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NUCLEAR
France and Japan step up competition for 10 billion dollar reactor
UN Wants Access to Brazil Atomic Enrichment Plant
India Test - Fires Surface - To - Air Missile
Iran to Sign Snap Nuclear Check Protocol Thursday
Head of Iraqi Arms Search May Be Ready to Step Down
Annan Seeks January Talks on Return of U.N. to Iraq
Nuclear plant in Japan shuts down after lightning hits network
Japan Fishing Village Hopes for Nuclear Project
Japan Hopes to Build Nuclear Fusion Plant
N. Korea Talks Delayed But Still Alive, U.S. Says
U.S. Won't Offer Incentives at N. Korea Talks
Glance at Libya's WMD Programs, Stockpile
Libya's Leader Admits Trying to Develop Banned Weapons
U.N. Saw Signs of Libya Nuke Program - Diplomats
Bush Says Libya Will Allow Arms Inspections
Japan to Buy U.S. Missile Defense System
Japan to Build Missile Defense System
US praises Japan on missile defense system
US nuclear industry eyes new reactor projects
Nevada prepares case against nuclear waste dump
U.S. Court to Review Nev. Fight Over Dump
Dean Assails 'Washington Democrats' on Iraq
MILITARY
U.S. to Practice Weapons Interdiction
Centex Fined for Election Violations
Senator Says Halliburton's Auditors Saw Problems
U.S. Negotiating Over Role of G.I.'s in a Sovereign Iraq
U.S. to Steer Ex-Arms Experts to Peaceful Jobs
U.S. Warns Israel Against Steps That Harm Peace Plan
Sharon Threatens to Impose Split on Palestinians
Sharon Threatens To Redraw Borders
With eye on India, Pakistan launches home-made sub
Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis
Annan Sets Meeting on U.N. Role in Iraq
Medical evacuations from Iraq near 11,000
Bosnian Serb Gets 23 Years for War Crimes
Clark Calls Milosevic 'Force' Behind Wars
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Chief of Sept. 11 Panel Assesses Blame but Holds Off on Higher-Ups
Kean Says 9/11 Attacks Could Have Been Prevented
Detainee to Get Hearing
In Debate on Antiterrorism, the Courts Assert Themselves
U.S. Courts Reject Detention Policy in 2 Terror Cases
Detainees' Abuse Is Detailed
Tapes Show Abuse of 9/11 Detainees
Welfare Drug Tests to End
Terrorism Drills Showed Lack of Preparedness
Bioterrorism Drill Reveals Many Flaws
Seized Citizen Is Ordered Released Bush Overreached Powers, Court Says
ENERGY AND OTHER
Big boost for offshore wind power
British Plan Major 'Wind Farm' to Generate Power Along Coasts
US Energy Demand to Grow 1.5 Pct Annually
Are We Going Nuclear?
Survey Indicates More Go Hungry, Homeless
U.S. Chides France on Effort to Bar Religious Garb in Schools
ACTIVISTS
School recruiters meet resistance
-------- NUCLEAR
France and Japan step up competition for 10 billion dollar reactor
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 20, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031220005536.bdbxkd3l.html
France and Japan stepped up lobbying ahead of Saturday's decision by the major nuclear powers on where to put an experimental nuclear fusion reactor as part of the multi-billion dollar ITER project.
The choice between the French town of Cadarache and Rokkasho-mura in northern Japan is to be made at a ministerial meeting at Reston, Virginia, in the Washington suburbs.
The reactor is expected to cost about 10 billion dollars but French officials estimate the project could bring 30 billion dollars to the economy of the chosen venue over 30 years.
The ITER consortium -- which hopes to find a limitless energy source from nuclear fusion -- is made up of the European Union, Japan, Canada, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, which quit the project in 1998 but returned in January as President George W. Bush changed his energy policy.
The European Union is backing France, after the Spanish town of Vandellos withdrew in November, but the United States could play a decisive role in the decision.
A French government envoy, Pierre Lellouche, said "very intense" talks were being held at a high level Friday before the meeting on the reactor venue.
France's Research Minister Claudie Haignere and the European Union Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin were expected in Washington on Friday night to join the lobbying. French officials said that if no concensus is reached Saturday, it may be put off until January.
A Japanese diplomatic source, meanwhile, said bilateral meetings were being held Friday with the United States, the European Union, South Korea and Russia ahead of Saturday's decision.
"We are still very hopeful," the source said.
ITER -- Latin for "the way" -- aims to be a test bed for what is being billed as the clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future. The project is not expected to generate electricity however before 2050.
The Japanese site has many assets: proximity to a port, a ground of solid bedrock and a nearby American military base which means that Rokkasho-mura already has the services available to accommodate foreign researchers in a comfortable environment.
The French bid offers an existing research facility and a more moderate climate.
In the past, nuclear energy has derived from splitting atoms of radioactive material to unleash a controlled chain reaction whose by-product is heat.
But more than half a century of experience in fission has thrown up serious problems, ranging from the nightmare of Chernobyl to the perils of transporting nuclear material and storing dangerous long-term radioactive waste.
Nuclear fusion takes the opposite approach, seeking to emulate the Sun.
The solar crucible takes the nuclei of two atoms of deuterium, which is the heavy form of hydrogen, and fuses them together to form tritium (the other isotope of hydrogen) and in so doing releases huge amounts of energy.
There is a virtually limitless source of deuterium in the world, because it can be derived from water; as for tritium, it is not a natural element, but can be easily made by irradiating it with lithium at high pressure.
That is the theory, and getting from there to a workable prototype plant of commercial size is what ITER is all about.
For all the allure of nuclear fusion as a boundless energy source, and the promise that, unlike nuclear fission, it offers no environmental headache, the technical hurdles remain immense.
Among the many problems are how to efficiently confine the plasma cloud in the magnetic field so that charged particles do not slip out, and the energy cost in pumping up the plasma to such high temperatures.
So far, no one has achieved a long self-sustaining fusion event. The record, achieved by European scientists at Cadarache on December 4, is six and a half minutes, releasing a thousand megajoules of energy.
-------- brazil
UN Wants Access to Brazil Atomic Enrichment Plant
December 19, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-brazil.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog is negotiating with the Brazilian government to ensure that a new uranium enrichment facility due to begin operating next year is properly safeguarded, the agency said Friday.
Several Western diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Brazil was not considered a problem state and there were no concerns that it was developing nuclear weapons.
However, after the discovery of Iran's 18-year cover-up of potentially arms-related atomic research, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is pressing all countries to open up nuclear programs as much as possible -- especially enrichment facilities, which can be used to produce bomb-grade material.
``We have been working with the Brazilian authorities to ensure that this facility is properly safeguarded,'' IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
Brazil has no safeguards agreement with the IAEA covering the facility, which is still under construction. This means the IAEA has no official right to inspect it when it goes live.
-------- india / pakistan
India Test - Fires Surface - To - Air Missile
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Missile-Test.html
NEW DELHI (AP) -- India test-fired a short-range, surface-to-air missile on Friday, the second such launch in two days, a defense ministry official said.
The homemade Trishul was fired from a mobile launcher in the eastern state of Orissa at 11:30 a.m., Amitabha Chakrabarti, the defense ministry spokesman, said.
``It was a routine test. We will be carrying out further tests over the next few days,'' he said.
The supersonic Trishul is capable of targeting aircraft and sea-skimming missiles. The solid-fuel missile can carry a warhead of up to 33 pounds. It has a range of about five miles and a radar guidance system.
The Trishul is used by India's army, navy and air force.
``The repeated test firings are to check the different parameters of the missile. Before it is inducted into the armed forces, we have to carry out many trials,'' Chakrabarti said.
The Chandipur missile testing range lies 750 miles southeast of New Delhi.
A Pakistan foreign ministry official, who did not want to be named, said Islamabad does not comment on tests of such short-range missiles by India.
India's test was unlikely to affect the confidence-building measures under way by the nuclear-armed rivals.
India says it needs the missiles to defend itself against Pakistan to the west and China to the north. India has fought three wars against Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947 and one war against China in 1962 over territorial disputes.
India's missile arsenal also includes the intermediate-range Agni, which can reach 1,500 miles; the short-range ballistic missile Prithvi with a range of 95 miles; and the Nag anti-tank missile.
-------- iran
Iran to Sign Snap Nuclear Check Protocol Thursday
by Parinoosh Arami
REUTERS IRAN:
December 18, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23158/newsDate/18-Dec-2003/story.htm
TEHRAN - Iran will almost certainly sign a binding international protocol that allows intrusive snap inspections of its nuclear facilities Thursday, cabinet ministers said Wednesday.
Asked when Iran would sign the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Vice-President Gholamreza Aghazadeh replied "Iran will most probably sign tomorrow."
The United States says Iran's atomic program is a smokescreen for the development of nuclear arms, but Iran has repeatedly denied this.
"We have agreed to sign the protocol to prove our activities are peaceful," said Aghazadeh, who heads Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.
The question of whether it should sign the protocol sparked heated debate in Iran earlier this year, hard-liners saying the short-notice inspections it permits were tantamount to allowing spies into the country.
But, under mounting international pressure, Iran said in October it would sign up for the tougher inspection regime, suspend uranium enrichment and provide full details of nuclear activities dating back to the 1980s.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticized Iran last month for an 18-year cover-up of sensitive nuclear research and warned it that any further breaches could see Iran's case taken to the U.N. Security Council.
Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said his ministry was taking responsibility for putting pen to paper in Vienna, home of the IAEA.
READY TO SIGN
Iran's former representative to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi recently left his post and a successor has not been announced.
Kharrazi and reformist President Mohammad Khatami both reiterated a signature was likely Thursday."Any time the agency expresses its readiness for a signature, we will sign," Khatami told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting.
Iran, OPEC's second biggest oil producer, insists its nuclear program is peaceful and that it is needed to meet booming domestic electricity demand and free up its hydrocarbon resources for export. But it admitted to the IAEA in October that it had hidden a secret centrifuge uranium enrichment program from U.N. inspectors for nearly two decades.
Government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh said last week that once Iran had signed the document, the government would send it to parliament as a bill.
If lawmakers, most of them allies of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, approved the bill, it would still need to be approved by the Guardian Council, a 12-member body dominated by conservative clerics who decide whether proposed legislation is in line with the constitution and Islamic Sharia law.
Iran has pledged to allow U.N. inspectors to operate in Iran as if the protocol had been ratified even before it has received final approval by parliament and the Guardian Council.
-------- iraq / inspections
THE WEAPONS
Head of Iraqi Arms Search May Be Ready to Step Down
December 19, 2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/politics/19KAY.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - David Kay, the head of the effort by the United States to find the banned weapons cited by President Bush as a primary reason for going to war with Iraq, is considering stepping down in the next few months before the group he leads completes its search and issues a final report, government officials said Thursday.
Dr. Kay, 63, is widely respected as thorough and straightforward even among critics of the war who have raised doubts about whether the threat from Iraq was as dire as the administration made it out to be. Should he leave, Democrats and some weapons experts said, it could fuel a perception that the United States is winding up the hunt without having found any caches of biological or chemical weapons.
"Kay's departure is very convenient in the effort to change the subject," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, referring to what he said were attempts by Mr. Bush to deflect attention from the administration's assertions that Iraq possessed stores of banned weapons. He added, "Kay set a very high standard of proof. He wants real evidence of the presence of weapons. That apparently is not a standard that is going to be met."
The organization Dr. Kay leads, the Iraq Survey Group, issued an interim report in October citing extensive evidence that Saddam Hussein had pursued banned weapons programs, including attempts to acquire missile technology from North Korea. But the report said the group had found no actual weapons, and Dr. Kay said at the time that it would take another six to nine months to complete his work, suggesting that his final report would land in the middle of the presidential election campaign.
Asked Thursday about Dr. Kay's plans, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said he did not want to speak for Dr. Kay but that the administration was intent on finishing the evaluation of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs and the search for actual weapons.
"The search is an important priority, and the work of the Iraq Survey Group continues," Mr. McClellan said. The group, he said, will "complete its work."
The White House continues to maintain that banned weapons will be found in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on Tuesday that a hole the size of the one Mr. Hussein was found in could hold enough biological weapons to kill tens of thousands of people, and that it could be some time before the United States gets the help it needs from Iraqis to find the hiding places.
But Mr. Bush said in an interview on Tuesday with ABC News that what was known about Mr. Hussein's weapons programs was enough to justify the war, and he seemed to play down the distinction between actual weapons and weapons programs. "So what's the difference?" he responded when pressed on the topic during the interview.
Dr. Kay's preliminary findings in October were hailed by the administration as vindication of its argument that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with. They were also used by critics of the war to press their argument that Mr. Bush had exaggerated the threat.
In discussions this week at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters, Dr. Kay, who took the job in June and has been living in Baghdad, said he was considering leaving in part because the search was taking much longer than he had initially expected, putting a strain on his family, government officials said. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Dr. Kay might leave before February. He could make his decision final next week when he returns to the C.I.A. for another round of discussions, they said.
Dr. Kay's group has seen some of its personnel and budget diverted to fighting the insurgency in Iraq, and its work has been hindered by the danger of moving around the country, officials said.
"Whether he's going to see the mission through to the end is unclear, but there's no doubt that he and others in the U.S. government agree there's plenty to be done in Iraq on the weapons of mass destruction issue," said an official. "He's giving some consideration to leaving early, but there definitely isn't any final resolution."
When asked whether Dr. Kay was frustrated that the search had not proceeded at a faster pace, the official said, "Most people had hoped things would be resolved a bit more quickly" than the current timetable calling for the survey group to finish its work sometime in the middle of next year.
The official said Dr. Kay was on vacation and not doing interviews.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former arms inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq, said the administration would have to be careful if Dr. Kay left to fight any perception that it was downgrading its effort to come up with a full accounting of Iraq's weapons.
"David has been a strong advocate of the administration's position that there is a lot of W.M.D. in Iraq, and one interpretation could be that he couldn't find them so he wants to get out," Mr. Albright said. "Certainly if Kay leaves they should have someone to replace him who has a direct connection to Tenet and who is credible." He was referring to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
--------
Annan Seeks January Talks on Return of U.N. to Iraq
December 19, 2003
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/international/middleeast/19NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 18 - Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday he was seeking a meeting next month with members of the Iraqi Governing Council and representatives of the United States-led occupation authority to determine whether the United Nations' return to Baghdad can be accelerated.
He told a year-end news conference he had been assured that the Iraqis would attend the Jan. 15 session and that he had begun "preliminary consultations" with the occupation authority.
"I hope we'll be able to sit and clarify what assistance and what role the U.N. can play and what they expect of us and for us to make a judgment on what can be done and not," Mr. Annan said.
"Of course," he added, "that discussion cannot only be with the Iraqi Governing Council. The coalition, which is the occupying power, must also indicate what they expect so it has to be a three-way discussion and clarification."
John D. Negroponte, the United States ambassador, said he knew of no invitation yet, but he reiterated American support for a "vital role" for the United Nations in Iraq and called for the world body's return "as soon as absolutely possible."
The expectation has been that the earliest the United Nations could return foreign staff to Iraq was in July when the American-led occupation is scheduled to end and the transfer to Iraqi sovereignty to begin.
Mr. Annan has been under pressure from the United States, other members of the Security Council and the Iraqi Governing Council to move sooner than that. The secretary general has argued, however, that he must have security guarantees before he sends foreign workers back into the country.
He withdrew all non-Iraqi employees from the country in October after a series of attacks on aid workers and diplomats and the Aug. 19 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, in which the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 other people were killed. Some 2,000 Iraqi employees are still in the country.
Last week Mr. Annan named Ross Mountain, a New Zealander who heads the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as his acting envoy to Iraq until the appointment of a successor to Mr. Vieira de Mello. He also set up offices in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Amman, Jordan, to coordinate Iraq relief.
Hoshyar Zebari, the interim foreign minister of Iraq, told the Security Council on Tuesday that the United Nations could not render effective aid from outside the country.
Turning to Afghanistan, Mr. Annan said the future of that country was at risk if the security situation continued to deteriorate. "If we do not deal with that, we may lose Afghanistan," he said.
