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Thread 4. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1084291/posts |
Posted on 02/05/2004 8:31:17 PM PST by Mossad1967
Edited on 02/09/2004 3:20:18 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
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.
There you go oceanview.
British Airways Cancels 2 London Flights
By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer
LONDON - A much-disrupted British Airways flight from London to Washington, D.C. has been canceled again over security fears, the airline said Thursday.
British Airways said Flight 223 from Heathrow to Washington's Dulles Airport would not fly on the coming Sunday. Monday's Flight 263 from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia also was scrapped.
The airline said the decision "follows government advice to cancel those flights for security reasons." The 184 people booked on the Washington flight and 149 Riyadh passengers would be rebooked on other flights or given a refund, the airline said.
BA said the return flights to London would operate as scheduled.
Flight 223 has been delayed or canceled eight previous times this year because of U.S. security alerts. Saudi flights also have been canceled several times.
Officials in Britain have refused to say what intelligence prompted them to advise cancellation of the BA flights, but U.S. authorities have spoken of a "specific and credible" terrorist threat to international flights.
Disruption to flight 223 began Dec. 31, when the plane was kept on the tarmac at Dulles for several hours after landing, while U.S. authorities questioned passengers and crew.
BA scratched the same service the following two days and several times after that, most recently on Feb 2. When the flight has gone ahead, it has sometimes been delayed for hours for stringent checks on passengers. The carrier's two other daily flights to Washington have not been affected.
Last August, BA suspended service to Saudi Arabia, where the British government warns of "a continuing threat of terrorism," after local authorities broke up a cell that reportedly was plotting an attack on a British plane. Service was restored in September.
Several Paris-based Air France flights to the United States and a Continental Airlines Glasgow-to-Los Angeles flight also have been canceled in the past few weeks.
Air France said Thursday that its flights were running normally and there had been no cancelations for security reasons.
Some European officials have questioned the need for the flight disruptions, and Britain's pilots' union has expressed concern over the "erratic" nature of the intelligence leading to the cancelations.
A U.S. request for armed "sky marshals" to travel on flights thought to be at risk also has caused friction, with Britain's Air Line Pilots' Association expressing strong opposition to the idea.
British Airways said marshals might be acceptable in some circumstances, but that it would scrap flights if there were concerns about security.
A spokesman said the government had not requested sky marshals for the two canceled flights.
Briton key suspect in nuclear ring
Posted: 02/12
From: Guardian
Man accused of smuggling parts tells Guardian: 'I was framed'
Owen Bowcott, Ian Traynor in Zagreb, John Aglionby in Jakarta and Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Thursday February 12, 2004
The Guardian
A Middle East-based British businessman has emerged as a key suspect in a secret network supplying Libya, Iran and North Korea with equipment to build nuclear bombs.
Speaking for the first time yesterday, Paul Griffin denied that his company played any part in shipping prohibited material from the Far East.
He told the Guardian: "We have been framed."
His comments came as diplomatic sources and nuclear experts around the world stepped up their warnings of a growing proliferation crisis as atomic technology and expertise is increasingly traded on the black market.
Regulators have warned of a dangerous illegal "supermarket" in atomic know-how, spanning five countries.
Last night President George Bush added his voice to the growing chorus of alarm. He talked of the threat of black market dealers motivated by "greed, or fanaticism, or both".
For the first time Mr Bush publicly accused Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, of being at the centre of a network supplying North Korea with the centrifuge technology that is needed to make highly enriched uranium for atomic bombs.
The names of individuals and companies supposedly involved in Dr Khan's clandestine network - including that of Mr Griffin - have been leaking slowly into the public domain. The US authorities have named a Dubai-based Sri Lankan businessman, BSA Tahir, as a key middle man in the nuclear proliferation network.
Mr Bush last night named Mr Tahir as Dr Khan's deputy and said he ran SMB computers, a business in Dubai. "Tahir used that computer company as a front for the proliferation activities of the AQ Khan network. Tahir ... was also its shipping agent, using his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients."
