<a href=www.heraldtribune.com>The Associated Press-heraldtribune.com

Postwar Spending Boom May Not Materialize BOSTON (AP) - Last fall, the prospect of war took much of the blame for corporate America's unwillingness to spend money, as uncertainty about the effect on oil prices, stock markets and budget deficits crippled the economy. But hope reigned that when the conflict was resolved, companies would commence previously postponed projects, resuming capital spending and lifting the whole economy. Now, many aren't so sure.

Poll Finds Opposition to More Tax Cuts WASHINGTON (AP) - With the country at war and facing budget deficits, six in 10 Americans say this is not the time for more tax cuts, an Associated Press poll finds. Still, half say their taxes are too high. The poll, taken in the days before Tuesday's tax-filing deadline, found that 61 percent say it would be better to hold off on additional tax cuts now to avoid making budget deficits worse and ensure there is adequate money to pay for the war.

Machinists at Lockheed Plant to Strike FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - Members of the union representing about 4,000 workers at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Texas aircraft manufacturing plant took to the picket line early Monday, hours after rejecting a contract offer and voting to strike. At 12:01 a.m., as Lockheed Martin Aeronautics' contract with Machinists Local 776 expired, about 20 people began picketing outside the plant. Calls to the union's office were not immediately returned.

Immigrants Make Use of IRS Tax ID Numbers SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Ernesto Cuellar filed his taxes this year not just to report what he made from his $9-an-hour job as a house painter, but also, he hopes, to speed his path to becoming a legal resident of the United States. Cuellar submitted his federal return using an increasingly popular tax number issued by the Internal Revenue Service to people who can't get Social Security numbers. Many, like Cuellar, are undocumented immigrants, causing concern among critics of U.S. immigration policy.

Restoring Iraq's Economy May Take Years CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Saddam Hussein took a wealthy, thriving country and drove it into the ground. Restoring Iraq's economy will take years, analysts say, even with the world's second-largest proven oil reserves. The hurdles are formidable: bombed-out roads, bridges, buildings; offices stripped by looters; outdated and corroded facilities in polluted oil fields; fallow farm fields ruined by waterlogging and salinity.

IMF, World Bank to Assess Iraq's Needs WASHINGTON (AP) - Fact finders from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will go to Iraq to assess the hugely expensive costs of reconstruction as soon as it is safe to do so. The finance ministers on the policy-setting committees of the IMF and World Bank "made it very clear that this is what they had in mind," World Bank President James Wolfensohn said Sunday, when weekend meetings of the two organizations ended.

World Bank Urges Lower Trade Barriers WASHINGTON (AP) - Global poverty can be cut in half by 2015 if rich countries lower trade barriers and increase foreign aid, the World Bank said Sunday. Poor countries can help themselves by investing more in health and education, the bank said.

Fed Official Sees Moderate Economic Rise PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The U.S. economy will experience moderate growth by year's end, but no sharp postwar rebound, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia predicted Sunday in his annual forecast. Anthony M. Santomero expects the economy to be growing at 3 percent to 4 percent by the end of the year and into 2004 as businesses start to fill depleted inventories and rehire workers.

Venezuelan Oil Output Hits 3.2M Barrels CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's oil production has risen to its highest level since before a two-month strike crippled operations, the energy minister said Sunday. Rafael Ramirez said Venezuela was pumping 3.2 million barrels a day, up slightly from 3.1 million at the end of March. Venezuela's output quota determined by the OPEC oil cartel is 2.8 million barrels a day.

Gold Prices LONDON (AP) - Gold bullion opened Monday at a bid price of $325.50 a troy ounce, down from $326.60 late Friday.

Japan Markets TOKYO (AP) - Japan's benchmark stock index hit a 20-year low for a second straight session Monday on concern that corporate pension funds were dumping shares. The U.S. dollar was higher against the Japanese yen.

Dollar-Yen TOKYO (AP) - The dollar traded at 120.64 yen on the Tokyo foreign exchange market Monday, up 0.86 yen from late Friday.