-------- japan
Nuclear plant in Japan shuts down after lightning hits network
TOKYO (AFP)
Dec 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031219085552.lpfxdrez.html
A 357,000-kilowatt nuclear reactor in Japan's central Fukui prefecture shut down automatically Friday after lightning struck what was likely the electricity network, the plant's operator said.
The No. 1 reactor in Tsuruga, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Tokyo, shut down at 3:28 pm (0628 GMT) after it was unable to send electricity through the grid, a spokesman for the Japan Atomic Power Co. said.
There was no danger of radiation leakage and the plant's emergency cooling system did not kick in, he said.
"There was no problem with the nuclear reactor itself," said spokesman Masao Tabayashi.
It was unknown when the reactor would resume operation, he said.
The No. 2 reactor with 1.16-million kilowatt capacity on the Tsuruga site continued to function normally. The plants feed the Osaka area, the commercial hub of western Japan, as well as central and northern Japan, but not Tokyo, the spokesman said.
There was no danger of blackouts as power companies would likely buy the required electricity from other plants, Tabayashi said.
----
Japan Fishing Village Hopes for Nuclear Project
REUTERS JAPAN:
December 19, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23170/story.htm
TOKYO - Rokkasho, a remote fishing village in northern Japan, was quietly confident Thursday as it waited to hear whether it would become host to a $12 billion experimental nuclear fusion reactor.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, a joint venture involving the United States, China, Russia, South Korea, the European Union and Japan, is expected to announce its choice of site after a meeting in Washington on Saturday.
ITER aims to create the world's first sustained nuclear fusion reaction, which it is hoped will provide a clean, efficient source of power in an imitation of reactions that form the source of the sun's power.
The two front runners to host the 30-year project are an EU-backed site at Cadarache in southern France and the village of Rokkasho, home to 12,000 people, mostly fishermen and farmers.
"We have good solid ground, we are very near a port and we have plentiful supplies of both fresh and sea water," said Kiyoshiro Nozawa, a local official overseeing the Rokkasho bid.
"The French site is not so convenient for ports, so I think we are ahead in that respect," he added.
Rokkasho, near the northernmost tip of the main island of Honshu, some 600 km (373 miles) north of Tokyo, is already the site of a uranium enrichment plant and a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant is scheduled to be completed by 2006.
Nuclear fusion involves sticking atoms together, as opposed to the splitting of an atom that is at the heart of nuclear fission, the process used in today's atomic power plants and weapons.
Fusion power has been touted as a solution to the world's energy problems, with proponents saying it would be safe, cause little pollution and require only sea water for fuel.
In half a century of research, however, it has never been achieved in a commercially viable way.
--------
Japan Hopes to Build Nuclear Fusion Plant
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Japan-Fusion-Energy.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan is confident it can win approval from an international consortium to build the world's first large-scale nuclear fusion plant, an experimental project that would generate energy by reproducing the sun's power source, an official said Friday.
Japan and France are the finalists in a bidding war for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, which is expected to cost $12 billion over 35 years. The project's sponsors -- the European Union, the United States, Russia, South Korea, China, Japan and Canada -- are set to reach a final decision on Saturday at a meeting in Washington.
Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry official Hidekazu Tanaka said he believes Japan's site, Rokkasho village on the main island's northern tip, has the edge going into the weekend vote.
``We are fairly certain we won't lose,'' Tanaka told The Associated Press. ``For a resource-poor country like Japan, the benefits of such a project would be huge.''
The ITER project, first proposed more than a decade ago, is designed to study the potential of fusion power as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. Fossil fuels are expected to run short in about 50 years.
Fusion, which powers the sun and stars, involves colliding tiny atoms at extremely high temperatures and pressure inside a reactor. When the atoms fuse into a plasma they release energy that can be harnessed to generate electricity.
Fusion power produces no greenhouse gas emissions and only low levels of radioactive waste. The reactor would run on an isotope of hydrogen, an abundant source of fuel that can be extracted from water.
And because fusion reactors don't consume uranium or plutonium -- the fuel of conventional, fission reactors -- and don't use an atomic chain reaction, there is little risk of a radioactive meltdown.
Scientists say it's also nearly impossible to package the reactor's contents into a weapon.
``You can't build a bomb from this kind of reactor,'' said Masaaki Inutake, a professor of fusion research at Tohoku University in Sendai, north of Tokyo.
The stakes are high because the project means jobs, government subsidies and prestige.
Tokyo faces stiff competition from France's bid to promote its proposed site -- the southeastern town of Cadarache, which has considerable EU backing.
There are also some concerns about earthquakes in Japan that could affect the reactor.
With an international research team expected to live near the reactor, Rokkasho's frigid, snowy winters also make it less appealing than Cacarache, which has a temperate climate and is in France's southern Provence region.
But Japan is hoping Rokkasho's location near the sea will sway the debate.
Tanaka, the ministry official, said Rokkasho is 3 miles from a major port, meaning that sea water can be pumped for fuel and that heavy-duty reactor parts, such as a massive superconducting magnetic coil, can be transported by ship in one piece. France's site, about 43 miles inland, would need the coil to be shipped in pieces and assembled later.
Rokkasho already has an industrial complex, including a nuclear fuel disposal and reprocessing plant scheduled to be finished in 2006.
Even if Tokyo manages to secure the deal, it may have to persuade a wary public, following a recent spate of accidents and cover-ups of lax safety practices at nuclear power plants.
Japan relies on nuclear power for 30 percent of its energy. But many communities have resisted plans to build more plants since Japan's worst nuclear accident in 1999. That accident, at a fuel-reprocessing plant north of Tokyo, was caused by an uncontrolled reaction that killed two workers and exposed at least 600 people to radiation.
``We will have to do lots of PR to reassure the public,'' said Tanaka.
The project won't be cheap, either.
With Japan's economy struggling through a long-running slowdown and public debt at historic highs, the government will have to dig deep to fund the $5.3 billion cost of construction over 10 years and another $6.4 billion for the reactor's equipment and day-to-day operations for 25 years after building is completed.
It will also have to pay for the electricity to power the reactor. Once the reactor is running, it should generate some 20 times the energy required to get it started.
But Inutake, the fusion researcher, said the technology hasn't yet been refined to the point where it will run at a self-sustaining burn.
``Attaining that would be a milestone,'' he said. ``Before building an economical reactor, we need to confirm that we can do it in an experiment. That's why this is so important.''
-------- korea
N. Korea Talks Delayed But Still Alive, U.S. Says
December 19, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite delays that have pushed any possibility of six-party talks with North Korea to curtail its nuclear arms program into 2004, a senior U.S. official said on Friday it was too early to say diplomatic efforts had failed.
After months of intensive efforts, the United States and its partners in negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program acknowledged this week that they were unable to arrange a second round of talks for this month, pushing the next target date into the new year.
The senior official, speaking with Reuters on condition of anonymity, was optimistic that a second round of talks would eventually be scheduled.
But he did not explain how the parties would overcome their disagreements over objectives for the talks, which are being arranged by China.
Some U.S. officials put the onus on China to bring Pyongyang to the table but the senior official interviewed on Friday said that was not the case. ``The onus is on North Korea,'' he said.
Delays and harsh rhetoric have been a feature of the reclusive state's international dealings.
The United States is insisting on a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the North's nuclear weapons programs while Pyongyang has spoken of a ``freeze.''
``I believe that it's still possible (that North Korea could be persuaded to abandon its programs) but I could not assess the probability of achieving it,'' the senior official said.
``We're determined to try and we've got a lot more steps to go before we could conclude that the multilateral process won't work,'' he said.
He and other officials say the administration stands ready to outline its ``principles'' for multilateral security assurances for North Korea if the six-party talks reconvene next year.
But the administration will not propose possible economic or energy incentives in advance of Pyongyang moving to dismantle its nuclear program, these officials say.
Pyongyang, apparently responding to media reports of elements of that U.S.-led plan, pronounced it ``greatly disappointing'' and published a counter-proposal that repeated demands for energy aid and diplomatic concessions in exchange for freezing its nuclear program.
President Bush has rejected the idea of a freeze, saying Washington wanted North Korea's nuclear arms program dismantled ``in a verifiable and irreversible way.''
--------
U.S. Won't Offer Incentives at N. Korea Talks
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A45
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13370-2003Dec18.html
The Bush administration is prepared to outline its "principles" for multilateral security assurances for North Korea if six-nation talks on the nuclear crisis convene next year, but the administration will not float possible economic or energy incentives at the session, a senior administration official said yesterday.
U.S. officials had hoped the meeting would take place this week in Beijing. But the parties did not reach agreement on the objectives for the talks, forcing a delay until January or later. The official, speaking in an interview arranged by the administration, said the "six-party process is alive and well," although it is "inherently difficult to get on the same page."
A key objective for the administration at the talks is to learn how the North Koreans propose to dismantle their nuclear programs, the official said. But he said it is unlikely the talks would dwell on the details of eliminating that nation's arsenal, particularly the scope of the inspection regime needed to verify that North Korea has given up its weapons.
North Korea said yesterday that it will never give up its nuclear weapons program unless the United States provides economic aid and security assurances. Pyongyang's official newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Pyongyang wants to trade its nuclear weapons for what it calls a "simultaneous package solution" to the nuclear dispute. North Korea's determination "to beef up its nuclear deterrent force will remain unchanged no matter what others may say, as long as the United States keeps pursuing a policy to threaten and stifle" it, Rodong said in a commentary.
The Bush administration has called for "coordinated steps" to resolve the crisis, which the official said can mean both sequential and in tandem.
North Korea's rejection of the talks, along with the Bush administration official's remarks, suggests that any progress in resolving the North Korean crisis will be incremental and difficult in the coming year. Another administration official said that "the factors and conditions for why we did not have talks in December have not changed."
Until this week, U.S. officials had gamely insisted that talks were still possible this month. But the effort ended last Friday when senior foreign policy officials, including Vice President Cheney, met and rejected the third proposed draft of a statement guiding the talks, submitted by China. The Chinese, the talks' host, had submitted the text saying quick acceptance would ensure the talks could still take place this week.
But the proposed text did not call for "irreversible" dismantling of North Korea's programs or mention "verification," two key issues for the Bush administration. At the meeting, Cheney in particular said those phrases were necessary, and so the effort to hold talks this month died, said an official familiar with the meeting.
China has frequently enticed North Korea to attend the talks by providing economic incentives. A meeting with North Korea, China and the United States was held in April, and the next session was expanded to include Japan, South Korea and Russia in August.
But the long delay between meetings had frustrated officials eager for a diplomatic solution. They hope to win agreement for a regular meeting schedule to avoid such protracted negotiations in the future.
Some Democratic presidential candidates, in particular Howard Dean, have criticized the administration for not being willing to sit down with North Korea and negotiate a direct agreement. The former governor of Vermont said he would offer the North Koreans economic aid, energy assistance and a "nonaggression pact" in exchange for dismantling its programs.
The senior official said the Bush administration was "certainly open" to direct talks during multilateral sessions. "But it cannot be an excuse for turning multilateral discussions into bilateral discussions," the official said.
-------- libya
Glance at Libya's WMD Programs, Stockpile
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Libya-Weapons-Glance.html
A glance at Libya's banned-weapons stockpiles and programs, according to the Bush administration, and what Libya has promised to do on each:
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Libya admitted to nuclear fuel projects, including possessing centrifuges and centrifuge parts used in uranium enrichment. Libya agreed to abandon all elements of its nuclear weapons program; to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency of all current nuclear programs; and to adhere to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Libya showed American and British inspectors a significant quantity of mustard and bombs designed to be filled with the World War I-era chemical weapon, as well as ``chemical precursors'' that could be used to produce mustard and nerve agents. The country agreed to accept the restrictions of the chemical weapons treaty.
BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
Libya acknowledged it intended to acquire equipment and develop capabilities to create biological weapons. Libya committed to renounce these programs and to accept outside inspections and the restrictions of the biological weapons treaty.
MISSILES
Libya admitted ``elements of the history of its cooperation with North Korea'' to develop extended-range Scud missiles. It agreed to destroy all ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 186 miles, and payloads greater than 1,100 pounds.
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Libya's Leader Admits Trying to Develop Banned Weapons
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Libya-Weapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, after secret negotiations with the United States and Britain, agreed to halt his nation's drive to develop nuclear and chemical weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday. Bush said pointedly, ``I hope other leaders will find an example'' in the action.
Libya's most significant acknowledgment was that it had a program intended to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, a senior Bush administration official said.
Libya's nuclear effort was more advanced than previously thought, the official said. U.S. and British experts inspected components of a centrifuge program to enrich the uranium, though the system was not operational, the official said, briefing reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity.
The White House suggested that Libya's dramatic decision was influenced by the war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, as well as U.S. efforts to rein in weapons of mass destruction capabilities in North Korean and Iran.
Blair, speaking from Durham, Britain, and Bush, addressing reporters in the White House briefing room, described a process of nine months of secret talks and onsite inspections, initiated by the long reviled Libyan leader shortly after he agreed to a settlement in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
In the decision announced Friday by all sides, Libya agreed to disclose all its weapons of mass destruction and related programs and to open the country to international weapons inspectors to oversee their elimination
``Colonel Gadhafi's commitment, once it is fulfilled, will make our country more safe and the world more peaceful,'' said Bush.
Recalling the war in Iraq, Bush said other nations should recognize that weapons of mass destruction ``do not bring influence or prestige. They bring isolation and otherwise unwelcome consequences.''
Bush said the United States and Britain, wary of Libyan promises, would watch closely to make sure Gadhafi keeps his word. And he said Libya's promises on weapons aren't enough; it must ``fully engage in the war against terror'' as well.
If Libya ``takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness,'' Bush held out the promise of helping Libya build ``a more free and prosperous country.''
The U.N. Security Council ended sanctions against Libya on Sept. 12 after Gadhafi's government took responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the victims' families.
But the United States has kept its own 17-year embargo in place and has kept Libya on the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
``As we have found with other nations, old hostilities do not need to go on forever,'' Bush said. ``Libya can regain a secure and respected place among the nations and, over time, achieve far better relations with the United States.''
The move represents a shift for a nation long regarded as an outlaw.
While Libya is credited with moderating its behavior in recent years, Gadhafi has been depicted as an erratic, untrustworthy ruler. In 1986, President Reagan sent American warplanes to bomb the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benzghazi in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin disco where a U.S. serviceman was killed.
The bombs struck Gadhafi's barracks and killed his young, adopted daughter and wounded two of his sons but Gadhafi, sleeping in a tent outside the compound, escaped injury.
Susan Cohen, a Cape May Courthouse, N.J., woman whose daughter was among the 270 people killed on Pan Am 103, said Friday night that Gadhafi cannot be counted on to keep his promise.
``How can we trust somebody who has blown up a plane?'' she asked.
The Libyan news agency Jana Tripoli quoted Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam as saying Libyan experts had shown their U.S. and British counterparts ``the substances, equipment and programs that could lead to production of internationally banned weapons.''
Libya's decision is a ``wise decision and a brave step that merit support from the Libyan people,'' Gadhafi said in a statement carried by the official news agency.
Teams of American and British experts went to Libya in October and December, the Bush administration official said.
They visited 10 sites related to Libya's nuclear program, the official said.
Libyan officials also showed the American and British team a significant amount of mustard agent, a World War I-era chemical weapon. Libya made the material more than a decade ago, and also had bombs that could be filled with the substance for use in combat, the official said.
Libya also acknowledged having chemicals that could be used to make nerve agent, the official said.
The U.S. official described little evidence of a Libyan biological program.
Libyan officials further acknowledged contacts with North Korea, a supplier of long-range ballistic missiles, and provided the U.S.-British team access to missile research and development facilities.
According to a recent, unclassified report to Congress, Libya's longest-range missiles were thought to be Scud-B ballistic missiles. These have a range of 186 miles. Libya agreed to destroy missiles with longer ranges, but it was unclear if the country had any.
Bush also used the announcement to try to nudge unnamed ``regimes that seek or possess weapons of mass destruction'' into similar cooperation.
