"The signals we are getting are very good," said Sen. Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat.

The Senate bill includes border security and enforcement measures but adds a guest worker program and a pathway to citizenship for some of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

In a 69-28 procedural vote, the Senate killed an amendment proposed by Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, that would have eliminated the guest worker program for future immigrants. It would have limited the program to illegal immigrants who have lived in America for at least two years.

The Senate also rejected a measure offered by Sen. Johnny Isakson that would have required the Department of Homeland Security to certify that U.S. borders were sealed and secure before the guest worker program could go forward.

Opponents said the measure from the Georgia Republican would have gutted the bill. "If there were ever a killer amendment, it was the Isakson amendment," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. He urged Bush to do more to line up support among Republicans.

But the Senate did agree to cap the number of temporary worker visas that would be available under the guest worker program to 200,000 a year, instead of a proposed 325,000.

In a televised speech on Monday Bush spelled out his vision for immigration reform that closely resembles the Senate bill.

NATIONAL GUARD

But in an effort to address concerns of conservative Republicans, who are focusing on stopping immigrants from coming in, he said he would deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Bush and other backers of a guest worker program say it is needed to fill jobs that Americans do not want.

But Dorgan argued it would be used to provide cheap labor for jobs in construction, manufacturing, transportation and food preparations which are now mostly filled by Americans. "This is about low-wage replacement workers," Dorgan said.

The bill still faces an uncertain future in a congressional election year when immigration is likely to be a major issue and would have to be melded with the tough House bill.

"I think we've got good prospects of getting something through the Senate," said Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. "Can we get that reconciled with the House, I don't know. I think it would be a major accomplishment if we could."

Opposition to the House bill, which could lead to millions of people being deported from the country, prompted protests across the country by Hispanic groups and their supporters.

Bush on Tuesday said only comprehensive legislation would work to stop illegal immigration.

Soldiers mix instant coffee with water in the bag, then slide it into the flameless ration heater bags troops use to warm their meals. A magnesium and iron oxide pad within the flameless ration bag transfers heat to the water in the hot beverage bag. Within minutes, the coffee is steaming hot.

Soldiers slip the bag into an envelope-like cardboard carton, which can be used like a cup to drink the coffee and protect their hands from the heat.

Barbara Daley, a food technologist at the Combat Feeding program, said many soldiers on the front lines were going without coffee because there was no easy way to make it. The researchers at the program based at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center spent about two years developing the Hot Beverage Bag, or HBB, as it is known in military speak.

"There are coffee lovers out there and they wanted a way to make a hot cup of coffee. We found a simple, dependable, inexpensive way to do it," said Daley, who helped develop the bag.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Rick Haddad, who spent two months in
Afghanistan last year, said the lightweight, easy-to-use bag was a big hit with the soldiers in his platoon, who previously often went without coffee.

"It's a morale thing," Haddad said. "Any time in a cold weather environment, if you can have something hot once a day, that definitely improves morale, especially if you are pulling guard duty for 12 hours a night with no sunlight."

Still, the instant coffee won't be mistaken for Starbucks.

The bags were first introduced to troops last year and are now being included in every meal pack, known as Meal, Ready-to-Eat, or MRE. They cost about 6 cents each to produce.

World War II veteran Tom Blakey said the hot beverage bag would have come in handy while he was serving in the 82nd Airborne Division. Although helmets were a popular way to cook coffee or meals for a group of soldiers, that could only be done when they were sure the enemy wasn't close enough to see or smell smoke from the campfire.

"You had to have the proper circumstances ... because of the fire situation and the proximity of the Germans," he said. "When we found a fire they were building, we bombed it, just like they did to us."

David Stieghan, U.S. Army Infantry Branch historian at Fort Benning, Ga., said soldiers have used a variety of military-issued utensils as well as their own ingenuity to find ways to make coffee during wartime.