Last modified: April 14. 2003 4:38AM

Boston.com Government: Reports it bombed village 'a lie' By Globe Staff and Wires, 4/10/2003

CARACAS - The government yesterday rejected allegations by Colombian border residents that its aircraft bombed a village in Colombia last month in support of leftist rebels fighting right-wing paramilitaries. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel dismissed the allegations as ''a grotesque lie'' aimed at trying to discredit Venezuela's left-wing president, Hugo Chavez. The two Andean neighbors share a volatile 1,400-mile border. President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia has ordered an inquiry into the allegations by border residents that Venezuelan military helicopters and planes crossed into Colombian airspace on March 21 and bombed a border hamlet at La Gabarra, in North Santander Province, killing and wounding several people. The residents said the aircraft acted in support of left-wing Colombian guerrillas who were under attack from rightist paramilitary groups. (Reuters)

UNITED STATES FBI: Al Qaeda suspect is arrested in Yemen

WASHINGTON - Yemeni authorities have arrested Fawaz Rabeei, a suspected member of Al Qaeda whom the FBI has sought for questioning about a possible plot against US interests, Yemeni officials said. Rabeei, a Yemeni, is the suspected ringleader of a group that may have been planning a terrorist attack in the United States or Yemen on Feb. 12, 2002, according to information FBI officials obtained from Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners held at the US Navy facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The warnings prompted an unusual FBI alert that month seeking Rabeei and 10 other Yemeni men. Rabeei is believed to have escaped an explosion on Aug. 9 that killed two accomplices in a warehouse in the Yemeni capital of San'a. After the blast, Yemeni authorities discovered 650 pounds of the plastic explosive Semtex hidden in pomegranate crates. (Washington Post)

SAUDI ARABIA Pakistani is executed for smuggling heroin

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia, which implements strict Islamic sharia law, executed a Pakistani man yesterday for smuggling heroin into the kingdom, the Interior Ministry said. Under sharia law, Saudi Arabia executes murderers, rapists, and drug smugglers, usually by public beheading. At least 45 people were put to death last year in the Gulf Arab state. At least 75 people were executed in 2001 and 121 in 2000. (Reuters)

LEBANON F ive arrested in plot to attack US interests

BEIRUT - The government said yesterday it had arrested five people in connection with a booby-trapped car discovered outside a McDonald's restaurant and accused them of planning attacks on Lebanon's Western embassies. ''We have five detainees so far who have confessed to placing a booby-trapped Renault car at McDonald's,'' Interior Minister Elias al-Murr said. ''The confessions showed that this terrorist group was also preparing for destructive acts on Western embassies,'' he said. ''We confiscated from one of the detainees a rocket aimed at hitting some of the Western embassies, as well as hand grenades, pistols, machine guns and silencers.'' Murr said the Lebanese detainees confessed to parking a car loaded with explosives outside the fast food outlet on the edge of Beirut over the weekend. The explosives did not detonate. (Reuters)

LATVIA Center to extend push for WWII criminals

RIGA - The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center said yesterday it was considering extending its drive to catch World War II criminals to several countries across Europe in a final race against time. The Jerusalem-based group already pays $10,000 for information leading to successful legal action in ''Operation Last Chance'' in the three Baltic states. ''We are considering Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Austria,'' director Efraim Zuroff said. ''But we are not 100 percent sure we will make it. The window of opportunity is only three to five years,'' he said, referring to a race against time as war crimes perpetrators and survivors grow old and die. Zuroff said he would like to see Russia included in the campaign. (Reuters)

This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 4/10/2003.

The Christian Science Monitor from the April 08, 2003 edition By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BEIJING – When the US pushed China to participate in an Asian coalition to halt North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Beijing demurred. It claimed little influence over Kim Jong Il.

