Top US diplomat
considers trip to South Korea
The US
State Department said Monday that Secretary of
State Colin Powell is considering a trip to
South Korea in the near future but nothing has
been finalized.
"He has
talked about going and he's expressed his
intention to go, but we haven't come to the
point where we could announce any trip or
really confirm the actual plans," State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher told
reporters.
He refused to
confirm South Korean media reports that Powell
may travel to Seoul to attend President-elect
Roh Moo-Hyun's inauguration on Feb. 25.
According to
senior US officials, if the secretary decides
to make the trip, he may include some other
countries in East Asia in his itinerary.
The Bush
administration has been widely criticized for
not taking initiatives to solve the nuclear
issue of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea. Washington said it will eventually talk
to Pyongyang over the nuclear issue but
insisted the talks beheld in a multilateral
setting.
NASA
investigating whether Columbia hit by debris
or meteoroid
NASA
Administrator Sean O' Keefe said in a
televised interview Monday that they are
investigating whether space debris or a
meteoroid may have struck Columbia, which blew
apart on Feb. 1.
An Air Force
tracking station captured images of an small
object separating from Columbia on January 17,
the second day of its flight, said O'Keefe on
CNN's "American Morning With Paula Zahn."
He said NASA is
investigating whether this object provides a
clue to what caused the shuttle's disaster.
"We're
trying to make sure all of the facts and
evidence will be there to inform us and give
us the answers to what caused this" so
the space program can get "back to flying
safely," according to O'Keefe.
On Sunday a
hatch door and two other large pieces of
debris from shuttle Columbia were found in
Nacogdoches County, Texas. So far, the most
significant shuttle parts recovered in the
search have been a 2-foot long section of wing
and a covering for a landing gear hatch.
O'Keefe said
NASA has begun taking pieces of Columbia --
some 20 feet long, others measured in inches
-- to a hangar at Florida's Kennedy Space
Center, where specialists will study them.
"There's
certainly no way we're going to be able to
totally reconstruct it. The pieces are just
absolutely mangled," he added.
Greenspan
says uncertainty over war harms US economic
growth
US
Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Alan Greenspan
on Tuesday said uncertainties about a war with
Iraq represent the biggest cloud hanging over
the struggling US economy.
"The
intensification of geopolitical risks makes
discerning the economic path ahead especially
difficult," Greenspan said in a prepared
testimony to the Banking Committee of the US
Senate.
Presenting the
Fed's semi-annual economic report to the
Congress, the Fed chairman said if "these
uncertainties diminish considerably in the
near term," then businesses in the United
States may boost their investment spending and
help the economy.
Underscoring
the cautiously optimistic outlook, Greenspan
released a Fed economic forecast that
projected the overall economy would grow at a
rate of 3.25 percent to 3.50 percent this
year. That would mark an improvement from
growth rate of 2.4 percent in 2002.
Greenspan also
called on the US Congress and the Bush
administration to exercise fiscal discipline
in light of swelling future federal budget
deficits.
"There
should be little disagreement about the need
to re-establish budget discipline," he
said.
The US
government projected last week a record budget
deficits of 304 billion US dollars in this
year and 307 billion dollars next year.
Greenspan
called that "sobering," especially
in light of the looming retirement of the Baby
Boom generation, which will place
unprecedented demands on the Social Security
system in the United States.
In his
testimony, Greenspan did not specifically
discuss Bush's new tax cuts. But he did
address the argument made by the president's
tax-cut supporters, who say reducing taxes
would generate enough new economic growth to
take care of the deficit problem.
"Short of
a major increase in immigration, economic
growth cannot be safely counted upon to
eliminate deficits and the difficult choices
that will be required to restore fiscal
discipline," Greenspan said.
Greenspan said
to get control of the deficit problem will
require that US Congress exercise restraint in
spending and in tax cuts.
NATO
remains split after postponed meeting
Member
countries of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) remained split Tuesday
over when to start military preparations for a
possible war against Iraq after a postponed
meeting.
The meeting of
the North Atlantic Council, the
decision-making body of the 19-member military
alliance, broke up after just about20 minutes
following being postponed twice.
NATO Spokesman
Yves Brodeur said there had been no agreement
and consultations would continue overnight.
The meeting is scheduled to resume on
Wednesday morning.
The meeting,
originally planned for Tuesday morning, was
first postponed to 1530 GMT in the afternoon
before being further delayed for another two
hours.
The dispute in
NATO was triggered when France, Germany and
Belgium on Monday opposed NATO plans to begin
shipping defensive equipment to Turkey, the
only NATO member bordering Iraq.
The widening
rift among NATO countries was widely regarded
as the most serious credibility crisis NATO
has ever faced since its founding in 1949.
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The
ex-president is visiting the country and Tuesday evening met with his party,
National
Liberation or the green party.
Some of the topics of discussion were the modernization of the party, the future of the country and the economic
situation of the same, but without a doubt, what caused the most commotion most
was his declarations about of the presidential re-election.
