Al Qaeda again threatens America (Thread 3) Daily Terror Threat

SANAA, Yemen, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A purported statement by al-Qaida in Yemen warned Saturday of a "major strike" soon in the United States.

The statement, distributed by the Yemeni Tagamoo Party for Reforms, said: "A major strike, a big event will take place in America soon," reminiscent of the Sept. 11 attacks.

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MOSCOW, February 11 (Itar-Tass) - Russia's armed forces are continuing a strategic staff exercise. First Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky told a press conference in the Russian capital on Tuesday that the drill entered an active phase on February 10, while the preparatory phase began in the second part of January.

The purpose of the exercise is to provide practical training to the commanding structures of the strategic nuclear forces and to general-purpose units. A minimum number of forces are to be enlisted for the exercise, Baluyevsky said.

The Russian military command is planning to polish off during the exercise some elements of the concept of development of the Russian Armed Forces.

It will also check the capability of general-purpose forces to airlift troops and armaments to great distances with the subsequent fulfillment of combat exercise missions.

Chief of the Russian General Staff General Anatoly Kvashnin is personally directing the exercise and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is supervising it.

Besides general-purpose units, the drill involves all the component parts of the Russian nuclear triad and the space troops. The Russian strategic air force, including Tu-160 and Tu-95MS bombers, is to carry out flight missions during the exercise. They are to perform some combat exercise tasks with the launching of cruise missiles.

The strategic missile forces will carry out several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles. A strategic submarine of the Russian Northern Fleet is to make an underwater launch of a ballistic missile.

On February 18, Russia will launch a “Molniya-M” booster rocket with a Cosmos-series military satellite on board.

The military command of the United States was notified about the upcoming exercise in conformity with the START-1 Treaty.

Bush Pushes for Renewed Targeting of WMD

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush, pointing to a black market weapons network led by the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, said Wednesday that no new countries should have the ability to enrich or process nuclear material.

He argued that international efforts to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction have been neither broad nor effective enough and require tougher action from all nations.

"The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons," Bush said.

"We must confront the danger with open eyes and unbending purpose," he said in a speech at the National Defense University. "I've made clear to all the policy of this nation: America will not permit the terrorists and dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most deadly weapons."

His call to prevent countries from acquiring the equipment and technology to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel for plutonium — even if the stated intent is to build civilian power facilities — was likely to anger Iran and North Korea and the countries that have supplied them.

Bush for the first time publicly accused Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's network of supplying to North Korea the centrifuge technology that is needed to make highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. The administration previously had said that it believed Khan's network was supplying weapons technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran but had not specified what.

The administration and North Korea are locked in a dispute over whether the Koreans are trying to develop nuclear weapons using highly enriched uranium. North Korea has acknowledged building nuclear weapons using plutonium but denies it is trying to build a weapon with highly enriched uranium — a key dispute as the two nations head into talks later this month with four other countries, including China.

With the president still being criticized over whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, he also used the speech to outline the role that good U.S. intelligence has played in the ongoing dismantlement of Khan's network, as well as Libya's commitment last December to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs.

He gave much of the credit for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's action against Khan to the groundwork laid over several years by U.S. intelligence.

"We will find the middlemen, the suppliers and the buyers," Bush said. "Our message to proliferators must be consistent and it must be clear: 'We will find you, and we're not going to rest until you are stopped.'"

Bush singled out the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, for criticism, calling for the creation of a special committee to focus on safeguards and verification and to ensure that nations comply with international obligations.

He also complained that nations such as Iran, which has been under investigation for proliferation, has been allowed to sit on the IAEA board of governors. "Those actively breaking the rules should not be entrusted with enforcing the rules," the president said.

The agency is seen as ineffective by many in the Bush administration who cite the agency's failure to stop weapons programs in Libya, North Korea and other countries.

The president also urged other countries to step up funding for programs aimed at securing vulnerable nuclear arsenals in Russia and other former Soviet-bloc nations, and called for an expansion of similar efforts elsewhere in the world — though he made no mention of any additional U.S. funding. Democrats have criticized the Bush administration for underfunding the program, both in Russia and beyond.

And the president renewed his call, first made before the U.N. General Assembly last fall, for a new Security Council resolution demanding that all U.N. members enact stricter export controls and criminalize weapons proliferation.

