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Posted on 03/12/2004 8:23:06 PM PST by thecabal
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This week's deadly train bombings in Spain will not lead to a rise in the U.S. color-coded terror threat alert system, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said Friday.
"Based on the current intelligence, we have no specific indicators that terrorist groups are considering such an attack in the U.S. in the near term," said department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer
TAIPEI, Taiwan - President Chen Shui-bian narrowly won re-election Saturday a day after being shot in an assassination attempt, but a referendum he had championed on beefing up defenses against China failed because not enough voters took part.
His opponent suggested the attempt on Chen's life Friday gained him crucial sympathy votes in a tight race and asked for the results to be nullified. Lien Chan, who lost by just 30,000 votes, noted that election officials counted about 330,000 invalid ballots. Polls four days before the vote had put the opponents neck and neck, both sides said.
Riot police were deployed as hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the streets to protest the election results, setting the stage for a possible political crisis that could challenge Taiwan's young democracy.
Crowds became violent in the third-largest city, Taichung, where hundreds of people pushed over a metal barrier at a court house, shoved their way through a police line and began smashing windows with their bare hands. Many chanted, "Check the ballots!"
Chen, of the Democratic Progressive Party, won 50.1 percent of the presidential ballot, the Central Election Commission said. Lien, of the Nationalist Party, came away with 49.9 percent. About 13 million ballots were cast for president, and turnout was 80 percent, the commission said.
Besides allegations of unfairness, the loss of the referendum was a heavy blow to Chen, who had said its defeat would be a victory for Beijing. Powerful opposition figures had said Chen did not have the legal authority to call the referendum and urged people to boycott it.
Of those who voted, 92 percent said "yes" on both issues: whether to strengthen Taiwan's defenses if China refuses to redeploy hundreds of missiles pointed at the island; and whether Taiwan should seek talks with China about setting up a new "peace and stability framework."
But only 45 percent of eligible voters participated, less than the necessary 50 percent for the referendum to be valid.
In his presidential victory speech, Chen shrugged off the referendum defeat, saying people didn't seem to understand the questions. He appealed to mainland China to respect the election.
"It is a new era for solidarity and harmony and a new era for peace across the Taiwan Strait," Chen said. "We sincerely ask the Beijing authorities across the strait to view the election results from a positive perspective — to accept the democratic decision of the Taiwanese people."
China, which had no immediate reaction to the voting, had feared the referendum as a rehearsal for a vote on Taiwan independence. Beijing and Taipei split amid civil war in 1949, and China wants the island to rejoin the mainland.
In criticizing the election, Lien and his party questioned the timing of the assassination attempt, saying a shooting on the eve of the vote was suspicious and its influence should be investigated.
"A bullet was fired at President Chen, but it ended up hurting us," said Jason Hu, the Nationalist mayor of Taichung, Taiwan's third-largest city.
Gunfire hit Chen in the abdomen and Vice President Annette Lu in the knee as they rode through the southern town of Tainan at midday Friday, waving to supporters from an open-top Jeep. Neither leader was seriously wounded.
The vice president demanded that Lien back up his charges.
"What is fair and unfair? If you make the petition without any evidence, then the democracy that we took pains to establish could be damaged," Lu told supporters at campaign headquarters before breaking into tears.
Joseph Wu, a senior Presidential Office official, said that "there were no sympathy votes." The assassination attempt was being treated as a criminal case — not a conspiracy or an attack that involved China, prosecutor Wang Sen-jung said Saturday. No suspects have been identified.
Chen, 53, grew up in a poor village and graduated from Taiwan's top law school. He got into politics by defending dissidents during the martial law era, which ended in 1987. He has been a legislator and Taipei mayor.
By contrast, Lien, 67, belongs to one of Taiwan's richest families. The former political science professor served as an ambassador, foreign minister, premier and vice president in the former Nationalist government.
Neither candidate favored immediate unification with China, and both deeply distrust the communist leadership. But Chen has been more aggressive in pushing for a Taiwanese identity separate from China, raising tensions with Beijing.