``Those weapons do not bring influence or prestige; they bring isolation and otherwise unwelcome consequences,'' he said. ``Leaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations.'' Associated Press writers Beth Gardiner in London and John J. Lumpkin in Washington contributed to this report.
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U.N. Saw Signs of Libya Nuke Program - Diplomats
December 19, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-libya-nuclear-iaea.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Prior to Libya's announcement it would renounce weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. nuclear watchdog had been concerned about signs Tripoli wanted to develop atomic arms, diplomats said on Friday.
A British official said Libya had not acquired a nuclear bomb, ``though it was close to developing one.''
Several Western diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity there were indications Libya had been trying to gather a team of nuclear experts from ex-communist states in central and eastern Europe in what looked like the beginnings of a future nuclear weapons program.
This had not escaped the attention of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations body charged with policing compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), one diplomat said.
``Segments of the IAEA have become very concerned about Libya,'' one Western diplomat told Reuters, adding that the IAEA's safeguards department had been ``especially concerned.''
The IAEA's safeguards department is charged with monitoring NPT signatories' civilian nuclear programs to ensure resources are not diverted to clandestine military programs.
Another diplomat said there had been signs Tripoli had embarked on a ``procurement program'' linked to developing nuclear weapons, though he gave no details of the procurement effort.
The British official said a British team working with the Libyans had seen nuclear projects under way at more than 10 sites, including the enrichment of uranium. It also saw dual-use sites with the potential to support work on biological weapons.
Libya's announcement that it would let the IAEA and other international organizations come to Libya and oversee the dismantlement of its weapons programs comes one day after Iran signed the NPT Additional Protocol permitting more intrusive, short-notice IAEA inspections of its nuclear sites.
Washington accuses Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as a front to develop the atomic bomb, a charge Tehran denies.
Libya has also agreed to ``immediately'' sign the NPT protocol, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a news conference.
Tripoli has long been on the radar screens of non-proliferation experts.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S.-based disarmament think-tank, said in a comment posted on its Web site (www.nti.org) before Libya's announcement: ``There remain... continuing allegations that Libya is indeed pursuing a nuclear weapon capability.''
After the recent discovery of Iran's 18-year cover-up of potentially arms-related atomic research, the IAEA has begun pressing all countries to open up their nuclear programs as much as possible -- especially uranium enrichment facilities, which can be used to produce bomb-grade material.
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Bush Says Libya Will Allow Arms Inspections
December 19, 2003
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/international/middleeast/19CND-LIBYA.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - President Bush announced today that Libya, which for decades has been estranged from the United States, had agreed to forsake weapons of mass destruction and to allow weapons inspectors from international organizations into the country.
Mr. Bush, in a stunning late-afternoon appearance, said Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had notified diplomats from both the United States and Britain of its decision. Libya has been talking with the United States and Britain quietly for some nine months, the president said.
Washington has asserted in recent years that Libya was developing biological and chemical weapons and trying to upgrade its nuclear capabilities.
Mr. Bush said Colonel Qaddafi's promise, if kept, would mean the Libya ``has begun the process of rejoining the community of nations,'' a journey that would improve the lives of the country's people and lead ``over time'' to better relations with the United States. Libya is a relatively poor country of 5.5 million people.
He said Colonel Qaddafi ``publicly confirmed his commitment to disclose and dismantle all weapons of mass destruction programs in his country.''
``He has agreed immediately and unconditionally to allow inspectors from international organizations to enter Libya,'' Mr. Bush said. ``These inspectors will render an accounting of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and will help oversee their elimination.''
The president praised the decision by Libya, which was announced in London by Prime Minister Tony Blair minutes before Mr. Bush's appearance in Washington. Mr. Bush said Libya's new approach to the world - if it continues - could only lessen the threat of terrorism in the Middle East and around the world.
He said Libyan officials ``have provided American and British intelligence officers with documentation on that country's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programs and activities.''
``Our experts in these fields have met directly with Libyan officials to learn additional details,'' Mr. Bush said.
In London, Mr. Blair said, ``Libya came to us in March following successful negotiations on Lockerbie to see if it could resolve its weapons of mass destruction issue in a similarly cooperative manner,'' according to The Associated Press. He said Libya agreed to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and to limit the range of Libyan missiles to a maximum of 186 miles.
Over the last year, Libya has made overtures to improve its relation with the West. Earlier this year, it agreed to pay some $2.7 billion in damages to families of the 270 people killed in the 1988 bombing of a jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. For years, Libyan agents were suspected of engineering the bombing with Colonel Qaddafi's tacit approval. Libya formally accepted responsibility for the bombing in a statement to the United Nations in August.
Colonel Qaddafi has ruled the North African country since taking over from the royal family in a 1969 coup. His critics have long accused him of being sympathetic to terrorists.
In 1986, Libyan-sponsored terrorists bombed a nightclub in West Berlin, killing two American soldiers. Shortly thereafter, American bombers struck at Libya, in an apparent effort to kill the dictator.
-------- missile defense
Japan to Buy U.S. Missile Defense System
December 19, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-defense-japan.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said Friday it would buy a U.S.-made missile defense system and conduct a review of its defense capabilities in a move that could unnerve other Asian countries.
Domestic support for the introduction of a missile defense system, mooted since North Korea sent a ballistic missile over Japan in 1998, has grown over the past year because of Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda announced the decision to endorse a Defense Agency proposal on missile defense after a meeting of Japan's Security Council.
``There is no intent to harm other countries. This is a completely defensive system,'' Fukuda told a news conference.
The government planned to complete the defense review and a medium-term defense equipment plan by the end of 2004, he said, giving no details on the review, other than to say it would take into account the current security environment.
One topic may be Japan's self-imposed ban on arms exports, which must be modified if Tokyo wants to push ahead with its joint development of a next-generation missile defense system with the United States.
Fukuda told reporters Thursday that the ban was a subject for future discussion.
TWO-STAGE DEFENSE
The first stage of the two-part missile defense system Japan intends to buy consists of Standard Missile-3systems that could be fired at missiles in mid-course from Japan's four existing high-tech Aegis destroyers.
The second line of defense would be provided by ground-to-air Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, upgrading the PAC-2 system Japan's armed forces already possess.
The Defense Agency estimates the missile defense system will cost 700 billion yen ($6.5 billion) over five years, Kyodo news agency said, adding that the government would earmark around 100 billion yen for the project in the 2004 budget.
The system will be partially deployed in 2007 and fully operational by 2011, the daily Mainichi Shimbun said Friday. The Defense Agency said it could not confirm the dates.
Moves toward a more independent defense posture tend to spark nervous reactions from Japan's Asian neighbors, some of which suffered under Tokyo's colonial rule before and during World War II.
Japan's launch of two spy satellites in March this year to keep an eye on neighboring North Korea, drew complaints from Pyongyang that it would set off a regional arms race. Japan's close cooperation with the United States over missile defense may also put pressure on its sometimes tense relations with China.
``The Chinese have a number of concerns over the U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system,'' said Robert Karniol, Asia-Pacific editor of Jane's Defense Weekly.
``One is that it threatens to negate the Chinese nuclear deterrent force. Another is that it has potential application over the conflict in Taiwan,'' he added.
Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited China earlier this year in an attempt to reassure Beijing that the missile program would be purely defensive.
He denied Friday that the system risked infringing Japan's ban on ``collective self-defense,'' part of the constitution that prohibits it even from helping allies if they come under attack.
``This system is not designed to shoot down missiles heading toward other countries,'' Ishiba told reporters.
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Japan to Build Missile Defense System
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Missile-Defense.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan announced Friday that it will begin building a missile defense system -- the first step of long-discussed plans to protect the country amid concerns over the threat from neighboring North Korea.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet and his top security advisers approved the project, citing ``a spread of missiles and a rise in weapons of mass destruction,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said in a statement.
``Ballistic missile defense is a purely defensive -- and the sole -- means of protecting the lives of our country's people and their property against a ballistic missile attack,'' the statement said.
Japan has studied the technology for missile defense with the United States, but until now it has only mulled plans to build such a system.
Fukuda did not explain details of the program. Media reports said the plan calls for refitting four Aegis-equipped destroyers with sea-based anti-missile rockets and purchasing advanced Patriot anti-missile rocket batteries starting next year. The new system will be deployed from 2007 through 2011, Kyodo News reported.
The government will allocate $935 million for the program in the next fiscal year beginning April. The entire program was estimated at $4.67 billion, the agency said.
The project will not fully shield Japan from incoming missiles, however. Analysts say the sea-based and Patriot missiles have less-than-perfect success rates for shooting down projectiles. Their limited number also means they cannot provide cover for the entire country.
Japan has become increasingly concerned with being able to protect itself against incoming missiles after North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile over its main island in 1998.
Trying to allay concerns among China and other neighbors that the system could signal a move by Japan toward building greater military power, Fukuda stressed missile defense was not offensive in nature and wouldn't be a menace to others.
``It will not threaten neighboring countries, and will not have a detrimental effect on the region's stability,'' Fukuda said. He added it would not violate Japanese laws against defending other nations, since the system would be used exclusively by Japan for its own protection.
To further counter what it called ``new threats'' of missiles, weapons of mass destruction, and international terrorism, Koizumi's Cabinet separately called for reorganizing the military into a more flexible and mobile force.
And in recognition of the rising importance of international peacekeeping and humanitarian missions to the Self-Defense Forces, the Cabinet instructed the Defense Agency to develop a special unit to carry out such duties.
Starting with a peacekeeping mission to Cambodia, and following with undertakings in East Timor and elsewhere, Japan's military has played a growing role in international campaigns.
On Friday, Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba ordered air, naval, and ground troops to prepare for deployment to restore water services and rebuild infrastructure in southern Iraq. He is expected to send around 1,000 soldiers to Iraq next year.
----
US praises Japan on missile defense system
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 19, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031219203520.ulw6mame.html
The United States Friday praised Japan's decision to adopt a ballistic missile defense system, but sidestepped suggestions the move pointed to pessimism over North Korea crisis talks.
Tokyo said it would adopt a US-developed system to protect itself from emerging threats from terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and North Korean missiles.
"Without going into the motivations of the Japanese decision, let me say that we welcome the Japanese government's decision to move forward on plans for missile defense," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
"I would note that the United States and Japan have cooperated on missile defense research for several years.
"Its decision to acquire US missile defense systems is further evidence of the close and cooperative relations between our two countries."
Ereli declined to respond to suggestions that Japan's move signified it was holding out little hope that efforts to defuse North Korea's nuclear program would succeed.
A new round of six-party talks on the program was due to have taken place in Beijing this week, but was delayed until next year, after Pyongyang and Washington failed to agree on the agenda for the talks.
Japan said it would introduce a US-developed missile defense system for now and continue to conduct joint research with the United States to improve on it, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said in a statement.
Tokyo has been alarmed by repeated launches of missiles by North Korea into the Sea of Japan.
North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998, prompting Tokyo to launch joint research with the United States to develop missile defense systems the following year.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US nuclear industry eyes new reactor projects
by Leonard Anderson
REUTERS USA:
December 18, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23161/newsDate/18-Dec-2003/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - A $1.1 billion project tucked into the stalled U.S. energy bill to develop a new kind of nuclear reactor has been touted as reviving nuclear energy and boosting the development of hydrogen-powered vehicles.
But scientists working on early stages of the project say the test reactor also could have industrial applications far beyond transportation, including improving the quality of heavy crude oils.
The House of Representatives passed the $31 billion energy bill in November but it fell just two votes short of passing the Senate. Republican leaders have vowed to try again early next year to move the legislation through Congress.
The bill's proposed nuclear project would end a long dry spell for the nation's nuclear industry, which hasn't approved a new plant since the near-meltdown of the reactor core at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979.
In addition to the new reactor, the bill includes $750 million a year in tax breaks for building 6,000 megawatts of new nuclear capacity, or about eight reactors.
Nils Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses and oversees the nation's 103 nuclear generators, has said the incentives in the bill "could be a turning point" for new construction.
Critics, however, label the project "pork barrel" work that will throw more dangerous spent radioactive fuel onto a growing pile.
Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and harsh critic of the NRC, called the VHTR "the most expensive way that could be imagined to produce hydrogen and nothing more, nothing less than one of the many pork barrel projects in the Republican bill."
IDAHO LAB PROJECT
The new reactor, to be developed at a federal Department of Energy research laboratory in Idaho, is called a "very high temperature rector," or VHTR, designed to produce both electricity and hydrogen while being safer to operate and less vulnerable to sabotage, said James Lake, associate laboratory director for nuclear research.
The VHTR would package uranium fuel in small pellets or "pebbles" covered in graphite and cooled by inert helium gas, Lake told Reuters.
This would allow heat to radiate away from the core of the reactor, eliminate the need for an elaborate cooling system, and prevent the possibility of a Three Mile Island-type accident. The reactor would be housed underground. In addition to transportation, Lake said hydrogen stored in fuel holds promise for other industrial uses:
- Hydrogen can be inserted into heavy crude oil, adding more barrels of higher-quality oil to domestic stocks.
- Hydrogen fuel cells can provide a reliable supply of electricity in critical applications like semiconductor manufacturing and hospitals.
- Hydrogen is a key ingredient in ammonia, a building block for the chemical fertilizer business.
- The VHTR could make hydrogen without producing greenhouse gases formed by burning natural gas or coal.
The U.S. and nine other nations are working on new reactor designs. The VHTR reactor, however, will not be ready for demonstration until 2015, while the $1.1 billion in the energy bill would pay for work only until 2010.
Nuclear utilities like Exelon Corp. (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , Dominion Resources Inc. (D.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and equipment makers like General Electric Co. (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the Westinghouse unit of British Nuclear Fuels, and the Framatome unit of France's Areva (CEPFi.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) are interested in the project, Lake said.
In the shorter term, Exelon, Dominion and Entergy have asked the NRC for permission possibly to add new reactors at existing plant sites in Illinois, Virginia and Mississippi.
As a "bridge" between its existing fleet and the VHTR, Exelon supports a Westinghouse advanced light water reactor called the AP 1000 now in development, a spokesman said.
-------- nevada
Nevada prepares case against nuclear waste dump
Friday, December 19, 2003
By Erica Werner,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-12-19/s_11491.asp
WASHINGTON - Nevada's legal team will tell a federal appeals court that the government is trying to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain even though it does not meet the original legal requirements for a dump, lawyers said Thursday.
The hearing Jan. 14 before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will cover six lawsuits that the state filed against the federal government between 2000 and 2002, and that have been consolidated.
For Nevada, which has failed in the political arena for over two decades to stop the dump, the courts might represent the state's best chance of keeping out 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste, lawyers said at a media briefing. The waste would be buried for 10,000 years at a desert site 90 miles from Las Vegas.
"I think that this is the first time that any court in this country is really going to look at the fundamental legal merits of this project," said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead lawyer in the Yucca case.
Egan and other lawyers outlined a series of arguments that accuse the government of learning, after it began studying Yucca Mountain, that the site could not satisfy Congress's original mandate of "geological isolation." Instead studies demonstrated that the site would be at risk of dangerous seepage, they said.
Rather than abandon the site, the Energy Department changed the rules and declared it suitable, the lawyers said.
They accused the department of improperly evaluating the environmental effects of the project and said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham unlawfully recommended its approval to President Bush. They contend the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to comply with the law in developing licensing rules and standards for the project.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department has followed the law and that a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain would be safe. He said Nevada's lawsuits "are simply misguided."
"In the end, if the science doesn't meet the standards, it's not going to be built. In the end, we believe the science will meet the standards," Davis said.
Congress and Bush approved sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain last year, but the department does not expect to open the site until at least 2010.
The department still must apply for a license from the NRC, which it plans to do a year from now.
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U.S. Court to Review Nev. Fight Over Dump
Associated Press
Friday, December 19, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13301-2003Dec18.html
Nevada's legal team will tell a federal appeals court that the government is trying to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain even though the site does not meet the original legal requirements for a dump, lawyers said yesterday.
The hearing Jan. 14 before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will cover six lawsuits, now consolidated, that the state filed against the federal government between 2000 and 2002.
