artikull i botuar ne New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 The Bush administration has dispatched teams of aviation safety investigators to Iraq and to major capital cities in Europe and Asia to determine if their commercial airports can be defended against terrorists who might try to shoot down passenger planes using shoulder-fired missiles, senior American officials say.
The inspections at airports in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra as well as in Athens, Istanbul, Manila and several other foreign capitals where American air carriers have regularly scheduled flights are part of the administration's response to recent intelligence reports suggesting that a terrorist attack using small heat-seeking missiles may be imminent, probably overseas.
While the overseas inspections began several weeks ago, administration officials said they had not discussed them publicly until now out of concern that the information might prompt terrorists to attack before security was tightened at some of the airports being inspected.
The concern in Iraq is centered on anti-American forces loyal to the former government of Saddam Hussein, while the concern elsewhere in the world involves Al Qaeda, which has been blamed for trying to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet last November. Terrorists fired two Russian-built shoulder-fired missiles at the plane as it took off from the airport in Mombasa, Kenya, barely missing the jet.
In what administration officials described as additional proof that they are taking the intelligence reports seriously, the Department of Homeland Security has decided to open a special office to deal with the missile threat and in an unpublicized request to Congress last month sought $2 million for the new office's initial budget.
The department has also notified eight government contractors in recent weeks that they are finalists for a potentially huge federal contract to develop prototypes for an electronic antimissile system that could be installed in thousands of passenger jets, similar to systems that are already installed in American military planes, including Air Force One.
Intelligence agencies say Al Qaeda has dozens of the small missiles, many of them Stingers made in the United States, left over from the American-led effort to help Muslim guerrillas oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980's.
Hundreds of other shoulder-fired missiles including Stingers and Russian SA-7's, which are designed for portability and can weigh as little as 30 pounds apiece are believed to be in the hands of other terrorist organizations and rebel groups around the world. Arms dealers say the weapons can be bought easily on the black market for as little as a few thousand dollars each.
Administration officials say the missile threat appears to be especially grave in Iraq, which will soon reopen its airports to regular passenger flights by European and other foreign airlines.
In a pair of incidents this summer, shoulder-fired missiles were fired at American military cargo planes. In both cases they missed, in part because of antimissile technologies built into the planes. The attacks were thought to have been carried out by anti-American rebels in Iraq who took the missiles from Iraqi military stockpiles after the ouster of Mr. Hussein.
The Pentagon has acknowledged the serious threat to its fleet in Iraq and has recently offered rewards to Iraqis who turn in shoulder-fired missiles, offering to pay $500 apiece for shoulder-fired SA-7's, SA-14's and SA-18's. So far, none have been purchased.
"Throughout the global war on terrorism, the manned portable missile threat is perhaps the greatest threat that we face anywhere in the world," Gen. John W. Handy, commander of the United States Transportation Command, recently told reporters. He said the missile threat in Iraq was "somewhere between high and moderate, depending upon what part of the country you are in."
The first of the international airport inspections were organized this spring, without any public announcement, by the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which is part of the department. The overseas inspections mirror ones that were carried out at dozens of domestic airports in the United States in the weeks after the attack on the Israeli charter plane in Mombasa, Kenya's major coastal city.
"Mombasa was a wake-up call," Adm. James M. Loy, the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, said in an interview. "The potential for actual attacks is very real," he said. "If I was a bad guy and I had access to that particular weapon, it would certainly be something that I know I would want to be part of my terrorist campaign."
He said that the inspections were being carried out at a "group of foreign airports that are important to us to have a good handle on."
While he did not list them, other Homeland Security officials said that the initial inspections occurred this spring and summer at a dozen overseas airports that were considered prominent terrorist targets and that were located in foreign countries eager to cooperate with the United States on airport security issues.
The officials said the inspections had been completed at Athens, Istanbul and Manila and were nearing completion at Baghdad and Basra. Al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates have long been known to operate in Greece, Turkey and the Philippines, and American air carriers fly to all three countries.
They said they would not identify the other inspected airports until after the security reviews were completed.
While the Greek government has often had a testy relationship with the United States, it has been eager to show that Athens, which will be the site of next year's summer Olympic Games, is safe from terrorism.
The inspections are expected to result in a host of security changes at some of the airports, including tightened police patrols along flight paths used for planes on takeoff and landing, as well as the installation of electronic surveillance equipment.
While administration officials stressed that the United States was not offering to assist foreign governments in paying for new security measures, the administration was offering the airports its continuing air safety expertise.
Administration officials said that multiple intelligence sources suggested in the spring that Al Qaeda would attempt a new attack with shoulder-fired missiles against Western passenger planes in Kenya or elsewhere in East Africa, similar to the effort to shoot down the Israeli jet in November.
As a result of the threat, the United States issued a travel advisory in May urging American travelers to stay away from Kenya, and Britain and Israel shut down all flights by its national air carriers to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
British Airways resumed flights to Nairobi last month, but only after the Kenyan government had stepped up round-the-clock security patrols along the flight paths leading into the international airports in Nairobi and Mombasa and agreed to the construction of high-technology watchtowers and tightened passenger inspections. El Al, the Israeli airline, has not yet resumed flights to Kenya.
The Bush administration has come under fierce criticism on Capitol Hill for having done too little to deal with the threat of terrorist attacks with shoulder-fired missiles, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers has called for the government to agree to pay billions of dollars for the immediate installation of antimissile systems on passenger planes, a move the administration has resisted.
In an interview, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said his department was moving quickly in considering technical options for passenger planes, but that the administration had no deadline for a decision. "It's like a lot of other risks; there's no single solution," he said, noting that his department had recently chosen the eight contractors to develop prototypes for antimissile technology for passenger planes.
"We got dozens and dozens of proposals, and we're looking seriously at those eight," he said.
He said that while recent intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda might use shoulder-fired missiles against passenger jets concerned him, there was no evidence to suggest an imminent threat against planes flying within the United States.
"We have no credible intelligence that Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization has them in the United States and is targeting them for use here," he said.
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