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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (49318)	4/2/2002 9:00:15 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Raid Netted Top Operative Of Al Qaeda By Karl Vick and Kamran Khan Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, April 2, 2002; Page A01 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A man captured in Pakistan last week has been positively identified as Abu Zubaida, the chief of al Qaeda operations outside Afghanistan and the highest-ranking lieutenant of Osama bin Laden taken alive since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials. U.S. officials took custody of Abu Zubaida and other suspected al Qaeda operatives from Pakistani authorities on Sunday and were preparing to fly them to an undisclosed U.S. military facility, according to senior U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Abu Zubaida was taken prisoner along with more than 20 other al Qaeda suspects and about 40 Pakistanis early Thursday in raids on more than a dozen private homes in the eastern Pakistani cities of Faisalabad and Lahore. He was shot in the groin and thigh while trying to escape the Pakistani police officers and U.S. agents swarming over a home that he shared with seven or eight other Arab men, according to one Pakistani intelligence official. U.S. intelligence agents targeted the homes "after multiple weeks of planning," one U.S. official said. The Pakistani official said the homes were identified after U.S. intelligence intercepted a phone call from Afghanistan to a residence in Faisalabad, an industrial city about 200 miles from the Afghan border. The Pakistani official said he did not know who placed the call. Intelligence officials have come to regard Abu Zubaida, 30, as one of the most important remaining leaders in an al Qaeda organization that has been substantially crippled by the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan. One U.S. official said today that Abu Zubaida "ranks probably third on a list of al Qaeda leaders we would like to have, but not third in their hierarchy." As a chief recruiter for al Qaeda in the late 1990s and one of several gatekeepers for its training camps in Afghanistan, Abu Zubaida not only culled recruits but also arranged for their travels after they completed training -- a role that gave him detailed knowledge of undercover terrorist cells scattered around the world. He moved up in al Qaeda's ranks after the organization's commander of military operations, Muhammad Atef, was apparently killed in November in a bombing attack in Afghanistan. In recent months U.S. officials feared that Abu Zubaida, whose photo has never been released, had been deployed to organize fresh attacks. Abu Zubaida, a Saudi-born Palestinian whose full name is Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein abu Zubaida, is not known to be facing charges in the United States and was not included on the FBI's list of "most wanted" terrorists released last year. But court testimony has described him as intimately involved in thwarted plans to bomb hotels in Jordan during the millennium celebration. A Jordanian court sentenced him to death in absentia for his role in that plot. Since Sept. 11, Abu Zubaida has been linked to other plots. The number of his satellite phone was found in the memory of a cellular phone of a man accused of organizing a plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. And a man accused in an al Qaeda plot against the U.S. Embassy in Paris reportedly told a French judge of being briefed by Abu Zubaida in bin Laden's home. Abu Zubaida is said to have joined al Qaeda in the 1990s and spent several years screening recruits in a residence known as the "House of Martyrs" in Peshawar, a Pakistani city near the Afghan border where militant Islamic sentiment is pronounced. "He is the person in charge of the camps," Ahmed Ressam, a confessed Algerian terrorist, testified last July in the trial of a man accused in the "millennium plot" aimed at Los Angeles International Airport. "He receives young men from all countries. He accepts you or rejects you. And he takes care of the expenses of the camps. "He made arrangements for you when you travel, coming in or leaving." Abu Zubaida's position is believed to have given him access to information about the current status of bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy. He also would be expected to know the names and possible locations of al Qaeda members around the world and possibly the sites of planned operations, since the terrorist network is known to have closely watched many potential targets in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. interrogators, however, have had difficulty getting usable information from many al Qaeda members already in captivity, though a few have provided leads that may have headed off several terrorist operations, one U.S. official said. When he was captured Thursday, Abu Zubaida was far from the Afghan border and the mountainous tribal areas where the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban members fleeing Afghanistan has been concentrated. Faisalabad, a sprawling Punjabi industrial center sometimes called "the Manchester of Pakistan," is not known for harboring religious extremists. Another of the raided homes was owned by the local head