For Nevada, which has failed in the political arena for more than two decades to stop the dump, the courts might represent its best chance of keeping out 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste, lawyers said at a media briefing. The waste would be buried for 10,000 years at a desert site 90 miles from Las Vegas.
"I think that this is the first time that any court in this country is really going to look at the fundamental legal merits of this project," Joe Egan, Nevada's lead lawyer in the case, said.
Egan and other lawyers outlined arguments that say the government learned, after it began studying Yucca Mountain, that the site could not satisfy Congress's original mandate of "geological isolation." Instead, studies demonstrated that the site would be at risk of dangerous seepage, they said.
Rather than abandon the site, the Energy Department changed the rules and declared it suitable, the lawyers said.
They accused the department of improperly evaluating the environmental effects of the project and said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham unlawfully recommended its approval to President Bush. They contend the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to comply with the law in developing licensing rules and standards for the project.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department has followed the law and that a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain would be safe. He said Nevada's lawsuits "are simply misguided."
"In the end, if the science doesn't meet the standards, it's not going to be built. In the end, we believe the science will meet the standards," Davis said.
Congress and Bush approved sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain last year, but the department does not expect to open the site until at least 2010.
The department needs a license from the NRC and plans to apply for one in a year.
-------- us politics
Dean Assails 'Washington Democrats' on Iraq
By Paul Farhi and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13369-2003Dec18.html
MANCHESTER, N.H., Dec. 18 -- In a pointed blast at his presidential rivals Thursday, Howard Dean criticized "Washington Democrats" who "want to declare victory in the war on terror" after Saturday's capture of Saddam Hussein.
The former Vermont governor expanded on his earlier assertion that the arrest did not make the nation safer, saying Americans are no safer now than they were before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"For the past four days, the Washington Politics as Usual Club has taken every opportunity for attacks on me and my campaign that go far beyond questioning my position on the war," Dean said in a campaign stop. "The capture of one very bad man does not mean this president and the Washington Democrats can declare victory in the war on terror."
Saying "the soul of the Democratic Party is at stake," he added: "The Washington Democrats fell meekly into line" with President Bush and "failed to ask the tough questions" last fall during the run-up to the war.
Dean's rivals in the Jan. 27 New Hampshire Democratic primary have seized on his comments about Hussein's capture. Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) have called Dean inconsistent and wrongheaded. They cite his remarks about Hussein as evidence of his lack of experience in foreign affairs, a key campaign issue.
Lieberman has dubbed Dean "Dr. No," for his war opposition and some of his domestic stands. Kerry accuses Dean of seeking to give the United Nations veto power over the use of U.S. military force. And Gephardt emphatically disputes Dean's assertion that the nation is no safer with Hussein in custody. They are hoping to slow Dean's momentum in New Hampshire, where new polls suggest his lead is widening.
Dean returned fire Thursday, accusing his rivals of basing their positions on the Iraq war on opinion polls -- supporting it at first, then speaking against it when casualties mounted and its "true costs" became known. Now that public support for the war is rising, and Hussein is no longer at large, Dean said, "the Washington Democrats began to redraft their talking points."
Speaking Thursday on domestic policies, Dean repeated proposals he has advanced before on the need for affordable health care, child care, college education and a secure retirement. He denounced what he termed "the Bush tax": higher federal budget deficits and increased state and local property taxes in many states. He called them the unintended consequences of Bush's federal tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.
After the speech, Lieberman accused Dean of adding to the burden of middle-class families. Alluding also to Dean's foreign policy speech Monday, Lieberman said, "Howard Dean is soft on defense and hard on the middle class."
Gephardt's campaign attacked Dean over earlier tax incentives offered to corporations, including Enron Corp., to establish what are known as captive insurance firms in Vermont. Dean said Thursday the tax break was not tailored for Enron. Gephardt campaign manager Steve Murphy said Dean, as governor, signed legislation that reduced the disclosure requirements of those companies, and he called on Dean to open his records.
Dean said he had no comment on the legislation and would let a court decide about the possible release of his gubernatorial records.
At a news conference after his speech, Dean was asked repeatedly about a Washington Post report that detailed instances in which his comments on a variety of subjects proved to be untrue or misleading. Dean did not address the article's specifics, but said voters can believe him "or they can believe The Washington Post."
Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report from Washington.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
U.S. to Practice Weapons Interdiction
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Seizing-Weapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States and allies next month plan to practice seizing a ship carrying weapons of mass destruction near where a North Korean missile shipment was captured last year.
The naval exercise scheduled Jan. 11-12 is part of a Bush administration effort to block shipments of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the material and equipment needed to make them and missiles that could be used to carry them.
It will be the third such exercise undertaken by the ``Proliferation Security Initiative,'' a 16-nation group formed this year. Experts from the countries met in Washington this week to discuss lessons learned from those exercises -- one each in the Mediterranean and Coral seas -- and start planning for five more in the next four months. A ``tabletop'' exercise on intercepting airplanes also has been held.
The January exercise in the Arabian Sea will include forces from several other members of the initiative, though precisely which countries has not been decided, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday. They will track, board and search a U.S. merchant vessel outfitted to mimic one carrying weapons of mass destruction.
The scenario is nearly identical to the seizure a year ago of a shipment of North Korean Scud missiles, which later was released, said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity. On U.S. intelligence, Spanish forces seized the ship and found 15 missiles and other military gear. They turned the ship over to American forces, which released it after several days when Yemen said it had bought the weapons and promised not to sell them to anyone else.
The incident was an embarrassment for the Bush administration and showed the need for better cooperation on seizures. It also underscored the legal difficulties in seizing such shipments, which often do not violate international law.
Legal experts from the participating countries discussed such problems during the Washington meetings but made no decisions, the Pentagon official said. He said the United States is working to forge agreements with countries where many ships are registered to smooth the way toward boarding, inspecting and seizing weapons shipments.
Other nations in the initiative are: Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and five new members -- Canada, Denmark, Norway, Singapore and Turkey.
Bush has made the project a high priority; his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met with the group this week. Officials say the initiative is aimed at stemming the flow of weapon and missile technologies across the globe with particular emphasis on North Korea and Iran.
Pyongyang exports missiles and other military gear, and the United States and its allies accuse it of selling weapons of mass destruction technology as well. The United States accuses Iran of having a clandestine nuclear weapons program, while Tehran says the program is only to make electricity.
North Korea responded angrily both to the missile seizure and the proliferation initiative. Before the first exercise, an official North Korean newspaper called it a ``military provocation.''
Upcoming exercises include a ``tabletop'' air interdiction exercise hosted by Italy Feb. 18-19; a customs seizure simulation in Germany in late March; a maritime exercise hosted by Italy in the Mediterranean April 13-22; and a simulated ground interdiction in Poland in late April
-------- business
Centex Fined for Election Violations
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14072-2003Dec19.html
The Federal Election Commission has fined two subsidiaries of the Centex Corp. $168,000 for making illegal, corporate-subsidized contributions to federal candidates, including $3,100 to President Bush's 2000 campaign.
In a conciliation agreement released yesterday, the FEC outlined a plan developed in 1998 by the officers of the Centex Construction Group Inc. and Centex Rooney Construction Co. Inc. to "compensate or reward Rooney employees" for political contributions. The corporate payments to the employees were "grossed up . . . to offset tax liability."
All told, 15 current and former officers of the subsidiaries were named by the FEC as participants in the illegal contributions that resulted in $56,000 being given to political parties and candidates.
The settlement agreement states that officials of the Dallas-based parent Centex Corp. and the recipients, including the Bush campaign, were not aware that the contributions were illegal.
The major beneficiaries of the plan were the Republican National Committee, which received $20,000, and the Florida Republican Party, which got $10,000. The Rooney firm is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The Bush 2000 presidential campaign received five contributions ranging from $100 to $1,000, the legal maximum an individual was allowed to give that year, under the plan.
Most, but not all, of the corporate officers named in the agreement have since left the companies.
The corporate repayments for individual contributions were "listed in a bonus spreadsheet under a new and separate column designed 'discretionary management bonuses' and were added to the bonus amount the employee otherwise would have received from any incentive plan," according to the agreement.
Most of the contributions went to Republican Party organizations or Republican candidates; $4,000 went to Democratic candidates.
The conciliation agreement specifically absolves the parent company and the recipients of the contributions from participation in the illegal scheme to subsidize contributions: "There is no evidence that any Centex Corporation executive, or any political committee receiving contributions, knew or understood" that the subsidiaries were reimbursing employees.
With annual revenue approaching $10 billion, Centex Corp. describes itself as "the nation's premier company in building and related services: Home Building, Home Services, Financial Services, Construction Services, Construction Products and Investment Real Estate."
--------
Senator Says Halliburton's Auditors Saw Problems
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13397-2003Dec18.html
Internal auditors at the Halliburton Co. subsidiary importing fuel into Iraq warned the company that it was overcharging the government even before a Defense Department draft audit raised similar concerns, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) charged yesterday.
Lieberman, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said members of his staff learned about the internal audit during a briefing Wednesday with the head of the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), which announced last week that Halliburton may have overcharged the government $61 million by importing fuel from Kuwait instead of Turkey.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Lieberman, the ranking member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said auditors working for the subsidiary, KBR, "warned that the prices the company was charging to import fuel from Kuwait into Iraq were excessive and that the company's prices and contracting procedures were in violation of" federal procurement rules.
"This extraordinary internal audit suggests that Halliburton had been previously warned by its own auditors that it was overcharging for the fuel but apparently ignored these important warnings and continued to charge the federal government inflated prices," he wrote.
According to government documents, KBR paid $2.27 per gallon to import fuel from Kuwait and $1.17 per gallon to import it from Turkey.
Wendy Hall, spokeswoman for Halliburton, said the internal audit "did not warn or say that there were excessive fuel prices and did not identify any violation of government contracting regulations."
Officials with the audit agency could not be reached for comment.
In the letter to Rumsfeld, Lieberman said a Defense Contract Audit Agency auditor discovered the internal report, took notes and then presented it to KBR officials for a response. Since then, Lieberman wrote, KBR has refused to provide a copy of the internal audit.
Hall said the audit is a confidential, internal document.
"The DCAA employee ignored identification on the internal document -- on each and every page -- that clearly states the document was proprietary and confidential for KBR internal use only," she said. The auditor's action "could be a violation of the law," she added.
Hall also said the company has provided the DCAA auditors with all the supporting material related to the internal audit.
"There have been multiple meetings since the draft audit, some even face-to-face," she said. "We are working with the DCAA, and we have updated and provided materials to them following these numerous meetings."
-------- iraq
FUTURE SECURITY
U.S. Negotiating Over Role of G.I.'s in a Sovereign Iraq
December 19, 2003
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/international/middleeast/19DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The Bush administration has begun delicate negotiations with Iraq's transitional leaders on the freedom American-led military forces will have to carry out operations against insurgents after the transfer of sovereignty to a new government in Baghdad on June 30, officials say.
While the Coalition Provisional Authority is scheduled to go out of business by the middle of next year, military officials have said recently that their forces may have to remain in Iraq for at least "a couple more years," in the words of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the American commander in Iraq.
Administration, Pentagon and military officials acknowledge that security operations must be conducted within inevitable new political constraints when Iraqis take charge of their own affairs, whether by next summer's deadline or later.
That concern is a prime motivation for the American push to rebuild Iraq's civil defense corps, army and police force, putting an Iraqi face on the security mission. "Our tactics are going to have to change to some degree," a Bush administration official said. "We are going to have to take the concerns of Iraqis into account."
As discussions with Iraq's transitional authorities are being pushed ahead on security affairs, the American authorities are proceeding on a separate, more political track, to insure that the Iraqi constitution, which is to be written by the government that takes power next year, embodies democratic and secular values.
The negotiations on the future military relationship between Washington and Baghdad, and on the principle of its future constitution, are widely seen as tests of whether Iraq can stand on its own next year and eventually serve as a model of democracy in the Middle East.
The Iraqi Governing Council, the group of Iraqi leaders chosen by the Coalition Provisional Authority to oversee Iraq, has set up a subcommittee to write a "transitional administrative law" to take effect next year before the June 30 transfer, according to administration officials.
The transitional law is intended to flesh out the principles that the Iraqi Governing Council agreed to in its discussions with L. Paul Bremer III, the American occupation administrator, on Nov. 15. Translating the principles into a sweeping set of laws is proving difficult, however, some officials said. The sticking point, they said, is how far to incorporate Islamic law into the constitution.
Whatever the council decides would, in turn, be rewritten by the government that is to take office next year. But American officials hope that the "transitional administrative law" is written so strongly that it will be adopted by the sovereign government. How much leverage the United States can bring to bear is a matter of conjecture.
Still, the military negotiations are considered the most urgent priority by many administration officials.
On his visit to Baghdad on Dec. 6, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took the lead in pushing the process forward at a meeting with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of the Governing Council's rotating presidents.
A senior Pentagon official who attended the session said the two men had discussed creation of a new government-to-government relationship and coordination of economic development, as well as the form of a new security agreement.
"We will work out, over the next six months, arrangements whereby military operations can continue and the continued training of Iraq's own security forces can take place," one official said.
A new mutual security pact - or even a formal invitation from the Iraqi authorities to the American-led military forces to remain - may quiet Washington's critics in the Arab world and around the globe, officials said.
"The transfer of sovereignty clearly will have an impact on security, because you rid yourself of the `occupation' label," an official said. "That is one of the claims that these so-called insurgents make, that they are under American occupation. So you remove that political claim from the ideological battle."
American officials say that even though the new Iraqi government may be pleased to have foreign forces help secure its territory, internal and international political considerations may prompt Iraq to limit the kinds of missions that allied forces carry out.
The precise rules of the security agreement between allied forces and the emerging Iraqi government have not been negotiated, but officials pointed to numerous precedents: the status-of-forces agreements that define rights and responsibilities of large American military forces in Japan or Germany, and the military-technical agreements or access deals that govern the smaller American presence in smaller nations, including many in the Middle East.
"They could be military-technical agreements; they could be status of forces agreements; they could be a whole range of things that could be broad, or that could be detailed," one official said.
In the meantime, the allied military is "marching straight ahead on building up five Iraqi security sectors," a Pentagon official said, referring to the new Iraqi Army, civil defense corps, border patrol, facilities protection service and police.
--------
IRAQI SCIENTISTS
U.S. to Steer Ex-Arms Experts to Peaceful Jobs
December 19, 2003
By JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/politics/19SCIE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The State Department said Thursday that it was starting a two-year program that could spend some $22 million to help provide several hundred former Iraqi weapons scientists and technicians with nonmilitary jobs in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq to prevent them from working for countries of concern or for terrorist groups.
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said American officials would begin by opening the Iraqi International Center for Science and Industry in Baghdad, at a cost of $2 million. He said the program could ultimately provide some $20 million in projects for such scientists.
The effort is similar to a decade-old, Pentagon-led program that has had bipartisan support in Congress. Called Cooperative Threat Reduction, it has supported former Soviet weapons scientists and their research projects to redirect them from arms-related to peaceful work.
Separately, a senior Defense Department official said Thursday that her agency might spend some of a new pool of $50 million of the Pentagon-led program on scientific exchanges and projects in Afghanistan and possibly in Iraq to reduce the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Speaking at a meeting of experts on unconventional weapons, the official, Lisa Bronson, a deputy under secretary at the Pentagon, said her agency was exploring using some of that money for programs to improve border security and expand disease surveillance.
Mr. Boucher said the Iraqi center in Baghdad would hold workshops next year on energy research, environmental protection, information technology and other nonmilitary projects for up to 600 Iraqi scientists, technicians and engineers who are known to have worked in Iraq's unconventional weapons programs.
A State Department fact sheet said the center would also provide "quick start" projects to employ idle military scientists and technicians. Finally, it will sponsor meetings between American experts and Iraqi scientists involved in Iraq's unconventional weapons programs to help identify other Iraqis who were involved in such work and redirect them toward other projects.
He said Iraqi scientists and technicians would be paid a stipend to attend the workshops and for their involvement in projects aimed at reconstructing the Iraqi infrastructure. He said all weapons scientists would be eligible to take part provided they had not actually used the weapons they had helped produce.