In the Civil War, Union soldiers were issued unroasted and ungrounded coffee beans, along with a one-quart tin-plated steel cup. Soldiers would roast a few coffee beans at the bottom of their cups or in a small frying pan, then use their bayonet socket to crush the beans. They would then pour water into the cup and boil it on a campfire, Stieghan said.

In recent years, front-line soldiers have used gelatinous fuel tabs to heat up coffee in their canteen cups, but that system wasn't always practical. Neither the fuel tabs nor canteen cups were always readily available, and soldiers had to use matches to light the tabs, so making coffee or other hot beverages that way could be messy.

"When it comes to coffee, soldiers have always done whatever it takes," Stieghan said, "just for the pick-me-up or the feeling of having something warm in their hands."

U.S. officials have declined to directly address on the record the question of backing Somali warlords, who have styled themselves as a counterterrorism coalition in an open bid for American support. Speaking to reporters recently, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States would "work with responsible individuals . . . in fighting terror. It's a real concern of ours -- terror taking root in the Horn of Africa. We don't want to see another safe haven for terrorists created. Our interest is purely in seeing Somalia achieve a better day."

U.S. officials have long feared that Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991, is a desirable place for al-Qaeda members to hide and plan attacks. The country is strategically located on the Horn of Africa, which is only a boat ride away from Yemen and a longtime gateway to Africa from the Middle East. No visas are needed to enter Somalia, there is no police force and no effective central authority.

The country has a weak transitional government operating largely out of neighboring Kenya and the southern city of Baidoa. Most of Somalia is in anarchy, ruled by a patchwork of competing warlords; the capital is too unsafe for even Somalia's acting prime minister to visit.

Leaders of the transitional government said they have warned U.S. officials that working with the warlords is shortsighted and dangerous.

"We would prefer that the U.S. work with the transitional government and not with criminals," the prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, said in an interview. "This is a dangerous game. Somalia is not a stable place and we want the U.S. in Somalia. But in a more constructive way. Clearly we have a common objective to stabilize Somalia, but the U.S. is using the wrong channels."

Many of the warlords have their own agendas, Somali officials said, and some reportedly fought against the United States in 1993 during street battles that culminated in an attack that downed two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and left 18 Army Rangers dead.

"The U.S. government funded the warlords in the recent battle in Mogadishu, there is no doubt about that," government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told journalists by telephone from Baidoa. "This cooperation . . . only fuels further civil war."

U.S. officials have refused repeated requests to provide details about the nature and extent of their support for the coalition of warlords, which calls itself the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in what some Somalis say is a marketing ploy to get U.S. support.

But some U.S. officials, who declined to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of the issue, have said they are generally talking to these leaders to prevent people with suspected ties to al-Qaeda from being given safe haven in the lawless country.

"There are complicated issues in Somalia in that the government does not control Mogadishu and it has the potential for becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda and like-minded terrorists," said one senior administration official in Washington. "We've got very clear interests in trying to ensure that al-Qaeda members are not using it to hide and to plan attacks." He said it was "a very difficult issue" trying to show support for the fledgling interim government while also working to prevent Somalia from becoming an al-Qaeda base.

A senior U.S. intelligence official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was a "Hobbesian" situation -- that the transitional government operating from Kenya was in its "fifteenth iteration" and that it, too, was a "collection of warlords" that played both sides of the fence. The official said that it presented a classic "enemy of our enemy" situation.

The source said Somalia was "not an al-Qaeda safe haven" yet, adding, "There are some there, but it's so dysfunctional." U.S. officials specifically believe that a small number of al-Qaeda operatives who were involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania are now residing in Somalia.

Analysts said they were convinced the Bush administration was backing the warlords as part of its global war against terrorism.

"The U.S. relies on buying intelligence from warlords and other participants in the Somali conflict, and hoping that the strongest of the warlords can snatch a live suspect or two if the intelligence identifies their whereabouts," said John Prendergast, the director for African affairs in the Clinton administration and now a senior adviser at the nongovernmental International Crisis Group. "This strategy might reduce the short-term threat of another terrorist attack in East Africa, but in the long term the conditions which allow terrorist cells to take hold along the Indian Ocean coastline go unaddressed. We ignore these conditions at our peril."