The CIA director, George Tenet, last week named a Malaysian company, Scomi Precision Engineering, as the firm that manufactured 14 components for a nuclear centrifuge dispatched to Libya last year. The equipment was seized in a high-security operation in October when the container vessel carrying it, the German-owned BBC China, entered the Mediterranean. Intelligence agents persuaded the owners to divert the ship to the southern Italian port of Taranto, where the material was confiscated.
Pleading that it thought the components were destined for the oil or gas industry, Scomi in turn named British-owned and Dubai-based Gulf Technical Industries (GTI) as the company which placed the order.
GTI, which was established in 2000, is run by Mr Griffin and his father, Peter. Its registration form with the Dubai Chamber of Trade and Commerce describes it as trading in "pumps, engines, valves and spare parts". It is listed on another Middle East website as a steel trading company.
"The allegations are totally untrue," Mr Griffin told the Guardian from Dubai. "We trade in engineering products. The first I knew about the press release [from Scomi] was when I was telephoned about it at 7.15am on Tuesday.
"I was asked whether we had really bought $3.5m of equipment from Malaysia.
"It's total nonsense, rubbish. I'm trying to find out myself what [is supposed to have been going on]. I have approached the Malaysian consulate to find out how everything happened. I haven't bought anything from Malaysia at all.
"If I was going to buy high precision parts I would order them from Europe; you know what you are getting from there. I would notice if I had brought some precision-engineered parts. They are not something you go pick up at a supermarket."
Mr Griffin, 40, and originally from south Wales, said he had met Mr Tahir when GTI bought some computers from his company last year. GTI had also asked him to sort out a computer virus on his system. "That was it," Mr Griffin said.
Asked whether he knew Dr Khan, the metallurgist, Mr Griffin said that he had, coincidentally, met him at a wedding in Pakistan "about 18 years ago".
He added: "I went to a friend's wedding and he [Khan] was the local dignitary. I was introduced to him.
"I have never met him in Dubai or since then. I don't even know where he lives. I haven't had any [other] contact with him.
"If we were anything to do with [this smuggling], I would have thought British or US intelligence would have contacted me. The British embassy know me here. I haven't been contacted by the authorities here. If I was doing something dodgy, I would have been picked up."
The bill of lading with the German company, BBC Chartering and Logistic, which owned the BBC China, would show he had nothing to do with the centrifuge order, he said. "They have promised to send me the documentation. They told me they had never heard of us. It's all a mystery. The last time I saw Tahir was eight months ago. These allegations are all a load of bullshit." Mr Griffin, who has lived in Dubai on and off since 1986, said his father, Peter, had now retired to Paris. GTI was still tendering for work with the oil industry in the region.
GTI's registered office is in a low-rise building at the side of the eight-lane Sheikh Zayed Highway on the way to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi.
On the ground floor, House of Cars sells four-wheel-drives to expatriates and Jebal Arafat Tailors caters to the Arab residents of the building.
Yesterday, the office smelled of paint and appeared to be in the process of being re-let. Mr Griffin lives in a single-storey villa in the smart Jumeirah area of the city, surrounded by palm trees. He told the Guardian his company had moved premises.
Malaysian security authorities said they did not know the whereabouts of Mr Tahir, who allegedly ordered the centrifuge parts from Scomi Precision Engineering, which is controlled by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi. A centrifuge is used to concentrate, or enrich, radioactive material. A police spokesman said investigators were keen to speak to him. "He is a crucial part of our ongoing investigation so we are keen to talk to him but we have yet to locate him," the spokesman said.
Mr Bush said that Mr Tahir, who has a Malaysian wife, "is in Malaysia, where authorities are investigating his activities".
Western diplomatic sources in Kuala Lumpur say they would like to see the investigation intensified but in reality it is losing momentum because Scomi has been cleared of any wrongdoing by Malaysian police. A police spokesman said: "Our investigation is still ongoing and we want to get to the bottom of the matter."
The Malaysian police chief, Mohd Bakri Omar, on Sunday absolved Scomi of any participation in the nuclear weapons trade. "So far, no wrongdoing has been committed," he said.
Scomi is continuing its operations. It insists it believed it was making equipment for the oil and gas industry.
