star-telegram.com: Breaking News

Senate says halt oil shipments to gov't reserve

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:19 CDT

By H. JOSEF HEBERT

The Senate is directing President Bush to temporarily halt the shipment of thousands of barrels of oil a day to the government's emergency reserve.

Both Democrats and Republicans said such shipments make no sense when oil is costing more than $120 a barrel and could better be used to add supplies to a tight market and possibly lower prices. Senators voted 97-1 Tuesday to suspend the shipments until the end of the year.

Bush has said the 70,000 barrels of oil being diverted to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is such a small amount that it does not affect energy markets. Many senators disagreed.

Officials: Clashes in Iraq's Sadr City kill 11

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:07 CDT

By SELCAN HACAOGLU

A fragile cease-fire failed to stop fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City where the latest clashes between Shiite extremists and U.S.-backed Iraqi forces killed 11 men and wounded 19, Iraqi hospital officials said Tuesday.

The U.S. military said that it responded to several attacks by militants with precision strikes, but only confirmed killing three militants. Two of the militants were killed in a Hellfire missile strike by an attack aircraft, according to the military. U.S. soldiers also suppressed "enemy fire" in four other clashes with tanks and attack aircraft, the military said.

The clashes erupted late Monday, just hours after Iraq's main Shiite political bloc and supporters of firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr signed a cease-fire with the hope of ending seven-weeks of fighting that has left hundreds of people dead in the capital.

It was not immediately clear if the those killed in the clashes, which escalated early Tuesday, were militants or civilians. There were women and children among the wounded, said hospital officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The military said Tuesday that militants staged several attacks on U.S. soldiers in Sadr City and elsewhere, but there were no troop casualties.

"They are obviously not listening to any agreement," Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a military spokesman for American troops in Baghdad, said. He accused what he called "special groups" of launching attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops.

The U.S. military has alleged that most Shiite extremists fighting Iraqi and U.S. forces in Sadr City have splintered away from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and the cleric's level of influence over those rogue groups is unclear. Many are thought to be trained and armed by Iranian forces. Iran denies the allegations.

Stover also blamed the so-called "special groups" for a failed surface-to-air missile attack on a helicopter gunship over Sadr City on Saturday. The missile was fired from an unknown location in eastern Baghdad but missed the target, he said.

The missile harmlessly exploded, and the rocket body landed in the Azamiyah neighborhood, where it was recovered by allied Sunni fighters and handed over to the U.S. military.

The missile attack came a day before the four-day cease-fire went into effect Sunday. But there has been sporadic fighting since then.

The talks between al-Sadr's representatives and the United Iraqi Alliance over the details of the truce were not finished until Monday. The deal allows Iraqi forces to take over security in the militia stronghold of Sadr City, a Shiite slum that is home to about 2.5 million people, on Wednesday.

The clashes first erupted in late March when Iraqi forces launched a crackdown in the southern city of Basra and Shiite extremists began firing rockets and mortars from Sadr City toward the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government and Western embassies.

"Any attack against residential areas, government offices and the Green Zone are prohibited from Sadr City or from another area," the cease-fire agreement said.

Under the compromise deal, Iraqi forces will try to refrain from seeking American help to restore order. The U.S. military officials on Sunday said they were supporting the government forces and would take their lead.

The Sadrists rejected calls by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to surrender weapons. But they gave the green light for Iraqi security sweeps, saying Mahdi fighters have no "medium or heavy weapons."

The majority of the 60,000 strong Mahdi Army has not openly participated in the fighting. Instead, they adhered to a general cease-fire ordered last August by al-Sadr, which has been one of the key factors causing a steep drop in violence in the country.

The latest cease-fire comes as the U.S. military largely finished the building of a barrier - reaching up to a height of 12 feet - to isolate extremists from using the southern section of Sadr City and disrupt supply and escape routes for militants.

Ex-officials: Bush admin. ignored Iraq corruption

Tue, 13 May 2008 11:02 CDT

By ANNE FLAHERTY

The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.

Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional aide visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, office members were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The U.S. embassy "effort against corruption - including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency - was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.

Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the administration takes the issue of corruption seriously and pointed to its recent appointment of Lawrence Benedict as coordinator for anti-corruption initiatives at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Benedict's appointment "is another demonstration that we are working at very senior levels to help the Iraqis deal with this issue," Casey said. "Any assertion that we have not taken this issue seriously or given it the attention it deserves is simply untrue."

