they believe the process has begun.
Gathering the plutonium from those fuel rods would give North Korea enough of the element to produce several more nuclear weapons to add to the one or two nuclear bombs U.S. officials contend the communist-led government already has. U.S. officials worry North Korea could sell or give some of its nuclear material - or worse, an assembled weapon - to other states or to terrorists.
North Korea withdrew last year from the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"It's a country that has sent ballistic missile technology to a lot of bad places. It's a country that, if it felt it were in its interest, it would sell nuclear technology," Di Rita said.
True or not, the claim is a challenge to President Bush, who has declared that a nuclear-armed North Korea is unacceptable to the United States. While stressing that Bush's focus is on finding a diplomatic solution, administration officials have not ruled out a military response.
White House and Pentagon officials called the North Korea matter a serious situation Tuesday but not a crisis.
"We will not submit to blackmail or grant inducements to the North to live up to its obligations," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Tensions over North Korea's nuclear program have been on the rise since October, when Pyongyang admitted having a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. The admission led to the collapse of the 1994 agreement in which North Korea had agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel aid and the construction of two nuclear power generating stations.
Since then, North Korea has withdrawn from the nonproliferation treaty and ejected International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. The United States has insisted on talks involving other countries in the region, such as China, South Korea and Japan, while North Korea says it wants to talk only to the United States.
Bush administration officials said Tuesday that North Korea has two choices.
"It can offend the entire international community by continuing to pursue its nuclear ambitions. That will only lead them to isolation and to a deteriorating situation for the regime in Pyongyang," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
"Or they can end these programs verifiably and irreversibly. And we have made clear that we're prepared to talk to North Korea about a better path that could be followed if it were prepared to do that."
Asked if Bush might resort to military force against North Korea, McClellan said, "The president never takes options off the table, but it's something that we want to address in a multilateral way."
McClellan said the United States would continue working with China, Japan and South Korea "toward our shared objective of a complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons program."
China, which hosted three-way talks with U.S. and North Korean representatives in April, urged North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's government Monday to agree to further talks.

U.S., N. Korea Drifting Toward War, Perry Warns
Former Defense Secretary Says Standoff Increases Risk of Terrorists Obtaining Nuclear Device
By Thomas E. Ricks and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 15, 2003; Page A14

Former defense secretary William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year, in an increasingly dangerous standoff that also could result in terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device and plant it in a U.S. city.
"I think we are losing control" of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. "The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities," he said in an interview.
Perry added that he reached his conclusions after extensive conversations with senior Bush administration officials, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and senior officials in China.
After weeks of debate, President Bush and his senior foreign policy advisers this week are expected to meet to resolve the administration's next step in the crisis over North Korea's nuclear programs. Officials have discussed how sharply to ratchet up the pressure, and how to react to a series of possible North Korean provocations, including nuclear tests.
Perry is the most prominent member of a growing number of national security experts and Korea specialists who are expressing deep concern about the direction of U.S. policy toward Pyongyang. As President Bill Clinton's defense secretary, he oversaw preparation for airstrikes on North Korean nuclear facilities in 1994, an attack that was never carried out. He has remained deeply involved in Korean policy issues and is widely respected in national security circles, especially among senior military officers. They credit him with playing a key role in developing the U.S. high-tech arsenal of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft and also with righting the Pentagon after the short, turbulent term of Les Aspin, Clinton's first defense chief.
Only last winter Perry publicly argued that the North Korea problem was controllable. Now, he said, he has grown to doubt that. "It was manageable six months ago if we did the right things," he said. "But we haven't done the right things."
He added: "I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous."
Since the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions erupted last October, when officials in Pyongyang disclosed they had a secret program to enrich uranium, the Bush administration has sought to pressure the regime into giving up its nuclear programs without offering inducements or entering into negotiations. Administration officials -- who came into office highly skeptical of the Clinton administration's 1994 deal that froze North Korea's nuclear programs -- have sought to enlist Japan, South Korea and China to join in isolating North Korea, and have begun laying the groundwork for a maritime campaign to shut down North Korea's narcotics and weapons smuggling operations.
North Korea has insisted on direct bilateral negotiations with Washington, although officials briefly participated in trilateral talks with China and the United States, and over the months it has taken increasingly provocative steps. It ousted international inspectors, restarted a shuttered nuclear facility and appears to have reprocessed at least a few hundred of 8,000 spent fuel rods that can provide plutonium for weapons. The spent fuel would give North Korea enough nuclear material to build two to three nuclear bombs within a few months, doubling the estimated size of its arsenal.
Last week, North Korean officials told the administration they had completed reprocessing all of the fuel rods -- an assertion that U.S. officials have not been able to confirm through available intelligence.
Officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House declined to respond to Perry's criticism on the record. But speaking anonymously, administration officials vehemently disagreed with his analysis, saying they have succeeded in building a multilateral consensus that North Korea's nuclear program is unacceptable, leaving Pyongyang increasingly isolated.
The administration has no intention of rewarding North Korea for giving up its weapons, officials said, adding that the new effort to target North Korea's illegal sources of revenue will only further weaken North Korea.
The administration policy toward North Korea, however, has been characterized by fierce disputes among senior policymakers, which officials privately acknowledge have hampered the administration's response. "There is an ongoing search for consensus within the administration itself," said Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. "The lack of a consensus to a significant extent has prevented U.S. policy from unfolding."
In a two-hour interview in his office at Stanford University, Perry said that after conversations with several senior administration officials from different areas of the government, he is persuaded that the Korea policy is in disarray. Showing some emotion, the usually reserved Perry said at one point, "I'm damned if I can figure out what the policy is."
Nor, having had extensive contacts with Asian leaders, does Perry believe that the multilateral diplomatic approach is working. "I see no evidence of that," he said. "The diplomatic track, as nearly as I can discern, is inconsequential."
From his discussions, Perry has concluded the president simply won't enter into genuine talks with Pyongyang's Stalinist government. "My theory is the reason we don't have a policy on this, and we aren't negotiating, is the president himself," Perry said. "I think he has come to the conclusion that Kim Jong Il is evil and loathsome and it is immoral to negotiate with him."
The immediate cause of concern, Perry said, is that North Korea appears to have begun reprocessing the spent fuel rods. "I have thought for some months that if the North Koreans moved toward processing, then we are on a path toward war," he said.
Perry's comments, while unusually blunt from a former senior policymaker, reflect an increasing consensus among other specialists that the administration, distracted by Iraq, has allowed the North Korean crisis to spiral out of control.
"I'm not sure where our policy is going," said retired Army Gen. Robert W. RisCassi, a former U.S. commander in Korea. But, he added, "I don't know if I would be as doomsday as Bill Perry is at this juncture," in part, because he believes a diplomatic solution is still possible.
James M. Bodner, a former top policy official at the Clinton-era Pentagon, said that the Bush administration essentially has a policy of ignoring North Korea as much as possible. The trouble, he said, is that it doesn't have time on its side, because North Korea's moves are likely soon to begin altering the politics of East Asia in a way that undermines U.S. interests in the region.
Even some specialists who support Bush administration policy think the situation is moving toward confrontation. "I think it will be enormously significant" if North Korea tests a nuclear warhead this year, said Paul Bracken, a Yale University expert on Asian nuclear issues. "It'll force the administration to take action -- surgical strikes, perhaps."
Eberstadt described the current situation as "sitzkrieg," saying neither side has made its most obvious move. In North Korea's case, that would be detonating an underground nuclear device, he said, while for the United States it would be to organize an international program of maritime interdiction -- a kind of loose embargo -- to shut down dangerous North Korean exports, including missile sales.
Perry argued that an interdiction strategy "would be provocative, but it would not be effective" in preventing the sale of nuclear material. "You don't need a ship to transport a core of plutonium that is smaller than a basketball," he said.
Rather than escalate in this way, Perry said, the administration should engage in "coercive diplomacy," which he explained as, "You have to offer something, but you have to have an iron fist behind your offer." He didn't specify what should be offered, but others have suggested that North Korea would like economic aid, trade deals, diplomatic recognition or a nonaggression pact.

