Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Commander: Taliban ready to battle NATO


chron
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A top Taliban commander said Wednesday the group has 4,000 fighters bracing to rebuff NATO's largest-ever offensive in northern Afghanistan, now in its second day.

Suicide bombers are ready, land mines have been planted and helicopters will be targeted, Mullah Abdul Qassim, the top Taliban commander in Helmand province told The Associated Press.

NATO, meanwhile, announced the capture of a senior Taliban fighter who had eluded authorities by wearing a woman's burqa. Mullah Mahmood, who is accused of helping Taliban fighters rig suicide bomb attacks, was seized by Afghan soldiers at a checkpoint near Kandahar, the alliance said.

Speaking by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, Qassim said the Taliban has 8,000 to 9,000 fighters in Helmand province, including some 4,000 in the north, where NATO launched its largest-ever offensive Tuesday. He said all the fighters were Afghan, denying reports of hundreds of foreign fighters in the region.

"All of them are well-equipped and we have the weapons to target helicopters," Qassim said. "The Taliban are able to fight for 15 or 20 years against NATO and the Americans."

New mines have been planted, and suicide bombers — a growing threat in Afghanistan — are ready to attack, said Qassim, whose voice was recognized by an AP reporter who has spoken with him before.

Operation Achilles, comprising some 4,500 NATO and 1,000 Afghan troops, is focused on securing lawless regions of northern Helmand — the world's biggest poppy-growing region.

The offensive follows a mission last fall that wiped out hundreds of militants who fought in formation in neighboring Kandahar province, prompting NATO spokesman Col. Tom Collins to say this week the military would welcome a repeat of those tactics.

Qassim said the Taliban would adapt to conditions on the ground this time around.

"The Taliban know traditional fighting," he said. "If we need to fight in a group, we will. If we need a suicide attack, we will do that. If we need ambushes and guerrilla fighting, we will do that."

Collins said Wednesday that NATO was confident it would succeed in helping the government move into the region, though he said it would "take a while to get there."

"We've established a presence and in some areas it's a heavy presence, and we're trying to disrupt the Taliban's senior leadership in the area and try to separate them from trying to rally" the Taliban's locally recruited soldiers, said Collins.

One British soldier and four Taliban fighters were killed during operations on Tuesday. NATO said it had no updates on the fighting late Wednesday.

Helmand is the world's largest poppy-growing region, and U.N. officials say the Taliban derives tens — if not hundreds — of millions of dollars from the crop. NATO also says the Taliban is deeply involved in the drug trade, though Qassim denied that, saying the Taliban had eradicated opium poppies when it ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001.

The Taliban leader said the militants control all of Helmand, and said the provincial governor hasn't been to the region in weeks, instead choosing to operate from Kabul, the capital.

"Every day we have been firing rockets at the British bases, but soldiers are not coming out," he said. "They're not fighting with us. We are ready, but they are staying inside."

Mahmood — the Taliban commander caught wearing the burqa — was trying to leave the Panjwayi area of Kandahar province — site of the large NATO battle last fall where hundreds of Taliban fighters were killed.

"Alert (Afghan) soldiers at this checkpoint spotted the oddity and quickly arrested him," NATO said.

"The capture of this senior Taliban extremist is another indicator that a more normal life is returning to the Zhari and Panjwayi districts and a testament to the great work the (Afghan army) is achieving," said Maj. Gen. Ton van Loon, the southern commander of NATO-led troops.

In eastern Afghanistan, Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces arrested a suspected al-Qaida bomb expert and five other terrorist suspects Wednesday.

The U.S.-led coalition had information indicating "a suspected terrorist with strong ties to al-Qaida" and to a group that helped militants along Afghanistan's border region was inside an eastern Afghan compound near Jalalabad, it said.

"The suspected terrorist was a (bomb-making) expert and logistics officer for the Tora Bora front, which facilitates the movement of fighters from Pakistan to Afghanistan," the U.S. said. No shots were fired and no one was hurt during the raid.