The Office of Accountability and Transparency, or "OAT" team, was intended to provide assistance and training to Iraq's anti-corruption agencies. It was dismantled last December, after it alleged in a draft report leaked to the media that al-Maliki's office had derailed or prevented investigations into Shiite-controlled agencies.

The draft report sparked hearings in Congress and prompted a showdown between Democrats and senior State Department officials on whether the public has a right to know the extent to which al-Maliki was involved in corruption cases.

Brennan charges the State Department never responded to his team's report, which was retroactively classified because agency officials said it could hurt bilateral relations with Iraq. Other recommendations by the group also were kept secret, including a negative assessment of Iraq's Joint Anti-Corruption Committee, Brennan said.

In July 2007, the OAT team concluded that the committee's only purpose was to provide a forum for complaints against Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, a top anti-corruption official in Baghdad whom many U.S. officials have hailed as the most effective in exposing fraud and abuse.

But information later released by the embassy ignored the team's assessment and ultimately "failed to even mention what a disaster" the committee "really was," Brennan said.

Brennan said he approved the embassy report against his better judgment but later regretted it.

Mattil, who worked with Brennan, made similar allegations. Specifically, he said the U.S. "remained silent in the face of an unrelenting campaign" by senior Iraqi officials to subvert Baghdad's Commission on Public Integrity, which had been led by al-Radhi. Then, the U.S. turned its back on Iraqis who fled to the United States after being threatened for pursuing anti-corruption cases, he said.

"Since we have done so little (to undercut corruption), it's easy to see why the government of Iraq has not done more," said Mattil, who left the accountability office last October after having served for a year as its chief of staff. "We have demanded no better."

Brennan was appointed as OAT director last summer and arrived in Baghdad in July. He left only a few weeks later after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He stepped down from his position in August.

Iraqi government officials could not be reached for comment.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, head of the Democratic Policy Committee, said the testimony was critical in light of upcoming legislation that would appropriate more than $170 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate Appropriations Committee, of which Dorgan is a member, is expected to approve the legislation Thursday.

"It is a cruel irony if we are appropriating money next Thursday or did appropriate money last month or last year and that money ends up actually providing the resources for an insurgency in Iraq which ends up killing Americans," said Dorgan, D-N.D.

Lawyer: 2 will admit fraud fueled luxury lifestyle

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:57 CDT

By MARYCLAIRE DALE

Presumably, she didn't fleece Prince Charles. But a couple of young jet-setters plan to admit in court that other people who crossed their paths unwittingly financed their luxury lifestyle.

A lawyer for Jocelyn Kirsch, 22, said Monday that she and her now-ex-boyfriend have signed federal plea agreements that likely will send them to prison for several years for ID theft and other crimes.

Since her arrest, Kirsch's friends and classmates at Drexel University have portrayed her as a serial liar who even masked her identity when she met the heir to the British throne at a student forum in Philadelphia last year; in a favorite myth, she told him she was Lithuanian.

When Kirsch and Edward K. Anderton, 25, were arrested in December, photos found on a laptop in their $3,000-a-month apartment showed the couple smooching under the Eiffel Tower, riding horseback on a beach and flaunting skimpy red swimsuits by a swanky hotel pool.

They stole credit-card and bank-account information from friends, co-workers and neighbors to finance lavish purchases and travel, prosecutors said. They were arrested when they claimed a package at a local UPS store under a neighbor's ID. The package contained lingerie from a British retailer.

"They were just so arrogant," Philadelphia Detective Terry Sweeney, the lead investigator, said Monday. "When you start committing ID theft around the corner from where you live, it's going to come back to haunt you."

Anderton, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with an economics degree, also set up eBay accounts with various stolen identities to buy and sell nonexistent goods, authorities said. That scheme alone netted $33,000, U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan said.

State charges against the pair were dismissed as federal charges were filed Monday by way of an information, which often indicates a defendant's cooperation.

Kirsch's lawyer, Ronald Greenblatt, said his client signed an agreement to plead guilty to two counts of aggravated identity theft, money laundering, bank fraud and other charges. The sentencing guideline range is about five years.

Anderton also signed a plea deal, Greenblatt said. Anderton's lawyer, Larry Krasner, did not return messages left with The Associated Press on Monday.

Kirsch is living with her mother in Novato, Calif., while Anderton, who had a $60,000-a-year starter job in real-estate finance, is back home with his family in Everett, Wash.

