www.dailytimes.com.pk By Bill Gertz WASHINGTON: US intelligence agencies say Osama bin Laden’s oldest son, Sad, is in Iran along with other senior Al Qaeda terrorists, as Iranian military forces have been placed on their highest state of alert in anticipation of a US attack on Iraq, according to intelligence officials. Sad bin Laden was spotted in Iran last month, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports. Sad is believed to be a key leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network since US and allied forces ousted the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan. Officials said it is not clear what relationship Sad has with the Tehran government, which on Thursday denied congressional testimony by CIA Director George J. Tenet that Al Qaeda terrorists are in Iran. The new reports are the first time senior Al Qaeda terrorists have been identified in Iran. Earlier reports have indicated other Al Qaeda fighters have been granted refuge in Iran from neighboring Afghanistan. The intelligence on bin Laden’s son comes as the Bush administration has released intelligence indicating Iraq is working with Al Qaeda terrorists, including a senior associate of Osama bin Laden who has been in Baghdad since May. A CIA spokesman declined to comment when asked about the intelligence reports about Sad’s whereabouts. London’s Arabic-language newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, quoting a diplomatic source, reported from Rome on Thursday that Sad was seen in Iran. The newspaper said it is not clear whether other senior Al Qaeda are in Iran. US officials confirmed that Sad is among the senior Al Qaeda believed to be in Iran after the newspaper report appeared. Sad, 23, is the oldest of Osama bin Laden’s 27 children from several wives. He lived with his father in Sudan and Afghanistan, and fled Afghanistan in December 2001. Meanwhile, Iranian military forces are on heightened alert and Tehran leaders fear US military forces will use operations against Iraq as a steppingstone for invading Iran. The Iranian military activities appear similar to Iran’s response to the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Iranian military forces built up in large numbers along the border with Iraq. So far, the Iranian forces have not massed near the Iraqi border, but are expected to do so if US military operations against Iraq occur. Mr Tenet said at a Senate hearing Tuesday that “we see disturbing signs that Al Qaeda has established a presence in both Iran and Iraq.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said yesterday that Mr Tenet’s claim was “baseless,” state-run Tehran radio reported. “The seriousness of Iran’s fight against terrorism, and its expelling those suspected of links to Al Qaeda, has always been clear, sincere and transparent,” he said. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also said in a Senate hearing in September that the Iranian government is “currently harboring reasonably large numbers of Al Qaeda,” while keeping the support for the terrorist group from its people. “The Al Qaeda are functioning in that country, both transiting and located, and operating,” Mr Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Iran’s government has denied repeatedly it has any links to Al Qaeda. The chief of Iran’s armed forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Salimi, said in Tehran on Monday that the Iranian army is “on full alert,” according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Gen. Salimi said the armed forces are “on guard against any aggressive move by enemies that would threaten the territorial integrity of Islamic Iran.” Bush administration officials met privately last month in Europe with Iranian officials to discuss Iraq and seek Tehran’s help in supporting Sunni Muslims in a post-Saddam Iraq. The meeting was first reported by The Washington Post Feb. 8. Officials said the initiative was put forth by Richard Haas, the State Department’s director of policy planning. Intelligence officials said Iran’s support for terrorists, including Al Qaeda, in the past was carried out by agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Qods Force. The Defense Intelligence Agency in 2000 uncovered information linking Al Qaeda to Iran’s government. Intelligence from Malaysia showed that two of the September 11 hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, attended a key meeting of Al Qaeda terrorists in Malaysia that year. The two men were the suicide hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon. The 2000 intelligence showed they stayed at the Kuala Lumpur residence of Iran’s ambassador to Malaysia. —TWT Qaeda plotting to hit Saudi oil installations NEW YORK: The Al Qaeda terror network is planning a series of deadly attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil lines and refineries, designed to cripple the Saudi monarchy and subsequently the US economy which has a large stake in Middle-east’s oil industry, a media report said on Saturday. US and Saudi intelligence officials are particularly concerned about operations by Al Qaeda after a previous attack plotted by it against Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery, the largest in the world, was thwarted last summer. The plot was foiled when the CIA provided intelligence to its Saudi counterparts. The Saudis refused to disclose to American authorities details of their follow-up on the investigation, but Saudi intelligence sources told ABC Television News that Riyadh was able to disrupt the operation by arresting five people. Al Qaeda’s repeated attempts against the World Trade Centre showed the terror network does not give up on its prized targets on single attempt, the report said. —PTI