Separately, U.S.-led coalition troops detained five men suspected of involvement in anti-government activities and "known terrorist groups," in the eastern city of Khost, the coalition said.

The troops uncovered a cache of grenades and armor-piercing rounds during their search, the statement said. No injuries occurred during the raid.

Real ID program postponed

los angeles times
Under siege from states and angry lawmakers, the White House moved back a deadline Thursday to implement national driver's license standards known as Real ID.

The announcement that states have an extra 20 months, until the end of 2009, to meet the requirements of the Real ID Act did little to ease criticism of the law from privacy advocates, motor vehicle departments and lawmakers. Almost two dozen states, including New Hampshire, are weighing legislation to oppose Real ID.

The resistance to a policy the administration calls an essential weapon in the war on terror reflects a shift from the almost total support the administration initially enjoyed for its national security agenda after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"In the months after Sept. 11, we adopted a 'do anything, do everything' mode," said Jim Harper, a public policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute who advises the Department of Homeland Security and opposes the act. "Here with five-plus years behind us, now it's time to look at what does work and what doesn't and lift the veil of secrecy."

Delayed implementation would not resolve the privacy and security concerns that Real ID raises, said Tim Sparapani, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Essentially, we've just kicked the can down the road another two years," he said.
The 2005 law requires new tamper-proof security features on licenses issued only to people who can prove citizenship or legal status; their personal data would be kept in a database that would be accessible by motor vehicle departments nationwide. All Americans would be required to renew their licenses by 2013. Those without one would be barred from federal buildings or airplanes unless they could show a passport or another form of federally approved identification with a photo.

The National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors Association were not happy with the program, noting that the federal government has not moved to offset the cost to states. They have estimated the cost at $11 billion, while the Department of Homeland Security puts it at $14.6 billion.

Last year, the federal government offered New Hampshire $3 million to test Real ID. An effort to oppose the program failed in the Legislature, but Rep. Neal Kurk, a Weare Republican and privacy advocate, is sponsoring another measure to defeat it this year.

Many states are concerned about longer lines, higher fees and fewer Department of Motor Vehicles centers, because they will have to meet stringent new security standards. Civil-rights advocates wonder about people who do not have birth certificates or other ID needed to get a Real ID license.

And privacy advocates worry about the linked databases, warning of the creation of a de facto national ID card and the increased possibility of identity theft without any added protection against fraud.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, was among a group of senators who said they would use the two-year delay to re-examine Real ID.

"It's not insignificant that there are privacy concerns," he said. "Big Brother government is a big problem."

Washington Softens Tone on North Korea Uranium-Enrichment



voanews


The crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs was initiated in 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted violating a previous agreement by pursuing a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium. Now that six-nation talks may be producing progress in eliminating Pyongyang's far more advanced plutonium-based program, Washington has softened its tone about uranium enrichment. VOA's Kurt Achin reports from Seoul.

It was in October 2002 in Pyongyang that an eight-year-old U.S.-North Korea nuclear agreement known as the "Agreed Framework" screeched to a halt. U.S. officials presented North Korean negotiators with evidence that Pyongyang was violating the deal by undertaking a secret program to produce highly enriched uranium - HEU - presumably for use in nuclear weapons.

Tong Kim, then a high-level interpreter for the U.S. State Department, was in the room.

"What we said then was, we have convincing evidence. We said they were pursuing it. We didn't say how far they went, we didn't say they are producing HEU bombs," Kim said.

Kim, now an international relations professor here in Seoul, says North Korean officials acknowledged the program - something they have never done publicly, and which they now deny. He believes Pyongyang thought, erroneously, the acknowledgment would enhance their bargaining leverage with the United States.

Instead, it had the opposite effect. Washington halted fuel oil shipments to the North. Pyongyang ejected international nuclear inspectors in return, pulled out of the global nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, and restarted the plutonium-producing reactor that had been shut down under the Agreed Framework.