Many American soldiers and experts hunting for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in Iraq have long complained that the lack of financial and other incentives for former weapons scientists to cooperate with the United States has hampered the search. Officials said they hoped that the program would both encourage their cooperation and help identify Iraqis not known to Americans to have been involved in research or production of unconventional arms.
But in his remarks, Mr. Boucher stressed that the new effort was "not an information-collection program."
"This is a program to put people to work to give them more productive uses of their expertise, their intelligence and their energy than work on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs," he said.
He said the United States had only "anecdotal" information that Iraqi scientists were being tempted by offers to work abroad for countries of concern or for terrorist groups. "We know of the potential, and we wanted to do something fairly early and fairly quickly as this program is unveiled to try to give these people an opportunity to contribute to the future of Iraq," he said.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bronson complained in her remarks that the Pentagon was not spending enough money to protect American soldiers against chemical and biological attack. She said that while the Pentagon was now spending $10.2 billion a year on missile defense programs, it had committed $1.2 billion a year on research, development and procurement aimed at protecting soldiers from such weapons - or one third of one percent of the Pentagon budget. "Get serious," she said, arguing that the budget for chemical and biological defense should be doubled.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. Warns Israel Against Steps That Harm Peace Plan
December 19, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/politics/19MIDE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The Bush administration, responding coolly to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's announcement of a possible "disengagement plan" in the West Bank, warned Israel on Thursday against taking unilateral steps that effectively abandoned the American-sponsored peace plan, called the road map, which would establish a Palestinian state.
"We would oppose any unilateral steps that block the road toward negotiations under the road map that lead to the two-state vision," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman.
A senior administration official involved in Middle East policy tried on Thursday night to emphasize that parts of Mr. Sharon's speech were positive, especially his call for immediate steps to ease conditions of Palestinians living in the West Bank and for the dismantling of "unauthorized" settlement outposts built in the last few years.
The official said that based on a reading of Mr. Sharon's text and also on briefings given to American officials before the speech, it was clear that such actions by Israel were offered "unconditionally" - that is, not dependent on the Palestinians acting first to crack down on Palestinian militant groups.
The administration official acknowledged that some of the steps promised by Mr. Sharon had been promised before and not carried out. "We expect far more rapid action after the emphatic remarks of the Israeli prime minister," he added.
Left unclear by Mr. Sharon's speech, the administration official said, was how he planned to carry out his promises to limit the growth of existing settlements in the West Bank, but the official said it seemed clear that Israel was prepared to confine any increase in the population of settlers to the areas where settlements already exist, and not to expand their territory any further into neighborhoods and areas regarded by the Palestinians as their land. But many details about what Mr. Sharon intends remain to be worked out with Palestinian negotiators and representatives of the United States in coming days and weeks.
Behind the speech, some administration officials said, was a tacit agreement between Mr. Sharon's aides - particularly Dov Weisglass, his chief of staff - and top aides to Mr. Bush that the new Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, is proving to be a disappointment.
Like Israeli leaders, administration officials say privately that they have been frustrated over the failure of Mr. Qurei to even be able to negotiate a cease-fire with the Palestinian groups as a possible prelude to their eventual disarmament.
The senior administration official said Thursday night, however, that Mr. Sharon had made enough conciliatory gestures in his speech to warrant a renewed attempt to get Mr. Qurei back to the negotiating table.
The Egyptian national security chief, Omar Suleiman, has been in Washington in the last week to brief administration officials on the progress of faltering negotiations for a cease-fire by Palestinian militant groups, but with little progress to report, many officials say.
What concerned the administration, officials said, was Mr. Sharon's stated intention to carry out the disengagement plan in a few months if the Palestinians failed to carry out the steps called for in the peace plan. The primary step, Mr. Sharon made it clear, was to shut down militant groups.
"We don't think it's best, at this point, to be discussing now what to do if progress is not made," Mr. McClellan said at the White House. Other officials said they were concerned that talk of what must happen if there is a breakdown might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
According to Mr. Sharon's speech, the disengagement plan would involve new "security lines" separating Israel from Palestinian-dominated territory in the West Bank and Gaza and a "change in the deployment of settlements."
Administration officials say they are concerned that such a plan could lead to a de facto Palestinian state in a shrunken form on perhaps 50 percent of the West Bank, with as much as 90 percent of the Palestinians living in the area squeezed into it.
Far-flung Jewish settlements in this area would, if this state were set up, presumably be dismantled or re-established in Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank.
This concern was only partly assuaged by Mr. Sharon's declaration that whatever boundary lines were established for Palestinian areas under his disengagement plan would not be final, and could be changed once an accord was reached between Israel and the Palestinians. The senior administration official said that Mr. Sharon understood the Bush administration's strongly held view that nothing Israel does now must make it look like it was "trying to impose a final settlement" on the Palestinians.
Mr. Sharon said he would not specify how many settlements would be shut down and "redeployed" elsewhere, but an administration official said that the numbers circulating between Jerusalem and Washington were from 17 to 22 of perhaps 100 settlements in the West Bank.
Some administration officials say they have heard that Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and Mr. Qurei, his handpicked prime minister, may be tempted to accept such an interim state, however shrunken it is from what they want, as a possibly valuable base from which to conduct future talks with Israel.
Administration officials cite various reasons for being concerned that Mr. Sharon may walk away from the negotiating process with the Palestinians, pull back from populated areas and even abandon some settlements in the West Bank.
The main concern, administration officials say, is that Mr. Sharon may accompany these steps by further construction of a barrier, not just along the so-called Green Line - the de facto frontier between Israel and the West Bank - but also in areas thrust into the middle of the West Bank or jutting out from Jerusalem.
Second, administration officials say they are concerned that if Israel withdraws forces unilaterally - in the absence of a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians - it might be seen as a retreat rather than a concession, along the lines of its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.
--------
Sharon Threatens to Impose Split on Palestinians
December 19, 2003
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/international/middleeast/19SHAR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
HERZLIYA, Israel, Dec. 18 - Israel will impose a security plan that will separate Israelis and Palestinians if the Palestinians fail to move quickly toward a negotiated peace, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said here in a speech on Thursday.
"If, in a few months, the Palestinians still continue to disregard their part in implementing the road map," he said, referring to the peace plan promoted by the Bush administration, "then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians."
Mr. Sharon reaffirmed his belief that the peace plan, which would lead to a Palestinian state by 2005, remained the best available option. And he said Israel would move to ease conditions for Palestinians and to dismantle illegal settlements, without linking it to immediate Palestinian moves.
But, he said, if the Palestinians did not at some point move "to uproot the terrorist groups and create a law-abiding society," he would pursue a disengagement plan, which would give Palestinians less land and preserve more Israeli settlements.
The Bush administration reacted coolly to Mr. Sharon's statement.
"The United States believes that a settlement must be negotiated, and we would oppose any effort - any Israeli effort - to impose a settlement," said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan. "Unilateral steps can help the road map move forward if they are part of the road map, or can block the road map. It depends on what they are."
Specifically, Mr. Sharon said, the plan would involve a pullback of the Israeli Army to what he called "a new security line" and the withdrawal of some settlements from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in order to "reduce as much as possible the number of Israelis located in the heart of the Palestinian population."
While Mr. Sharon has hinted over the past few weeks that he was considering taking unilateral steps, his speech represented the first time he had expressed a willingness to dismantle settlements without a comprehensive peace agreement.
While Palestinian leaders have long sought withdrawal of Israeli settlements, they were harshly critical of Mr. Sharon, accusing him of trying to impose his own peace plan at terms highly detrimental to them.
"With this unilateral position, they may make peace between Israelis and Israelis," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said in an interview with CNN after Mr. Sharon's speech. "They will not make peace with the Palestinians."
Nabil Aburdeineh, a spokesman for Yasir Arafat, said in an interview from Ramallah, Mr. Arafat's headquarters: "The security severance is not acceptable. The result of Sharon's speech is the refusal to implement the road map."
Mr. Sharon provided no timetable for the moves he spoke about, but in the past weeks, the Israeli news media have reported that he is prepared to give the Palestinian Authority about six months to make significant progress in stopping terrorism.
His plans seemed aimed in part at deflecting mounting criticism in Israel that the government's security policies have caused suffering among the Palestinians, which has intensified hatred of Israel.
But another aim clearly was to place the onus on the Palestinians for the failure to move ahead on the peace plan, and to warn the Palestinian Authority that it would face serious losses if it were unable to curb terrorism.
"Obviously, through the disengagement plan, the Palestinians will receive much less than they would have received through direct negotiations, as set out in the road map," Mr. Sharon said.
On the Israeli side, rightist figures like Shaul Yahalom, of the National Religious Party, were angry both over Mr. Sharon's willingness to remove some settlements and over the concept of a unilateral retreat from some territory. His party, he said, "will concentrate all its efforts to carry out a targeted annihilation against any concept of a unilateral withdrawal."
Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition Labor Party, said on Israel Radio that he was "very disappointed" by the speech. "Instead of a decision, we were given a postponement, one that is not necessarily in our favor," he said.
Mr. Sharon also listed steps "to significantly improve the living conditions of the Palestinian population." Among them, he said, Israel will remove "closures and curfews, and reduce the number of roadblocks," all aimed at improving "freedom of movement for the Palestinian population, including the passage of people and goods."
In a step that is of particular concern to the religious right in Israel, Mr. Sharon also vowed to dismantle illegal settlements, the so-called outposts, which have been established in recent months in violation of the peace plan's ban on new settlements. There are believed to be several dozen such places, ranging from a few people with a couple of trailers to larger settlements with permanent housing.
"I have committed to the president of the United States that Israel will dismantle unauthorized outposts," he said. "It is my intention to implement this commitment." Mr. Sharon gave no timetable, but Israeli news media have reported that some might be dismantled as early as next week.
In announcing his readiness to take unilateral steps, Mr. Sharon seemed to split the difference between two points of view expressed by other senior members of the ruling Likud Party during the past two days at the Herzliya Conference, sponsored by the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, a collection of research and study institutes.
Earlier at the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, contending that current occupation policies were not working, called for "immediate, grand, one-sided moves" aimed at separating the Israelis and the Palestinians.
But other Likud leaders, including Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, opposed unilateral steps.
"I oppose unilateral steps because they provide a prize for terrorism," Mr. Shalom said Wednesday. "They weaken our ability to conduct negotiations about a future agreement, they don't take us anywhere, and they don't lead to any feeling of commitment on the part of the Palestinians."
But in his speech, Mr. Sharon argued that the disengagement plan he had in mind was aimed at improving Israeli security and not at undermining the possibility of a permanent negotiated settlement.
"The steps which will be taken will not change the political reality between Israel and the Palestinians, and will not prevent the possibility of returning to the implementation of the road map and reaching an agreed settlement," he said.
-------
Sharon Threatens To Redraw Borders
Palestinians Assail Plan to End Talks
By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13478-2003Dec18.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 18 -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday night that Israel would end negotiations with the Palestinians "in a few months" and unilaterally declare new borders if the Palestinian government did not immediately act to halt terrorism.
Sharon proposed what he described as a "disengagement plan" in which Israel would evacuate some Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories and draw a new "security line," largely along the route of the massive fence and wall currently being built by Israel around much of the West Bank.
In a nationally televised speech before a security conference in the coastal town of Herzliya, Sharon also threatened to unilaterally annex Palestinian land in several locations, saying, "Israel will strengthen its control" over areas that it wants to include as "an inseparable part of the state of Israel in any future agreement."
Sharon's 19-minute speech was short on specifics, but if he follows through, it would mark a significant turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His warning that Israel was prepared to take unilateral actions was immediately criticized by Palestinian officials. The plan could effectively end years of talks aimed at achieving a negotiated peace settlement leading to the side-by-side existence of two states -- Israel and Palestine. It would contradict demands by the Bush administration that the Israeli and Palestinian governments continue trying to resolve their differences at the bargaining table.
"We are pleased to hear Prime Minister Sharon's strong reiteration of his support for the 'road map' as the way forward," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in Washington, referring to the U.S.-backed peace process that has been sidelined because of continuing violence.
"We would oppose any unilateral steps that block the road toward negotiations under the road map that lead to the two-state vision," McClellan added, calling on the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers to meet face to face "very soon and without any preconditions."
Later, a senior Bush administration official briefing reporters in Washington hailed Sharon's speech as a "very positive" development that could help break the stalemate in the peace process and reaffirmed the road map. Any suggestion that the United States was displeased by Sharon's remarks, he said, was "a misreading of what Scott McClellan said."
The White House, he said, is "not opposed to unilateral steps by Israelis and Palestinians as long as they move the ball forward. There is nothing wrong with unilateral steps that reinforce the road map."
He also disputed suggestions that Sharon had threatened the Palestinians or planned to impose a final settlement on his own terms. "We do not read the prime minister as saying that," he said. "I don't think I would accept the word 'threat.' " He dismissed some of Sharon's comments as "hypotheticals" that were in the speech primarily for "Israeli domestic political reasons."
Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, said Sharon's speech "was totally in contradiction to the road map." He added: "A unilateral path will not provide Israel with security."
Sharon's speech seemed designed to set a new agenda after criticism of his leadership and widely publicized efforts by political opponents to launch their own peace proposals.
Many analysts blame Palestinians and Israelis equally for the failure of the road map, saying that while Palestinians did little to combat terrorism, the Israelis failed to ease hardships on Palestinians, freeze settlement growth and dismantle illegal settlement outposts.
In his speech, Sharon insisted that Israel would dismantle unauthorized outposts and ease living conditions for Palestinians, promises he has made before but which some analysts say he has largely not fulfilled.
"Palestinians must fulfill their obligations" under the road map to combat terrorism, Sharon said. He said it was "imperative to implement" the road map, but added, "I do not intend to wait for them indefinitely."
Sharon said, "If, in a few months, the Palestinians still continue to disregard their part in implementing the road map," then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians." He said such action "will be fully coordinated with the United States."
"This shifts the terms of the debate dramatically and dangerously," said Naomi Chazan, a political scientist and former member of Israel's parliament from the dovish Meretz Party. "It ends the debate over whether there will be a Palestinian state and asks how it is going to happen. The answer seems to be: unilaterally, wherever I want and whenever I feel like doing it."
Yaron Ezrahi, a political analyst who teaches at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said: "We should all take this speech with a degree of skepticism. Two key things were not very specific -- time and space. [Sharon] spoke in a language of action, but nobody who heard it would know what to do next."
Although Sharon did not mention any settlements by name, analysts and political leaders said that any settlement evacuation likely would be limited to perhaps a half-dozen of the smallest and most isolated ones in the Gaza Strip and in remote areas of the West Bank. If there were an annexation, settlement officials and political analysts said, it probably would be of large settlement blocks that have been constructed in the past two decades on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Though some Jewish settlement officials immediately denounced Sharon's threats to "relocate" settlements, Nissan Slomiansky, a member of the Israeli parliament from the National Religious Party and a longtime leader in the settler movement, said he was not alarmed: "It sounds like he's talking about some isolated locations. We are not talking about tens of thousands of settlers." He also questioned whether Sharon ultimately would take any action against settlements. "Until now there has been only talk," he said.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and researcher Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
-------- pakistan / india
With eye on India, Pakistan launches home-made sub
REUTERS INDIA:
December 15, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23105/newsDate/15-Dec-2003/story.htm
KARACHI - With one eye on nuclear rival India, Pakistan launched its first home-made submarine last week in what the navy called a "quantum leap" towards military self-reliance.
At a ceremony at Karachi's naval dockyard, President Pervez Musharraf inaugurated the Agosta 90B submarine five years after construction began with the help of French state-controlled naval shipbuilder Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN).
"It has given a considerable boost to our defence capabilities," the military leader said. "Pakistan has joined the elite group of countries which can construct submarines. It is a step toward self-reliance."
The launch of the vessel was delayed by the U.S.-led war in neighbouring Afghanistan and the killing in May 2002 of 11 French naval technicians working on the project by a suicide bomber. The attack has been linked to Islamic militant groups in Pakistan.
"I express my heartfelt condolences to the families of the French engineers who lost their lives in this gruesome attack," Musharraf said.