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WASHINGTON: The Bush administration on Friday, in newly compiled guidelines on counter-terror strategy, said it would lead the fight against global terror by seeking help from other nations but would act alone if needed. The strategy document also says the United States will, if necessary, “compel” other countries to root out terror operations within their borders if they fail to cooperate willingly. “The United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international community in this fight against a common foe,” the document said. “If necessary, however, we will not hesitate to act alone, to exercise our right to self-defense, including acting pre-emptively against terrorists to prevent them from doing harm to our people and our country.” It said that in countries where terror groups are known to operate, United States would seek partnerships to root out the groups, help to build up institutions in “weak but willing” states or rally diplomatic pressure to convince reluctant states to cooperate. “Where states are unwilling, we will act decisively to counter the threat they pose, and, ultimately to compel them to cease supporting terrorism,” it said. The United States is currently engaged in a diplomatic battle with France and other countries over President George Bush’s campaign to dismantle Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, which he has linked to his war on terrorism launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Bush has vowed to bypass the United Nations and lead a coalition of like-minded nations against Iraq if the United Nations fails to enforce a resolution last year to disarm Iraq. France, Germany, Russia and China all are seeking to forestall an early decision on whether to go to war. A senior administration official briefing reporters on the guidelines said they embody priorities followed since the September 11 attacks, which led Bush to declare war on terrorism and attack Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime accused of sheltering the Al Qaeda network blamed for the attacks. International terrorism, the official said, “will be with us for some time. The trick is to get it down to levels so we can go about our normal lives.” Main elements of the administration’s strategy are attacking the command structures of terror networks, denying support and sanctuary to terror groups, diminishing underlying conditions that fuel support for such groups, and defending the United States homeland. The document complements other administration strategy guidelines on national security, weapons of mass destruction and homeland security. —Reuters