"She's supposed to be graduating college now, and instead she's going to be going down to federal court in a few weeks and entering a plea," Greenblatt said.

Retail sales dip for second time in 2 months

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:47 CDT

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER

Consumers, battling soaring gasoline prices and a slumping economy, cut back further on their spending in April.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that retail sales dipped 0.2 percent last month, right in line with economists' expectations.

It was the second drop in the past three months and was led by a 2.8 percent decline in auto sales, the biggest setback in this category in 10 months. It reflected the problems that automakers are having as a weak economy and soaring gasoline prices cut into demand for new cars.

Excluding autos, retail sales rose by 0.5 percent, a better performance than had been expected as sales at general merchandise stores, a category that includes big chains such as Wal-Mart, posted a 0.5 percent increase, much better than the tiny 0.1 percent rise in March.

However, sales at department stores were down 0.1 percent, indicating that tough economic times may be pushing people to seek out bargains at giant discount stores.

In other economic news, the Commerce Department said that business inventories edged up a tiny 0.1 percent in March, the smallest advance in a year and another sign of the weakening economy.

The small inventory rise was below the 0.4 percent increase that many economists were expecting and was an indication that businesses are holding back on adding to their stockpiles in the face of slowing demand.

Many analysts believe the economy has slipped into a recession. However, overall economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, has not yet turned negative.

The Bush administration is hoping that a $168 billion economic stimulus package, which includes about $100 billion in direct payments to households, will give the economy a jump-start. The government started making those payments at the end of April.

The Federal Reserve launched an aggressive campaign last September to cut interest rates in an effort to deal with the weakening economy and a severe credit crisis. The central bank cut the federal funds rate for the seventh time last month but indicated it might now pause, with some Fed officials expressing worries that higher inflation could be triggered if interest rates were driven even lower.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech Tuesday that the turbulent financial market had eased somewhat but that the situation remained "far from normal." He said the Fed's actions, which included an unprecedented move to allow investment banks to borrow directly from the Fed, "seems to have bolstered confidence."

The 0.2 percent drop in retail sales in April followed a 0.2 percent rise in March and a 0.5 percent decline in February.

Sales at clothing and specialty stores posted a 0.7 percent increase in April while sales at electronics and appliance stores were up 1.4 percent.

Sales at furniture stores edged up a slight 0.1 percent. This sector has been under pressure, reflecting the prolonged two-year slump in home sales.

Barr launches Libertarian White House bid

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:12 CDT

By BEN EVANS

Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr launched a Libertarian Party presidential bid Monday, saying voters are hungry for an alternative to the status quo who would dramatically cut the federal government.

His candidacy throws a wild card into the White House race that many believe could peel away votes from Republican Sen. John McCain given the candidates' similar positions on fiscal policy.

Barr, who has hired Ross Perot's former campaign manager, acknowledged that some Republicans have tried to discourage him from running. But he said he's getting in the race to win, not to play spoiler or to make a point.

"I've heard from Americans from all walks of life ... they want a choice," he said at a news conference in Washington. "They believe that America has more and better to offer than what the current political situation is serving up to us."

Barr first must win the Libertarian nomination at the party's national convention that begins May 22. Party officials consider him a front-runner thanks to the national profile he developed as a Georgia congressman from 1995 to 2003.

If he wins the White House, he said he would immediately freeze discretionary spending in Washington. He also would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and consider slashing spending at federal agencies such as the departments of education and commerce - as well as at overseas military bases.

The former U.S. attorney also said he would strictly enforce immigration laws.

"This notion that government owes something to people just because they're here does not resonate with me," he said. "This is not a charity."

Barr, 59, quit the Republican Party two years ago, saying he had grown disillusioned with its failure to shrink government and its willingness to scale back civil liberties in fighting terrorism. He has been particularly critical of President Bush over the war in Iraq and says the administration is ignoring constitutional protections on due process and privacy.

While in Congress, he was a persistent critic of President Clinton and was among the first to press for impeaching the former president. He helped manage House Republicans' impeachment case before the Senate.

He lost his seat to fellow Republican Rep. John Linder in 2002 after a redistricting. He then opened a lobbying and public affairs firm with offices in Atlanta and outside Washington.

The 2004 Libertarian presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik, took less than 1 percent of the vote, placing fourth behind President Bush, Democrat John Kerry and Independent Ralph Nader.

