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w Powell speaks of ‘winds of freedom’ during Iraq visit BY GEORGE GEDDA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAGHDAD, IRAQ — Secretary of State Colin Powell, becoming the highest ranking U.S. official to visit Iraq since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, said Sunday he is convinced “the winds of free dom are blowing” across the country but acknowledged the possibility that terrorists are try ing to sabotage the process to ward self-rule. Powell spent 12 hours in talks with the team of American offi cials guiding Iraq in the postwar period and with the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He also attended a Baghdad City Council meeting, met with Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and joined the U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, at a joint news conference. Powell described impressive moves toward self-government and seemed invigorated by what he heard as he made his rounds. “There is vibrancy to this ef fort, a vibrancy that I attribute to the winds of freedom that are now blowing through this land,” he said after the city council meeting. Powell’s day began with a flight from Kuwait aboard a C-130 cargo plane and ended with a dinner with a leading Baghdad-based Shiite cleric. , . He said the United States is committed to having Iraqis run their government, but wants to cede power after a “deliberative process” rather than the early transfer advocated by some fellow members of the U.N. Security Council. France has pressed for seating a provisional government within a month. “We are not hanging on for the sake of hanging on. We are hang ing on because it’s necessary to stay with this task until a new gov ernment has been created, a re sponsible government,” Powell said at the news conference with Bremer. “The worst thing that could happen is for us to push this pro cess too quickly, before the capac ity for governance is there and the basis for legitimacy is there, and see it fail.” Powell called attention to the appointment of an interim Iraqi Cabinet with 25 ministers, steps toward creation of an independent judiciary and general Arab accep tance of Zebari as a legitimate Iraqi representative even though Iraqi still lacks an authentic gov ernment. “There is a sense of hope here even in this time of difficulty,” Powell said. “Those who are so critical of the administration might want to hold their fire a bit.” Powell acknowledged that the security situation remains chal lenging, with a major new threat coming from “terrorists who are trying to infiltrate into the coun try for the purpose of disrupting this whole process.” The secretary gave a rough es timate of 100 such infiltrators and said he was confident that the U.S. military can handle the problem. The attacks on American occu pying forces, an almos.t daily oc currence in Iraq, continued when .a roadside bomb hit a convoy in the city of Fallujah, killing a U.S. soldier and injuring three others, the military said. Some 155 soldiers have died in Iraq since President Bush de clared an end to major combat on May 1. During the heavy fighting before that date, 138 soldiers died. “This security threat comes from those who do not want to see (deposed President) Saddam Hussein go and those who want to foment trouble here, terrorists who are coming in, as well as rem nants of the old regime,” Powell told “Fox News Sunday” in Washington. He said military commanders told him they are confident they can handle both threats, though it will take time. Almost nine in 10 Americans, in an ABC-Washington Post poll released Sunday, said they were concerned that the United States is going to get bogged down in a long and costly peacekeeping mis sion in Iraq. In Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that the ad ministration would seek more money next year than the addi tional $87 billion already request ed to pay mainly for postwar costs in Iraq. He also said the adminis tration does not know when the U.S- military presence in Iraq will end. About 116,000 American troops are deployed in Iraq. While some U.S. lawmakers have urged the ad ministration to increase-that number and persuade other coun tries to commit troops, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took issue with critics who say the mission has become a quagmire. “We’ve been there 41/2 months since the end of major military combat. Four-and-a-half months is not bogged down, in my view,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Last week, LLS. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, made a compari son to Vietnam. That prompted a blunt response from Powell: “We ought to. stop with these rather bizarre historical allusions back to something that happened 25, 30 years ago,” Powell said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” He asserted that “there is polit ical life returning here on a demo cratic basis. The Iraqi people are being presented a future so total ly different from the horrible past from which they’ve just come out.” Bremer has said a new govern ment could be in place as early as the end of2004. But the Iraqi chair man of a committee studying the constitutional process said Sunday that it could take as long as two years to write a new Iraqi constitution, hold a national ref erendum on it and conduct na tional elections. On an unseasonably cool day, Powell was received warmly at the Baghdad International Airport by dozens of U.S. soldiers. He posed with some for pho tographs. The former general, whose last military job was chair man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looked very much at home with the sergeants and corporals who surrounded him. Powell then flew to Baghdad by helicopter, avoiding the drive along an airport road that has been the scene of occasional £ sniper attacks. ^ Zebari, who took office just a week ago, acknowledged that the security environment will influ ence the pace of progress toward Iraqi self-rule. He expressed hope that by mid-2004, Iraq will have “an elected legitimate govern