www.dailytimes.com.pk By Robert Fisk The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush’s most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected US President. And they weren’t doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons In the end, I think we are just tired of being lied to. Tired of being talked down to, of being bombarded with Second World War jingoism and scare stories and false information and student essays dressed up as “intelligence”. We are sick of being insulted by little men, by Tony Blair and Jack Straw and the likes of George Bush and his cabal of neo conservative henchmen who have plotted for years to change the map of the Middle East to their advantage. No wonder, then, that Hans Blix’s blunt refutation of America’s “intelligence” at the UN on Friday warmed so many hearts. Suddenly, the Hans Blixes of this world could show up the Americans for the untrustworthy “allies” they have become. The British don’t like Hussein any more than they liked Nasser. But millions of Britons remember, as Blair does not, the Second World War; they are not conned by childish parables of Hitler, Churchill, Chamberlain and appeasement. They do not like being lectured and whined at by men whose experience of war is Hollywood and television. Still less do they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, is now sending America’s poor to destroy a Muslim nation that has nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September. Jack Straw, the public school Trot turned warrior, ignores all this, with Blair. He brays at us about the dangers of nuclear weapons that Iraq does not have, of the torture and aggression of a dictatorship that America and Britain sustained when Saddam was “one of ours”. But he and Blair cannot discuss the dark political agenda behind George Bush’s government, nor the “sinister men” (the words of a very senior UN official) around the President. Those who oppose war are not cowards. Brits rather like fighting; they’ve biffed Arabs, Afghans, Muslims, Nazis, Italian Fascists and Japanese imperialists for generations, Iraqis included though we play down the RAF’s use of gas on Kurdish rebels in the 1930s. But when the British are asked to go to war, patriotism is not enough. Faced with the horror stories, Britons and many Americans are a lot braver than Blair and Bush. They do not like, as Thomas More told Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, tales to frighten children. Perhaps Henry VIII’s exasperation in that plays better expresses the British view of Blair and Bush: “Do they take me for a simpleton?” The British, like other Europeans, are an educated people. Ironically, their opposition to this obscene war may make them feel more, not less, European. Palestine has much to do with it. Brits have no love for Arabs but they smell injustice fast enough and are outraged at the colonial war being used to crush the Palestinians by a nation that is now in effect running US policy in the Middle East. We are told that our invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with the Israeli Palestinian conflict a burning, fearsome wound to which Bush devoted just 18 words in his meretricious State of the Union speech but even Blair can’t get away with that one; hence his “conference” for Palestinian reform at which the Palestinians had to take part via video link because Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, refused to let them travel to London. So much for Blair’s influence over Washington the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, “regretted” that he couldn’t persuade Sharon to change his mind. But at least one has to acknowledge that Sharon war criminal though he may be for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres treated Blair with the contempt he deserves. Nor can the Americans hide the link between Iraq and Israel and Palestine. In his devious address to the UN Security Council last week, Powell linked the three when he complained that Hamas, whose suicide bombings so cruelly afflict Israelis, keeps an office in Baghdad. Just as he told us about the mysterious Al Qaeda men who support violence in Chechnya and in the “Pankisi gorge”. This was America’s way of giving Vladimir Putin a free hand again in his campaign of rape and murder against the Chechens, just as Bush’s odd remark to the UN General Assembly last 12 September about the need to protect Iraq’s Turkomans only becomes clear when one realises that Turkomans make up two thirds of the population of Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s largest oil fields. The men driving Bush to war are mostly former or still active pro Israeli lobbyists. For years, they have advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush’s most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected if he was elected US President. And they weren’t doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by yes, Richard Perle. The destruction of Iraq will, of course, protect Israel’s monopoly of nuclear weapons and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon has in store. Although Bush and Blair dare not discuss this with us a war for Israel is not going to have our boys lining up at the recruiting offices Jewish American leaders talk about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish American groups who so bravely oppose this madness have been the first to point out how pro Israeli organisations foresee Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic must be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen, of Johns Hopkins University, tried to do in the Wall Street Journal the day after Powell’s UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations’ objections to the war might yet again be ascribed to “anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent.” Many Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argue that an Iraq war will leave Israel with even more Arab enemies, especially if Iraq attacks Israel and Sharon then joins the US battle against the Arabs, it must be said, oppose this nonsense. The slur of “anti-Semitism” also lies behind Rumsfeld’s snotty remarks about “old Europe”. He was talking about the “old” Germany of Nazism and the “old” France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that oppose this war are the “new” Europe, the continent that refuses, ever again, to slaughter the innocent. It is Rumsfeld and Bush who represent the “old” America; not the “new” America of freedom, the America of F D Roosevelt. Rumsfeld and Bush symbolise the old America that killed its native Indians and embarked on imperial adventures. It is “old” America we are being asked to fight for linked to a new form of colonialism an America that first threatens the United Nations with irrelevancy and then does the same to NATO. This is not the last chance for the UN, or for NATO. But it may well be the last chance for America to be taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies. In these last days of peace the British should not be tripped by the oh so sought after second UN resolution. UN permission for America’s war will not make the war legitimate; it merely proves that the Council can be controlled with bribes, threats or abstentions. It was the Soviet Union’s abstention, after all, which allowed America to fight the savage Korean War under the UN flag. And we should not doubt that after a quick US military conquest of Iraq and providing ‘they” die more than we die there will be plenty of antiwar protesters who will claim they were pro war all along. The first pictures of “liberated” Baghdad will show Iraqi children making victory signs to American tank crews. But the real cruelty and cynicism of this conflict will become evident as soon as the “war” ends, when our colonial occupation of a Muslim nation for the US and Israel begins. There lies the rub. Bush calls Sharon a “man of peace”. But Sharon fears he may yet face trial over Sabra and Chatila, which is why Israel has just withdrawn its ambassador to Belgium. I’d like to see Saddam in the same court. And Rifaat Assad for his 1982 massacre in the Syrian city of Hama. And all the torturers of Israel and the Arab dictatorships. Israeli and US ambitions in the region are now entwined, almost synonymous. This war is about oil and regional control. It is being cheer led by a draft dodger who is treacherously telling us that this is part of an eternal war against “terror”. And the British and most Europeans don’t believe him. It’s not that Britons wouldn’t fight for America. They just don’t want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that includes the Prime Minister, they don’t want to fight for Blair either. —Independent