Tribune's Newsday deal is one step in easing debt

Tue, 13 May 2008 07:35 CDT

By SETH SUTEL

Tribune Co.'s $650 million sale of Newsday is an important step toward alleviating its debt burden - for this year.

Now the Chicago company needs to move on its next big asset sales, including the Chicago Cubs baseball team and Wrigley Field, in order to meet its obligations to creditors looming in 2009.

The deal announced Monday puts one of Tribune's largest newspapers in the hands of cable operator Cablevision Systems Corp., which like Newsday is based on New York's Long Island.

Investors have been skeptical about the benefits to Cablevision from the deal, given that it hasn't operated a newspaper before and the newspaper industry is struggling as readers and advertisers move to the Internet.

"It's incredibly hard to fathom why they want to expand into the newspaper business," said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with Pali Capital. "Why are they putting dollars towards newspapers rather than buying their own stock?"

For Tribune, there's no doubt why the deal make sense: The company needs cash. Last December, Tribune bought out its public shareholders in an $8.2 billion deal orchestrated by real estate mogul Sam Zell, and now it's struggling to service that debt.

Zell had originally hoped to keep Tribune's newspaper and broadcasting businesses intact, but it had to change course and consider options for Newsday following a rapid deterioration in the newspaper business this year.

Tribune last week reported an 11 percent decline in first-quarter newspaper revenues, which have been hit hard by the slumping economy and online competition.

Tribune now seems to be covered on a $650 million lump-sum debt payment coming due in December as well as other near-term obligations, but analysts say it needs to get moving on other asset sales in order to be in shape to deliver on another $750 million debt payment due in June 2009.

"This is certainly the first step in alleviating near-term liquidity concerns," said Mike Simonton of Fitch Ratings, a bond ratings agency, but he added that it "does not get them out of the woods necessarily."

"It doesn't get them over the hump, but it gets them in the right direction," said Dave Novosel, media analyst at Gimme Credit, a bond research firm. "They still have other debt maturing and they'll need to sell other assets to meet these funding requirements."

The next step for Tribune is selling the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field. Together, the two could fetch as much as $1 billion, which would get the company past the 2009 payment.

Once those sales are behind it, Simonton said, there should be a better indication of whether Tribune would face pressure to sell more assets.

Much would depend on whether the company's new management is able to stabilize Tribune's newspapers, something that's too early to tell. "A year and a half from now it will be more clear if further asset sales are necessary," Simonton said.

Tribune is still marketing the Cubs, while it's in talks with an Illinois state agency about Wrigley Field. Those talks are complicated by the fact that the agency, which also owns U.S. Cellular Field, where the Chicago White Sox play, wants laws that restrict changes to Wrigley Field loosened.

Another option for Tribune would be selling its roughly 30 percent stake in Food Network back to E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the rest of the rapidly growing cable TV channel. Analysts estimate that stake could be worth well over $500 million.

Scripps, however, is going through changes of its own as it splits into two separate companies, one with the cable networks and another with a group of newspaper and TV stations. That split is expected to be complete by the end of the second quarter.

In order to get favorable tax treatment, Tribune will retain a 3 percent stake in a joint venture to be formed containing Newsday as well as several related assets, including Newsday.com, some regional magazines and the free New York City daily newspaper amNewYork. Cablevision will hold the remaining 97 percent. The deal will be financed by $650 million in debt provided by Bank of America Corp. Tribune will receive $612 million in cash and another $18 million in prepaid rent for leases of facilities that Newsday will continue to use, and its 3 percent stake in the venture will be valued at $20 million.

Both Cablevision and Tribune declined to comment on the deal beyond a joint statement the companies put out Monday.

Cablevision, which is controlled by the Dolan family, has about 3.1 million subscribers in the New York metro area and owns Madison Square Garden, the NBA's New York Knicks and the NHL's New York Rangers.

China quake death toll rises to about 10,000

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:00 CDT

By WILLIAM FOREMAN

A powerful earthquake toppled buildings, schools and chemical plants Monday in central China, killing about 10,000 people and trapping untold numbers in mounds of concrete, steel and earth in the country's worst quake in three decades.

The 7.9-magnitude quake devastated a region of small cities and towns set amid steep hills north of Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu. Striking in midafternoon, it emptied office buildings across the country in Beijing and could be felt as far away as Vietnam.