He also announced that three new countries — Canada, Singapore and Norway — are joining the 11 now involved in his Proliferation Security Initiative, which aims to stop shipments of weapons of mass destruction.

"There is a consensus among nations that proliferation cannot be tolerated. Yet, this consensus means little unless it is translated into action," Bush said. "Every civilized nation has a stake in preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction."

Excerpts of Bush Speech on WMD

By The Associated Press

Excerpts from President Bush's speech on weapons proliferation, as recorded by the White House:

In the past, enemies of America required massed armies and great navies, powerful air forces to put our nation, our people, our friends and allies at risk. In the Cold War, Americans lived under the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but believed that deterrents made those weapons a last resort. What has changed in the 21st century is that, in the hands of terrorists, weapons of mass destruction would be a first resort, the preferred means to further their ideology of suicide and random murder.

___

A. Q. Khan is known throughout the world as the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. What was not publicly known, until recently, is that he also led an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how.

For decades, Mr. Khan remained on the Pakistani government payroll, earning a modest salary. Yet, he and his associates financed lavish lifestyles through the sale of nuclear technologies and equipment to outlaw regimes stretching from North Africa to the Korean Peninsula.

A. Q. Khan himself operated mostly out of Pakistan. He served as director of the network, its leading scientific mind, as well as its primary salesman. Over the past decade, he made frequent trips to consult with his clients and to sell his expertise. He and his associates sold the blueprints for centrifuges to enrich uranium, as well as a nuclear design stolen from the Pakistani government. The network sold uranium hexafluoride, the gas that the centrifuge process can transform into enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Khan and his associates provided Iran and Libya and North Korea (news - web sites) with designs for Pakistan's older centrifuges, as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models. The network also provided these countries with components, and in some cases, with complete centrifuges.

To increase their profits, Khan and his associates used a factory in Malaysia to manufacture key parts for centrifuges. Other necessary parts were purchased through network operatives based in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. These procurement agents saw the trade in nuclear technologies as a shortcut to personal wealth, and they set up front companies to deceive legitimate firms into selling them tightly controlled materials.

Khan's deputy, a man named B.S.A. Tahir, ran SMB computers, a business in Dubai. Tahir used that computer company as a front for the proliferation activities of the A. Q. Khan network. Tahir acted as both the network's chief financial officer and money launderer. He was also its shipping agent, using his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients. Tahir directed the Malaysia facility to produce these parts based on Pakistani designs, and then ordered the facility to ship the components to Dubai. Tahir also arranged for parts acquired by other European procurement agents to transit through Dubai for shipment to other customers.

___

Breaking this network is one major success in a broad-based effort to stop the spread of terrible weapons. We're adjusting our strategies to the threats of a new era. America and the nations of Australia, France and Germany, Italy and Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom have launched the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict lethal materials in transit. Our nations are sharing intelligence information, tracking suspect international cargo, conducting joint military exercises. We're prepared to search planes and ships, to seize weapons and missiles and equipment that raise proliferation concerns, just as we did in stopping the dangerous cargo on the BBC China before it reached Libya. Three more governments, Canada and Singapore and Norway, will be participating in this initiative.

___

First, I propose that the work of the Proliferation Security Initiative be expanded to address more than shipments and transfers. Building on the tools we've developed to fight terrorists, we can take direct action against proliferation networks. We need greater cooperation not just among intelligence and military services, but in law enforcement, as well.

___

Second, I call on all nations to strengthen the laws and international controls that govern proliferation. At the U.N. last fall, I proposed a new Security Council resolution requiring all states to criminalize proliferation, enact strict export controls, and secure all sensitive materials within their borders.

___

Third, I propose to expand our efforts to keep weapons from the Cold War and other dangerous materials out of the wrong hands. ... We must also prevent governments from developing nuclear weapons under false pretenses. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was designed more than 30 years ago to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond those states which already possessed them. Under this treaty, nuclear states agreed to help non-nuclear states develop peaceful atomic energy if they renounced the pursuit of nuclear weapons. But the treaty has a loophole which has been exploited by nations such as North Korea and Iran. These regimes are allowed to produce nuclear material that can be used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear programs. ...

The 40 nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group should refuse to sell enrichment and reprocessing equipment and technologies to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants.