Bomb Rocks Indonesia Parliament Complex
Mon Jul 14, 7:21 AM ET
By Dean Yates

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A bomb exploded at Indonesia's parliament Monday, spraying nails and concrete over a wide area in an attack that came just days after police caught nine suspected Muslim militants and seized a huge cache of explosives.
The blast also follows parliament's passage last week of a bill paving the way for Indonesia's first direct presidential election in 2004. Security analysts said Monday they saw a growing threat of political assassinations ahead of the poll.
Police called the bombing a "terror" attack, although parliament is in recess and no one was hurt. Damage was minor.
National police chief Da'i Bachtiar said it was too early to blame anyone, but added the attack bore the hallmarks of bomb explosions in April at Jakarta's international airport and near the U.N. building in Jakarta. No one died in those blasts.
He said the high explosives used were also of the same type as that found among a cache of weapons seized in a raid on suspected operatives of the Southeast Asian militant network Jemaah Islamiah in Central Java province last week. "Inside this tube were a variety of nails. If this explodes, then they become just like bullets," Bachtiar told reporters.
Late Monday, an Indonesian police source said four members of the Australian Federal Police had begun to probe the site, building on cooperation forged during the investigation of last year's Bali bombings, which have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah.
A number of Australian police are still working on that case.
The latest device was placed near an air-conditioning unit at the back of a function room in the parliament complex but close to the main auditorium, which was empty.
ARRESTS, EXPLOSIVES
The attack follows Friday's announcement by police that they had foiled plans by Islamic radicals to attack churches and shops in Jakarta and had arrested nine suspected Jemaah militants.
They also seized TNT and chemicals with an explosive power 10 times greater than the bombs used in the Bali blasts that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Police said at the weekend they were hunting several more suspects.
Security analysts said it was too soon to connect the latest attack with Jemaah Islamiah, a group linked to al Qaeda. Jemaah aims to form an Islamic state across parts of Southeast Asia.
But the analysts said that safeguarding the 2004 elections -- especially in light of last week's arrests -- was starting to cause concern in Jakarta.
Zachary Abuza, a counter-terrorism specialist at Simmons College in the United States, said senior security officials were worried about political assassinations leading up to the polls.
"They are really expecting a lot more in terms of assassinations," Abuza said. One Western security risk analyst said police believed they had to rein in Jemaah Islamiah fast before the elections.
"They feel they have a limited window of opportunity to close these guys down before the elections. What they fear is that if they don't, they will create hell," the analyst said.
One of the suspected militants was arrested last week at a house close to President Megawati Sukarnoputri's main private residence. Police seized an M-16 rifle and 1,600 bullets during the raid. There have been reports the suspects were part of an operation aimed at killing several Indonesian political figures.
The alleged head of Jemaah Islamiah, Abu Bakar Bashir, is on trial in Jakarta over a series of bombings in the country and an assassination plot against Megawati in 2001.
Bombings have occurred sporadically in Indonesia since it began its messy transition to democracy in 1998.

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - INTELLIGENCE
July 9, 2003 - 6:48 p.m.
Kashmiri Arrests Here Raise Spectre of New Terror Front
By Anjali Cordeiro, Special to CQ Homeland Security

The indictment of eleven men in Virginia last week on charges of supporting a Pakistan-based group fighting to push India out of Kashmir raises the prospect of a new terrorist threat in the United States.
According to the indictment, the eleven men allegedly supported a radical Islamic group called the "Army of the Pure" - Lashkar-e-Taiba in the local language - which was labeled as a terrorist organization by the State Department in October 2001.
In another incident, last month, a Kashmiri-born truck driver from Ohio pleaded guilty to providing material support and resources to al Qaeda. Iyman Faris allegedly was involved in an al Qaeda plot to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge.
Until now, however, no Kashmir militants were suspected of operating in tandem with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization inside the United States.
The former head of counterterrorism for India's foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, said in an e-mail interview that the LT, as the group is commonly referred to, and groups like it, have had a clandestine presence in the United States since the 1990s.
"They have been focusing on cultivating members of the Pakistani immigrant community and Afro-Asian Muslims," said B. Raman (who, like many Indians, uses only one name).
India and Pakistan have been struggling over control of Kashmir since the two countries were separated in 1947.
Money Hunt
Harry B. "Skip" Brandon, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI for counterintelligence, says that Kashmiri militants here traditionally concentrated on raising funds for the fight back home.
"There is no question that there have been very active supporters of the Kashmir freedom movement in the United States," Brandon said in an interview Wednesday.
"Since the eighties, there have been people who have raised funds for the freedom of Kashmir. Their activities at that time were not in direct violation of U.S. laws. There was periodic close coordination [between the FBI and] authorities in India, but there was nothing that could be legally done."
After the Sept. 11 attacks, when many of the groups operating in Kashmir were designated as terrorist groups by the State Department, raising money or providing other material support for them became illegal.
The arrests of the 11 men, Brandon added, shows that U.S. intelligence agencies are taking notice of regional groups like the LT.
"They are not just focused on the Taliban and the al Qaeda, but also on groups affiliated with them," he said.
Violent Jihad
The Lashkar is widely considered to be the most brutal of the terrorist groups active in the Kashmiri conflict.
The group is suspected of involvement in the Dec. 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and an attack on an army outpost in New Delhi later that month, the Hindustan Times said in a feature on the group.
The State Department describes the Lashkar as "the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad," an anti-American organization formed in 1989.
In 2002, under pressure from Washington, the government of Pakistan banned the Lashkar and froze its assets.
The eleven men arrested last month, nine of whom are American citizens, are charged with conspiring to "engage in violent jihad" on behalf of Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, the Philippines and "other countries and territories... the defendants and their conspirators believed to be the enemies of Islam."
The indictment does not allege the men were plotting specific attacks inside the United States, but does charge them with the "intent to serve in armed hostility against the United States"
The indictment alleges that a number of the men practiced military tactics using paint-ball equipment in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. One allegedly possessed a "Terrorist Handbook" containing instructions on manufacturing and using explosives and chemicals as weapons. Another allegedly had a photograph - downloaded from the Internet - of the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Eight of the men pleaded not guilty to the charges July 3 in federal court in Alexandria, Va. Three others are not yet in custody and are believed to be living in Saudi Arabia, according to media reports.
On July 2, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema overruled a magistrate's decision to grant bond to one of the men, ordering him held until trial. Brinkema has scheduled hearings for Justice Department appeals of bail for some of the other men.
Al Qaeda Connection
Selig Harrison, head of the Asia Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., says intelligence agencies agree Lashkar maintains a close working relationship with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.
"Three years before September 11, I was told by a top source in the State Department that the Lashkar was serving a secret police function for the Taliban" in Afghanistan, Harrison said.
Raman, the Indian intelligence veteran, said Lashkar headquarters at Muridke, in the Pakistani province of Punjab, has a guesthouse and a mosque constructed with funds provided by Osama Bin Laden.
"Before he fell foul of the U.S., [bin Laden] stayed in this guest house during his visits to Pakistan," says Raman.
Most experts agree that Lashkar operatives are unlikely to attempt any attacks inside the United States in the near future.
"It has been building up its clandestine infrastructure in the U.S. and will continue to do so, but will avoid any attacks for the present," Raman said.
Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and former deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia also doubts the Lashkar will attack the United States directly.
"My impression is that these people are more interested in their own homeland," she said.
But Brandon's not so sure.
"It is not outside the realm of possibility that these groups could pose a threat to U.S. homeland security," Brandon said. "If you had asked me four or five years ago, I would have said that it was highly unlikely, these groups are interested only in Kashmir. But radical Islamic terrorism has given things a new twist and the authorities are gradually seeing a blurring of the lines between terrorist groups."
And Raman warned the group probably will continue to "guide, train, fund and coordinate other members of bin Laden's International Islamic Front and al Qaeda remnants wanting to launch attacks in the U.S. without coming directly into the picture itself."
Tariq Karim, a former Bangladesh ambassador to the United States who currently is a senior advisor for governance institutions at the University of Maryland, agrees.
"Their links with al Qaeda go way back and are deep," he said. "The spiritual wing of the Lashkar was funded by al Qaeda till very recently."
And Karim says the group may find other sympathizers here.
"There is a huge South Asian community in the U.S. and North America and you will always find among the expatriate community people willing to fund causes," he said. "Also, they believe that if they can recruit people from the U.S., it is symbolic that people here sympathize with their cause."

Roh, Hu to boost N. Korea efforts
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published July 8, 2003

BEIJING (AP) - The leaders of China and South Korea pledged new efforts yesterday to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, but Beijing also said Pyongyang needs reassurances that it won't come under attack.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun spoke to reporters after closed-door talks in Beijing, which is North Korea's only major ally.
"We must open up channels between all concerned parties as soon as possible," Mr. Roh said. "And in order to reach a consensus, all sides need to make relentless efforts."
Mr. Hu said both countries agreed on the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
"We want to avoid the situation getting out of hand, so we need to deepen our efforts to make a breakthrough," Mr. Hu said.
China has said it is in favor of keeping nuclear weapons off the Korean Peninsula, a stand Mr. Hu reaffirmed yesterday. In April, Beijing hosted the first formal talks between Washington and Pyongyang since the nuclear dispute started in October.
Mr. Roh, making his first visit to China since taking office in February, has called for Beijing to play a "constructive role" in resolving the dispute. China recently offered to host more talks.
The standoff flared in October when U.S. officials said Pyongyang had admitted it had a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 deal with Washington.
U.S. officials said a North Korean envoy had contended during the April meeting in Beijing that Pyongyang had nuclear bombs and planned to build more, but that it was willing to give them up if it received security guarantees and economic aid.
The United States says any talks with North Korea also should involve South Korea, Japan and Russia, in addition to China. North Korea insists on holding direct talks with the United States before multilateral talks.