About 1,300 rescue workers and troops arrived Tuesday at the quake's epicenter, which had been cut off since the earthquake struck. The number of casualties there is not yet known.

Rain has compounded the difficulty of rescue efforts elsewhere. Premier Wen Jiabao, who flew to the region, said rain was forecast for the next several days.

The government was pouring in troops to aid in the disaster recovery. Xinhua said 16,000 were in the area and 34,000 more were en route.

Snippets from state media and photos posted on the Internet underscored the immense scale of the devastation. In the town of Juyuan, south of the epicenter, a three-story high school collapsed, burying as many as 900 students and killing at least 50, the official Xinhua news agency said. Photos showed people using cranes, mechanical hoists and their hands to remove slabs of concrete and steel.

The news agency reported on Tuesday that another 1,000 students and teachers were buried and feared dead when a high school collapsed in Beichuan county. The building was reduced to a pile of rubble two yards high, it said.

Buried teenagers struggled to break free from the rubble in Juyuan, "while others were crying out for help," Xinhua said. Families waited in the rain near the wreckage as rescuers wrote the names of the dead on a blackboard, Xinhua said.

Parents of the dead students built makeshift religious altars at the site, resting the corpses on any available piece of plywood or cardboard, and burning paper money and incense in a traditional honor for their child in the afterlife, according to NPR's Melissa Block.

The earthquake hit one of the last homes of the giant panda at the Wolong Nature Reserve and panda breeding center, in Wenchuan county, Xinhua said. But the agency reported that 60 pandas at another breeding center in Chengdu were safe.

In Gansu province, which neighbors Sichuan, a 40-car freight train derailed and caught fire in the earthquake, Xinhua reported.

The freight train was carrying 13 tankers full of gasoline and was still burning Tuesday, when the first official confirmation of the accident came. Xinhua said there were fears the burning oil tanks, which had been buried by the rocks, could explode. More than 900 local residents were evacuated, it said.

In Chengdu, it crashed telephone networks and hours later left parts of the city of 10 million in darkness.

"We can't get to sleep. We're afraid of the earthquake. We're afraid of all the shaking," said 52-year-old factory worker Huang Ju, who took her ailing, elderly mother out of the Jinjiang District People's Hospital. Outside, Huang sat in a wheelchair wrapped in blankets while her mother, who was ill, slept in a hospital bed next to her.

The overall death toll increased to about 10,000, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday. It said nearly 10,000 people died in central China's Sichuan province alone and 300 others in three other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing.

Worst affected were four counties including the quake's epicenter in Wenchuan, 60 miles northwest of Chengdu. Landslides left roads impassable Tuesday, causing the government to order soldiers into the area on foot, state television said, and heavy rain prevented four military helicopters from landing.

Wenchuan's Communist Party secretary appealed for air drops of tents, food and medicine. "We also need medical workers to save the injured people here," Xinhua quoted Wang Bin as telling other officials who reached him by phone.

To the east, in Beichuan county, 80 percent of the buildings fell, and 10,000 people were injured, aside from 3,000 to 5,000 dead, Xinhua said. State media said two chemical plants in an industrial zone of the city of Shifang collapsed, spilling more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia. The news agency said about 600 people died in Shifang and up to 2,300 were buried by rubble.

Though slow to release information at first, the government and its state media ramped up quickly.

Wen, a geologist by training, held an early morning emergency meeting near Chengdu and ordered troops and police to clear the road north to Wenchuan.

Pentagon biggest obstacle to Democrats' GI bill

Tue, 13 May 2008 02:23 CDT

By ANNE FLAHERTY

Veterans groups say it's time to expand college aid for GIs, and Democrats want to use an election year to do it. Their biggest obstacle? The Pentagon.

The Defense Department is lobbying against legislation proposed by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would guarantee a full-ride scholarship for service members to any in-state public university. According to defense officials, the plan would hurt its ability to retain service members because the new GI education bill would require only three years before the full benefit kicks in. The Defense Department wants the commitment to be extended to at least six years.

"We have no issue with the fact that Sen. Webb wishes to provide a more generous education benefit to troops," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. "But we are certainly concerned that this would be eligible to them" so soon.

The Pentagon's opposition to Webb's bill underscores the difficulty the military has had in recruiting and retaining an all-volunteer force at a time when it is engaged in a war that is deeply unpopular with the American public.