ment.” Details about the length of Pqjvell’s stay in Iraq and his re maining activities were closely held by U.S. officials. He was ex pected to visit locations associat ed with rights abuses under Saddam’s rule. Rumsfeld, on a recent visit to Iraq, went to a mass grave site. Typhoon hits South Korea, leaves 72 casualties BY VIJAY JOSHI THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - A ty phoon lashed coastal South Korea with a fury unseen in a century, lifting shipping containers in the air, toppling gigantic cranes and flipping an evacuated cruise ship. Seventy-two people were killed and two dozen others feared dead, officials said Sunday. Typhoon Maemi hit the south eastern coast Friday night with record winds of 135 mph. About 25,000 people fled their homes to seek shelter in schools, and public facilities as the storm raged into Saturday, said the National Disaster Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters, or NDPCH. About 7,000 were still homeless Sunday as the nation dug out. Thousands of military troops helped search Sunday for the miss ing and repair washed out roads, while helicopter crews distribut ed relief supplies to victims. Vast tracts of farmlands, cities and rivers were flooded as Maemi — Korean for the insect cicada — dumped rainfall of up to 17.8 inches. The storm also blasted parts of North Korea with strong winds and rainfall of more than seven inches, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said. However, it wasn’t immediately clear if there was any damage as the communist government tightly controls in formation. The storm weakened to a tropi cal storm Saturday and then dis sipated Sunday as it moved out into the Sea of Japan. Maemi was “by far the most powerful typhoon since we began compiling weather records in 1904,” said Yoon Seok-hwan, an of ficial at the Korea Meteorological Administration. He said Maemi’s wind speed was the fastest ever, topping the 129.6 mph record set by Typhoon Prapiroon in 2000. Maemi triggered landslides in several places, one of which de railed an express train from Seoul to the southern city of Andong on Saturday, injuring 28 people. The NDPCH said at least 72 peo ple drowned or died because of landslides, electrocution and other causes. It said 24 more were miss ing and feared dead. In Busan, the nation’s second largest city and its main port, 11 container-lifting cranes, each weighing as much as 900 tons, were toppled, their green and red steel limbs twisted beyond recog nition. Steel containers as long as 20 feet were scattered around the port. Busan, formerly known as Pusan, is located 200 miles south east of Seoul. At a beach, a cruise ship tumed-floating hotel that had been evacuated earlier flipped over and lay on its side in shallow water. At least 18 other empty fishing boats capsized. Elsewhere, a construc tion crane collapsed on a fire en gine, injuring five firefighters. Highway road signs were up rooted and fell on vehicles. The few cars that ventured on the roads were buffeted by strong winds as they moved cautiously with headlights and hazard lights on. Thousands of people who had been visiting their hometowns on the southern islands for the annu al thanksgiving Chuseok holiday since Wednesday were stranded as high swells kept ferries from op erating. Five of the nation’s 18 nuclear power plants were shut after their main current transformers or power lines were damaged by the typhoon, the NDPCH said. It said no radiation leakage was report ed. About 20 major factories in Ulsan and Onsan cities on the southeast coast, including two ma jor oil refineries, were forced to temporarily halt operations, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said. Prime Minister Goh Kun convened a meeting of ministers to plan for repairing the damage. Ring Week Sept. 22-26 10arn-4pm 1st floor of the Russell House —i-$---$— -^--—.—|— File Sharing § CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 could face suspension. Clemson has also installed a de vice on its network to slow downloads in an effort to dis courage file trades. "I don't think the music busi ness would be having these kinds of problems if music were more reasonably priced," said third-year media arts stu dent Jennifer Bird. "The quali ty of music is declining, so peo ple don't want to pay for an en tire album when they just want one song." The music industry is re sponding to such consumer com plaints in hopes to stop online piracy. Universal has cut the av- m eragepriceofitsCDsby$6,and W online music stores such as Buymusic.com now offer legal music downloads with the aver age song costing less than $1.00. The Associated Press contributed to this report Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockudesk@hotmail.com Swedes say no to European common * currency BY MATT MOORE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - Swedes rejected adopting the European common currency in a Sunday referendum over shadowed by the killing of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, an ardent euro supporter, days earlier. The Swedish rejection of the euro is a blow to the common ^ currency and European inte- ™ gration. It also provides a boost for euro opponents in Britain and Denmark, which still use their own currencies. Denmark rejected the euro in a 2000 referendum. Britain has not decided whether to let voters decide the issue. Prime Minister Goeran Persson said late Sunday that voters rejected replacing the current Swedish currency, the krona, with the euro. Kesuits irom 97 percent 01 the Scandinavian country’s 5,967 precincts showed that 56.3 percent of voters rejected the euro, while 41.7 percent sup ported it. Two percent cast un decided ballots. More than 5.4 million ballots were cast. A “I think we read the opinion ™ polls too optimistically,” Persson said. “I can only es tablish that we have an elec tion result that is very clear and a turnout that is very high.” The results countered some analysts’ predictions that the stabbing death of Lindh would emotionally sway voters to adopt the currency used by 12 of the 15European Union mem bers.