___

It is the charge of the International Atomic Energy Agency to uncover banned nuclear activity around the world and report those violations to the U.N. Security Council. We must ensure that the IAEA has all the tools it needs to fulfill its essential mandate. America and other nations support what is called the Additional Protocol, which requires states to declare a broad range of nuclear activities and facilities, and allow the IAEA to inspect those facilities. As a fifth step, I propose that by next year, only states that have signed the Additional Protocol be allowed to import equipment for their civilian nuclear programs.

___

We must also ensure that IAEA is organized to take action when action is required. So, a sixth step, I propose the creation of a special committee of the IAEA Board which will focus intensively on safeguards and verification.

___

And, finally, countries under investigation for violating nuclear non-proliferation obligations are currently allowed to serve on the IAEA Board of Governors. For instance, Iran, a country suspected of maintaining an extensive nuclear weapons program, recently completed a two-year term on the Board. Allowing potential violators to serve on the Board creates an unacceptable barrier to effective action.

Errant Russia Politician Says He Feared for Life

Wed Feb 11,12:46 PM ET By Richard Balmforth

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The strange tale of Ivan Rybkin grew even murkier Wednesday when the would-be Russian president said he had felt under threat from special service agents during his five-day mystery absence in Ukraine.

But, in an often incoherent account to a radio station, the former parliament speaker failed to answer other questions over his disappearance, something that may damage his credibility as a presidential challenger.

Asked whether he would drop out of the race for the Kremlin top job, he said: "I am thinking this over."

Rybkin, 57, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, returned to Moscow Tuesday night, looking haggard and disoriented, ending a police manhunt sparked by his sudden disappearance from home on Feb. 5.

Speaking to Ekho Moskvy, Rybkin stuck to his original story that he had simply decided to go to the neighboring state -- without telling his wife or aides -- to take a break from political pressures.

While acknowledging for the first time that he had learned of the alarm back in Moscow as early as the weekend, he blamed Russia's FSB state security for not putting people's minds at rest when they knew where he was.

"I can say with 100-percent certainty that all this happened with the knowledge of the special services of Russia. They declared across the country that I was being sought and that they could not find me. It was a sort of game," he said.

He said he had initially met Ukrainian politicians and businessmen. But after learning of the alarm in Moscow he grew fearful that people around him were intending to keep him in Ukraine beyond the Mar. 14 election.

'DIRTY TRICKS'?

"I felt a real threat to my personal security," he said, but declined to elaborate on this.

His words did not appear to substantiate speculation that he had been the victim of a "dirty tricks" to discredit him and his backer, exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

Rybkin has accused Putin of crushing independent media and mismanaging the drive against Chechen separatists -- an issue in which he has expertise as a former negotiator.

Like the six other contenders, he is given no chance of stopping the popular Putin from winning a second Kremlin term. But his disappearance has all but destroyed his chances of running an effective campaign.

He gave no explanation of why he did not telephone home during the weekend to reassure his family.

Berezovsky, Rybkin's main financial backer, said Tuesday that Rybkin's political career was over.

Putin's allies accused Rybkin of staging his disappearance to win a sympathy vote for a doomed campaign.

Sergei Mironov, one of the six presidential candidates who says he is standing to support Putin, accused Rybkin of turning the campaign into a "circus."

"It is clear the voter will be the judge of Rybkin," Mironov, speaker of the parliament upper house, said.

Another candidate, liberal Irina Khakamada, said that if it was shown Rybkin had gone off only on impulse "he is not fit to be a politician and should quit the race." If coerced, she said, he should seek asylum in London and tell all.

Rybkin said he had decided to take off on a trip to Ukraine to get away from campaign pressures that included being tailed everywhere by two men and searches of his campaign offices.

Jordanian Militant Sought in Iraq Attacks

By KENT KILPATRICK, Associated Press Writer

With a $10 million bounty on his head, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is one of the most hotly sought Islamic extremist leaders with links to al-Qaida.

The Jordanian is suspected of planning some of the worst terror bombings in Iraq and is believed to have written a captured document sent to al-Qaida commanders outlining a campaign to foment civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

He was linked to deadly bombings last year in Turkey and Morocco and accused of orchestrating the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan. And Britain tied him to a foiled ricin poisoning plot.

Little evidence has been presented, though, so it is not clear how firm the allegations are.