Al Qaeda said to have migrated to Iran

By Aamir Latif
Published July 6, 2003

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's intelligence community believes that the operational base of al Qaeda has shifted to Iran from Pakistan after the arrest of the network's military operations chief, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Mohammed was arrested by Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in Rawalpindi on Feb. 28.
Pakistani intelligence officials said they since received cogent information that several key al Qaeda fugitives who were hiding in Pakistan had moved to Iran.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview during his Washington trip late last month that some al Qaeda operatives "certainly" had relocated to Iran in the wake of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, although he could not say for certain who the fugitives were.
"Al Qaeda is on the run, and they are transiting to all the neighboring countries," Gen. Musharraf told editors and reporters at a luncheon June 26 at The Washington Times. "Certainly, they are transiting to Iran as well, although we can't say for sure how senior these people are."
Saif Al-Adel, an Egyptian national who has been appointed the military chief of al Qaeda after the arrest of Mohammed, is hiding in the Iranian city of Zahedan, which borders with Pakistan, Pakistani intelligence officials say.
Other leaders include Osama bin Laden's eldest son, Saad bin Laden; Yaaz bin Sifat, a top ranking al Qaeda planner; Abu Mohammad al-Masri; and various former ministers of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban government.
A former mayor of Kabul during the Taliban regime, Mohammed Islam Haani, was arrested recently by Afghan troops while trying to cross into Iran.
Intelligence officials believe that some 250 al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives are hiding in Iran.
Pakistan's intelligence agencies recently arrested two officials of the country's passport agency from the border city of Peshawar on charges of providing fake passports to hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban.
Gen. Musharraf called the passport incident "very disturbing to us," saying Pakistan was attempting to develop more sophisticated systems to prevent such forgeries.
He said an internal investigation found that the officials involved were motivated by money, not by sympathy for al Qaeda or the Taliban.
"There was nothing here tied to the support of extremism. There was no attachment or link to al Qaeda," he said. "From what we have uncovered, it was a case of simple corruption."
During initial investigations, the passport officials confessed to helping many al Qaeda and Taliban leaders flee Pakistan. Intelligence officials believe that the majority of those fugitives are hiding in Iran.
"We have received concrete information that Saif Al-Adel and some other al Qaeda leaders have trickled into Iran during the last few months following an intense operation against the network in Pakistan," one intelligence officer said on the condition of anonymity.
The officer refused to comment on whether the al Qaeda fugitives were hiding under Iranian state protection.
"I cannot say anything with authenticity in this connection," the official said. "We only know that several al Qaeda leaders have trickled into Iran on fake documents or without documents as no other country is able to bear the American pressure except Iran."
After a detailed investigation from passport officials, he said, it would be clear which al Qaeda operatives had crossed the Iranian border and how they did it.
Other intelligence sources said that Al-Adel had crossed the Iranian border via the Pakistani town of Taftan.
Taftan is situated some 325 miles off Pakistan's southeastern city of Quetta. Until the arrest of Mohammed, Al-Adel had been in Pakistan's tribal belt, near Quetta, where he was busy recruiting fighters.
Intelligence officials believe the departure of Al-Adel and others is partly a result of Pakistan's massive hunt for them in a remote area of Baluchistan province, which abuts both Afghanistan and Iran.
Another key suspect, Yaaz bin Sifat, who is wanted in connection with the September 11 attacks, has fled to Iran from Pakistan, intelligence officials say.
Intelligence officials have received reports that other fugitives in Pakistan also will attempt to flee to Iran.

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
June 25, 2003 - 8:14 p.m.

U.S.-European Strains Over Post-9/11 Security Measures Easing

By Amy Menefee, Special to CQ Homeland Security

Despite lingering acrimony over a Homeland Security program to inspect U.S.-bound cargo in European ports, American and European officials this week pledged to "expand and intensify customs cooperation and to take practical measures to improve the security of ocean-going and other modes of international trade."

The European Union has sued eight of its own member countries that joined the U.S. Container Security Initiative, charging their participation violates European Union trade laws.

But in a statement issued at the conclusion of a U.S.-EU summit in Washington June 25, EU and U.S. officials agreed that the Container Security Initiative and other customs-related programs offer "an important opportunity to maximize supply chain security on both sides of the Atlantic."

The statement also said a technical working group may be formed to make recommendations on securing transatlantic cargo shipments. The working group would be made up of officials from the Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection division, the European Commission and interested EU member states.

New talks on aviation security also were announced at Wednesday's summit. Those talks may take place this fall, the EU said.

Embassy urges readiness for attacks
By Richard S. Ehrlich
Published June 23, 2003

BANGKOK, Thailand - The U.S. Embassy has advised Americans in Thailand to conduct antiterrorist "emergency drills" at home and at work after police arrested three Muslims suspected of plotting to bomb embassies and tourist sites.
Police hunted over the weekend for a fourth Muslim man, Samarn Waekaji, in connection with the suspected plot to bomb the U.S., British, Australian, Israeli and Singaporean embassies as well as major tourist venues in Bangkok.
U.S. investigators continued a separate investigation into the origin of radioactive cesium-137 that a Thai teacher is accused of trying to sell to U.S. and Thai agents in a Bangkok hotel parking lot.
There was no indication that the two cases were linked, and it appeared that U.S. and Thai officials were treating them as different investigations.
"If you have been reading the newspapers or watching TV over the last two weeks, you are probably wondering what exactly is going on in Thailand concerning terrorism and how it relates to Americans residing here," the U.S. Embassy said in a "security update" to Americans living in this Southeast Asian nation.
"You have most likely seen the story about the three men arrested in southern Thailand for plotting attacks against several embassies and soft targets in Thailand, and the more recent arrest involving a person selling material for possible use in a 'dirty bomb,' " the U.S. advisory said.
The embassy assured expatriate Americans that terrorist operations have been disrupted by recent international efforts, including "arrests in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia, the United States, and many other places around the world."
It praised Thai authorities for being "very active in pursuing matters related to terrorism" and expressed confidence in Thailand's ability to reduce the threat.
"While we will continue to work closely with the Thai authorities with regard to the safety of the American community, we urge you to remain proactive in your personal security practices," said the warning, issued Friday.
"You should remain vigilant and prepared. Consider holding emergency drills for your family or business, and report suspicious persons and incidents to the police immediately."
Thailand's population is about 95 percent Buddhist. Its Muslim community lives mostly in the south along the border with Muslim-majority Malaysia.
Bangkok is a relatively modern, sprawling city of 6 million people with low-key security, despite the recent arrests. A police presence is visible at the gates of major embassies and at some tourist sites, but the atmosphere is usually relaxed.
Three Thai Muslims arrested on June 10 in southern Thailand are suspected of belonging to Jemaah Islamiyah, a pan-Asian militant group blamed for the Oct. 12, 2002, bombing in Bali, Indonesia, which killed 202 persons.
The three were identified as Islamic religious teacher Maisuri Haji Abdulloh, his son Muyahi Haji Doloh, and drugstore owner Waemahadi Waedao.
"The plan was for high-powered explosives to be concealed in vehicles that would be parked at the targeted places, ready to explode," Interior Minister Wan Mohammad Matha told journalists after the arrests.
The men denied the charges, and their lawyer insisted they did not confess or possess any incriminating evidence.
Three days later in a separate case, U.S. Customs officials helped Thai police arrest a Thai suspect,, Narong Penanam, in Bangkok who is accused of offering to sell them a box containing cesium-137, which is used in medical and research technology but can be mixed with an explosive to create a small "dirty bomb" that would spread the radioactive material.