A Scomi factory manager, Che Lokman Che Omar, told reporters during a tour of the site last week that the case was being blown out of proportion.
"It is not difficult to make," he said. "It could be one of thousands of parts used by the oil and gas industry. In fact, we have made more complex and difficult parts before." In its latest statement Scomi said it was making "generic items", not "sensitive parts" and that it "never knowingly manufactured" nuclear weapons parts.
The Foreign Office declined to comment about the allegations against GTI or Mr Griffin.
Investigators at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency probing nuclear trafficking networks in at least a dozen countries believe Dubai is the centre for traders and middlemen running the black market.
The Americans hailed the seizure of the BBC China as a triumph for US intelligence that helped to persuade Colonel Muammar Gadafy of Libya to renounce his weapons of mass destruction pro grammes under the deal announced in December.
Other informed sources are convinced that, in fact, the boat was seized after the Libyans informed the CIA about it.
BBC Chartering and Logistic GmbH, the shipping company based at Leer in northern Germany which owns the BBC China, said: "This was a regular container transport from Dubai to Libya. We were surprised by the visits from the secret service and the [German] economics ministry. We're not involved at all in this story."
Rolf Briese, the company's managing director, said: "This is not so simple. We've made a declaration to the economic ministry and we have an agreement not to give any more information about it."
Investigation sources say the shipping company has been cleared of any suspicion in the incident and the BBC China is plying its business as usual.
While the IAEA investigators were denied access to the material on the BBC China by the Americans, the agency's inspectors found similar equipment in Libya during a visit in December.
According to diplomats in Vienna, the equipment bore stickers bearing the name KRL, referring to Khan Research Laboratories, the facility south of Islamabad at the heart of the Pakistani bomb project and named after Dr Khan.
The stickers found on the equipment in Libya explain why Dr Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA head, has taken to describing the clandestine nuclear trade as a "supermarket."
The disclosure of Dr Khan's smuggling network has been punctuated by heated claims and counter-claims about whether US and western intelligence agencies penetrated the hidden trade or completely missed its significance.
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
FALLUJAH, Iraq - Insurgents launched a brazen attack Thursday on an Iraqi civil defense outpost visited by Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East. Abizaid and his party escaped injury in the gun battle.
Just moments after a convoy carrying Abizaid and his party pulled inside the cinderblock walls at the headquarters of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps in this city west of Baghdad, an explosion rang out. Seconds later, two more explosions were heard near the rear of the compound, and U.S. soldiers responded with a barrage of rifle and machine gun fire.
Several attackers fired three rocket-propelled grenades, and another pelted the party with small arms fire from a nearby mosque. The gun battle lasted about six minutes.
No U.S. soldiers and no one in Abizaid's party were injured. Residents said one Iraqi was grazed in the leg by a bullet and slightly injured.
Abizaid was accompanied by Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. After the gun battle, Abizaid and Swannack canceled plans to walk into the city and instead returned to a U.S. military base near here.
A defense official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that the insurgents had been tipped off to the presence of the senior general.
However, U.S. officials, briefing reporters at military headquarters in Baghdad, said they were not prepared to make such a link. One noted that rocket attacks in the Fallujah area were relatively common.
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt issued a statement saying: "Today at 1330 (1:30 p.m. local time) in Fallujah, Gen. Abizaid and Gen. Swannack were visiting an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps battalion headquarters compound when three rocket propelled grenades were fired at their convoy from rooftops in the vicinity. No soldiers or civilians were injured and both coalition and Iraqi civil defense soldiers returned fire and pursued the attackers. A local mosque was thought to be haboring the attackers and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers conducted a search of the mosque without result."
Kimmitt said Swannack reported that the attack was believed due to "a small number of personnel unrepresentative" of most of the people of Fallujah
After Abizaid left in a convoy of Humvee utility vehicles, soldiers of the 82nd Airborne's 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment asked members of the Iraqi security force to clear the mosque. But they refused.
Abizaid appeared unfazed. Speaking in Arabic to one member of the Iraqi security force after the gunfight, the general asked about the attack and was told, "This is Fallujah. What do you expect."
