News n Notes from the Web

Debate Over Iraqi Arms Poses Risk to President

By David E. Sanger - News Analysis - New York Times
January 30, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — The intensifying debate over prewar American intelligence about Iraq presents President Bush with difficult and risky alternatives as he balances election year politics with calls to overhaul the intelligence apparatus and to restore the nation's credibility around the world.

He could order the start of an inquiry about the performance of intelligence agencies, as Democrats and the former chief weapons inspector, David A. Kay, have insisted, but his aides fear that that could prove politically damaging and would almost certainly reopen old wounds with the C.I.A.

He could keep arguing that military action was justified no matter how immediate a threat Saddam Hussein posed, and put off an examination and possible overhaul of America's intelligence operations for another year. But his political team worries that doing so could keep the issue alive through a long campaign.

Or the president and those on his national security team who once described how Mr. Hussein could use his stockpiles of weapons to strike at any time could conclude that something went badly wrong during their long march to war.

But the White House does not make a habit of admitting error. And even if Mr. Bush vowed to fix what many say is a broken system, his national security aides note, the fix would not be easy. "They've made a pretty huge mess of it," said one senior Republican who has been talking to Mr. Bush's top advisers about what steps to take next. "They wove this giant story, based on intelligence assessments that in hindsight — and this is hindsight, remember — were wrong.

"It's exposed a huge problem in our intelligence gathering. But who wants to take that on in an election year? Or while you are fighting terrorists?" White House officials will not talk at length about why they are so deeply hesitant to start an investigation. But they are facing a situation where Democrats are looking for evidence to blame Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and some Republicans are looking for evidence to blame George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

One White House official said Thursday that there was clearly a risk that an inquiry could spin out of control, exactly what many administration officials fear has happened to the inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet some officials are beginning to argue, in background conversations, that such an investigation is inevitable now that Dr. Kay has declared to the Senate that "we were almost all wrong."

The politics of doing what Dr. Kay says needs to be done — conduct an inquiry and overhaul the intelligence community before a similar mistake is made over Iran, North Korea or other potential threats — has grown enormously complex. Mr. Bush has publicly defended the "unbelievably hardworking, dedicated people" of the American intelligence agencies in part, some administration officials say, because he because he wants to avoid another bitter public dispute with Mr. Tenet and the intelligence apparatus. Feelings are still raw over last summer's open arguments between the White House and Mr. Tenet over who was to blame for Mr. Bush's faulty claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was trying obtain uranium in Africa. They were worsened by the accusations that a White House official blew the cover of Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. officer who operated under cover and is the wife of Mr. Bush's greatest critic on the Africa claim, Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Repairing that damage has taken months, and a grand jury has recently begun to hear evidence about the leak. Many intelligence officials continue to argue that real problem was not the ambiguous intelligence about Iraq's weapons capacity, but how Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney chose to use it. On Thursday, appearing on NBC, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, insisted that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were not ducking the issue. "No one will want to know more than the president of the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought was there going in," Ms. Rice said. She sounded in no hurry, saying it was important to let the Iraq Survey Group complete its work, work that Dr. Kay believes is 85 percent done.

Many Republicans have a different instinct: to follow Dr. Kay's lead and put the blame on the agency's assessments rather than the White House. In their view, that is the best way to insulate Mr. Bush from the charge that he cherry-picked the most damaging information.

Conveniently, some of them have long been suspicious of Mr. Tenet, who was put in his post by President Bill Clinton, and see this as an opportunity to speed along a retirement that the central intelligence chief has been talking about for a year. But Mr. Tenet has many defenders, including the president's father. It was a measure of Mr. Bush's problem, and Mr. Tenet's, that Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that his committee's draft report of what went wrong, to be issued soon, would be very specific, and very critical.

"This is, indeed, a very egregious problem," he said. "If your intelligence is wrong you're in a world of trouble."

Mr. Bush's political advisers are highly aware that Dr. Kay's report has given Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination something they have long sought: a way to revive the issue of whether Mr. Bush was careless and trigger-happy, willing to twist intelligence findings to fit his own agenda, even at the cost of American credibility abroad.