From the "Congressional Quarterly Homeland Security Daily," 20 June:

U.N. Body Advocates ID Cards for Commercial Sailors

The annual conference of the International Labor Organization, a United Nations body, has approved a proposal to fingerprint more than one million seafarers for new identity cards to prevent the maritime industry being infiltrated by terrorist groups, Reuters reported Thursday. The seafarer's country will issue the card, but the question of who pays for the technology was left open. The Bush administration has lobbied for the new ID cards because of concerns that a nuclear or biological device could be smuggled into the country through one of its ports. “9/11 was an obvious kick, but everyone understood that we all had an interest in dealing with this,” ILO Director General Juan Somavia told a news conference, Reuters said.-Anjali Cordeiro

June 19, 2003
Bush Says U.S. Will Not Tolerate Building of Nuclear Arms by Iran
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, June 18 - President Bush said for the first time today that the United States and its allies "will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon" in Iran, and an American official at a meeting of the world's nuclear watchdog agency accused the country of repeatedly evading inspections and violating its commitments.
Mr. Bush's assertion that Iran's program would be stopped came as the White House said it hoped to begin working with allies soon on intercepting ships and aircraft suspected of carrying material that could aid states like Iran and North Korea in their nuclear programs.
For years American officials have been studying programs in Iran and North Korea that are believed to be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium from the spent fuel produced by nuclear reactors. The Central Intelligence Agency believes North Korea already produced, a decade ago, enough plutonium to produce two weapons. Then, in October, the North admitted to a second program to produce highly enriched uranium in a laboratory process, and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency found a very similar program in Iran, after receiving tips from American and other intelligence agencies.
Programs in both countries appear to have accelerated in recent months, American intelligence officials say.
Mr. Bush's statement today came in response to questions from reporters during a meeting with senators about Medicare. Asked how he would stop Iran from acquiring a weapon, he said: "The international community must come together to make it very clear to Iran that we will not tolerate construction of a nuclear weapon. Iran would be dangerous if they have a nuclear weapon."
But Mr. Bush did not describe a strategy to halt the program, and while he is picking up support for gradual isolation of North Korea, many nations in Europe and elsewhere have extensive trade relations with Iran and rely on its oil. Moreover, administration officials believe that Iran is likely to pursue efforts to build nuclear weapons regardless of what government rules the country.
"They now see a nuclear power - the United States - right next door in Iraq," said one American diplomat with long experience with Iran. "That has to be affecting their calculations."
A senior White House official said tonight that Mr. Bush's explicit warning to Iran was a "carefully-worded escalation" that, for the first time, drew a line that the White House said Iran would not be permitted to cross. "It's not like this spilled out," a senior official said, noting that Mr. Bush had met extensively with his aides about the Iranian program in recent weeks.
Yet as recently as two weeks ago, when he was visiting Russia, which is providing crucial technology to Iran for a nuclear reactor, Mr. Bush said only that he was "concerned" about Iran's program and that it was important to keep weapons out of the hands of "radical clerics."
By declaring today that he would "not tolerate" the Iranian program, he echoed exactly the statements he made last month about North Korea. Mr. Bush has said that the United States is seeking a diplomatic solution in North Korea and is leaving its military options open if diplomacy fails; in the case of Iran, he has never mentioned the possibility of military action.
Mr. Bush has made clear in a series of statements that began during the summit meeting of industrialized nations in Évian, France, two weeks ago that finding new ways to counter the Iranian and North Korean programs would be at the top of his agenda in the aftermath of the war in Iraq. The White House said today that it was moving forward with the first phase of its "counterproliferation" effort.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said a number of major allies had agreed in principle at a meeting in Spain last week to begin intercepting - at sea and in the air - nuclear and missile-related shipments into and out of countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons technology. "The interdiction initiative that the president announced in Krakow has been well received and has now moved forward," he said, referring to the president's visit to Poland last month, although he added that no date had been set to begin intercepting such shipments.
The agreement in Spain calls for the seizure of such shipments when they pass through the waters or air space of countries agreeing to join the American-led effort. But it does not establish any new legal authority to seize such shipments in international waters, a step that would require redrafting international laws.
"We don't want to get bogged down in that," one senior administration official said last week.
In recent weeks, North Korea has boasted of its nuclear program and said it would accelerate it if the United States did not agree to a package of aid, recognition and security guarantees for the country. Iran, in contrast, has insisted that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, a statement reiterated today by President Mohammad Khatami.
White House officials have clearly decided to increase the diplomatic pressure on both countries.
Today, speaking at a meeting of Asian leaders in Cambodia, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that "no issue is of greater urgency to the U.S. than North Korea's nuclear weapons programs." He was seeking broader Asian support for a policy of increasing isolation of the North, a strategy that Japan has joined, but that China and South Korea have resisted.
Meanwhile, at a meeting of the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, the United States ambassador, Kenneth Brill, contended that Iran is "aggressively" pursuing a weapons program, and at the White House Mr. Fleischer said it made no sense for an oil-rich nation to spend so much money to produce nuclear power to produce energy.
Mr. Brill also noted that the I.A.E.A. inspectors were only allowed to see parts of the nuclear program after their existence was revealed by outsiders.
"Without the outside revelations, Iran's extensive nuclear program would still be proceeding on a largely clandestine basis," he said. "Can the I.A.E.A. or anyone else be confident under these circumstances that there are no other clandestine facilities that have yet to be revealed?"
Mr. Bush also voiced support for protesters on the streets of Tehran today, even though some of his aides have worried that any vocal American backing would play into the hands of hard-line clerics who say the street protests have been engineered by Washington.
"I appreciate those courageous souls who speak out for freedom in Iran," Mr. Bush said. "They need to know America stands squarely by their side. And I would urge the Iranian administration to treat them with the utmost of respect."

Headline: 13,000 Muslims face deportation -- Detail Story

NEW YORK, June 17: Over 13,000 Muslims, many of them Pakistanis, found to be living illegally in the United States during the special US Immigration registration process, are expected to be deported by authorities.
Last December the US immigration department, under the new Patriot Act, began requiring young men, mostly from 25 Muslim nations, to register in the hope of keeping track of recent arrivals from countries linked to terrorism. The last deadline was in late April for males over 16 from Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Similar deadlines had passed for males from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and many other countries.
A total of 144,513 immigrants registered nationwide, according to the US Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Enforcement, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Of those, 13,434 have had deportation proceedings started against them. The agency said 2,783 were detained, with 99 remaining in custody as of June 1, the most recent statistics available.
Many Pakistanis, who were unable to adjust their immigration status in the United States have either fled to Canada or European nations seeking political asylum, many have returned home. Although US authorities had held out an assurance that the process would be fair and transparent, most of the people fearing deportation left the United States, some after living here for more than 10 years. Even immigrants married to the American citizens, who were unable to adjust their status before registration would be subject to deportation.
Immigration lawyers and advocates complain that the registration programme amounts to racial profiling. A spokesman for the newly-established Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Enforcement Service (BCIS) , under the Homeland security office said: "We need to know who's coming in, are they leaving, and what they do while they're here." "In a post-9/11 world, we need to develop a system to track entrances and exits. Lets start with the higher-risk visitors, those who come from nations where Al-Qaeda is known to exist," he said.

June 17, 2003
Iran Is Urged to Sign Pact Giving Power to Inspectors
By FELICITY BARRINGER

UNITED NATIONS, June 16 - With Iran facing growing pressure to be more forthcoming about its nuclear program, the United Nations top nuclear weapons inspector, the Russian foreign minister and a group of European Union ministers today urged it to sign a protocol that would give inspectors the right to conduct more intrusive examinations of its facilities.
The calls came after the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is meeting in Vienna, formally reviewed a recent report that gave new details about Iranian plans for a heavy water research reactor, which could be used in the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The State Department responded to the developments by calling on the board of the I.A.E.A. to formally urge Iran to "answer all outstanding questions about that program" and to sign the protocol, which was added to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The Reuters news agency reported today that Iran's Atomic Energy Organization had said that Tehran might be willing to sign the protocol, but reiterated that it wanted access to Western nuclear technology in return. "We have not yet decided about signing the Additional Protocol, but we are studying it with a positive view," Khalil Mousavi, the organization's spokesman, told Reuters.
The Iranian nuclear program has been the subject of heightened international concern since the I.A.E.A. report was distributed 10 days ago. Since then, Iranian officials have turned down the request of inspectors to take "environmental samples" at the Kalaye Electric Company. Intelligence agencies and exile groups have alleged that the plant was used to test Iran's centrifuge apparatus - another technology associated with nuclear weapons.
Both the European Union, Iran's main trading partner, and Russia, whose engineers are helping Iran build a civilian nuclear power plant at Bushehr, called on Tehran to provide the necessary cooperation.
A statement of the Council of the European Union ministers issued in Luxembourg said that "while the council recognizes Iran's right to develop a nuclear program for civilian purposes, the nature of some aspects of this program raises serious concern." It also emphasized "the need for Iran to answer timely, fully and adequately all questions raised regarding its nuclear program."
The Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, visiting New Delhi, said, "We hope that Iran will sign the additional I.A.E.A. protocol, which will allow the extension of the provision of the I.A.E.A. over all nuclear facilities in the territory of the country."
In a speech to the Vienna meeting of the nuclear agency's 35-member governing board, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general, called on Iran "to permit us to take environmental samples" at one suspect site and to allow inspectors greater access "to provide credible assurances regarding the peaceful nature of its nuclear activities."
The agency's report had concluded, in part, that Iran had not met its obligations in terms of "the reporting of nuclear material, the subsequent processing and use of that material and the declaration of facilities where the material was stored and processed."
But the report also indicated that the very disclosures of the previously concealed activity and plans might be a sign of a new attitude.