Later, after he returned to the U.S. base, Abizaid told a reporter, "This is an area where there are plenty of former regime elements out there, willing to fight." Abizaid then flew on to Qatar, as scheduled.
Abizaid was tapped as Central Command chief after Gen. Tommy Franks retired after the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.
____
EDITOR'S NOTE: AP Military Writer Robert Burns is traveling with Gen. Abizaid in Iraq
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - In another apparent link to the nuclear black market emanating from Pakistan, U.N. inspectors in Iran have discovered undeclared designs of an advanced centrifuge used to enrich uranium, diplomats said Thursday.
The diplomats said preliminary investigations suggested that the design matched drawings of enrichment equipment found in Libya that was supplied through the network headed by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The revelations came a day after President Bush, in a keynote speech, acknowledged loopholes in the international enforcement system and urged the United Nations and member states to draw up laws that spell out criminal penalties for nuclear trafficking.
Khan, a national hero in Pakistan for creating a nuclear deterrent against archrival India, confessed on Pakistani television last week to masterminding a network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) with nuclear technology. President Pervez Musharraf then pardoned him.
Beyond adding a link to the chain of equipment, middlemen and companies comprising the clandestine nuclear network supplying weapons-related technology to rogue governments, the find cast doubt Tehran's willingness to open its nuclear activities to international inspection.
Accused of having nuclear weapons ambitions, Iran — which denies the charge — agreed late last year to throw open its programs to pervasive inspections by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and said it would freely provide information to clear up international suspicions.
But the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iran did not volunteer the designs. Instead, they said, IAEA inspectors had to dig for them.
"Coming up with them is an example of real good inspector work," one of the diplomats told The Associated Press. "They took information and put it together and put something in front of them that they can't deny."
At less enriched levels, uranium is normally used to generate power. Highly enriched, it can be used for nuclear warheads.
Iran — which says it sought to make low enriched uranium — has bowed to international pressure and suspended all enrichment. But it continues to make and assemble centrifuges, a development that critics say also throws into question its commitment to dispel suspicions about its nuclear aims.
The United States and its allies interpret enrichment suspension as encompassing the whole process — including a halt in assemblage of related equipment. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher warned last month that failure by Iran to indefinitely suspend "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities would be deeply troubling."
The IAEA continues to negotiate with Iran on what constitutes suspension, but Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's director general, also is known to be seeking a commitment from Iran to stop and assembling centrifuges.
The diplomats said Iran had not yet formally explained why the advanced centrifuge designs were not voluntarily handed over to the agency as part of its pledge to disclose all past and present activities that could be linked to weapons.
"They'll probably say it's an oversight," said one of them.
Thu Feb 12, 1:33 AM ET
By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer
SAMAWAH, Iraq - A mortar landed near a hotel housing Japanese journalists Thursday in a southern Iraqi town where Japanese troops have deployed, officials said. The blast shattered windows in a nearby building but caused no injuries.
The 60-mm mortar hit at about 5 a.m. in an intersection some 50 yards from the hotel in Samawah, said a security guard, Numan Khadim Amar. The launcher was found, along with a few more rounds, about 2 miles away in the northern part of the city.
Col. Yasushi Kiyota, one of the commanders of the Japanese forces deploying at Samawa, said Dutch troops — who patrol the city — were investigating. He said there were no injuries.
About 100 Japanese troops are setting up a camp about four miles outside town, where a total of about 600 troops are to be based in Japan's biggest overseas military mission since World War II and its first to a war zone in half a century.
The Japanese are to carry out humanitarian missions focusing on reconstruction of the area's battered infrastructure. Though strictly non-combat, the mission has been debated in Japan for months and has only a narrow margin of support from the public, which remains deeply concerned over the possibility of terrorist attack causing bloodshed.
Second, if AQ wants to go bio or chem, there are much more effective ways of maximizing exposure, than using a relatively small postal center. Releasing the stuff at a mass transit facility in NYC could potentially contaminate hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of hours, and allow the person spreading the stuff to do so without detection.
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