A prominent Sunni cleric in Iraq, Hareth al-Darri, called al-Zarqawi "an imaginary character" Wednesday and said he doubted the Jordanian had much of a role in the insurgency.

Jordanian officials describe al-Zarqawi as a religious zealot who is determined to cleanse Islamic countries of sinful Western morals and say he is known for eloquent preaching about the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

Asked if al-Zarqawi was behind suicide bombings that killed 100 Iraqis on Tuesday and Wednesday, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, said that based on the captured letter, there appeared to be a relationship.

However, an American official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was possible al-Zarqawi was involved in the bombings but said they were more likely staged by Saddam Hussein loyalists.

This week's bombings aside, U.S. authorities said previously that evidence was mounting to suggest al-Zarqawi had a hand in deadly attacks at a Shiite mosque in Najaf, the U.N. offices in Baghdad and an Italian paramilitary police post in Nasiriyah.

The official in Washington declined to discuss where al-Zarqawi ranks among wanted terror suspects, but added: "Would U.S. forces like to get their hands on Zarqawi? You bet."

In Iraq, Col. Ralph Baker of the 1st Armored Division said this week's bombings resembled "the operating technique" of al-Qaida or Ansar al-Islam, a radical Muslim group based in Iraq's Kurdish region that is affiliated with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s network. Officials in Washington, Jordan and other countries have said al-Zarqawi has strong ties to Ansar.

After the U.S.-led war that ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan two years ago, Washington described al-Zarqawi as one of eight al-Qaida operations chiefs and listed him among about two dozen of the most-wanted fugitives.

Last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell used al-Zarqawi as an example of al-Qaida ties to Saddam's regime, saying al-Zarqawi received hospital treatment in Baghdad after fleeing Afghanistan. Intelligence sources said he apparently was fitted with an artificial leg.

U.S. intelligence officials also said then that al-Zarqawi considered himself and his followers to be operating independently of al-Qaida's chain of command. But they said he relied on al-Qaida for money and logistical support.

Al-Zarqawi, 37, was born Ahmad Fadeel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, but uses a nom de guerre derived in part from the name of his hometown in Jordan, Zarqa. Now believed to be hiding in Iraq, he has been involved with Islamic militant groups since going to Afghanistan in the late 1980s to help fight the occupying Soviet army.

According to his family, he returned to Zarqa, an industrial town 17 miles from the Jordanian capital, Amman, in 1992. The family, which belongs to the Bedouin tribe Bani Hassan, says he married but couldn't find work.

His mother, Um Sayel, last year described her youngest son as a modest man and devout Muslim and said he was wrongly being accused of terrorist activities. "My son is a good man, an ordinary man, a victim of injustice," she said.

Um Sayel, who uses her eldest son's name for identification, wouldn't talk about al-Zarqawi's 1992-97 stint in prison. Jordanian security officials say he was jailed for working with groups that wanted to overthrow the monarchy and set up an Islamic state and also plotted to attack foreigners in Jordan.

Al-Zarqawi fled Jordan in 1999, shortly before authorities announced they had foiled a gas attack on American and Israeli tourists during millennium festivities and charged him with planning the assault. Jordanian officials say he went to Afghanistan, where they say he showed a talent for making poison gas and developed close contacts with bin Laden.

He reportedly left Afghanistan as the Taliban regime collapsed two years ago, apparently having been wounded during the U.S. bombing or in fighting with Washington's Afghan allies. U.S. authorities say he stayed in Iran for a time, then spent two months in Baghad receiving medical care.

Intelligence officials in several countries say al-Zarqawi has been on the move ever since, forging new terrorist cells and planning attacks.

A little over a year ago, Jordanian authorities named al-Zarqawi as the mastermind behind the October 2002 murder of Laurence Foley, a 60-year-old administrator of U.S. aid programs in Jordan.

In a German court last year, Shadi Abdellah, a Palestinian on trial for allegedly plotting to attack Berlin's Jewish Museum and a Jewish-owned disco, testified he was working for al-Zarqawi. He said they met in Afghanistan.

German authorities have reportedly said they believe al-Zarqawi was appointed by al-Qaida's leadership to arrange attacks in Europe.

Moroccan government sources said a group blamed for bombings last May that killed 45 people in Casablanca got its orders from al-Zarqawi. In Turkey, officials said he was believed to have played a role in bombings that killed 63 at two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank in Istanbul in November.

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