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer
WANA, Pakistan - As helicopters circled overhead and gunfire crackled in the distance, a Pakistani general said Saturday many of the al-Qaida fighters surrounded near the Afghan border were Chechen or Uzbek, and he was uncertain if they included Osama bin Laden's Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
Although Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain hedged on the identity of the senior figure, he said he still believed a "high-value" terrorist target remained in the trap and had not escaped across the border into Afghanistan.
The operation in the arid, rugged terrain of South Waziristan raged into its fifth day with no sign of surrender from 400 to 500 foreign fighters and local tribesmen facing a thunderous barrage of artillery by night and Cobra helicopter gunship fire by day.
Hussain said 5,000 to 6,000 Pakistani troops were deployed in Pakistan's largest anti-terror campaign, conducted across a 25-square-mile swath of territory within 10 miles of the Afghan frontier.
About 2,500 soldiers were fighting the militants and the rest conducting searches, he said. Pakistani officials said a dozen American personnel are helping with technical intelligence and surveillance.
"I would not rule out any possibility, but with this level of resistance, even after 48 hours (of bombardment), I believe the high-value target is still there," Hussain told about 40 journalists flown by Pakistan's military to this town about three miles from the battle.
He said the fighters were a blend of foreigners and members of the local Yargul Khel tribe, and that this was the first of a series of operations to clear the lawless tribal region of militants.
The military announced Saturday that more than 100 fighters had been detained, some of them sent to the provincial capital, Peshawar, for interrogation. It showed journalists about 40 captured fighters at a military base in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan. They were blindfolded and with hands bound, crammed into a military truck. The corpse of another militant lay wrapped in a white shroud in a military ambulance.
Security officials said prisoners under interrogation included Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and ethnic Uighurs from China's predominantly Muslim Xinjiang province, where a separatist movement is simmering.
There have been reports that at least 80 ethnic Uzbek Islamic militants, led by Qari Tahir Yaldash — a Taliban ally and deputy of slain Uzbek leader Juma Namangani — are in the Waziristan region. Namangani was killed during the U.S.-led coalition's assault on Afghanistan that began in late 2001.
"Our people are interrogating them to determine who these terrorists are," said Brig. Mahmood Shah, the chief of security for tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan. "Some of them are foreigners."
The military also showed journalists in Wana belongings and equipment seized from a Chechen fighter who was killed, including grenades, detonators, a traditional pakor hat and prayer beads. Also displayed were four locally made rifles, a dozen grenades, AK-47s and boxes of Soviet-era ammunition seized from tribesmen.
The Pakistani army has intercepted some radio conversations of militants inside the encampment — mostly in the Chechen and Uzbek languages and some in Arabic.
One radio intercept in Uzbek or Chechen said a man wounded when he tried unsuccessfully to flee the area in a vehicle on the first day of the operation would need "four men to carry him and 10 or 11 people to protect him," Hussain revealed.
That raised suspicion the man was important and "most likely Chechen or Uzbek, as the intercepts were in those languages," he said.
Al-Zawahri is Egyptian, and would be expected to have mostly Arabic-speaking protectors. But Hussain said it was possible a figure like al-Zawahri would be guarded by fighters of different nationalities. He also said the protected man could have been a top local tribesman.
Last year, Russian authorities revealed that al-Zawahri was detained in Dagestan in 1997 after visiting Chechnya under an assumed name and held in a pretrial detention center for a few months. He was released and expelled from Russia after authorities failed to establish his identity.
Earlier, President Pervez Musharraf said commanders believed they had a "high-value" target surrounded. Four senior Pakistani officials then said they believed al-Zawahri was the target, based on the level of resistance and intelligence placing him in the region recently. The government has been cautious, saying it would not know who was present until the operation is completed.
Hussain said 400 to 500 militants are believed to still be fighting, using mortars, AK-47s, rockets and hand-grenades in a face-off with troops.
The military gave no updated details of casualties. On Friday, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan put the number of troops killed at 17, most in a disastrous initial assault Tuesday. Pakistan says 26 militants also have been killed.