Bali survivors recount bomb horror

DENPASAR, Indonesia --Australian victims of last October's Bali bomb attacks have given harrowing recollections of their experiences, describing a devastating scene littered by charred bodies during testimony to an Indonesian court.
The accounts were delivered by the first foreign witnesses to appear in the Bali trials during a hearing in the case against Amrozi -- one of three suspects to face trial for the attacks.
The October 12 attacks left 202 people dead, most of them tourists, including 88 Australians.
Tasmanian Stuart Anstee told the court he was partying with five friends in the Sari Club at the time a huge car bomb ripped through the Kuta Beach nightspot.
Three of his friends were killed and the force of the explosion knocked him unconscious for several minutes, Anstee, 24, said Monday.
"When I woke up I noticed blood spurting from my neck and my leg and my left arm. I saw many dead bodies inside and outside the Sari Club," Anstee told the court in the Balinese capital, Denpasar.
"Australians are angry at the people who committed this crime, angry at the terrorists," he said.
Former Australian Rules footballer Jason McCartney showed the court the scars from burns he received in the attack and glared at Amrozi during his testimony.
"The ugly visions are still there. I don't know how long it will take for them to go away," McCartney said, adding he was still receiving counseling and had been afraid to return to the Indonesian island.

'White people' targeted
In an earlier session, prosecutors told the same court an Indonesian Muslim militant accused of masterminding the bombing chose the location because it was popular with "white people."
Opening the case against Mukhlas or Ali Ghufron -- Amrozi's brother -- prosecutor Putu Indriati said the bombings were part of a plan to wage war on the United States.
"It was agreed the place for the bombing would be Bali because many white people went there, including those from America and its allies," Indriati read to the court, Reuters news agency reported.
Mukhlas is charged with plotting, organizing and funding the bombings.
The 43-year-old Muslim preacher is also accused of being the operations head of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant network, though the indictment against Mukhlas made no mention of the group.
Jakarta has blamed JI for the Bali blasts and the trial is expected to reveal more details about the inner workings of the group.
Prosecutors alleged Mukhlas met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1987 during the Indonesian's three-year stint there fighting Soviet forces.
Mukhlas gave more than $30,000 to several suspects to purchase explosives and a minivan that was used in the bombings, prosecution lawyers said.
The defendant's lawyer said on Sunday Mukhlas had not admitted to a role in the blasts. If found guilty, he faces the death penalty under newly introduced anti-terror laws.
Mukhlas' trial has been adjourned until next week.

June 13, 2003
Saudis Fire Clerics Who Preached Intolerance
By JAMES DAO

WASHINGTON, June 12 - The government of Saudi Arabia said today that it has fired several hundred Islamic clerics and suspended more than 1,000 others for preaching intolerance, part of a broader campaign against terrorism.
At a news conference held one month to the day after terrorist bombs killed more than 30 people in Riyadh, the Saudi government also announced that it has implemented new regulations intended to prevent the flow of Saudi money to terrorist groups overseas.
Saying that last month's bombings had "galvanized" his government, Adel al-Jubeir, a senior foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, asserted that Saudi Arabia has done more than any other country to ensure that its money does not "get used for evil."
"We will go after those who use religion to justify such behavior, which is alien to any faith, in particular our Islamic faith," Mr. Jubeir said at the Saudi Embassy here.
For the Saudis, who spend millions of dollars annually on public relations in the United States, today's announcements were the latest effort to counter assertions that Saudi Arabia is a breeding ground for Islamic extremism and a major financier of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and Hamas.
Critics scoffed at the Saudi Embassy's assertions that they had "closed the door on terrorist financing and money laundering."
William F. Wechsler, a National Security Council official in the Clinton administration who has studied terrorist financing, said the Saudis had revealed few details of their new regulations, making it difficult to evaluate their effectiveness.
"Let's see the laws and regulations, and let others evaluate them, not take the Saudis word for it," he said in a telephone interview. "Let's see that they are meeting international standards. Let's see the enforcement."
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, called pledges by the Saudis and other Arab nations to stop the flow of money to terrorist groups "a very important step forward." But he said more needed to be done.
According to documents released by the embassy, the Saudi government instituted new rules last month intended to make it easier for regulators to monitor charitable giving overseas. Those rules include requiring Saudi charities to keep their money in a single bank account, preventing cash withdrawals from those accounts and creating a new agency that will be the conduit for all Saudi charitable giving outside Saudi Arabia.
But Mr. Jubeir acknowledged that there were significant loopholes in the rules. For example, the Saudi regulations will not apply to foreign-based charities that raise funds in the kingdom.
The rules also will not prevent Saudi money from reaching schools, hospitals and other community institutions run by the political wing of Hamas, the Gaza-based group that has taken responsibility for a devastating suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Wednesday. But Mr. Wechsler and other terrorism experts said it was impossible to separate Hamas' political wing from its military operations. "It's a fantasy to think you can just give money to the charitable wing and somehow you are not helping a terrorist organization," Mr. Wechsler said.
The Israeli government also contends that Palestinian documents seized by its troops during raids in the West Bank last year provide evidence that organizations run by senior Saudi officials have contributed large sums of money to Hamas and to the families of suicide bombers.
The Saudi government does contribute aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, Mr. Jubeir said, but he argued that such assistance did not incite terrorist acts.
"If the family's in need, they will get the money," he said. "We're not saying, `Go blow yourself up and we'll give you money.' "

June 12, 2003
U.S. Widens Checks at Foreign Ports
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, June 11 - The Bush administration has decided to place teams of American inspectors at major seaports in Muslim nations and other smaller, strategically located foreign ports to prevent terrorists from using cargo containers to smuggle chemical, biological or nuclear weapons into the United States, senior administration officials said.
The inspectors, they said, will be provided with radiation monitors, chemical detectors and other equipment to inspect "high risk" metal cargo containers before they are placed on ships bound for the United States.
The move is the second phase in a government program begun shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to station American customs inspectors overseas to work side by side with their foreign counterparts in searching for unconventional weapons. The first phase focused on 20 large container ports in Europe and Asia, none of them in countries with predominantly Muslim populations.
Officials said the Department of Homeland Security planned to place teams of inspectors that would remain indefinitely in Dubai, the Persian Gulf emirate that is a crucial transhipment point for containerized cargo in the Arab world; Malaysia; Turkey and other Muslim nations. Al Qaeda is believed to have a sizable presence in both Dubai and Malaysia.
Intelligence agencies report that Al Qaeda has repeatedly used cargo ships to move conventional weapons and explosives, including the explosives used in the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa.
Human cargo is also a concern. In October 2001, only weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the authorities in an Italian seaport discovered an Egyptian man suspected of Qaeda membership hiding in a shipping container bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia; airport maps and security passes were also found in the container, which he had outfitted with a bed and bathroom. The man disappeared while on bail.
Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner of customs and border protection in the Homeland Security Department, said the expansion of the program reflected a continuing concern that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups would try to place chemical, biological or nuclear weapons into some of the more than six million containers that arrive in the United States from overseas each year.
"I'm not prophesying anything," Mr. Bonner said in an interview. "But I do have concern that we need to have this security system in place as fast as we possibly can." He said "the system of containerized shipping was vulnerable to terrorist exploitation."
"And you don't have to take my word for it," he added. "Every national security expert I've heard has come to the same conclusion."
The issue of cargo security has become increasingly contentious on Capitol Hill. Many prominent lawmakers from coastal states have accused the administration of failing to provide the money to safeguard ports from terrorist attacks and to prevent terrorists from using cargo ships to transport weapons.
Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, who will announce many of the details of the expanded inspection program in a visit Thursday to Port Elizabeth, N.J., said that "identifying and dealing with high-risk containers at the earliest possible point protects the entire international supply chain and all of the world's major seaports."
He said the posting of customs inspectors abroad, a 17-month-old program known as the Container Security Initiative, had "emerged as a formidable tool for protecting us from the threat of terrorism."
In the first phrase of the program, the Customs Service, which has since been merged into the Homeland Security Department, opened negotiations with foreign governments representing the world's 20 largest cargo ports, as measured by shipments to the United States, to permit American inspectors to be stationed permanently in those ports.
Administration officials said teams of American inspectors would be at work at almost all of those large ports - a list that includes Antwerp, Genoa, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Yokohama - by the end of the year.
Mr. Ridge signed an agreement today with the prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is visiting Washington, to allow American inspectors to work the giant Thai port of Laem Chabang, which is No. 20 on the list.
But while those 20 foreign ports represent almost two-thirds of the containerized cargo bound for the United States, officials said there was mounting worry that Al Qaeda might try to make use of cargo containers passing through other, smaller ports, especially in Muslim nations where the terrorist group has a strong following.
In the new phase of the program, Mr. Bonner said, the Bush administration would place teams in an additional 20 to 25 foreign seaports, with the ports to be chosen on the basis of both cargo volume and their strategic location in nations or regions where terrorism is believed to be a special threat.
"We will be expanding to important parts of the Islamic world," he said. "We will be looking more strategically."
Administration officials said that the Malaysian government had already agreed to join the program, and that negotiations would begin soon in earnest with both Dubai and Turkey, which are also expected to sign on quickly.
The Department of Homeland Security has already placed 130 inspectors overseas as part of the first phase of the program, with another 170 in training to join them. Department officials said more than $100 million had already been committed to setting up the program.
Mr. Bonner said foreign governments were eager to allow the American inspectors into their ports, if only because it meant that cargo shipped from their ports would face no special delays for inspection when it arrived in the United States. Governments that refuse to join the program would risk having their cargo shipments held up on arrival in this country.
Foreign governments that agree to join the program are required to provide the American inspectors with high-level detection equipment, including radiation monitors that would be used to detect nuclear devices or the components of radioactive weapons.
Mr. Bonner said that while the United States had no intention of buying detection equipment for use in foreign seaports, the administration had asked the World Bank to consider how to help foreign governments raise the money for it.
Under the program, the American teams are expected to carry out inspections of a small sample of cargo containers that raise suspicion - because their shippers are unknown, because their contents are in question or for some other reason. Each team is expected to have about five members.
At the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Ridge is also expected to announce the distribution of $170 million in federal grants to strengthen port security around the country, most of it directed to state and local governments, and $30 million for research and development on cargo security.