The diesel-electric submarine is the second of three to be constructed under a deal with France, and the navy said in a statement it would go on building conventional submarines once they were finished. The first of the three was built in France and has been in service with the Pakistan navy since 1999.
The Agostas have been fitted with modern command and control systems and are capable of launching anti-ship missiles and torpedoes. It is designed as an anti-submarine, anti-surface and intelligence gathering resource.
MAIN THREAT INTERNAL
Musharraf said the main threat to Pakistan was not "external", but came from religious extremism and sectarianism.
"This menace of extremism is eating us like termites. All Muslims are facing a threat because of it," he said.
But the navy made a pointed reference to India:
"The induction of this new submarine...will help maintain peace and stability in this volatile region by deterring our main adversary from any kind of adventurism," the statement said.
Pakistan has become increasingly alarmed at aggressive defence acquisitions by India in recent years, saying that they could further upset the military balance in South Asia in conventional and nuclear forces.
Musharraf recently banned six radical Islamic groups, some of which had already been outlawed but reappeared under new names.
The groups have been blamed for a wave of violence aimed at Western and Christian targets as well as Pakistanis from rival Muslim sects.
Some outfits have been linked to the al Qaeda network and others are involved in a separatist insurgency in the disputed Kashmir region, the trigger for two of three wars between India and Pakistan since independence from Britain.
The neighbours are taking tentative steps towards peace after coming to the brink of war last year, although there is little prospect of a swift resolution to the core Kashmir issue.
Musharraf criticised India for building a fence along the heavily militarised de facto border dividing the two countries in the Himalayan region.
"There should be no change on the Line of Control, especially when there are talks of rapprochement."
Both countries are holding to a ceasefire along the frontier ahead of a regional summit in Islamabad in January which may provide a platform for further peace initiatives.
(Additional reporting by Mike Collett-White in Karachi)
-------- spies
Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show
Trip Followed Criticism Of Chemical Arms' Use
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13558-2003Dec18.html
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I14769-2003Dec19L
Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.
Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.
The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."
The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit National Security Archive, provide new, behind-the-scenes details of U.S. efforts to court Iraq as an ally even as it used chemical weapons in its war with Iran.
An earlier trip by Rumsfeld to Baghdad, in December 1983, has been widely reported as having helped persuade Iraq to resume diplomatic ties with the United States. An explicit purpose of Rumsfeld's return trip in March 1984, the once-secret documents reveal for the first time, was to ease the strain created by a U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons.
The documents do not show what Rumsfeld said in his meetings with Aziz, only what he was instructed to say. It would be highly unusual for a presidential envoy to have ignored direct instructions from Shultz.
When details of Rumsfeld's December trip came to light last year, the defense secretary told CNN that he had "cautioned" Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, an account that was at odds with the declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting, which did not mention such a caution. Later, a Pentagon spokesman said Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Aziz.
Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said yesterday that "the secretary said what he said, and I would go with that. He has a recollection of how that meeting went, and I can't imagine that some additional cable is going to change how he recalls the meeting."
"I don't think it has to be inconsistent," Di Rita said. "You could make a strong condemnation of the use of chemical weapons, or any kind of lethal agents, and then say, with that in mind, 'Here's another set of issues' " to be discussed.
Last year, the Bush administration cited its belief that Iraq had and would use weapons of mass destruction -- including chemical, biological and nuclear devices -- as the principal reason for going to war.
But throughout 1980s, while Iraq was fighting a prolonged war with Iran, the United States saw Hussein's government as an important ally and bulwark against the militant Shiite extremism seen in the 1979 revolution in Iran. Washington worried that the Iranian example threatened to destabilize friendly monarchies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Publicly, the United States maintained neutrality during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980.
Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.
Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archives, a Washington-based research center, said the secret support for Hussein offers a lesson for U.S. foreign relations in the post-Sept. 11 world.
"The dark corners of diplomacy deserve some scrutiny, and people working in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Uzbekistan deserve this kind of scrutiny, too, because the relations we're having with dictators today will produce Saddams tomorrow."
Shultz, in his instructions to Rumsfeld, underscored the confusion that the conflicting U.S. signals were creating for Iraq.
"Iraqi officials have professed to be at a loss to explain our actions as measured against our stated objectives," he wrote. "As with our CW statement, their temptation is to give up rational analysis and retreat to the line that U.S. policies are basically anti-Arab and hostage to the desires of Israel."
The declassified documents also show the hope of another senior diplomat, the British ambassador to Iraq, in working constructively with Hussein.
Shortly after Hussein became deputy to the president in 1969, then-British Ambassador H.G. Balfour Paul cabled back his impressions after a first meeting: "I should judge him, young as he is, to be a formidable, single-minded and hard-headed member of the Ba'athist hierarchy, but one with whom, if only one could see more of him, it would be possible to do business."
"A presentable young man" with "an engaging smile," Paul wrote. "Initially regarded as a [Baath] Party extremist, but responsibility may mellow him."
Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this article.
-------- un
Annan Sets Meeting on U.N. Role in Iraq
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A34
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13544-2003Dec18.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 18 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Thursday invited the United States, its military allies and Iraq's political leaders to New York next month to discuss and define the U.N.'s future role in Iraq.
Annan's request for talks comes as the United Nations is facing increasing pressure from Washington and Baghdad to return to Iraq to help oversee the transfer of power. It reflected the U.N. chief's growing doubts about U.S. and Iraqi commitments to assign the United Nations a meaningful and independent role in Iraq's political transition.
Annan complained at his annual year-end news conference that the United Nations was not mentioned in a November agreement between the United States and the Iraqis on a schedule for a handover of power next summer. "There have been some questions as to whether this was an omission or a message," Annan said. "This is something we will have to clarify when we sit down." The meeting is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 15.
Annan said that a delegation from the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council would attend the meeting but that he had only begun "preliminary consultations" with representatives of the U.S.-led coalition. "I would want the coalition also to clarify what they want us to do," he said.
U.S. officials here were caught off-guard by Annan's initiative and said that the United States has not decided whether to the accept the invitation. "I was not aware at this stage of any invitation to the coalition," John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters after Annan's announcement.
Negroponte and other U.S. officials said that the U.N. role in Iraq is spelled out in postwar resolutions adopted by the Security Council. They said they believe that further discussions should take place in Baghdad.
"Under existing resolutions, there's ample scope for activity by the United Nations," Negroponte said. "I would emphasize that we would welcome the return of the United Nations and its personnel to Iraq as soon as absolutely possible."
The United Nations evacuated most of its staff from Iraq in November after terrorists attacks on U.N. personnel. At least 24 employees and associates, including the U.N.'s top envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello, were killed.
Although Annan assembled a new team this month to oversee U.N. Iraq operations from offices in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Amman, Jordon, he has resisted calls to establish a permanent headquarters in Baghdad.
Iraq's interim foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, appealed to Annan this week to send a U.N. mission back to Iraq. He also invited Annan to visit Iraq and pledged to send him a letter outlining the role the Iraqis want the United Nations to play.
"I did not give him an answer," Annan said.
Annan insisted that his demands for greater clarification of the U.N.'s role in Iraq were not a stalling tactic. It "is not an attempt to sit on the fence; it's a real substantive issue," he said. "We will return to Iraq when a secure environment has been created. That does not mean that we have ruled out going to Iraq during the [U.S.] occupation."
-------- us
Medical evacuations from Iraq near 11,000
By Mark Benjamin
United Press International
12/19/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031217-032344-8720r
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- The total number of wounded soldiers and medical evacuations from the war in Iraq is nearing 11,000, according to new Pentagon data provided in response to a request from United Press International.
The military has made 8,581 medical evacuations from Operation Iraqi Freedom for non-hostile causes in addition to the 2,273 wounded -- a total of 10,854, according to the new data. The Pentagon says that 457 troops have died.
The Pentagon's casualty update for Operation Iraqi Freedom listed on its Web site, however, does not reflect thousands of the evacuations.
It is a toll the country has not seen since Vietnam, said Aseneth Blackwell, former national president of Gold Star Wives of America, Inc., a support group for people who lose a spouse from war.
"It is staggering," said Blackwell.
Blackwell, who lost her husband in 1969 in Vietnam, sometimes visits Walter Reed Army Medical Center where some Iraq veterans get medical care. "To see these guys walking around up there with an arm missing, a leg missing, that is when it hits you in the face," said Blackwell.
According to data released to UPI from the Army Medical Command, the military as of Nov. 30 made 8,581 medical evacuations for bone injuries, surgeries, brain problems, heart illness, mental problems and other non-hostile causes.
But the Pentagon's casualty update as of Dec. 17 on its Web site reported only 364 soldiers as "non-hostile wounded" in addition to reporting that 457 troops have died and 2,273 soldiers have been wounded in action.
Pentagon spokesman Jim Turner said the Pentagon casualty update reports battle deaths and injuries. "What you are seeing on the (casualty update) are the types of injuries you would see in battle."
The Pentagon's definition for casualty, released by Turner, is "any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured."
Turner did not return a phone call or e-mail asking for a clarification of the Pentagon's casualty update.
A veterans' advocate said the Pentagon should report non-hostile incidents as casualties. "They are considered casualties," said Bill Smith, a spokesman at Veterans of Foreign Wars.
In response to a request from UPI about non-hostile incidents, the Army Medical Command this week released data that show 3,843 medical evacuations for "non-battle injuries" and 4,738 for "disease" between March 19 and Nov. 30. Examples of non-battle evacuations were for bone injuries and surgery, the Army said. Examples of disease evacuations include brain, heart, stomach, or mental problems. The evacuations include causes as diverse as dental problems and gynecological issues.
The data from the Army on medical evacuations for non-combat problems only includes evacuations to Army medical facilities and not facilities run by other services, according to Army Surgeon General spokeswoman Virginia Stephanakis. Stephanakis said she does not know how many troops were sent to other facilities, but said that number is small.
It also excludes an unknown number of troops treated in Iraq who did not require a medical evacuation, and soldiers whose illnesses do not show up until later, like post-traumatic stress disorder.
In an e-mail, Army Medical Command spokesman Jaime Cavazos said it was important to remember that evacuations were for "both serious and not-so-serious" problems, but provided no detail. He also said that one individual might represent multiple evacuations, if a soldier were evacuated "back and forth between Iraq and (medical facilities in) Germany several times," but provided no data. He did not return a call seeking further explanation.
-------- war crimes
Bosnian Serb Gets 23 Years for War Crimes
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/international/europe/19HAGU.html
THE HAGUE, Dec. 18 - A Bosnian Serb prison camp commander who allowed his troops to rape, torture and murder his Muslim prisoners was sentenced Thursday to 23 years in jail at the United Nations war crimes tribunal.
The commander, Dragan Nikolic, 46, showed no emotion as the presiding judge, Wolfgang Schomburg, read the sentence, which was longer than the 15 years prosecutors had recommended.
Mr. Schomburg said Mr. Nikolic deserved to be sentenced to life in prison on the basis of his "sadistic" crimes but was shown clemency because he admitted guilt and expressed remorse.
"Not a single day or night at the camp passed by without Dragan Nikolic and others committing barbarous acts," including beatings with iron bars and rubber tubing with lead inside, Mr. Schomburg said, reading the judgment of the three-judge panel.
Mr. Nikolic was charged with war crimes in 1994, but eluded arrest until 2000.
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Clark Calls Milosevic 'Force' Behind Wars
Testimony Focuses on '95 Massacre
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11251-2003Dec18.html
PARIS, Dec. 18 -- Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a former NATO commander, told the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague that Yugoslavia's former president, Slobodan Milosevic, said in 1995 that he had prior knowledge of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, the worst act of slaughter of the Bosnian civil war, according to transcripts of Clark's testimony released Thursday.
Testifying Monday, Clark also told the tribunal that based on extensive conversations with Milosevic during political negotiations in the 1990s, he believed that Milosevic was the "guiding force" of the ethnic wars in the Balkans and that Bosnian Serb militias took direction from and reported to the former president.
Clark, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, was called as a prosecution witness against Milosevic, who is being tried on charges of war crimes and genocide in connection with the conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Clark's appearances before the court Monday and Tuesday brought together two adversaries who know each other well and resulted in frequent tense exchanges. Speaking in his native Serbian, Milosevic used his cross-examination of Clark on Tuesday to try to turn the trial into a political forum and make his own indictment of NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. He hammered away at Clark as a "war criminal," and accused him of deceitfulness and of commanding a "terrorist" army by siding with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
At one point, Milosevic displayed a picture of a KLA soldier holding up two severed heads of Serbs and asked, "Are these allies of General Clark's infantry in Kosovo?" Later, Milosevic asked, "Do you think you are a war criminal, General Clark?"
Presiding Judge Richard May interrupted such questions, stopping Milosevic before Clark could respond.
In his presidential campaign, Clark is using his NATO experience as evidence that he has the foreign policy expertise to challenge President Bush in November. The trial has offered him a forum to showcase the crowning operation of his military career, the bombing campaign that drove Serb troops from Kosovo.
But the trial transcripts also show that his appearance a little more than a month before the Democratic primary in New Hampshire also carried pitfalls. During the proceedings, Milosevic made reference to questions about Clark's temperament and penchant for independence that had drawn criticism from his superiors.
At one point, Milosevic cited an article in the New Yorker magazine quoting Gen. Henry H. Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying that Clark was removed from his post as NATO commander for "integrity and character issues" and that Shelton would not vote for Clark.
"So your former superior talks about your character. Isn't that right, General Clark?" Milosevic said. He later asked: "Why were you removed from your post prematurely?"
Clark responded by reading a lengthy commendation given to him by then-defense secretary William Cohen, and also the citation read by President Bill Clinton when he awarded Clark the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clark said, "I want to assure this court that there is no merit whatsoever in the statement made by a military colleague during the course of a political campaign."
The lengthy reading of the citations prompted the judge to ask Clark how long he intended to go on. A video of the proceeding will be released Friday.
Clark has said he spent more than 100 hours in meetings with Milosevic between 1995 and January 1999. After his appearance, Clark said he found Milosevic virtually unchanged. "He's the same guy," Clark said in an interview.
Much of Clark's testimony centered on his first encounter with Milosevic, in August 1995, when Clark was a military adviser to Richard C. Holbrooke, then U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, during negotiations that led to the Dayton peace accords, which ended the Bosnian war.
Clark said he recalled asking Milosevic at that session, "should we be dealing with you, or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?" He said Milosevic replied, "With me, of course."
Clark said he recalled a break in the meeting, when he privately asked Milosevic: "You say you have too much influence over the Bosnian Serbs. How is it then, if you have such influence, you allowed General Mladic to kill all those people in Srebrenica?" Ratko Mladic was the Bosnian Serb military commander.
According to Clark, Milosevic replied, "I warned Mladic not to do this, but he didn't listen to me." Clark said he found the remark "stunning" because "that was an admission that he had foreknowledge of Srebrenica." Clark also said he did not know whether Milosevic was telling the truth when he said he tried to stop the slaughter.
Nina Bang-Jensen, director of the Coalition for International Justice in Washington, said establishing that Milosevic had advance knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre was all that was needed "to hold him legally liable, because he has a duty to prevent it. And if he claims he could not prevent it, then he must punish the perpetrator" afterward, she said. "This is settled war crimes law."
Milosevic, however, called Clark's account "a blatant lie" and denied that such an exchange took place.
More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed in Srebrenica when Serb forces overran a U.N.-protected enclave. It was Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
Staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Chief of Sept. 11 Panel Assesses Blame but Holds Off on Higher-Ups
December 19, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/national/19KEAN.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The chairman of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said on Thursday that information long available to the public showed that the attacks could have been prevented had a group of low- and mid-level government employees at the F.B.I., the immigration service and elsewhere done their jobs properly.
The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in a telephone interview that his investigators were still studying whether senior Bush administration officials should also share the blame. He said it was too early to suggest that White House aides or other senior officials had been derelict.
"There were people at the borders who let these people in even though they didn't have proper papers to get into this country," Mr. Kean said of immigration inspectors who allowed the hijackers into the United States.