"Are we talking to them and doing some of that? Yes," said Ted Dagne, the leading Africa analyst for the Congressional Research Service. "We fought some of these warlords in 1993 and now we are dealing with some of them again, perhaps supporting some of them against other groups. Somalia is still considered by some as an attractive location for terrorist groups."

The issue of U.S. backing came to the forefront this winter when warlords formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism after a fundamentalist Islamic group began asserting itself in the capital, setting up courts of Islamic law and building schools and hospitals.

Soon after, the coalition of warlords were well-equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and antiaircraft guns, which were used in heavy fighting in the capital last week. It was the second round of fighting this year, following clashes in March that killed more than 90 people, mostly civilians, and emptied neighborhoods around the capital.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council this month, the world body's monitoring group on Somalia said it was investigating an unnamed country's secret support for an anti-terrorism alliance in apparent violation of a U.N. arms embargo.

The experts said they were told in January and February of this year that "financial support was being provided to help organize and structure a militia force created to counter the threat posed by the growing militant fundamentalist movement in central and southern Somalia."

In March, the State Department said in its terrorism report that the U.S. government was concerned about al-Qaeda fugitives "responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and the November 2002 bombing of a tourist hotel and attack on a civilian airliner in Kenya, who are believed to be operating in and around Somalia."

The United States relies on Ethiopia and Kenya for information about Somalia. Both countries have complex interests and long-standing ties and animosities in the country. In December 2002, the United States also established an anti-terrorism task force in neighboring Djibouti, with up to 1,600 U.S. troops stationed in the country.

Africa researchers said they were concerned that while the Bush administration was focused on the potential terrorist threat, little was being done to support economic development initiatives that could provide alternative livelihoods to picking up a gun or following extremist ideologies in Somalia. Somalia watchers and Somalis themselves said there has not been enough substantial backing for building a new government after 15 years of collapsed statehood.

"If the real problem is Somalia, then what have we done to change the situation inside Somalia? Are we funding schools, health care or helping establish an effective government?" Dagne said. "We have a generation of Somali kids growing up without education and only knowing violence and poverty. Unless there is a change, these could become the next warlords out of necessity for survival. That's perhaps the greatest threat we have yet to address."

Somalis far from the factional fighting in Mogadishu said they were waiting for anyone to help ease their destitute lives during the worst drought in a decade.

In Waajid, a dusty town about 200 miles northwest of the capital, thousands of villagers have left their farms for squalid camps, searching for water and living in open, rocky fields under low-lying, fragile shelters of sticks and rags that look like bird's nests.

Many people here say they feel that the United States has ignored Somalia since the failed 1993 military intervention. Today many Somalis said they regret that chapter in their history and thank the United States, the largest donor of food and funding for water trucks during this season's drought.

However, they said that news that the U.S. government was talking with warlords has awakened feelings of resentment.

"George W. Bush, we welcome the Americans. But not to back warlords. We need the U.S.A. to help the young government," said Isak Nur Isak, the district commissioner in Waajid. "We won't drag any Americans through the street like in 1993. We want to be clear: We don't want only food aid, but we do want political support for the new government, which is all we have right now to put our hopes in. We can't eat if everyone is dead."

Both bodies had been urged by the Community Race Relations Coalition to apologize for the "failure of past leadership to uphold and defend lynching victims' most basic rights to life, liberty, and due process." Of the more than 4,700 lynchings nationwide during the 1800s and early 1900s, about 500 were in Texas.

"My hope at the end is some resolution, some statement that can bring about healing, recognizing how far we've come, who we are and who we hope to be," Mayor Virginia DuPuy said.

At least two county commissioners had said they opposed an apology because the lynchings happened before current leaders and residents were born. But they also said the victims should not be forgotten.

Lester Gibson, the only black county commissioner, vowed to keep placing the matter on the agenda until the group reaches a consensus. He voted against the motion rejecting the resolution.