But in fact, for nearly two months, China has been quietly "getting North Korea's attention," as a well-placed Western source puts it - halting oil pipeline shipments to Pyongyang for three days due to "technical difficulties," and using its wide diplomatic channels to urge North Korea down a nonnuclear path.

Now, since the start of the US-led Iraq war, Chinese efforts have increased and taken firmer shape in response to the Bush administration's "doctrine of preemption," now on display in the Gulf.

"The Iraq war has brought a change," says Shi Yinhong, a professor of international studies at People's University in Beijing. "Before Iraq, there was a stalemate in the Chinese position, and fragmentation. Now there is some recognition of a possible time sequence in the US approach to North Korea, and that has created a sense of urgency in China."

At the highest levels, Chinese officials have been closely studying ways of bringing about a "verifiable" denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, sources say. They're coming to the conclusion that without a firm common policy among Northeast Asian states and the US, verification may not be possible - and the US might step in. "We have never been opposed to multilateral talks," says one high-level Chinese source, somewhat belying the fact that since October China has ardently advocated direct talks between the US and the North.

The Iraq war itself seems to have strengthened the position of an influential minority of bolder, more pro-active Beijing analysts and party and government foreign policy experts - the scholarly class that traditionally advised the emperor in Chinese society. In their view, China should use its diplomatic capital to urge the North into the kind of multilateral talks that the White House has advocated to stop Kim Jong Il from bringing his enriched uranium and plutonium programs to fruition.

Unlike their South Korean counterparts, some of these advisers even echo Bush team hard-liners - expressing a willingness to keep military options on the table, and considering sanctions against North Korea. (Seoul is closer to North Korean artillery than is Beijing, a Western source notes.)

Yet while China wants to cultivate improved relations with the US, it is incorrect to say that Beijing's recent pressure on Pyongyang is simply serving American attempts to deal with Mr. Kim. Rather, new Chinese efforts are articulated in terms of self-interest. They are attempting to outflank the new US doctrine, and what Beijing sees as potential chaos on the Korean peninsula and a refugee calamity on China's border, if US bids to deal with the unpredictable Kim later take a turn toward the extreme.

It would also be incorrect, sources say, to assume a bolder Chinese approach to the North has taken hold here as policy. What Chinese diplomats actually say to their North Korean colleagues at the various levels of contact is a closely held secret.

Ties between old Communist Party comrades, and at the military level where Chinese memories of aiding the North in the Korean War are intact - have a powerful sway. In some readings, the scholars' view is a minority view - that internal dynamics in China have not ripened at least yet toward a bold stance, and that the pressuring of Pyongyang is simply a tactical or experimental position, and not to be read as a pro-US helpmeet.

China has only reluctantly agreed to back UN Security Council talks to be held Wednesday on North Korea's January withdrawal from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Officially, Beijing is vehemently opposed to sanctions on North Korea. China said little during Kim's escalations - kicking out UN weapons inspectors, withdrawing from treaties, intercepting a US reconnaissance plane - in the six months since he admitted having a secret nuclear program.

Still, Western reporters have confirmed that Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi has made clear representations to North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Namsung to resolve the crisis. Even the willingness of Chinese sources such as Dr. Shi at the People's University to be quoted by Western journalists indicates a stronger position in Beijing.

Zhang Liangui, an influential policy advisor at the Central Party School in Beijing, where progressive young Party officials attend, for example, says that he cannot confirm whether or not China had cut off oil from its Da Qing pipeline - to send a message to North Korea. But he says that, "if it wasn't an intentional warning, still, Beijing should conduct such acts as part of a package of [sticks and carrots] in dealing with Korea."

Mr. Zhang is one of four scholars who have openly advocated a tougher Chinese position toward the North in official media here, something that indicates backing in high government echelons. At the same time, the Zhang position advocates that China take a friendly approach to North Korea, use its channels of communication with Pyongyang as an asset - while leaving Washington to play "bad cop."

Some experts in Seoul believe Kim's 55-day hiatus from public appearances, and the recent relative absence of North Korean provocations along the DMZ, suggest he has been reconsidering his strategy.