June 11, 2003
Japan Detains 2 North Korean Ships, Part of Pressure Strategy
By JAMES BROOKE

TOKYO, June 10 - Japan detained two North Korean cargo ships in Japanese ports today, moves that North Korea denounced as sanctions and that Japan defended as safety inspections.
"We are ready to thoroughly inspect all North Korean vessels at ports across the country," Chikage Ogi, Japan's transport minister, said at a news conference, hours before her inspectors scoured the North Korean ships for violations.
The detentions were ordered a day after Bush administration officials said they were encouraging allies to put pressure on North Korean shipping by enforcing safety rules and searching for illegal drugs, a major North Korean export. The policy is part of a broader effort to force North Korea into negotiating an end to its nuclear bomb program.
Inspectors worked all day in Maizuru, a western Japan port that last year received about one-quarter of the 1,344 calls to all Japanese ports by 147 North Korean ships. After the inspections, Maizuru transport ministry officials ordered the detention of the Namsan 3, a 298-ton freighter, until its North Korean crew of 16 could fix three major safety violations: lack of charts of surrounding seas, a hole in its bulkhead, and a doorsill to the cabin that was too low to prevent water from flooding in.
Farther north, at Otaru port in Hokkaido, northern Japan, local transport officials ordered the detention for safety violations of the 178-ton Daehungrason 2, which was carrying a cargo of crabs.
During the last decade, several North Korean freighters have become stranded along Japan's coast. Invariably, the state company owners have walked away from the shipwrecks, refusing to pay fines or to remove the hulks.
The detentions today came after North Korean authorities suspended the country's lone ferry link with Japan to protest the new safety inspection policy. North Korea's state-run press denounced the inspections.
"If this is part of `sanctions' against the D.P.R.K., we cannot but regard it as a very serious development," the official Korean Central News Agency said, using the initials of North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
It called the policy "part of the Bush administration's foolish and shameful moves to ostracize the D.P.R.K. politically and morally on the international arena and isolate and stifle it by terming it a `rogue state.' "
But for Japan, the largest economy in the region, North Korea's hostility only serves to strengthen the political standing at home of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. A survey by NHK public television broadcast on Monday evening showed that 59 percent of voters supported Mr. Koizumi's two-year-old government, up five percentage points from a poll in May.
While the United States and Japan are tightening a maritime noose on North Korea, China and South Korea seem increasingly neutral.
"Under the present circumstances, both sides should avoid taking measures which are likely to escalate the situation on the Korean peninsula," China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, told reporters in Beijing today.
South Korea plans on Saturday to ceremonially mark the renewal of rail and road links with the North. Freight trains should be traveling from Seoul to Pyongyang by the end of September, Cho Myoung-gyon, a senior official at South Korea's Unification Ministry, said in a radio interview today.

New Bases Reflect Shift in Military
Smaller Facilities Sought for Quick Strikes

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 9, 2003; Page A01

In the most extensive global realignment of U.S. military forces since the end of the Cold War, the Bush administration is creating a network of far-flung military bases designed for the rapid projection of American military power against terrorists, hostile states and other potential adversaries.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, announced Thursday, and the recent removal of most U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia are the opening moves in a complex shift that should replace most large, permanent U.S. bases overseas with smaller facilities that can be used as needed, defense officials said.

The bases are being built or expanded in countries such as Qatar, Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan, and the U.S. territory of Guam. While existing U.S. bases in Germany and South Korea, in place for more than 50 years, were designed to deter major communist adversaries, the new bases will become key nodes in the implementation of the administration's doctrine of preemptive attack against terrorists and hostile states believed to have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Their location is based on the premise that U.S. forces must be able to strike rapidly adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction before they can attack the United States or its allies. The basing strategy is also predicated on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's oft-stated belief that the United States cannot predict who its adversaries are going to be.

"The strategic issue that is big and profound is the unprecedented destructive power of terrorism and what that means," said Andy Hoehn, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, the architect of the realignment. "You just can't ignore it, and you can't deal with it regionally. This is running across regions, across continents. If you're going to deal with this, you're going to deal with it on a global scale."

The new network of bases corresponds to what defense officials call an "arc of instability" that runs from the Andean region in the Southern Hemisphere through North Africa to the Middle East and into Southeast Asia.

"When you overlay our footprint onto that, we don't look particularly well-positioned to deal with the problems we're now going to confront," Hoehn said.

Hoehn said the new basing concept would require fundamental changes in the way U.S. forces are structured and transported by air and sea. They would need to be deployed around the world in smaller units more much rapidly, often falling in on equipment already in place.

"If there is a terrorist training camp somewhere and we come to understand that there is something we can do militarily, we don't have a month to do it," Hoehn said. "We certainly don't have six months to do it. We may only have hours to do it."

The United States would still maintain a ring of permanent military "hubs" on U.S. territory, such as Guam, and in closely allied countries, such as Britain and possibly Japan. But many of the major bases on which it had relied, such as those in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Germany and South Korea, will be replaced by dozens of spartan "forward operating bases" in southern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, maintained only by small, permanent support units, Hoehn and other defense officials said.

Beyond the hubs and forward operating bases would lie a ring of "forward operating locations," or prearranged but unmaintained staging areas that U.S. forces would be allowed by host nations to occupy quickly in the event of a conflict. Officials said these forward facilities would be augmented by greater reliance on basing forces and equipment aboard ships at sea, and on pre-positioning forces and heavy combat equipment at staging areas along major shipping routes, the officials said.

Defense officials cited a series of basing agreements developed in the Persian Gulf in anticipation of the Iraq war as a prototype for those they want in other parts of the world. Although U.S. forces have vacated two large permanent air bases in Saudi Arabia and Turkey used to patrol the northern and southern "no-fly" zones over Iraq for more than a decade, they have established forward operating bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Military personnel are stationed in all of those countries, with 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, a major Air Force operations center in Qatar and two huge Army bases in Kuwait. But there are no combat units permanently based in any of those countries, as there are in Germany, home to the Army's 1st Armored and 1st Infantry divisions.

The continued basing of 60,000 Army troops in Germany, where they have been since the end of World War II, is under review. Defense officials want to continue using Ramstein Air Base in southern Germany, and view it as a critical hub facility for supporting deployments to more distant forward operating bases and locations.

One scenario under consideration, Hoehn and other defense officials said, calls for the troops in Germany to be brought home and based in the United States. They could then be rotated on six-month assignments in countries such as Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, which are closer to the Balkans and Central Asia and less restrictive than Germany as training sites.

Defense officials are also interested in operating locations along southern European shipping routes in Italy, Spain and Portugal. Farther east, in Central Asia, defense officials plan on maintaining bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which were established in 2001 to support the war in Afghanistan.

In Asia, the relocation of 18,000 Army troops away from the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea to areas 75 miles south is designed to make them more mobile, freeing them up to respond to other emergencies in the region. Ultimately, Hoehn said, some of those troops might be brought to the United States and deployed to South Korea on six-month rotations.

Defense officials said there is no plan for moving all 20,000 Marines out of Okinawa. But they said they are looking at ways of repositioning the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force from its current locations in Okinawa, Hawaii and Guam. The Pentagon is hoping to possibly reestablish bases or locations in the Philippines, although it is not clear how receptive the Philippine government will be, officials said.

The Pentagon is also considering bases or staging areas in northeast Australia, where the U.S. military has close ties and excellent training relationships with the Australian military. But one official said he doubted that any forthcoming agreements would call for U.S. Marines to be permanently based there.

Harlan Ullman, who taught at the National War College and now is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), lauded the realignment and said he only wished Rumsfeld had proceeded even faster.

"I think this is long overdue," said Ullman, a Naval Academy graduate and Vietnam veteran. "Rearrangement of American forces is absolutely essential. We've been based in Europe since 1944. The changes are strategically very sound, as the axis of interests shift south and east."

But Kurt Campbell, a senior defense official in the Clinton administration who is now senior vice president at CSIS, a Washington think tank, said he thinks the Pentagon is moving too quickly.