What that leaves for now is a slow retreat by White House officials — a day-by-day, fact-by-fact backing away from assertions they made with such confidence nine months ago. Mr. Bush no longer declares, as he once did, that he is certain that sooner or later unconventional weapons will be found in Iraq. "He still thinks it," one of his aides said, "but I'm not sure you will hear him say it" until the Iraq Survey Group's investigation is complete.

Mr. Powell, last weekend, started backing away as well, saying more assertively than ever before that there might be no weapons stockpiles in Iraq and that if none are found, an effort had to begin to find out what went wrong. Nonetheless, he and Ms. Rice argue that Mr. Hussein brought his troubles on himself by refusing to account for stockpiles that the United Nations said existed in the mid-1990's.

Only Mr. Cheney, the man who made the most extensive claims about Iraq's readiness to strike out, has failed to back down publicly. Last Friday he was on the air again, talking about Mr. Hussein's mobile biological weapons units, which now appear, Dr. Kay says, to have had no such purpose. "We'll have to get Cheney the new memo," one White House official said after Mr. Cheney's comments. "As soon as we write it."

The Halliburton Shuffle
By Bob Herbert, Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
January 30, 2004

Can you spell Halliburton? R-i-p- o-f-f.

War-torn Iraq has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another treasure trove of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no peer in the fine art of extracting riches from the government.

But if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have, you'll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the government that has been so good to it.


Annual reports filed with the S.E.C. since the mid-90's — when Dick Cheney took over as chief executive and wrote the game plan for garnering government goodies — showed Halliburton subsidiaries incorporated in such places as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu.

Vanuatu? Who knew?

Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and subsistence farming. 'Additional revenues,' according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, 'derive from a growing tourist industry and the development of Vila [the capital] as a corporate tax shelter.'

Halliburton, in an S.E.C. filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu) Ltd.

The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it's indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton's tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, 'After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability.'

That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a ride.

In the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private profit-making companies. Brown & Root came up with myriad ideas in a classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to implement its own plan.


Mr. Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, and the defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.

Halliburton is bound so intimately to the defense establishment it might as well be an adjunct to the military. (Mr. Cheney still receives deferred compensation from Halliburton but insists he has no role in the awarding of contracts.)

Halliburton is an organization that has the reach of a multinational and the eyes of a Willie Sutton. Through its subsidiaries, it has done work with countries the U.S. has accused of supporting terror. It was accused of overcharging the U.S. government for work done in the 1990's, and in 2002 it agreed to pay a $2 million settlement in response to accusations that it had defrauded the government.


The Pentagon is currently examining allegations that the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root overcharged the government by $61 million for gasoline imported into Iraq from Kuwait. Last week the company acknowledged that at least one employee had participated in a $6.3 million kickback deal with a Kuwaiti company. That money has reportedly been repaid to the government.

What we have here is a private profit-making multinational company with no particular allegiance (other than contractual) to the U.S. government. Nevertheless, through its powerful allies in the government, Halliburton enjoys extraordinary influence over national defense policies and has its own key to the national treasury.

If it's at all grateful, it hasn't shown it. The U.S. is at war. The government is running record deficits. Money is tight everywhere. But Halliburton won't even kick in its fair share. It continues to benefit from the nation's largesse, while scouring the world for places to shelter as much of its American riches as possible.

Where's the Apology?
By Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
January 30, 2004

George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Instead, he got rid of accountability.

Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less — because Saddam "did not let us in.")

So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry.

True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure. I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup. (Yes, the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of health, but many people — including a majority of the British public, according to polls — regard that report as a whitewash.)

In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.

Let's look at three examples. First is the Valerie Plame affair. When someone in the administration revealed that Ms. Plame was an undercover C.I.A. operative, one probable purpose was to intimidate intelligence professionals. And whatever becomes of the Justice Department investigation, the White House has been notably uninterested in finding the culprit. ("We have let the earthmovers roll in over this one," a senior White House official told The Financial Times.)