"There were visa people who let these people in," he said. "There were F.B.I. people who, when they got reports from Phoenix and Minnesota and elsewhere, didn't think they were important enough to buck up to the higher-ups. There were security officers at the airports who let these people onto airplanes even though they were carrying materials that weren't allowed on airplanes."
Mr. Kean said an interview that was broadcast Wednesday by CBS News was being misinterpreted as suggesting that he was calling for the departure of senior administration officials.
"We don't have the evidence to do that yet," he said. "We're doing the work. The report may in fact end up suggesting that people are the subject of some serious criticism."
Mr. Kean, whose bipartisan 10-member panel is to issue a final report in May, said he was surprised that some midlevel officials at the F.B.I. and in federal immigration agencies had not been removed from their jobs, given errors before the Sept. 11 attacks that may have allowed the hijacking plot to go undetected.
"It surprises me that if there were serious mistakes, there haven't been any consequences of those mistakes," he said.
The F.B.I. had no formal response to Mr. Kean's comments. A bureau official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the actions of the midlevel personnel before Sept. 11 were "under review, including an inspector general's review of whether there were institutional or personnel issues that should be addressed."
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Kean Says 9/11 Attacks Could Have Been Prevented
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13300-2003Dec18.html
The chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said he believes that the strikes could have been prevented, a claim that President Bush's spokesman rejected yesterday.
In an interview with CBS News broadcast Wednesday night, Tom Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who was chosen by Bush to head the panel, said the attacks could have been avoided. "I do not believe it had to happen," he said in the interview.
Asked whether people should have been fired, he replied: "There were people certainly, if I was doing the job, who would certainly not be in the position that they were in at that time, because they failed. They simply failed."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that the administration has not changed its view on whether the attacks could have been thwarted. "As we have previously said, there is nothing that we have seen that leads us to believe that September 11th could have been prevented," he said. "We previously said that. That still stands."
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission headed by Kean, noted, as others have previously, that some terrorists had expired visas, that all eluded aviation security and that there was miscommunication between intelligence agencies that may have kept authorities from following clues to the attacks. "If any of these things hadn't happened, it might have been a different story," he said.
But Felzenberg said Kean "did not intend to make news" with his remarks, which were made two weeks ago at the end of a long interview that focused on Kean's role as a university president. Felzenberg also pointed out that Kean said at the commission's opening hearing in March that the system had failed.
Kean is not the first public official to suggest that the attacks might have been prevented. After a lengthy investigation by a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees concluded last summer, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) co-chairman of the panel, said that the attacks of Sept. 11 "could have been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and some good luck had been brought to task."
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) has on several occasions criticized the FBI and CIA for failing to follow up on other clues.
In the interview, Kean said it is not yet clear whether the same people who were in crucial roles in September 2001 are still in those positions. But Kean said he would find the answer.
"This is a very, very important part of history, and we've got to tell it right," he said.
-------- courts
Detainee to Get Hearing
9th Circuit Ruling Could Lead to Court Dates for Others at Guantanamo Bay
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13460-2003Dec18.html
In the first ruling of its kind, a federal appeals court yesterday decided that a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba should be granted a court hearing in the United States inquiring into his detention, and raised the possibility that all the 660 or so prisoners there could likewise be given court dates in this country.
But legal observers said that the 2 to 1 decision by a three-judge panel in San Francisco almost certainly will become moot after it is inevitably folded into a pending U.S. Supreme Court case that is expected to take up similar issues sometime in the spring.
Yesterday's decision was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, one of the nation's most liberal appeals courts. The case was filed by the U.S.-based brother of a Libyan detainee at Guantanamo Bay named Falen Gherebi.
The decision contains powerful language raising questions about the U.S. government's policy of holding the prisoners in Cuba without allowing them lawyers or access to U.S. courts, and it echoes concerns raised by human rights activists around the world.
"We simply cannot accept the government's position that the executive branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included . . . without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum," Reinhardt said in the ruling, joined by one other judge.
Until the U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to hear its Guantanamo case, previous federal court decisions inquiring into some of the same legal questions had established that the Guantanamo Bay captives have no right to habeas corpus hearings. Judges in the previous cases cited a 1950 Supreme Court decision establishing that foreign nationals imprisoned by the United States in foreign countries had no habeas corpus rights in U.S. courts.
The U.S. government maintains that the Guantanamo Bay naval base, leased from Cuba since 1903, is on foreign soil, but the Ninth Circuit panel said the fact that the United States controls the prison there means the captives have certain rights. A dissent by one judge on the three-judge panel agreed with the government position.
Some legal experts said the fact that it was the Ninth Circuit that rendered yesterday's decision might make it harder for the lawyers of detainees' families in the upcoming Supreme Court case to win over some of the conservative justices they need to prevail.
"The Ninth Circuit has such a liberal reputation that yesterday's decision might . . . give some of the conservative justices an incentive to vote against" granting habeas corpus, said one lawyer working on the case.
The pending Supreme Court case springs from two proceedings filed on behalf of 16 British, Australian and Kuwaiti detainees whose relatives asked that they be given the right to demand their freedom in U.S. courts.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced yesterday the appointment of a military defense lawyer to represent one of the 660 detainees who might be tried before special military tribunal. The name of this prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, had not publicly emerged before. The assignment of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift as his attorney indicates Hamdan could be one of the first to be taken before a tribunal, officials said.
One other detainee, David Hicks of Australia, has been assigned an attorney.
--------
NEWS ANALYSIS
In Debate on Antiterrorism, the Courts Assert Themselves
December 19, 2003
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/national/19ASSE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The broad presidential powers invoked by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, to detain suspected terrorists outside the civilian court system is now being challenged by the federal courts, the very branch of the government the White House hoped to circumvent.
The two separate appellate court rulings on Thursday swept away crucial parts of the administration's legal strategy to handle terrorist suspects outside the criminal justice system and incarcerate them indefinitely without access to lawyers or to the evidence against them.
The rulings are by no means a final judicial verdict on the administration's approach. But the rulings demonstrated powerfully the willingness of the courts to challenge the administration's procedures, which were put in place without Congressional approval in the tumultuous months that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
The issue of whether the administration has gone too far will not be decided definitively until the cases reach the Supreme Court. The court has agreed to decide whether detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to access to civilian courts to challenge their open-ended detention.
Nevertheless, in one sense the administration has already lost an important point by the courts' willingness to ignore assertions that the issues are exclusively within the discretion of the executive branch.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the two decisions were a serious setback for the administration's legal approach.
"The Padilla decision emphasized the Bush administration's unilateralism versus Congress," Mr. Roth said, referring to an appellate court ruling on Thursday in the case of a United States citizen, Jose Padilla, arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism.
"The Ninth Circuit decision said that you can't create a legal black hole in territory controlled by the United States," Mr. Roth added, referring to a second ruling on Thursday related to noncitizens captured in the Afghan war and detained at a naval base in Guantánamo Bay.
"Both attacked the Bush administration's view that a war metaphor can justify restrictions on basic criminal justice rights away from a traditional battlefield," Mr. Roth said.
The rulings suggested the possibility that the administration could be forced to redefine its strategy, possibly by seeking Congressional authorization or by returning to established legal procedures to deal with suspected terrorists.
But on Thursday, administration officials gave no sign that they would retreat from their approach. "Actually these rulings are an aberration," said a senior Justice Department official. "The administration has been upheld time and time again."
The official cited rulings supporting presidential authority to freeze assets of organizations that help finance terrorists and allowing the government to close immigration hearings in cases related to Sept. 11.
The arrangement for detaining terrorist suspects was developed against a backdrop of fear as American military planners prepared for war in Afghanistan. Mr. Bush's legal advisers worried that if terror cases were tried in the existing civilian and military justice systems, prosecutors would be forced to give away too much information to terrorist enemies.
In criminal courts, defendants are entitled to lawyers, have a right to a speedy trial and must be advised of the evidence and witnesses against them - concessions that the Bush administration did not want to grant to combatants in a war with adversaries who recognized none of the traditional rules of combat.
In New York on Thursday, a federal appeals court opinion in the case of Mr. Padilla struck at the heart of that aggressive strategy. The panel's 2-to-1 opinion said that the president lacked the authority to exercise such broad coercive powers against American citizens without the consent of Congress.
Specifically, the judges attacked the government's designation of Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant, a category of detainee that was created shortly after Sept. 11 to hold suspected terrorists without the rights that criminal suspects are routinely granted in the civilian court system.
Mr. Padilla has been identified as a lower-level Qaeda operative who entered the United States to plan an attack involving a so-called dirty bomb, which spews radiological material using conventional explosives.
Government officials have said that it was Abu Zubaydah, a senior Qaeda operative detained in an unknown location who provided the information that led to Mr. Padilla's arrest. Later, officials said that Mr. Padilla was dispatched to the United States by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, another top Qaeda operational leader, who was also captured earlier this year.
The officials said that in a criminal trial they would be forced to disclose information about Mr. Padilla that Mr. Zubaydah or Mr. Mohammed had provided to interrogators, a step that intelligence analysts say would pose a risk to national security.
In the case in San Francisco, a 2-to-1 panel said on Thursday that the detention of 660 noncitizens at Guantánamo Bay without the protection of the American legal system was unconstitutional and a violation of international law.
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U.S. Courts Reject Detention Policy in 2 Terror Cases
December 19, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS and WILLIAM GLABERSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/national/19DETA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
A divided federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday that President Bush lacked the authority to detain indefinitely a United States citizen arrested on American soil on suspicion of terrorism simply by declaring him "an enemy combatant."
Within hours, a second federal appeals court, based in San Francisco, also in a divided ruling, declared that the administration's policy of imprisoning some 660 noncitizens captured in the Afghan war on a naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without access to United States legal protections was unconstitutional as well as a violation of international law.
The twin blows to the underpinnings of the administration's elaborate legal strategy erected after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks make it all the more likely that the Supreme Court will have the final say on matters that the administration had argued did not belong in the courts in the first place.
The Supreme Court agreed just last month to hear the case of the detainees at Guantánamo and is widely expected to rule as well on the issues raised in the case of Jose Padilla, the American declared an enemy combatant.
The court is also expected to announce next week whether it will hear a related case involving Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been held alongside Mr. Padilla in the naval brig in Charleston, S.C. Mr. Hamdi, who is believed to be a United States citizen as well as a Saudi, was arrested in Afghanistan and is being held as an enemy combatant, an action that was upheld by an appeals court based in Richmond, Va.
The ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, involved Mr. Padilla, former gang member in Chicago and convert to Islam. His case drew wide attention when Attorney General John Ashcroft said in June 2002 that he had been planning to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.
The majority of the three-judge panel ruled that while Congress might have the power to authorize the detention of an American, the president, acting on his own, did not.
"The president, acting alone, possesses no inherent constitutional authority to detain American citizens seized within the United States, away from the zone of combat, as enemy combatants," said the majority, composed of Judges Rosemary S. Pooler, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, and Barrington D. Parker Jr., appointed by President Bush.
The appeals court gave the government 30 days to release Mr. Padilla or take some other action. The judges said the government could then bring criminal charges against him in civilian courts or seek to have him held as a material witness, a procedure that has been used to detain others and that is similarly under challenge in federal courts.
In a strong dissent, Judge Richard C. Wesley, a Bush appointee, said he believed the president had the power to "thwart acts of belligerency on U.S. soil." Judge Wesley called it startling that the majority would say the president lacked authority to detain a citizen terrorist who was "dangerously close" to putting Americans in peril.
The chief White House spokesman said the administration would seek to have the Padilla ruling overturned.
"The president's most solemn obligation is protecting the American people," said the spokesman, Scott McClellan. "We believe the Second Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed. The president has directed the Justice Department to seek a stay, and further judicial review."
In the case of the Guantánamo detainees, the ruling, by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, provides a counterweight to an earlier ruling by a federal appeals court based in Washington, which had unequivocally supported the administration's position that the detention camp in Cuba was out of the reach of United States law.
Yesterday's decision out of San Francisco means that when the justices deliberate the issues of Guantánamo as they have already agreed to do, they will have two conflicting lower court opinions on which to deliberate.
While the Guantánamo situation has provoked anger both in the United States and abroad, the issues raised in the New York ruling were, if anything, more contentious. The detention of United States citizens arrested on American soil as enemy combatants and consequently keeping them from the usual legal protections Americans enjoy have been treated as especially alarming by civil liberties advocates.
"This is by far the biggest legal setback the administration has faced in conducting its war on terrorism," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and the author of a recent book on the subject. "That's because this is the furthest they've gone out on a limb. They had essentially asserted that the president had unchecked authority to label U.S. citizens as enemy combatants anywhere in the United States and lock them up."
Mr. Padilla has been held incommunicado for 18 months at a Navy brig in Charleston. The court majority said he should be entitled to full constitutional protections, including access to his lawyers. His lawyers have not been permitted to see him since President Bush declared him an enemy combatant in June 2002.
"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center once stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat Al Qaeda poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," Judges Parker and Pooler wrote.
"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum," they said, "and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued but whether the president is obligated" to share them with Congress.
The majority said a law known as the Non-Detention Act provides that "no citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an act of Congress." The court said the joint Congressional resolution authorizing operations against terrorism after Sept. 11 "contains no language authorizing detention."
In the ruling on the Guantánamo detainees by the appeals court in San Francisco, two judges on a three-judge panel similarly ruled against the Bush administration, with the third dissenting.
The majority opinion, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt and joined by Judge Milton I. Shadur, like Judge Reinhardt an appointee of President Jimmy Carter, based its conclusion on the notion that the naval base at Guantánamo is not part of Cuba as the government has contended and thus outside United States jurisdiction. The opinion said Guantánamo was clearly under the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and thus the plaintiff, Salim Gherebi, a Libyan, was entitled to the protections of United States law.
In dissent, Judge Susan P. Graber, a Clinton appointee, said she believed that a 1950 Supreme Court ruling precluded courts' intervention in the case.
The 58-page majority ruling is largely a discussion of the circumstances under which the United States controls Guantánamo, which it leased from Cuba in 1903 in perpetuity as long as it maintains a presence there.
The court said that under the government's approach, detainees like Mr. Gherebi "would appear to have no effective right to seek relief in the courts of any nation or before any judicial body." The opinion said that in times of national emergency like war, "it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike."
Stephen Yagman, Mr. Gherebi's lawyer, said he brought the case in California because that was where he was when he was approached by Mr. Gherebi's brother, who lives in San Diego.
Neil A. Lewis reported from Washington for this article, and William Glaberson from New York.
--------
PRISONS
Detainees' Abuse Is Detailed
December 19, 2003
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/national/19BROO.html
A report released yesterday by the Department of Justice's inspector general concluded that at one federal prison in Brooklyn, some staff members physically abused many illegal immigrants arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks, taunted them and illegally taped their meetings with lawyers.
Hundreds of illegal immigrants in the New York area were detained after the attacks. Almost all were found to have no tangible connection to terrorism; many have been deported or have left the country, officials said.
The report drew its conclusions from interviews with more than 30 detainees, dozens of prison officers and supervisors, and hundreds of videotapes.
The videotapes, which investigators found after they were told by prison employees that the tapes no longer existed, showed staff members slamming chained detainees into walls and twisting their elbows, often while the detainees were in chains, handcuffs or otherwise not resisting orders, the report said.
The report said there were accusations that guards smashed a detainee's face into a T-shirt taped to a wall. The shirt had an American flag and the words "These colors don't run!"
In other cases, the report said, prison officials illegally taped detainees' conversations with their lawyers. In a few cases, after talking with their lawyers through a solid partition and in the presence of prison staff members, some male detainees were needlessly stripped naked and searched in front of female employees, the report said.
The report recommended that the federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the Brooklyn detention center, discipline 10 employees whom it identified and several others whom it did not.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons did not respond to three calls for comment.
A Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, said the department's civil rights division and the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York would review the report to decide whether to prosecute.
Nancy Chang, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed a federal lawsuit against the Justice Department last year on behalf of several detainees, praised the report and called on prosecutors to use the videotapes to prosecute prison employees who abused detainees.