"Some of the changes make an enormous amount of sense," he said. "But what they don't recognize is forward bases and presence are extraordinarily sensitive diplomatically. You just can't throw the dice like this without an enormous amount of pre-planning, most of which has not been done."

Bush Proposed New "Proliferation Security Initiative"

President Bush unexpectedly proposed a new global initiative in Poland on 31 May that would permit the search and seizure of ships and planes suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or their components when in transport across the world. The so-called "proliferation security initiative" is expected to be debated at the G8 meeting in Evian, France currently underway, the Capitol News Group reported. "When weapons of mass destruction or their components are in transit, we must have the means and authority to seize them," Bush said in his speech on Saturday. An administration official said the initiative was prompted by the interdiction of a cargo ship carrying North Korean Scud missiles bound for Yemen that had to be released because it was protected by law given its location in international waters, according to The Straits Times. The Financial Times reported that the initiative may lead to the establishment of a "counter-terrorism action group" of donor countries that will support "countries with the will but not the skill to combat terror," as well as point to countries that "are most at risk of developing into failed states that threaten world security."

ANALYSIS: While G8 members were expected to address the need for an "action plan" to deter the creation, accumulation, and storage of WMD, Bush's surprise proposal may well test already strained transatlantic relationships. White House officials said the UK, Spain, Australia and Poland have indicated support for the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Financial Times reported, but that France and Germany, who opposed the war in Iraq, may be much slower to respond to Bush's initiative. Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "The most important thing, particularly after all the differences there have been over Iraq, is that the international community comes back together and sends a very clear signal that we will do everything we can, collectively and individually, to deal with this issue."

Iran Says It Holds No Senior Al Qaeda Members

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran, under pressure from Washington over its role in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, said on Monday it had arrested members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda but none ranked high in the network.
Leading U.S. lawmakers predicted on Sunday positive developments regarding al Qaeda in coming days from Iran.
U.S. officials say they have intelligence suggesting senior al Qaeda members hiding in Iran had prior knowledge of the May 12 suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia in which 34 people, including eight Americans, were killed.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi, quoted by state radio on Monday, said some al Qaeda members had been arrested in the Islamic Republic "but the detainees are not senior al Qaeda members."
"Iran is serious about confronting al Qaeda," he said, calling on Washington to "follow logic and wisdom in international relations and avoid making interfering remarks," the radio reported.
Iran says it has in the last year arrested and deported around 500 al Qaeda members who slipped over its borders from Afghanistan Iran's ambassador to the United Nations Javad Zarif, said on Sunday that Iran was trying to identify a group of al Qaeda suspects in custody and was willing to hand them over to "friendly governments," such as Saudi Arabia.
The United States, which broke diplomatic ties with Tehran shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution, has grown more critical of Iran since the end of the Iraq war last month. U.S. officials have accused Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program, meddling in post-war Iraq and harboring al Qaeda.
Iran denies all the charges and insists its has long been ideologically opposed to bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the White House was due to consider on Tuesday a Pentagon-backed proposal to estabilize Iran's clerical government through a popular uprising.

Bush insists North Korea give up nukes

By Bill Sammon
Published May 24, 2003

President Bush yesterday threatened "tougher measures" against North Korea if it continues to develop nuclear weapons and condemned Pyongyang for kidnapping Japanese citizens.
"We will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea," Mr. Bush said at a Texas news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "We will not give in to blackmail.
"We will not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of North Korea's nuclear-weapons program," he said.
In his sternest warning since Pyongyang began flouting international agreements against nuclear weapons in recent months, Mr. Bush added: "Further escalation of the situation by North Korea will require tougher measures from the intelligence community."
The president did not specify what those measures might entail. A senior administration official said the "strategic ambiguity" was intentional.
"Even if you assume that the North Koreans are not going to be helpful, there are various different ways in which they can not be helpful, calling out for different sorts of responses," the official said. "So I guess my bottom line is, it's too early to say."
Meanwhile in Paris, the Group of Eight world powers yesterday urged North Korea to dismantle its nuclear-arms program rapidly and pressed Iran to offer more guarantees concerning its own nuclear ambitions
"The North Korean nuclear issue constitutes a threat to international peace and stability," France said in a statement summing up the conclusions of a meeting of G-8 foreign ministers in Paris.
The G-8 statement also expressed worries about Iran. Ministers said Iran should allay these fears by signing a new protocol with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran insists its nuclear programs are purely to generate electricity.
The White House is particularly wary of Pyongyang's pushing ahead with plans to reprocess spent fuel from nuclear-power plants for use in nuclear weapons. Also, there are fears of a missile launch toward Taiwan or a conventional military provocation against South Korea.
"Unfortunately, there's a menu that the North Koreans could pick from," the senior official said. "And it probably includes things that we here are not even thinking of right now."
Still, the White House refused to say what North Korea would have to do to trigger "tougher measures" by the United States.
"We have consciously made a decision on the part of the U.S. government not to draw red lines," the official said.
"The history of the past 15 years with the North Koreans shows that when they think somebody - and particularly the U.S. - has drawn a red line, they say: 'Oh, let's push up to that red line, let's cross that red line, let's see if we can provoke a response, let's see if we can force the United States to rush to us to talk to us on our terms,' " the official added. "We don't really want to go down that road."
The CIA believes North Korea already has one or two nuclear weapons, and North Korea last month said during three-way talks in Beijing with the United States and China that it might test, sell or use its stated arsenal.
Mr. Bush yesterday called for five-way talks among the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea and Japan.
Mr. Koizumi repeated the president's calls for "tougher measures" against North Korea.
"In any event, Japan will crack down more rigorously in illegal activities," he said. "And the North Koreans will have to understand that threats and intimations will have no meaning whatsoever.
"It is extremely important for Japan to comprehensively resolve the various issues, including nuclear weapons, missiles and abduction."
He was referring to the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korean security forces, a practice that Mr. Bush publicly denounced yesterday for the first time.
"I strongly condemn the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the North Koreans," the president said.
On the Korean Peninsula yesterday, South Korea agreed to give North Korea 400,000 tons of rice after the two sides settled a dispute over a perceived threat from the communist North after recent U.S.-South Korean talks.
The two Koreas also agreed to connect their railways in mid-June inside the demilitarized zone, which has divided the Korean Peninsula for the past half-century, according to a joint statement from the South Korean government.
The rival neighbors opened talks on economic cooperation Tuesday in Pyongyang, but the meeting immediately stalled after North Korean delegates criticized last week's summit between President Bush and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and warned of an "unspeakable disaster" for the South.
Setting aside economic issues, the Koreas haggled over the North Korean remark. The talks initially were scheduled to end Thursday.
South Korea saw the remark as a threat and demanded an explanation. The North resisted and instead demanded that the South explain the "further steps" Mr. Bush and Mr. Roh had agreed to consider if North Korea increases tensions over its nuclear programs.
North Korea accuses the United States of planning an invasion, although Mr. Bush and Mr. Roh repeatedly have said they prefer a peaceful settlement.
The dispute ended yesterday when chief North Korean delegate Pak Chang-ryon sought to ease South Korean ire.
By "unspeakable disaster," Mr. Pak said he meant that "the North and South should not bring disasters onto each other by intensifying confrontation," according to South Korean pool reports from Pyongyang.
The nuclear dispute flared in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea acknowledged that it had a clandestine nuclear program. Washington and its allies are trying to muster international pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
This article is based in part on wire service reports.

NATO to help Poland in Iraq peacekeeping
By Paul Ames
Published May 22, 2003

BRUSSELS - NATO's 19 member nations yesterday agreed unanimously to start planning to help Poland lead a multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq, a move that begins to heal the alliance's deep divisions over the war.
Although the plans involve only modest technical assistance, the step also marks the possibility of a wider role for NATO in postwar Iraq.
"This is a big step forward by the NATO alliance," said Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. "Today's decision puts us squarely in the mix in Iraq."
The apparent ease with which allies reached the deal is in stark contrast with the acrimonious dispute before the war, when France, Germany and Belgium for weeks held up sending defensive units to Turkey to emphasize their opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, France and Germany have sought to repair ties with the United States. Mr. Burns said the speedy consensus on Poland's request indicated that the alliance had put the Iraq dispute behind it.
"I think NATO has overcome that crisis," he told reporters.
French diplomats said Paris had no objection to authorizing the assistance for Poland, which is expected to assemble at least 7,000 peacekeepers in a force believed to deploy next month to work between a U.S.-run northern zone and the British-controlled south.
The assistance is expected to involve intelligence sharing, communications and logistics, and headquarters setup but no direct NATO involvement on the ground.
"We are not talking about a NATO presence in Iraq; we are talking purely and simply about NATO help to Poland," said George Robertson, the alliance's secretary general.
Poland is expected to provide 2,200 troops to lead the force in Iraq. Bulgaria will contribute 450 soldiers, but it was not clear which other countries would join.
Polish officials estimate that the mission will cost $90 million a year, of which Poland is ready to pay a third. Warsaw would like the United States to pay the rest - covering costs for such things as the troops' transport to Iraq, their barracks and some of their equipment, such as Humvees. Washington has not committed to the financing.
Nations considering joining the mission will meet in Warsaw today and tomorrow.
U.S. officials see NATO's involvement in Iraq, although limited, as well as a recent decision to take on peacekeeping in Afghanistan, as signs that the alliance is making good on pledges to reinvent itself post-Cold War to face global challenges.
"There is no question that NATO is out on the frontier in the war on terrorism," Mr. Burns said.
Diplomats at NATO headquarters said they would continue discussions on the alliance taking on a more central role in longer-term peacekeeping efforts in Iraq perhaps as early as the end of the year.
That could follow the model in Afghanistan, where the alliance first provided backup to the German-Dutch peacekeeping force in the capital, Kabul, before agreeing to take command of the mission.
Starting in August, the Afghan operation will mark NATO's first mission outside its traditional Euro-Atlantic theater.
The Iraq mission is a test for Poland, which joined NATO in 1999 and which has struggled to modernize and restructure its military along Western lines since the collapse of communism 10 year earlier.