Then there's the stonewalling about 9/11. First the administration tried, in defiance of all historical precedents, to prevent any independent inquiry. Then it tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, of all people, to head the investigative panel. Then it obstructed the commission, denying it access to crucial documents and testimony. Now, thanks to all the delays and impediments, the panel's head says it can't deliver its report by the original May 11 deadline — and the administration is trying to prevent a time extension.

Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.

And the independence of the Pentagon's own inspector general's office is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the office's chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan. So when Mr. Bush's defenders demand hard proof of profiteering in Iraq — as opposed to extensive circumstantial evidence — bear in mind that the administration has systematically undermined the power and independence of institutions that might have provided that proof.

And there are many more examples. These people politicize everything, from military planning to scientific assessments. If you're with them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don't tell them what they want to hear, you're an enemy, and being right is no excuse.

Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?
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Powell takes on Russia over democracy

Mon 26 January, 2004 15:02
By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters UK

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he is worried about Russia's democracy, in unusually blunt comments that underscore widespread concerns the Kremlin is turning increasingly autocratic. In a front-page article published in major Russian daily Izvestia, he said Russian politics were not sufficiently subject to the rule of law and made clear there were limits to the U.S.-Russian relationship without shared values.

While couched in diplomatic terms, Powell's comments were unusually direct from a U.S. administration that has worked closely with Moscow in the U.S.-led war on terrorism and has cooperated on regional issues from North Korea to Iran. He also challenged Russia's policy in Chechnya and -- without citing any countries by name -- its recently assertive dealings toward nations like Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. "Certain developments in Russian politics and foreign policy in recent months have given us pause," he wrote at the start of a two-day visit to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

Washington has been at pains to promote relations with Putin's Russia even in the face of the Kremlin refusal to back its invasion of Iraq and fears that its commitment to a market economy and democracy may be stumbling. Later Powell, who held talks with Putin, insisted his article was not an attempt to meddle in domestic affairs. "As far as I am concerned, it wasn't in any way an attempt on my part to interfere in (the) internal dynamics of Russian political life. It was one friend speaking to another," Powell told a joint news conference with Ivanov.

The Russian foreign minister was equally keen to show no offence was taken, hoping that any doubts had been dispelled. "Our exchanges were full of good will. Even the most difficult issues were discussed in a constructive atmosphere of openness," he said. Relations between President George W. Bush and Putin have warmed by the year, but in recent months there have been widespread fears the Kremlin is turning more authoritarian. "Russia's democratic system seems not yet to have found the essential balance among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government," Powell wrote. "Political power is not yet fully tethered to law."

PUTIN READIES FOR RE-ELECTION

Powell's concerns come as Putin prepares for almost certain election to a second four-year term in March, his opponents either unwilling to challenge him directly or unable to muster enough support to pose any real threat. Putin's increasing grip on power is seen by some as being at the expense of democracy and a more transparent economy.

Powell made clear he was worried about Moscow's assertive dealings with its neighbours, which include a territorial dispute with Ukraine over part of the Sea of Azov and the continued presence of Russian troops in Moldova and Georgia. "Certain aspects of internal Russian policy in Chechnya, and toward neighbours that emerged from the former Soviet Union, have concerned us," he wrote.

**** Theory and Practice of Cooperative Behavior ***
(referenced by James Gosling, Java programming founder, Sun Microsystems)
2 related books:
1. The Evolution of Cooperative Behavior, James Axelrod, Basic Books (Reprint from: 1985), 256pp, ISBN: 0465021212

2. The Complexity of Cooperation, James Axelrod, Princeton University Press, 1997, 248pp, ISBN: 0691015678

Related Texts (all the way back to graduate school days!)
- Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Oxford Univ Pr, 1967? ISBN (ASIN) 0195002490
- William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma, Anchor Books, 320pp, ISBN
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*** U.S. Eyes Space as Possible Battleground ***

By Jim Wolf , Reuters News Service, 18 Jan 2004

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's plan to expand the exploration of space parallels U.S. efforts to control the heavens for military, economic and strategic gain.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld long has pushed for technology that could be used to attack or defend orbiting satellites as well as a costly program, heavily reliant on space-based sensors, to thwart incoming warheads.