But he has reemerged with a blast of new and often contradictory positions and rhetoric. Mr. Kim accused the US of plotting his overthrow, but in another venue said that direct talks with the US were the only means toward settling the crisis.

Some Chinese scholars are already staking out a post-Kim position. What China wants, according to Chinese sources, are assurances in high-level meetings that in a "worse case scenario" - a collapse of North Korea - that China's border would be secure, and that the international community would take care of refugees. "We would want any US forces to quickly withdraw from the Chinese border, to be replaced by an international force - and guarantees that the UN would handle the refugees," one source says.

The Natal Witness DUNCAN DU BOIS Writing in the Sunday Times on March 30, Judge Richard Goldstone stated that there were only two lawful ways in which the U.S. could use military force against Iraq. One was if the UN Security Council sanctioned it; the other was in the case of "dire self-defence". The U.S. war against Iraq is in dire defence of dollar imperialism against the threat of the euro. Put another way, the war is about world economic dominance. That, according to Australian analyst Geoffrey Heard, is the reason for the Bush Administration's determination to oust Saddam Hussein's regime, because his policy of selling oil in euros is threatening U.S. global hegemony. The origin of Establishment America's problem with Iraq goes back to 1999 when Iraq broke ranks among the oil producers and began to trade its oil in euros instead of U.S. dollars. As Heard notes, under an Opec agreement all oil has been traded in greenbacks since 1971. America's monopoly of the oil business has premised the U.S. dollar's supremacy among world currencies. Initially the U.S. scoffed at Iraq's move to the euro but by 2001 disdain had turned to alarm. Iran indicated an interest in changing to euros while Russia has been seeking to increase its oil production aimed at European sales - in euros, of course. Venezuela, the world's fourth largest producer, has been cutting out the dollar in its dealings and bartering with various countries, including Cuba. The net result of these developments meant that the dollar's stranglehold on oil was slipping and with it America's dominance of world trade. With Iraq having the world's second largest oil reserves, the American Establishment, which is sodden in oil investments, simply had to act against Saddam - even if it meant going to war. The alternative was the meltdown of the U.S. economy. America was in serious trouble long before the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. Its real threat came not from the Middle East so much as from the EU with its new currency, the euro. Commanding 40% of world trade, the EU poses a major challenge to continued U.S. dominance. If only a few Opec members switched to euros, argues Heard, that would hurt the U.S. in two critical ways: it would result in a stronger euro and an increase in the "eurozone" and it would trigger dollar dumping and depress the greenback's value. With the dollar facing bleak times, the only thing left for the Bush administration as the proxy of Establishment America (Al Gore would have had to have done the same) was to come out fighting. In one respect, Bush has been very frank about the purpose of this war. He has said it is to protect the American way of life. Indeed. And that means ensuring the reign of dollar imperialism. The war against Iraq is, therefore, a war both to defend and to assert dollar dominance. Heard sees four objectives for the U.S. in this war:

• return Iraq's oil reserves to the dollar circle;
• send a clear message to other oil producers as to what will happen to them if they try to leave the dollar zone;
• deal a setback to the EU and its euro;
• use the war as a cover to get Venezuela's oil back into the dollar circle by means of covert CIA action. The cost of the war is not measured in terms of the images shown on our television screens. In fact, in Uncle Sam's view the cost of going to war is negligible compared to the cost of not going to war. The possible loss of U.S. power and the end of dollar imperialism, as far as Washington is concerned, far exceeds all other considerations. The final aspects of Heard's analysis provide insight as to the positions of Australia and the UK. Having significant U.S. dollar reserves and strong trade links with the U.S., it is in Australia's interests to support the U.S. and to see to it that the ascendancy of the euro is checked. Britain, which has yet to adopt the euro as its currency, stands to gain time and room to manoeuvre by siding with the U.S. A U.S. victory would also, in effect, give the EU principals, France and Germany, bloody noses and place the UK in a position either to demand a better deal from the EU for adopting the euro or to distance itself from Europe and to align with America. A weakened and divided EU is a U.S. policy strategy. Whose side should South Africa be on? It's really a case of Hobson's choice. When the U.S. economy went concave in 1929, the whole world was sucked in to its depression. Only the mad mullahs would want a repetition of that. Which is why the anti-U.S. rhetoric of the ANC government, compounded by Nelson Mandela's virulent anti-Bush remarks, is shortsighted. It would have been far better to have adopted a neutral stance, particularly since an election is due in a year's time. In 1999 the ANC's election expenses enjoyed considerable American and Middle Eastern funding. Given the physical and political costs of the war, the chances of a repeat of such funding in 2004 must range from uncertain to unlikely. Nonetheless, the aftershocks of the war on Iraq may cost the ANC dearly.
• Duncan du Bois is a DA Durban Metro ward councillor. He writes in his personal capacity.

Publish Date: 4 April 2003

Saturday, March 29, 2003 <a href=www.stripes.osd.mil>By Kendra Helmer, Stars and StripesEuropean edition

Petty Officer 2nd Class Bounlay Khaiaphone, 25, is a gas turbine technician on the USS Cowpens. He is from Laos, one of 15 nationalities represented by sailors in the engineering department.

ABOARD THE USS COWPENS — Every day on this ship is like a United Nations gathering.

The 400 sailors in the engineering department hail from 15 countries, from France to the Philippines to Venezuela. That means melding several languages, cultures and customs into one purpose.

“I think it’s part of our strength,” said Lt. Cmdr. Vince Perry, 37, USS Cowpens chief engineer. “Some of these guys have done more to prove their devotion to the United States than U.S. citizens.”

The engineering department sailors on the guided-missile cruiser hail from the United States, Romania, France, the Philippines, Laos, Vietnam, China, Haiti, Dominican Republic, British Virgin Islands, Mexico, Cameroon, Jamaica, Panama and Venezuela.

Several, including Petty Officer 2nd Class Ngoc Le, have applied for U.S. citizenship, a requirement for becoming an officer.

Le, a gas turbine engineer, was born in South Vietnam. Though he’s a Christian, people sometimes unknowingly do something offensive to his Buddhist upbringing.

“For me, you don’t touch my head,” said Le, 28. “Our head is a symbol of high authority. You don’t let people walk over your head.”

Learning about those cultural differences makes ship life interesting, said Petty Officer 2nd Class Bounlay Khaiaphone, 25. He left Laos as a child for a refugee camp in Thailand.

“You chat about countries, learn about lots of other places,” said the gas turbine technician.

For the most part, the cultural differences aren’t noticeable, though the accents take some getting used to. Petty Officer 3rd Class Zhenping Wu keeps an English dictionary handy to point out words in case people don’t understand him.

Native to China, Wu was nervous about serving on a ship.

“I was scared because I didn’t know anything,” said Wu, 23, a gas turbine technician. “But I don’t feel different [from the other sailors] now.”

His family didn’t want him to join the military for fear he’d go to war. But he is at war, albeit from the sea. The Cowpens was the first ship from the Persian Gulf to launch Tomahawk missiles against Iraq last week.

Wu plans to get out of the Navy and return to the United States to take care of his parents, who don’t speak English.

“The Chinese have a responsibility to take care of their family,” he said. “I made a deal with my sister that after four years I have to go back to join the family.”

Family has been on the mind of Petty Officer 3rd Class Gueldo Cesar lately. His second daughter was born last month while he was under way.

Cesar, 30, a Haitian, and others said they joined the Navy because of a chance to learn about technology. Learning about other cultures has been an unexpected benefit.

But one sailor said it’s no big deal to work with so many nationalities.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Jermaine Johnson, 24, grew up in St. Catherine, Jamaica.

“The Jamaican national motto is, ‘Out of many comes one people.’”