Thousands of tribal residents fled their homes, and on Saturday, a small bus packed with villagers from near Wana was hit by gunfire and rockets from a Pakistani helicopter, killing 12 people, eight of them women, and injuring seven, an intelligence official in Wana said on condition of anonymity.
Sultan confirmed the incident but blamed firing by militants. He said that seven people, including five women, were killed and 13 injured.
____
Associated Press reporters Paul Haven and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, and Noor Khan in Afghanistan's Paktika province contributed to this report.
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld almost immediately urged President Bush to consider bombing Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, says a former senior administration counterterrorism aide.
Richard A. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism coordinator at the time, recounts in a forthcoming book details of a meeting the day after the terrorist attacks during which top officials considered the U.S. response. Even then, he said, they were certain that al-Qaida was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement.
"Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said. "We all said, 'But no, no, al-Qaida is in Afghanistan."
Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, said Rumsfeld complained in the meeting that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."
A spokesman for Rumsfeld said he couldn't comment immediately.
Clarke makes the assertion in a book, "Against All Enemies," that goes on sale Monday. He told CBS News he believes the administration sought to link Iraq with the attacks because of long-standing interest in overthrowing Saddam Hussein; Clarke appears Sunday night on the network's "60 Minutes" program.
"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection" between Iraq and the al-Qaida attacks in the United States, Clarke said in an interview segment that CBS broadcast Friday evening. "There's just no connection. There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaida."
Clarke also criticized President Bush for promoting the administration's efforts against terrorism, accusing top Bush advisers of turning a blind eye to terrorism during the first months of Bush's presidency.
The Associated Press first reported in June 2002 that Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions.
The last of those two meetings occurred Sept. 4 as the security council put finishing touches on a proposed national security policy review for the president. That review was finished Sept. 10 and was awaiting Bush's approval when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.
"Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism," Clarke told CBS. "He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something."
There have been earlier published accounts of the administration's suspicion during the week after the 2001 attacks that Iraq might have been involved, but none by a direct participant in such senior-level meetings and none that suggested there was a push to attack Iraq so soon afterward.
A discussion among President Bush and Cabinet members at Camp David. Md., on Sept. 16, for example, included remarks about whether it was prudent to attack Iraq after the terror attacks.
Bush told reporter Bob Woodward of The Washington Post that he decided not to heed advice on Iraq by some officials who also had served his father's administration during the first Gulf War.
"One of the things I wasn't going to allow to happen is, that we weren't going to let their previous experience in this theater dictate a rational course for a new war," Bush told Woodward for his 2002 book, "Bush at War." He said discussion later that day "was focused only on Afghanistan."
Clarke retired early in 2003 after 30 years in government service. He was among the longest-serving White House staffers, transferred in 1992 from the State Department to deal with threats from terrorism and narcotics.
Clarke previously led the government's secretive Counterterrorism and Security Group, made up of senior officials from the FBI, CIA , Justice Department and armed services, who met several times each week to discuss foreign threats.
By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain - A Spaniard with a criminal record led four Moroccans to an explosives warehouse at a mine to steal dynamite used in the Madrid terror bombings, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The unidentified Spaniard, a former miner in the northern Asturias region, was among five people arrested Thursday. He insisted he only led the Moroccans to the warehouse and did not help with the robbery or know the Moroccans had Islamic extremist links, El Pais reported, quoting police sources.
The Spaniard has a record for drug and weapons possession, the newspaper said. The Moroccans remain at large and have not been identified, it added.
Interior Ministry officials could not be reached to comment on the report.
The March 11 train bombings killed 202 people and wounded more than 1,800, making it Spain's deadliest terrorist attack. A total of 160 people remain hospitalized, four of them in critical condition, the Madrid regional health service said Saturday.
Ten suspects are in custody. Suspicion has centered on Moroccan extremists said to be linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group, which carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
In a videotape, a man claiming to speak on behalf of al-Qaida said the group carried out the attack in reprisal for Spain's backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The Spaniard arrested in Asturias told police he had met the four Moroccans in January in a bar in the Lavapies district of Madrid, El Pais said.
That's where one suspect, Jamal Zougam, had a cellular telephone store to which police have traced a cell phone found attached to a bomb that failed to explode.