Under a 1996 space policy adopted by then-President Bill Clinton that remains in effect, the United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space "by all nations for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humanity."

"Peaceful purposes allow defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national security and other goals," according to this policy. "Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."

No country depends on space and satellites as its eyes and ears more than the United States, which accounted for as much as 95 percent of global military space spending in 1999, according to the French space agency CNES. "Yet the threat to the U.S. and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the U.S. government charged with national security responsibilities," a congressionally chartered task force headed by Rumsfeld reported 10 days before Bush and he took office in 2001.

Theresa Hitchens of the private Center for Defense Information said the capabilities to conduct space warfare would move out of the realm of science fiction and into reality over the next 20 years or so. "At the end of the day it will be political choices by governments, not technology, that determines if the nearly 50- year taboo against arming the heavens remains in place," she concluded in a recent study.

Outlining his election-year vision for space exploration last week, Bush called for a permanent base on the moon by 2020 as a launch pad for piloted missions to Mars and beyond.

One unspoken motivation may have been China's milestone launch in October of its first piloted spaceflight in earth orbit and its announced plan to go to the moon. "I think the new initiative is driven by a desire to beat the Chinese to the moon," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy research group.

Among companies that could cash in on Bush's space plans are Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp., which do big business with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as with the Pentagon. The moon, scientists have said, is a source of potentially unlimited energy in the form of the helium 3 isotope -- a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtually no radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor. "And if we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn't have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be," said Pike.

Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison estimated the moon's helium 3 would have a cash value of perhaps $4 billion a ton in terms of its energy equivalent in oil. Scientists reckon there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the earth for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 30 tons could meet all U.S. electric power needs for a year, Kulcinski said by e-mail.

Bush's schedule for a U.S. return to the moon matches what experts say may be a dramatic militarization of space over the next two decades, even if the current ban on weapons holds. Among other things, the Pentagon expects to spend at least $50 billion over the next five years to develop and field a multi-layered shield against incoming missiles that could deliver nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Ultimately, this shield -- first proposed by President Ronald Reagan and dubbed "Star Wars" by critics -- may include space-based interceptors, the first weapons in space, as opposed to sensors that guide weapons.

Last year, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency obtained $14 million for research on basing three or more missile interceptors in space by the end of the decade for tests. The plan would field satellites armed with multiple "hit-to-kill" interceptors capable of destroying a ballistic missile through a high-speed collision shortly after its launch, according to Wade Boese, research director of the private Arms Control Association. Such a system could also function as an anti-satellite weapon.

No decision has been made yet to deploy space-based interceptors as part of the U.S. missile defense program "although we are conducting research and development activities in that area," a Defense Department official said Friday.

01/18/04 14:26 - © Copyright Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of Reuters Ltd.

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Cancer Stats Cite New Danger: Obesity
By Robert Davis, USA TODAY

About 156 people an hour will learn they have cancer this year, according to new data from the American Cancer Society. And by the end of this year, scientists predict, 563,700 people in the USA will have died from the disease.

But the grim statistics in Cancer Facts and Figures 2004, an American Cancer Society report released Wednesday, reveal that some strides have been made.

Death rates have declined slightly, for instance, and major victories have been won against lung cancer through anti-smoking campaigns.

But they also show another American behavior looming large as a danger to the aging population. Obesity and the lack of physical activity causes as many as one-third of the USA's cancer cases.

"It has become increasingly clear that obesity is a factor in about a dozen different types of cancer," says Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, who co-wrote the report. Thun says communities must create "social policies that can help people maintain healthy body weight and help people get regular physical activity."

The report is released each year to give doctors an idea about how the battle against cancer is going. Other findings:

•Lung cancer is down in men but still increasing among women.

•Five-year survival improved significantly for children, from 56% in the mid-1970s to 78% in the 1990s.

•African-American men have 40% higher mortality from all cancers combined than white men.

