A team from the United States is expected to arrive in Bulgaria within days for talks on possible US military bases, Defence Minister Nikolai Svinarov told a news conference on May 17. Svinarov’s announcement on May 17 confirmed a statement by Bulgarian armed forces chief Nikola Kolev made a few days earlier. "Bulgaria also hopes to get support for the modernisation of its army - rather than financial remuneration - in exchange for the use of its military facilities," Svinarov said. “A decision when the foreign bases will start operating in Bulgaria will be taken by Parliament under national law." He said he expected such a decision by the end of this year. (Sofia Echo, May 23) Graf Ignatievo, Bezmer, Novo Selo and Sarafovo airport, near Burgas on the Black Sea coast, are named as locations for the new US bases. (Sofia News Agency, May 18)

WW4 REPORT readers are aware that the monthly Critical Mass bicycle ride in New York City has been facing a severe police crackdown for the past several months, with hundreds arrested, bicycles confiscated, and now a threatened injunction against the ride's perceived organizers. Ironically, this crackdoown comes as several have been killed this year in a wave of reckless accidents by city motorists.

WW4 REPORT readers are aware that the Nasa Indian community of Toribio in southern Colombia's Cauca department have been under siege for the past several weeks as guerillas and army troops fight for control of their village. Army and guerillas alike are operating in violation of the constituionally-recognized autonomy rights of the Nasa, who have declared their territories closed to all armed actors. (See our recent report.) Two representatives from Toribio are currently in New York City to raise awareness about the situation their people face, and will be speaking in Manhattan this Friday.

An article on Electronic Intifada alleges Israel is burying nuclear waste from its Dimona research reactor at a location on the occupied West Bank. The Dimona facility is at a remote location in the Negev desert, but evidence is emerging that the waste is being dumped at a Palestinian village south of Hebron, where the population suffers from a variety of mysterious health problems. Issa Samandar writes May 19:

There have been reports that Dimona's nuclear waste is dumped in El Dahriya, a Palestinian village, South of El-Khalil or commonly known as Hebron. First, big holes are dug in the ground, then the waste is dumped followed by a cement cover up, on which fake rocks are placed that are sealed with screws. The surrounding villages were not informed about these hazardous practices. Instead they learned about it through an increase of their communities' alarming health problems, which are solely caused by being exposed to nuclear radioactivity.

In February, eight civilians, including community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra and three children, were massacred in the Colombian Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military, and peace community members saw the army’s 17th and 11th Brigades in the area around the time of the murders. SOA Watch, the group that monitors the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (now officially the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), reports that the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army received training at the SOA. Gen. Héctor Jaime Fandiño Rincón attended the "Small-Unit Infantry Tactics" course in 1976. In December of 2004 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.

The US defended itself May 20 against charges from states without nuclear weapons that it is failing to fulfill its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). At a month-long conference reviewing the NPT, non-nuclear states dismissed U.S. diplomats' recitation of warhead and missile reductions. "Most of these measures date from before 2000," Mexico's Luis Alfonso de Alba complained to delegates, referring to the 2000 NPT conference, when the U.S. and other nuclear powers committed to "13 practical steps" to meet the treaty's goal of eliminating atomic arms. Those steps included activation of the 1996 treaty banning all nuclear tests—a pact since rejected by the Bush administration. U.S. delegate Jackie Sanders pointed to current "alarming examples" of proliferation, referring to North Korea's declared weapons program and U.S. allegations that Iran also plans to build atomic arms. Confronting such threats—not focusing on US—"must be the primary objective of the 2005 Review Conference," the ambassador said.

Pressure is growing on the U.S. to respond to allegations that its agents were involved in spiriting terrorist suspects out of three European countries and sending them to nations where they may have been tortured. In Italy, a judge said this week that foreign intelligence officials "kidnapped" an Egyptian suspect in Milan two years ago and took him to a U.S. base from where he was flown home. In Germany, a Munich prosecutor is preparing questions to U.S. authorities on the case of a Lebanese-born German who says he was arrested in Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003 and flown by US agents to a jail in Afghanistan. And in Sweden, a parliamentary ombudsman has criticized the security services over the expulsion of two Egyptian terrorism suspects who were handed over to US agents and flown home aboard a US government-leased plane in 2001. Human Rights Watch said there was credible evidence the pair had been tortured while being held incommunicado for five weeks after their return. One was later convicted in a "patently unfair" trial.

The retraction of Newsweek's allegations of Koran-abuse at Guantanamo, which had sparked violent protests in Afghanistan, may not win the U.S. peace in that country for very long. A vivid report in the NY Times May 20 depicts horrendous details of the torture-death of two detainees at the Bagram Collection Point in December 2002, based on a 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by the Times. Seven soldiers are now facing criminal charges in the case.