The Moroccans told the Spaniard they ran a mine in Morocco but had trouble obtaining explosives. The Spaniard offered to help them get dynamite, and in return was apparently given drugs, El Pais said.
The Spaniard met with the Moroccans in the Asturian town of Aviles in late February and led them to an explosives warehouse at a mine, the report said. The explosives were stolen on or about Feb. 29, the paper said.
The Spaniard was arrested Thursday in Aviles, El Pais said. Four Moroccans were also arrested Thursday outside Madrid.
Police think all or part of the estimated 220 pounds of dynamite used in the Madrid bombings came from that warehouse, the paper said.
On Friday, a Spanish judge jailed Zougam and two other Moroccans on 190 counts of murder. That reflects the number of bodies identified so far. Two Indians were jailed on charges of collaborating with a terrorist group. All five suspects were arrested two days after the bombings.
The judge's order stops short of a formal indictment and means the suspects can be held for up to two years while police gather more evidence.
Intelligence chiefs from Spain, France, Britain, Germany and Italy were to meet Monday in Madrid to discuss the threat of terrorism in Europe.
Many Spaniards have accused the Spain's conservative government of provoking the rail bombings by supporting the Iraq war. The ruling Popular Party fell in a surprise defeat by the Socialists in general elections on March 14.
Thousands of Spaniards took part Saturday in rallies in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities to protest the war on the first anniversary of its opening salvos.
Zougam and the other four were held in solitary confinement, with no access to lawyers or news, until their interrogation began Thursday night. The newspaper El Mundo reported Saturday that the first thing Zougam asked the judge was who had won the election.
Also Saturday, the Socialist Party said the man expected to be Spain's next foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, told U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Friday that the incoming government was firm in its plan to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops stationed in Iraq unless the United Nations takes charge there.
By Mirwais Afghan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At least six Afghan civilians were killed and seven wounded in a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan's central province of Uruzgan, officials said on Saturday.
Many of the casualties in the Friday night raid on a village in the province's Charcheno district were women and children, said a provincial government official who declined to be identified.
Six people had been killed and seven wounded, said a police officer, who also declined to be identified. A Pakistan-based Afghan news agency said seven people had been killed -- three women and four men.
U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty said he was unaware of any civilian casualties.
He said U.S. aircraft had pounded suspected Taliban positions in the province on Friday morning, not evening, in retaliation for the killing of two U.S. soldiers on Thursday in a fire fight in which five militants were also killed.
He said the air strikes in the Tarin Kot area killed three more suspected militants.
"I have no information that indicates coalition forces killed any civilians in Uruzgan," he said. "Certainly I have no reports that women or children were killed."
U.S.-led forces have stepped up a hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, in south and east Afghanistan launched since March 7, codenamed "Mountain Storm."
The United States has been criticized by many Afghans and rights groups for killing and wounding civilians in its pursuit of Taliban, al Qaeda and fighters allied to them, launched after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The United Nations has called for details of investigations into such incidents to be made public.
In the worst U.S. attack on civilians, in July 2002, 48 people were killed and 117 hurt when a U.S. gunship attacked a wedding party in the province, according to Afghan officials.
The U.S. military eventually said 34 had been killed and 50 wounded -- most women and children -- but said the aircraft had come under fire.
"NAVIGATION ERROR"
In other violence overnight, three militants were killed when several dozen suspected Taliban and al Qaeda fighters attacked government forces near a U.S. military base at Shkin in Paktika province close to the Pakistani border.
The attackers struck from four directions, said Paktika police chief Mohammad Rahim Ali Khel. The rebels fled into Pakistan when U.S. helicopters appeared, he said.
The attack occurred just across the border from a major Pakistani military operation against hundreds of suspected al Qaeda militants in Pakistan's South Waziristan region.
In another incident, a U.S. helicopter launched an attack inside Pakistan's North Waziristan region on Friday night, killing one person and wounding three, villagers said.