Thun says there are many possible reasons for the disparities, including poverty, which limits access to quality health care. African-American women, for instance, have a lower incidence of breast cancer but a higher death rate from the disease. "If you don't have health insurance, your chances of getting appropriate mammography and then appropriate follow-up and treatment is much less," Thun says. "Many of these things are difficult to turn around."

The full report can be found online at www.cancer.org.
****

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The Unquiet Death of a Chinese Peasant

(Lenient Treatment for Driver in 'BMW Case' Ignites Media Frenzy, Wide Discussion of Wealth and Justice)
By Philip P. Pan, Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 16, 2004; Page A14

BEIJING, Jan. 15 -- It could have been just another accident in a country where new drivers are plentiful and traffic deaths are on the rise. Two motorists argued after a minor collision, attracting a crowd, and as one attempted to leave, her car lunged forward, killing a bystander and injuring a dozen others before crashing into a tree.

A few months later, the driver paid damages to the victims, pleaded inexperience behind the wheel and expressed remorse in court. A judge ruled the Oct. 16 crash accidental, found the woman guilty of "causing a traffic disturbance" and handed down a suspended sentence.

The story might have ended there but for a few details that intrigued Chinese journalists: The defendant was driving a new, metallic silver BMW sport-utility vehicle; the other motorist was a peasant operating an old tractor loaded with a harvest of green onions; and the bystander who was killed was the peasant's wife.

In China, where the divide between rich and poor is widening, faith in the courts is low and the increasingly profit-driven state media are hungry for juicy stories, that's all it took to transform a smashup in the northeastern city of Harbin into a national obsession. In newspapers, on television and on the Internet, people across the country are talking about what is now commonly referred to as "The BMW Case."

In the weeks since the judge's Dec. 20 ruling, tens of thousands of people have flooded the Internet with angry messages accusing the court of protecting the BMW driver and demanding she be prosecuted for homicide. Many repeated rumors that the 45-year-old housewife threatened to kill the tractor driver before stepping on the gas, that her husband is a tycoon related to a senior city official, and that he was overheard saying money could solve their legal problems. The couple has denied these allegations, as have police and local officials.

But the media frenzy reached such a pitch that the Communist Party leadership in Heilongjiang province announced this week it had ordered a new investigation into how police, prosecutors and the courts had handled the matter -- a rare concession by Chinese officials accustomed to ignoring public opinion.

Then on Thursday, China's main Internet sites, apparently following government orders, moved to shut down the online discussion. Earlier this week, Wei Lai, an editor at the popular Chinese Web portal Sina, said the company had deleted about one in five messages about the BMW case for going too far in criticizing the government, but had allowed nearly a quarter-million messages to remain. On Thursday, those messages suddenly disappeared as well.

The government's reaction highlights the challenge the Internet poses for China's authoritarian political system as well as the Web's growing influence on decision-making by the party. Last month, China's highest court ordered the execution of an alleged gangster after a similar outcry on the Internet against a decision to grant him a reprieve based on evidence he had confessed under torture. Several months earlier, outrage on the Internet over the death of a college student in police custody led the party to abolish a regulation allowing police to detain people without proper identification.

Chinese legal scholars say the public scrutiny could force judges to think twice before accepting bribes or showing favoritism to those with power, but it might also encourage the party to ignore evidence and intervene in judicial decisions to satisfy the whims of the public.

Yang Xiaohuai, a defense lawyer in Beijing, said the basic problem was the lack of an independent judiciary, which undermines trust in the legal system. "In China, there is a phenomenon," he said. "Power is greater than the law, money is greater than the law and connections are greater than the law."

The BMW driver, Su Xiuwen, and her husband deny that they enjoy any special ties with local officials or used their wealth to buy favorable treatment in court. But the case tapped into deep resentment in Chinese society against the country's newly rich, who many believe have benefited from corruption and enjoy special privileges. News reports noted that Su's BMW costs about $100,000; the average annual income in China is less than $1,000.

"I wish I were poor without all these troubles," said Guan Mingbo, Su's husband and chairman of the board of a real estate development company in Harbin. Reached by telephone, he blamed the Internet for his wife's problems and said he was concerned the party might reopen the case under public pressure.