May 21, 2003
U.S. Diplomatic Outposts to Be Shut in Saudi Arabia
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 20 - American officials said today that the United States Embassy here and two consulates in Saudi Arabia would be closed on Wednesday because of an "imminent" threat of more terrorist attacks inside the kingdom. Officials in Britain and Germany also said they would close their embassies temporarily.

The decision to close the American Embassy in Riyadh and the consulates in Jidda and Dhahran came in response to new intelligence reports warning of a sharp increase in communications among suspected terrorists describing plans for a series of attacks here, American officials said today.

"The embassy continues to receive credible information that further terrorist attacks are being planned against unspecified targets in Saudi Arabia," the embassy warned Americans in a statement posted today on its Web site.

"In response to information that some strikes may be imminent," the statement continued, the embassy and consulates will be closed on Wednesday and reopen on Sunday, following the normal Saudi weekend on Thursday and Friday and the observance of Memorial Day on Saturday.

Embassy officials had already declared a heightened state of alert after three simultaneous car bombings on May 12 struck three Western residential compounds in Riyadh, killing 34 people, including 8 Americans, and wounding nearly 200 others. Last week, the embassy urged all nonessential personnel to leave Saudi Arabia immediately, and many of the nearly 40,000 Americans who live in the kingdom have left or say they intend to leave within days.

In Washington, the White House said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with Saudi officials, had concluded that Al Qaeda was behind the attack in Riyadh, and that the group remained a threat to carry out further attacks.

The decision to move American workers out of diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia "is a description of how real we see the threat in Saudi Arabia right now," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman.

Saudi officials today arrested two men of Moroccan descent in Jidda on suspicion that they are terrorists, and they were searching for a third man, a senior American official said tonight. The men are not believed to be connected to the bombing last week.

The temporary closing of the embassy and consulate reflects a growing concern among American and Saudi officials that terrorists intend to carry out a new, possibly more devastating, terrorist attack against Western targets here.

"There was enough either chatter and information gathered in the last 48 hours to suspect a very real threat and that some kind of attack would be imminent," a senior American official said today. "Out of caution on that kind of information, they decided they would close for the day tomorrow."

Saudi and American officials said they believed that last week's bombings were carried out by a cell of 19 men connected to Al Qaeda. The officials have estimated that there are at least three active terrorist cells still in the kingdom, and perhaps as many as five.

Officials said that several dozen militants headed the cells and that they were being assisted with logistics and surveillance by approximately several hundred supporters. One cell is believed to have fled Saudi Arabia in recent days, several officials said.

In a dinner with reporters at one of his homes on Monday night, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, said there were about 50 militants in Saudi Arabia, all veterans of the conflict in Afghanistan, who were organizing an attack and recruiting men to help carry it out. Prince Bandar also estimated that there were probably another 300 people aiding the cells inside Saudi Arabia.

Echoing the prince's "gut feeling" that "something big will happen," senior American counterterrorism officials said they had grown increasingly worried this week by the increase in intercepted "chatter" among terrorists. An American counterterrorism official said there was concern that terrorists with ties to the cell that carried out last week's attacks are in the final planning stages of a new round of attacks against Western targets.

The British Foreign Office said its embassy in Riyadh, its consulate in Jidda and a trade office in Khobar would be closed from Wednesday to Saturday. The Foreign Office also warned on its Internet site that there was a "high threat" of additional terrorist strikes in the kingdom and raised the possibility of chemical or biological attacks. Germany intends to reopen its embassy on Friday.

Last weekend, the American Embassy issued a warning about a possible terror attack in Jidda. On Tuesday morning, an armed man was arrested at the barrier gate outside the consulate in Dhahran. No one was injured in the incident.

Tensions remain high in the residential compounds here where a majority of Riyadh's 12,000 American expatriates live. Sue Lynn Shaffer, a 44-year-old American who has lived in Saudi Arabia for six years, said she planned to leave the Jedawad luxury residential compound, where one of the attacks occurred, and return to Hawaii.

"There is a lot of fear here," Ms. Shaffer said in an interview last weekend. "People are afraid for their children."

Saudi and American officials appear to be working together closely in the investigation. A team of 66 agents from the F.B.I. and officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department are remaining in the country to continue the inquiry, officials said.

Saudi officials have demonstrated a strong commitment to rooting out terrorism, officials here say.

Since last week's attacks, leaders of the monarchy have been speaking about making sweeping changes to Saudi society.

"There is fear at every level of Saudi society that this may be getting out of hand," said one official, pointing out that anti-Western hatred was taught in many schools, mosques and homes.

May 20, 2003
Bush Affirms U.S. Is Ready to Send Troops to the Philippines
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, May 19 - President Bush reaffirmed Washington's commitment today to send American troops to help root out Muslim militants in the southern Philippines, but he did not provide any details of how or when they would be sent.
Mr. Bush appeared to be making the statement as a public gesture to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, who stood at his side during a full-dress East Room news conference this morning that celebrated the United States-Philippine alliance and Ms. Arroyo's support for the United States during the Iraq war.
"She's tough when it comes to terror," Mr. Bush said. "She fully understands that in the face of terror, you've got to be strong, not weak. You can't talk with them; you can't negotiate with them. You've got to bring them to justice."
Ms. Arroyo's state visit is the third by a foreign leader in Mr. Bush's presidency and the most recent in a series of public thank yous by Mr. Bush of loyal supporters during the war. This month, he has bestowed another White House joint news conference on Prime Minister José María Aznar of Spain and a joint appearance at his Texas ranch on Prime Minister John Howard of Australia.
The presidential thank yous have served as an invitation into a new alliance of nations that support the White House at a time when the United States is at odds with traditional allies like Germany and France. Today Mr. Bush said that the Philippines would be considered a "major non-NATO ally," which would give it greater access to American defense equipment and supplies. Nations like Israel and Australia already have such status.
Mr. Bush's announcement that the United States intended to send troops to the Philippines to combat terrorism was a reiteration of an administration policy that has bogged down for the past two months.
In February, the Pentagon said that it was ready to send 1,700 troops to fight terrorist groups in the southern Philippines, but that plan was stalled when Philippine officials balked and said that their Constitution did not permit foreign troops to carry out combat missions. Both nations have pledged to work together to hunt down members of Abu Sayyaf, a group of about 250 guerrillas who have kidnapped and beheaded foreign tourists and missionaries.
But the details of how the United States can fight terrorists in the Philippines within the restrictions of the Philippines Constitution has still not been worked out, as administration officials made clear today. In his remarks, Mr. Bush said the extent and nature of the American troop commitment was up to Ms. Arroyo.
"We will be involved to the extent that the president invites us to be involved," Mr. Bush said.
Ms. Arroyo's government is also fighting the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a 12,000-member Muslim separatist group. "That group must abandon the path of violence," Mr. Bush said. "If it does so, and addresses its grievances through peaceful negotiations, then the United States will provide diplomatic and financial support to a renewed peace process."
Mr. Bush said today that the recent car bombings in Morocco and Saudi Arabia meant that Al Qaeda was "still actively plotting to kill" and that "we've got to be alert here at home." Saudi officials have arrested suspects they believed to be linked to Al Qaeda in the case, while Morocco officials have been trying to determine whether Al Qaeda was involved there.
Mr. Bush did not directly answer a question today asking whether he had overestimated the damage done to Al Qaeda by his administration.
Tonight Mr. Bush was the host at a state dinner for Ms. Arroyo, the third of his presidency.
The guest list included Gary L. Wilson, the chairman of Northwest Airlines; Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of The Washington Post; Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal; George Will, the syndicated columnist; and Meg Whitman, the chairman and chief executive officer of eBay.

Powell calls for terrorist disarmament

JERUSALEM (CNN) --After meeting Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called for "rapid, decisive action by the Palestinians to disarm and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure."

Powell said he looked forward to his discussions later in the day with new Palesti