of Lashkar-i-Taiba, a militant Muslim group banned by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The local party leader, Hameedullah Khan Niazi, has been released by the Pakistani police, who nevertheless say they took his apparent links to Abu Zubaida as evidence that Pakistan's militant Islamic fringe is providing valuable assistance to al Qaeda as it seeks to regroup. Pakistani Islamic militant groups extend far beyond the western areas that border Afghanistan. With backing from the Pakistani government, which until Sept. 11 was also the primary sponsor of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, militant Islamic parties have opened hundreds of offices across Pakistan in recent years. Though the parties have been banned by Musharraf, their adherents remain active, officials and analysts say. Sheik Omar Saeed, accused of planning the Jan. 23 kidnapping that ended in the death of American newspaper reporter Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, is associated with one of the largest groups, Jaish-i-Muhammad. His trial is scheduled to begin Friday in the port city of Karachi. © 2002 The Washington Post Company

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (49318)	4/2/2002 9:04:55 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 65232

Middle East will remain critical to US oil needs - Brookings study AFX Europe, April 1 WASHINGTON (AFX) - The Middle East will remain critical to US oil needs for the foreseeable future and even if the US boosts domestic output it will not be shielded from future petroleum price hikes which are set by the international markets, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. The report -- Energy and the Environment -- says that the Middle East's dominance over global oil supplies will remain in place, despite the rising prominence of Russia and the Caspian Basin, because it holds between two-thirds and three-quarters of all known oil reserves. Brookings' economists estimate that if another crisis in the Middle East were to take a large volume of oil, of up to 7 million barrels a day, off the market, that the price of world crude could spike up to 75.00 usd a barrel if no other sources were available, even if the US decided to draw down some 2.5 mln barrels a day from its national reserves. "A big increase in US output could heighten competition for OPEC in the short to medium term, thereby moderating oil prices somewhat. But US oil production is simply too high-cost (and reserves too limited) for increases in domestic output to affect OPEC much, especially over the long haul," the report says. "The gap between what the US now produces and what it consumes, nearly 10 mln barrels a day, is too wide to be bridged," it notes. The report's authors also say that opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is not likely to have a significant impact on the nation's dependence on foreign oil imports. President George W. Bush wants to open the reserve to boost domestic output and reduce dependence on foreign imports. "Increased ANWR output will fractionally reduce US energy security by helping to maintain a more oil-dependent economic system," the report says. It also points out that US producers struggle to compete with foreign producers across the Persian Gulf who have lower production costs. Most OPEC oil costs less than 5.00 usd a barrel to produce. The authors argue that the key to increasing US energy security lays in reducing the petroleum intensity of economic activity, and that the government should use the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help iron out supply shortfalls and price hikes. "In the past some analysts have called for treating the reserve as a publicly provided source of supplemental supply that the private sector can bid for through options contracts like those that already exist in commodity exchanges. That approach needs to be dusted off and seriously considered, together with a small excise tax on all petroleum consumption to pay for operating the reserve," the report argues. The SPR contains some 550 million barrels of oil. Canada's oil exports to the US are seen increasing in the years ahead -- Canadian oil exports make up the largest share of US oil imports -- as more production from new discoveries like Newfoundland's Hibernia Field comes on stream. US natural gas imports from Canada could also be boosted by the "vast quantities of gas, possibly several hundred trillion cubic feet, (which) remain untapped in an area stretching across the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin." The study also highlights Russia's growing role as an energy player and says that Russia could be poised to become an energy superpower in the 21st Century, but that its future is in natural gas and not oil. However, to do so, it will "depend on major increases in production, serious investments, both foreign and domestic, in infrastructure, and more developed gas markets in Asia." "With 32 percent of proven world (gas) reserves, Russia far outranks Iran, 15 percent, Qatar, 7 percent, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, 4 percent, and the United States and Algeria with 3 percent," the report says. The report also notes that many Russian companies are seeking to expand their activities in the gas sector, and that Gazprom holds a quarter of all world gas reserves.