"I don't know if they will give my wife a harsher sentence or not," he said. "But if they do, I don't know where I can go to appeal."

Dai Yiquan, 46, the peasant whose wife, Liu Zhongxia, was killed in the crash, said he was satisfied with the $12,000 out-of-court settlement he reached with Su and was not interested in reopening the case. But he also said he settled because he couldn't find anyone willing to testify against the woman.

"I told police that she drove into the crowd on purpose, but they asked me again and again, 'How do you know?' " he said by telephone. "No one dared stand up as a witness. . . . I had to give up because I was helpless. I have no money, no power."

In court and in state media, Su admitted cursing Dai and hitting him with her purse after his tractor scraped her BMW. She said she was upset by the accident and thought the car was in reverse when it sped into the crowd. She also said she had learned to drive only recently and could not find the brakes.

But many Chinese remain suspicious. Newspaper reports noted that police never opened a manslaughter investigation, that no witnesses were called to testify in Su's trial and that statements taken from them were not read in court. Police would not say whether technicians examined Su's car or whether investigators tried to verify her claims of limited driving experience.

But Dai said he did not think it was worth pushing for a jail sentence. "No matter how long the sentence is," he said, "with her money, she'll be out soon."
****

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Transcript: Iraqi Governing Council Pres. Adnan Pachachi Statement

Thursday, January 15, 2004; 5:13 PM, Washingtonpost.com:
Following is an edited transcript of a statement made by Adnan Pachachi, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council, at a Baghdad news conference Thursday. Pachachi is heading a Governing Council delegation that meets Monday in New York with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq. Pachachi's statement was made in Arabic and was translated by the U.S. occupation authority.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I am, as you know, on the verge of traveling to New York at the head of a delegation representing the Governing Council to conduct three way talks with the secretary general of the United Nations and the coalition administration represented by Ambassador Paul Bremer. I am optimistic that these talks will create positive results, most important of which is the return of the United Nations to its natural role in assisting us in the reconstruction process and our voyage towards democracy. We will clarify from the secretary general and his aides what the United Nations can offer and what we expect from it throughout the few remaining months until the end of the occupation and the dissolving of the Civil Coalition Provisional Authority and the regaining of Iraq's sovereignty in the presence of a transitional government practicing governmental authority and carries out a governments responsibilities in a complete fashion from and before June 30th.

After that is the start of the period of creating the constitution and the United Nations will have a very important role for its extended experience in organizing, conducting elections, placing the electoral laws, population statistics and the writing of the constitution, in preparation of establishing an elected government with extended legitimacy from the will of the free Iraqi people. . . .

Last year we reached an agreement with the Coalition Civil Administration to speed up the process of transfer of authority and return of sovereignty. The Governing Council chose this route because the alternative route would [be] to remain for two years or more under occupation and foreign rule. For this we consider the Nov. 15th agreement an important historic step towards independence and sovereignty. Some of the signs and positive results for this agreement have started such as the police and the Iraqi Civil Defense Core as they play a more important role than the coalition forces in securing security. The ministers are also practicing their authority in an extensive and escalating manner and three important laws have been issued and they are the laws of the special criminal tribunals specialized on laws against humanity, war crimes, the corruption fighting system and the property disputes.

I am not denying that there are a few differences in points of view in regards to the selection process of the members of the Transitional National Assembly. The differences are not related to the principles but the details, for we all agree that the best way to select the National Assembly is direct general elections, if it was possible to prepare for them and conducting them in a correct manner to include true representation at the will of the Iraqi people during the remaining short period to regain authority and sovereignty.

We are holding on to the June 30th agreement because we believe that any delay to this date of returning authority and sovereignty will result in disappointment and great depression for the Iraqi people, and I do not believe that there is anybody that would like to take responsibility of that. Disagreements in opinion are a natural phenomenon in a democratic debate targeting subjectivity. We prefer this form of debate and interaction and we look down on the dictatorship tactics that the Iraqi people suffered from for more than 30 years.

I will meet you all after I return and I will relay to you what took place in our talks with the officials and others and thank you.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company