China, Russia, the United States, South Korea and Japan subsequently initiated negotiations with North Korea - known as the six-party talks - to find a diplomatic end to the North's nuclear programs.

Since last month, when North Korea pledged to seal its main plutonium reactor once again, U.S. officials have indicated that Washington was reconsidering the HEU accusation that started the crisis.

The chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, told a Washington audience last month that the North will still have to answer for its purchase in the 1990's of uranium-related centrifuges from the network of Pakistani nuclear pioneer A.Q. Khan.

However, Hill implied that Washington might now be willing to accept that the centrifuges, and related aluminum tubes purchased from Germany, were not part of an HEU program at all.

"At some point we need to see what's happened to this equipment," Hill said. "If the tubes did not go into a highly enriched uranium program, maybe they went somewhere else - fine. We can have a discussion about where they are and where they've gone."

Hill says the United States simply isn't sure how far the North might have developed a uranium program.

"It's a complex program," he noted. "It would require a lot more equipment than we know that they have actually purchased. It requires some considerable production techniques, that, we're not sure they've mastered those."

Several weeks after Hill's comments, the main U.S. intelligence official dealing with North Korea, Joseph DeTrani, told the U.S. senate that Washington's confidence in the existence of a North Korean HEU program has decreased since 2002.

"The assessment was with high confidence that indeed, they [North Korea] were making acquisitions necessary for, if you will, a production-scale [uranium] program," he said. "And we still have confidence the program is in existence, at the mid-confidence level."

South Korea, too, believes the North has been working on an HEU program, but it, too, has no evidence that such a program is advanced. Last month, ending years of official silence on the issue, the South's chief nuclear negotiator, Chun Yung-woo, provided Seoul's first public assessment of the situation.

"We do not have full information where the program itself stands now." Chun said. "Nobody seems to believe that they have an enrichment plant up and running, but I cannot tell you how far North Korea's enrichment program has evolved."

Experts say there are several reasons for the apparent softening of the U.S. position.

First, U.S. intelligence suffered a major setback in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, where no weapons of mass destruction were found despite highly confident U.S. assurances. It is thought intelligence officials have decided to be more cautious in their conclusions.

Peter Beck, North Asia Director for the International Crisis Group, suspects North Korea's test of a plutonium-derived nuclear weapon last October also helped focus the minds of U.S. policymakers.

"After the nuclear test last October, they realized that the HEU program probably hasn't gone anywhere from when it was detected in 2002, and the plutonium program most certainly has," he said.

Experts like Beck say February's deal in Beijing is the outcome of a more pragmatic, plutonium-focused approach by Washington to the nuclear talks. The deal was signed only after intensive one-on-one discussions between the U.S. and North Korea in Berlin several months earlier.

Tong Kim, the former State Department interpreter, calls the HEU program accusations a "self-inflicted sticking point" by the United States. He says Washington is hoping to receive some form of explanation from North Korea, so the diplomatic process can move forward.

"What I would expect would be that North Koreans somehow would come up with an explanation of what they have bought and what they did with them - again, claiming that those materials, or their plan, had nothing to do with a weapons program," Kim said.

The International Crisis Group's Peter Beck says North Korea's uranium-related purchases are probably "sitting in a cave somewhere, gathering dust." He notes that the North must disclose details of all nuclear activities in the second phase of February's six-party agreement - although he predicts it will be reluctant to provide the kind of specificity the U.S. and its partners are looking for.

"Now, I'm not expecting the North to show up to a working group with a laundry list of their facilities, because that would essentially be handing over a target list to the Bush administration," Beck said. "So, how we get to that next step of coming clean is not going to be just a problem for HEU, but for all their other nuclear activities - and that's going to be a real challenge."

The deadline for implementation of the February agreement's first phase is mid-April. Talks on a second phase, which will include North Korea's promised nuclear declaration, are expected to begin shortly after that.