Adding to the military's dilemma is the larger number of soldiers and Marines needed to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last year, the Pentagon recommended that the Army be increased by about 65,000 soldiers to a total of 547,000, and the Marines be increased by 27,000 to 202,000.

The difficulty in finding young people also can be attributed in part to low unemployment numbers in recent years. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, unemployment dropped from 6 percent in 2003 to 4.6 percent in 2007.

In recent months, the military has had to take creative steps to reach its desired troop numbers. A year ago, when Army recruiters didn't meet their goal, the service announced new $20,000 bonuses for recruits and up to $40,000 if an enlistee signed up for at least four years.

The Army also has granted special exceptions to recruits with prior criminal records, medical problems or low-aptitude scores that would have otherwise disqualified them from service. Senior military officials defended the change in policy as justified because they say current restrictions were so stringent that many members in Congress would have been denied entrance to the ranks because of indiscretions from their youth.

Retention rates have been less troublesome in the military, with the Army and Marine Corps exceeding their goals by large margins in 2006 and staying strong in 2007. Studies have found that combat deployments can prompt service members to re-enlist, usually because of a sense of accomplishment.

Still, the Defense Department is worried that its retention numbers could fall as service members are asked to return repeatedly to Iraq and Afghanistan and they are given too much of an incentive to leave. One particular problem facing the military is its ability to hang on to seasoned combat veterans, including those in the elite forces, who are being lured to higher-paying jobs in the private sector.

Webb, a Vietnam veteran and critic of the Iraq war, counters that his legislation would be more effective in attracting new recruits and would offset any drop in the military's ranks.

"I can't think of a better way to broaden (the) propensity to serve than to offer a truly meaningful educational benefit, rather than simply taking that smaller demographic" of those already enlisted "and pound on it" with repeated combat tours, he said.

UN chief slams Myanmar junta for slow response

Mon, 12 May 2008 22:34 CDT

By JOHN HEILPRIN

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticized Myanmar's military junta Monday for what he called its "unacceptably slow response" to helping cyclone victims.

Three of the U.N. Security Council's five veto-wielding members - France, Britain and the United States - remain interested in possible action to require Myanmar's government to open its doors to more aid, U.S. and other council diplomats said.

"We'll be pushing the issue in the council," Deputy U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told The Associated Press.

There has been no agreement on proposed wording for a statement or resolution, but U.S. officials say their aim is to craft language saying authorities in Myanmar must do everything possible to accept international help.

A previous such effort last week was temporarily set aside after Myanmar began taking steps to let in a few flights and aid shipments.

One of the diplomats said the Western powers were taking a wait-and-see approach, based on indicators such as how many U.S. flights are allowed into Myanmar. The first one flew into the country Monday carrying water, blankets and mosquito nets.

"We believe that it's going to be very difficult to reach everybody and to tackle the crisis as we would like without some outside military and civilian assets," John Holmes, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, told reporters Monday.

Nearly 32,000 people were killed by the cyclone and almost 30,000 others are still missing after the May 3 cyclone, Myanmar state television reported Monday. Almost all foreign relief workers have been barred entry into the isolated nation. The junta says it wants to hand out all donated supplies on its own.

"I want to register my deep concern - and immense frustration - at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis," Ban said.

"Unless more aid gets into the country - very quickly - we face an outbreak of infectious diseases that could dwarf today's crisis," he said. "I therefore call, in the most strenuous terms, on the government of Myanmar to put its people's lives first. It must do all that it can to prevent this disaster from becoming even more serious."

In London, the leader of Britain's opposition Conservative party suggested possibly dropping aid in Myanmar without the consent of the country's military rulers.

"If the situation hasn't radically improved by Tuesday then we need to consider the further steps of direct aid being dropped to help people," David Cameron told British Broadcasting Corp.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office said any move to drop aid by air was unlikely though all options should be considered. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week he could not imagine dropping aid into Myanmar without consent from authorities.

Last week, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner suggested the 15-member Security Council could use the U.N.'s mandate adopted in 2005 that nations have a "responsibility to protect" their own citizens to bypass Myanmar's military leaders and drop supplies by air. But that mandate does not mention natural disasters.

Myanmar's U.N. ambassador, Kyaw Tint Swe, said last week that his nation was prepared to cooperate with the international community but that the aid "has to be orderly and systematic."

Ban said Myanmar's leaders have not returned his repeated calls and letters to them, including a second letter sent Monday, seeking greater cooperation with U.N. and other international relief efforts.