The region's top security official confirmed the attack but said he had no information about a death. The helicopter strayed into Pakistani territory because of a navigation error, he said. (Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin and David Brunnstrom in Kabul and Haji Mujtaba in Miranshah, Pakistan)
Sat Mar 20,10:17 AM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter was downed by rebel fire west of Baghdad, but there were no injuries, the U.S. military said Saturday.
The downing occurred Friday near Amariya, south of Fallujah, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's deputy director of operations. Insurgents are active in the area.
"Both pilots were recovered without injury and forces secured the crash site and completed recovery efforts," Kimmitt said.
On Friday, Spc. Justin McCue, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said a military OH-58 Kiowa helicopter made a precautionary landing because of mechanical problems in Amariya, and that both pilots were uninjured.
It was not immediately clear whether Kimmitt was referring to the same helicopter cited by McCue.
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - A militant group offered an unusual apology Saturday for mistakenly killing an Arab college student in a drive-by shooting in a Jewish neighborhood, calling his family to offer their condolences and declaring him a "martyr."
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a group linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said it carried out Friday's shooting, in which gunmen in a passing car shot the student twice in the head and once in the abdomen in Jerusalem. The group apologized on Saturday after it turned out the victim was George Khoury, 21, the son of a prominent Arab attorney.
In more than three years of fighting, Palestinian militant groups have carried out scores of shootings and suicide bombings, killing hundreds of people, among them dozens of Arab citizens of Israel who were working, eating or riding buses along with Jewish Israelis when assailants struck.
In the same period, more than 2,700 people were killed on the Palestinian side.
But Saturday marked the first time a militant group apologized for mistakenly killing an Arab.
Zacariyya Zubeidi, head of an Al Aqsa cell in the West Bank town of Jenin and one of Israel's most wanted men, said Khoury was a martyr, a distinction normally reserved for Palestinians killed in the conflict with Israel, including bombers and gunmen on suicide missions.
"The family remained angry, and it's their right to be angry, but we consider him one of the many martyrs that fall every day," Zubeidi told The Associated Press. "This is a war between us and Israel and it is natural for there to be accidental victims."
For the slain man's father, Elias Khoury, the killing brought back memories of his father Daoud, who was also killed by Palestinian militants in an attack in downtown Jerusalem's Zion Square in 1975.
"Our lives are crazy," Elias Khoury told Israel Radio. "Both sides use force. Acts of terror, acts of occupation, will not do either side any good. This has to stop."
George Khoury was a second-year student of economics and international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In high school, he participated in several international gatherings on religious tolerance, his father said.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, a 7-year-old Palestinian girl died Saturday from wounds she suffered a day earlier, hospital officials said. Fatima al-Jallad was shot in the head while playing outside her home in the Khan Younis refugee camp Friday, Palestinian officials said.
Residents said the girl was killed by Israeli soldiers who fired from an outpost at the nearby Jewish settlement of Ganei Tal. An army spokeswoman said she didn't have any information about the girl.
The spokeswoman said, however, that at about the same time soldiers nearby fired warning shots in the air as two Palestinians entered an off-limits buffer zone between Israel and Gaza.
Israel launched a new offensive into Gaza following a twin suicide bombing in the Israeli seaport of Ashdod that killed 10 Israelis.
In Japan there are certain things one does not do because they are thought to cause bad luck. One example is:
The number four:
The number four is considered inauspicious because it is pronounced the same as the word for death (shi). Therefore, one should not make presents that consist of four pieces, etc. In some hotels and hospitals the room number four is skipped.
By TIM TALLEY
Associated Press Writer
March 20, 2004, 1:47 PM EST
McALESTER, Okla. -- Conversations between Timothy McVeigh and a fellow death row inmate could become key evidence in the state murder trial of bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, including testimony that McVeigh may have named others who were involved in the attack.
Over prosecution objections, Judge Steven Taylor has authorized inmate David Paul Hammer to testify for defense attorneys who believe McVeigh gave Hammer the identity of John Doe No. 2, a mystery man some claim to have seen with McVeigh on the day of the bombing.
Nichols' attorneys claim McVeigh had substantial help planning and executing the April 19, 1995, attack and that Nichols was set up to take the blame.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-nichols-trial-witnesses,0,3795942.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines
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