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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (11063)	12/13/2001 10:21:04 AM
From: JHP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

December 13, 2001 U.S. to Use Reward Ads in Hunting Palestinians By ELAINE SCIOLINO WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — It will be a most unusual advertising campaign for the State Department. In the next several weeks, the department will use the Internet, newspapers, posters, fliers and matchbooks to advertise a program offering rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of specific Palestinians accused of killing or planning the killings of Americans in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The advertising campaign is an expansion of the "Rewards for Justice" program, the State Department's nonprofit charity that solicits private funds to pay millions of dollars in rewards for information leading to the arrest of terrorism suspects. In addition, the program's web site, www.dssrewards.net, which profiles the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 22 "most wanted terrorists," will add the photographs and descriptions of Palestinians wanted for the deaths of as many as 21 American citizens in the last decade. "After a careful interagency review, the Department of State has decided to post on the Web site rewards for information that leads to the arrest or conviction of individuals responsible for certain acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, or prevention of such acts," according to a State Department press statement that has not yet been released. "Any person who provides information leading to the arrest or conviction of an individual for an international terrorist act against American persons and property may be eligible for a reward." The advertising campaign reflects a larger policy shift by the Bush administration to demonstrate just how unhappy it is with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Until now, the State Department has resisted lobbying from American Jewish organizations and lawmakers to advertise rewards for Palestinian-related terrorism. Instead, it has confined its public appeals for information to terrorist suspects like Osama bin Laden (up to a $25 million reward) and organizations like Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement. During the Clinton administration, State Department officials argued that training the spotlight on Palestinian-related terror could harm Middle East peace talks. As late as the summer of last year, officials said they were able to point to instances where Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority he heads took action to arrest suspected terrorists. That all changed with the Palestinian uprising that began nearly 15 months ago. Just before the Sept. 11 attacks in America, when the Bush administration announced a global campaign against terrorism, it decided to identify publicly Palestinians allegedly involved in terrorism against Americans. The decision resulted from governmentwide deliberations, State Department officials said. Just as important, the officials added, was an intense, three-year lobbying campaign by Morton A. Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America. "We actually invented the issue," Mr. Klein said in a telephone interview. "No one knew about this before we brought it up." State Department officials insist that the reward program has extended to terrorism committed in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip all along, only that nothing was done to tell anyone about it. "You could always get a reward for information related to any terrorist incident involving American victims," a State Department official said. Nine days ago, the State Department sent out letters to the families of the victims of the terrorist acts now included in the advertising campaign asking them to sign privacy waivers. Once they are received, the advertisements will go out. Most of the rewards handed out have not been made public. One exception was the payment of $2 million that led to the capture and conviction of Ramzi Youssef, who helped plan the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The State Department may not have to pay out very much as a result of the new advertising campaign. Officials acknowledge that there are only a handful of Palestinian terrorist suspects left out of an original list of 67. The rest are either in Israeli or Palestinian custody or dead.