www.haaretzdaily.com By Aluf Benn

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is acting like a "super treasurer" and allocating funds for the Fatah groups and activists dealing with terror, according to an Israeli intelligence report to the government recently.

The report says Arafat and the heads of the PA's security establishment are making it difficult for Palestinian Finance Minister Salem Fayyad to introduce proper norms and effect reforms in the Palestinian economy.

Recently the PA's financial situation has improved considerably, says the report. Since the beginning of the year Israel has transferred NIS 530 million to Fayyad, from the PA's tax funds collected by the Israeli treasury. These funds were added to the aid the PA received from Arab countries and Europe, and enabled the PA to pay its workers' wages earlier than expected.

Israel conditioned transfer of funds frozen since the beginning of the intifada on having U.S. accountants supervise the PA budget, to make sure the money is not used to finance terror activities. But, the report says, Fayyad is having trouble asserting his authority over the PA's financial system - Arafat remains in control, much to the Palestinian finance minister's chagrin.

Arafat persists in giving orders to the Palestinian treasury to earmark funds for five destinations: direct financing of Fatah activity, including terror infrastructures; financing Fatah institutions and organizations; aid to the families of Fatah suicide bombers; and compensating workshop owners in the Gaza Strip, whose holdings were destroyed by the IDF; and compensation for families whose homes were demolished by the IDF.

Arafat is believed to be using the money to strengthen his position, which was weakened among Fatah activists due to his financial difficulties. Arafat wants to prevent his people from turning to Iran for alternative financing. Israel believes Arafat will continue to allocate funds without spoiling his relations with Fayyad.

Fayyad's relations with the PA security chiefs are tense, following his attempt to regulate the wage payment to their people. He wanted the them to get their salaries via their bank accounts. The security heads objected, because they wanted to remain in control of the payments. Fayyad failed to overcome their objection, and Arafat refrained from taking a stand.

www.haaretzdaily.com By Reuters

WASHINGTON - With the nation on a heightened state of alert, President George Bush yesterday told Americans steps are being taken to protect them from another terrorist attack. The administration last week raised its terror threat advisory to "high," signifying a heightened risk of attack and prompting authorities to tighten security around Washington, New York and other high-profile targets.

Bush sought to calm the public, rattled by a taped message believed to be from fugitive Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden urging Muslims to fight America and repel any war against Iraq. The United States blames bin Laden's Al-Qaida for the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed about 3,000 people.

"Our nation is preparing for a variety of threats we hope never will arrive," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "Many of these dangers are unfamiliar and unsettling. Yet the best way to fight these dangers is to anticipate them, and act against them with focus and determination." Bush's advice: "Americans should go about their lives."

Democrats ridiculed the administration for dispensing advice that included stocking up on duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal homes against a chemical or biological weapons attack - saying what was really needed was more federal money for homeland security.

They called on Bush to submit to Congress within seven days a supplemental budget request for homeland defense that would total in the billions of dollars.

"It is shameful that the heroes who rushed to defend the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11th have to come to Washington over and over again, hat in hand, and beg this administration for the resources they need," said Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

Bush has requested $41.3 billion for domestic security for fiscal 2004, a 10 percent increase. He is asking Congress for nearly $6 billion to beef up U.S. defenses against biological attack, is also expected to ask lawmakers for another $20 billion for the Pentagon within the next few weeks.