--------
Tapes Show Abuse of 9/11 Detainees
Justice Department Examines Videos Prison Officials Said Were Destroyed
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13497-2003Dec18?language=printer
Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday.
An investigation by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and used excessive strip searches and restraints to punish those in confinement.
The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.
"Some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time," the report said. "We determined that the way these MDC staff members handled some detainees was, in many respects, unprofessional, inappropriate and in violation of BOP policy."
One focus of the report was an American flag T-shirt that hung from a wall at the MDC with the slogan, "These colors don't run." Four corrections employees told investigators that the shirt, which hung in a prisoner receiving area for months, was covered with bloodstains, including some that appeared to have come from detainees being slammed into the wall.
A report issued by Fine in June found "a pattern of physical and verbal abuse" at the Brooklyn detention facility's Special Housing Unit, where 84 of the men picked up after the Sept. 11 attacks were held. But investigators said then that firm conclusions on abuse were impossible in many cases because of the lack of videotapes, which prison administrators said at the time had been destroyed.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said yesterday that federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and in the department's Civil Rights Division were reviewing the report to determine whether criminal charges were warranted. The Justice Department had previously declined to pursue any prosecutions in the cases.
"We agree with the inspector general that even the intense emotional atmosphere surrounding the attacks, particularly in New York City, where smoke was still rising from the rubble of Ground Zero, is no excuse for abhorrent behavior by Bureau of Prisons personnel," Corallo said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that the alleged misconduct of a few employees detracts from the fine work done by the correctional personnel at MDC and around the nation, who conducted themselves professionally and appropriately."
Bureau of Prisons officials declined to comment, referring all questions to the Justice Department. Barbara J. Olshansky, deputy legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group that is suing the federal government on behalf of detainees, said the report "is astounding confirmation of what we've alleged all along. This goes into exactly what kind of physical and verbal abuse there was and what the contradictions of the government's position has been. . . . It's clear that there was no provocation at any point, and clear that there was no justification for excessive force at any point."
A federal dragnet after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in the detention of more than 1,200 foreign nationals, including 762 people who were the focus of Fine's original probe. Most were of Arab or South Asian descent and were held on immigration violations under a directive from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft while authorities attempted to determine whether they were connected to the attack or to terrorist groups. None was ever charged with terrorism-related crimes, however.
Many of the incidents of abuse were confirmed when investigators viewed more than 300 videotapes recorded from October to November 2001 that showed detainees being moved around the facility and within their cells, investigators said. Corrections officers who had been interviewed earlier had denied that many of the incidents occurred. MDC Warden Michael Zenk and other officials repeatedly told Fine's investigators that the videotapes had been destroyed as part of a recycling policy, the report said.
The tapes eventually located in August had not been included on inventory sheets provided by the prison and were held in a storage room that also had not been disclosed to investigators, the report said. Many tapes from the period are still missing, and there are unexplained gaps the ones that were found, the report shows.
Many detainees also told investigators that, in the month before the installation of the camera system in October 2001, jail conditions and abuse had been much worse, the report noted. The cameras were installed in part to protect jail officers from unwarranted allegations, Fine said.
"If the camera wasn't on, I would have bashed your face," one detainee was allegedly told by a guard. "The camera is your best friend."
Fine said in an interview that the prison system's failure to turn over all the videotapes "significantly delayed and hindered our investigation," but "we did not find sufficient evidence to prove it was an effort to cover anything up."
He said he remained concerned about allegations of abuse in the weeks before the installation of a video system. "If these incidents are an indication of what was done in front of the camera, what may have occurred without them?" Fine asked. "It's cause for significant concern."
The public version of the report released yesterday does not name individual corrections officers or detainees, but it does describe in detail an unspecified number of violent incidents captured on film or witnessed by guards and law enforcement officials. Several lieutenants and officers interviewed by investigators indicated that they had seen incidents of abuse. One lieutenant told another that "slamming detainees against the wall was all part of being in jail and not to worry about it," the report said.
Another MDC officer said in an affidavit that "there were some lieutenants . . . who would [rein] in an officer for bouncing a detainee against the wall, but there were probably other lieutenants who would let it slide."
During two incidents captured on videotape, the report said, "we observed officers escort detainees down a hall at a brisk pace and ram them into a wall without slowing down before impact." In the numerous "slamming" incidents recorded on tape, the report said, there was no evidence that the detainees had provoked or attacked the guards.
On more than 40 occasions, the report found, MDC staff members recorded detainees' visits with their attorneys using video cameras set up on tripods outside visiting rooms. The tapes routinely captured "significant portions" of conversations between the detainees and legal counsel. In some cases, detainees were instructed not to speak in Arabic or to speak in English because they were being taped.
Such taping is a violation of federal regulations, Fine's investigation found. Prisons rules permit videotaping, but not audiotaping, of attorney visits.
Zenk, the prison warden, told investigators that the cameras were moved farther from the visiting room after an attorney complained in November 2001. But the report says that "as late as February 2002, conversations between detainees and their attorneys are still audible on many of the tapes."
Although the taping "potentially stifled detainees' open and free communications with legal counsel," the report noted that some of the recordings include allegations of physical and verbal abuse that were consistent with the allegations being probed.
The report found two incidents in which inmates were locked in restraints for more than seven hours despite no signs of resistance.
-------- drug war
Welfare Drug Tests to End
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/national/19DRUG.html
DETROIT, Dec. 18 - The State of Michigan on Thursday agreed not to resume its sweeping drug-testing program for welfare recipients, drawing to a close a four-year lawsuit between the state and the American Civil Liberties Union.
In April, a federal court of appeals ruled that Michigan's pilot drug-testing program was unconstitutional. The state had tested 268 people in 1999 before the A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit that year, halting the program.
In Thursday's out-of-court settlement, the state retained the right to test some welfare recipients if they are suspected of having substance abuse problems. Michigan has no plans to do so, said a spokeswoman for the Family Independence Agency, Maureen Sorbet.
In the five weeks Michigan's program operated, 8 percent of recipients tested positive, in line with national drug-use statistics.
-------- homeland security
DOMESTIC SECURITY
Terrorism Drills Showed Lack of Preparedness, Report Says
December 19, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/national/19TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - A classified Bush administration report has found that the largest counterterrorism exercise conducted by the federal government since the Sept. 11 attacks was marred by communications problems, serious shortages of medical supplies and hospital rooms and confusion over where the residue of a radiological attack would spread, administration officials said on Thursday.
The five-day exercise last May in Chicago and Seattle, known as Topoff 2, tested the response of federal agencies and local governments to nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks using biological agents and a so-called dirty bomb, a crude radiological device.
Administration officials said they were disturbed by the report's suggestion that a continuing lack of preparedness by federal and local governments would result in unnecessary deaths in the event of a major terrorist attack. But they insisted that many of the communications and logistical problems identified in the exercise had been corrected in the seven months since the $16 million exercise was conducted.
A brief, unclassified summary of the report, which is expected to be made public on Friday and was made available to The New York Times in advance, cited "critical" problems in Seattle in trying to determine where plumes of radiological contamination from a simulated dirty bomb in the city had spread. As a result, officials said, rescue teams were uncertain for hours where they could travel without risking radiation poisoning.
The summary showed that in Chicago, the problems were often more basic, and that the exercise showed that the city and local federal officials lacked an "efficient emergency communications infrastructure" to deal with a terrorism attack - in this case, a simulated attack with pneumonic plague, a deadly and highly contagious biological agent.
Emergency communications during the Chicago exercise relied heavily on regular telephone lines and fax machines, jamming phone lines for hours and slowing information among rescue teams.
The summary said there was also confusion in Chicago and the vicinity over local stockpiles of medical supplies and antibiotics that could be used to treat exposure to the plague and other bioterrorism agents. The report found that some jurisdictions involved in the Chicago exercise had stockpiles of medicine, while others did not, and that medical supplies from federal stockpiles were not necessarily distributed on the basis of need.
Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which directed the exercise, noted that the simulation occurred only four months after the department had formally opened for business.
"This was conducted in the first months of the department, before many of the response systems that we now have were in place," he said. "The Topoff 2 exercise was intended to find and address vulnerabilities associated with our response efforts." As a result of the exercise, he said, "we have created new systems by which to communicate with federal, state and local officials."
A major problem identified in the exercise - the federal government's inability to provide quick, consistent reports on the path of radiological, chemical or biological agents released in a terrorist attack - is the subject of intensive study at the Homeland Security Department, officials said.
Other administration officials said that whatever the emergency response problems identified in Topoff 2, the exercise had gone far better than Topoff 1, which was conducted in Denver in May 2000 and which identified glaring problems in the federal government's preparations to deal with a catastrophic terrorist attack.
City officials in Chicago and Seattle acknowledged that the exercise last May had turned up deficiencies in local preparations to deal with a terrorist strike. But they praised the Homeland Security Department for the conduct of the simulation, and both cities, which volunteered to participate in the exercise, said they were far better prepared for a terrorist attack as a result.
"We learned some things," said Cortez Trotter, executive director of the Office of Emergency Communications in Chicago, noting that the exercise had led his city to make changes in its communication systems for handling top-secret information and in the method it uses to gather information on the number of hospital beds and medical equipment available for treatment of terrorist victims.
"I believe that Chicago is as prepared as any major city in American in dealing with terrorism, but certainly we found some areas in which we can improve," he said.
Clark S. Kimerer, chief of operations for the Seattle Police Department, said in a telephone interview, "We found, literally, hundreds of fixable things."
He said the results of the exercise had led the city to order a $1 million mobile command center that would allow senior emergency response officers to move throughout the city. He said the city was also planning to purchase a mobile kitchen.
"We found that getting food to rescue workers was a problem," Mr. Kimerer said. "The food that we did deliver was sometimes not quite edible in the state it was. There was some frozen meat on a stick that might interest the Centers for Disease Control."
--------
Bioterrorism Drill Reveals Many Flaws
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterrorism-Drill.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government's largest bioterrorism drill since the Sept. 11 attacks revealed widespread communications problems and confusion among emergency personnel, according to a federal summary on Friday.
The drill last May was overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, which wanted to assess the country's readiness to deal with multiple terrorist attacks. It began in Seattle with the simulated detonation of a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' and ended four days later in Chicago with a raid on the fictional terrorist group responsible for the chaos.
A detailed report on the drill is classified, but Homeland Security officials released a 15-page summary. In it, they noted emergency crews in Seattle had trouble determining where the radiological contamination had spread, which would be key to evacuating and treating people in a real emergency.
Chicago's drill centered on responding to a deadly plague released on the city. The exercise exposed a serious shortage of medical supplies and hospital rooms.
Still, the report called the drill a success, saying it ``provided a tremendous learning experience'' for Homeland Security and hundreds of state and local agencies that work with it.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also hailed the results. The exercise posed a huge logistical challenge for an agency that was then only a few months old, Ridge said.
The report said uncertainty reigned during much of the drill, as officials weighed whether to raise the threat level of a specific area, declare an emergency or reopen public transportation systems.
``To the extent there were problems in those areas, communications issues were the likely cause,'' the report said.
Seattle Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer acknowledged the confusion, but said it was ``not crippling by any stretch.''
The goal of the exercise was to get very precise reading on the fictional plume, Kimerer said, but that proved difficult as officials waited for computer models to develop.
``On the other side of that, it didn't hamper decision-making in the field,'' he said.
Incident commanders made quick decisions -- in most cases assuming the plume area was larger than it ultimately was, Kimerer said. ``We'd rather do that than guess wrong and expose people to some risk,'' he said.
Chicago officials had a similar view. A total of 64 hospitals in Illinois participated in the drill, making it one of the largest mass casualty exercises ever undertaken.
The report said it was apparent there was a ``lack of a robust and efficient emergency communications infrastructure,'' with the biggest problem handling the unexpectedly large call volume.
Still, Cortez Trotter, director of Chicago's Office of Emergency Operations, called the exercise a success.
``I think Chicago did well,'' he said.
The exercise, a follow-up to a drill three years ago in Denver and New Hampshire, cost about $16 million and involved more than 8,500 people from 100 federal, state and local agencies, the American Red Cross and the Canadian government.
Associated Press Writer Dennis Conrad contributed to this story.
On the Net:
Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/
-------- prisons / prisoners
Seized Citizen Is Ordered Released Bush Overreached Powers, Court Says
By Michael Powell and Michelle García
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13579-2003Dec18?language=printer
NEW YORK, Dec. 18 -- A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Bush does not have the power to declare an American citizen seized on U.S. soil an "enemy combatant" and hold him indefinitely in military custody.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in a 2 to 1 ruling, gave the administration 30 days to release Jose Padilla, who allegedly plotted to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb." He has been confined to a South Carolina brig without access to an attorney for 19 months.
"The President's inherent constitutional powers do not extend to the detention as an enemy combatant of American citizens without express congressional authorization," the court concluded in a decision signed by Judges Barrington D. Parker and Rosemary S. Pooler. "Padilla will be entitled to the constitutional protections extended to other citizens."
Thursday's ruling constitutes one of the strongest judicial rebukes of the administration's tactics in the war on terrorism -- in this case, its policy of aggressively detaining suspects without formal charges and without access to lawyers or their families.
Also Thursday, a federal appeals court in California ruled that a detainee at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be granted a court hearing, and held open that possibility for all 660 alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters there. [See story, Page A19.] But the U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to review the same question.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the ruling in the Padilla case is "troubling and flawed" and that the Bush administration will seek a stay. He suggested that the Justice Department would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court if necessary.
"Let's remember," McClellan said, "we're talking about an individual who was involved in seeking to do harm to the American people. And the president has repeatedly said that his most solemn obligation . . . is to protect the American people."
If the 2nd Circuit's decision is not stayed -- many expect it will not be -- the Justice Department apparently would face three choices. It could hold Padilla as a material witness, charge him with a crime or set him free.
"The pendulum is swinging back," said Elisa Massimino of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which filed a brief in the case. "Even in a post-9/11 world, the president does not stand above the law and the Constitution."
Neal R. Sonnett, chairman of the American Bar Association's Task Force on Treatment of Enemy Combatants, stressed that he does not argue that Padilla, a former gang member who has served prison time for homicide, is necessarily innocent of conspiring with al Qaeda. The question, he said, is whether Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have defined their war on terrorism so broadly as to blur constitutional distinctions.
"None of us want to see a dirty bomber walk free," Sonnett said. "But the government cannot declare that the entire world is a combat zone in which the Constitution doesn't apply."
Previously, the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ratified the conditions under which another enemy combatant, Yaser Esam Hamdi, has been held. But Hamdi, who is also a U.S. citizen and is held in the same brig as Padilla, was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The 2nd Circuit Court said in its ruling Thursday it was not addressing Hamdi's case.
Earlier this month, the Defense Department reversed course and announced it will provide Hamdi a lawyer because it has finished interrogating him.
Bush has designated as an enemy combatant one other person, Ali Saleh Kahlah Marri, a Bradley University graduate student accused of being an al Qaeda sleeper agent.
Padilla was captured at O'Hare International Airport on May 8, 2002, and was accused of scouting sites for the detonation of a radioactive bomb. He was brought to New York, where he was held as a material witness but never formally charged. A federal judge assigned him a lawyer, but three weeks later Bush designated Padilla an enemy combatant. He was taken to the military prison, where he remains.
The administration and its supporters have argued that al Qaeda presents a threat unique in American history, given the cataclysmic nature of its intent and the ability of sleeper agents to burrow deep into American society. The war zone, they say, cannot be restricted to nations far from U.S. borders.
Judge Richard C. Wesley, in his dissent, argued that Padilla must have access to a lawyer. But he also wrote that Congress in September 2001 gave Bush the power to prosecute the war and did not limit that zone to foreign soil.
"The court put great weight on the fact that he wasn't carrying an explosive device," said Ruth Wedgwood, a former federal prosecutor and a professor of international law at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "But that isn't how al Qaeda does things.
"In the case of catastrophic terrorism," she said, "citizens of the United States have a human right not to be victims."
Frank J. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, predicted that Thursday's ruling could handcuff authorities.
"I worry that by giving them the status of criminal defendants . . . you establish a set of rights and prerogatives that I fear can be potentially helpful . . . [to] their campaigns in the United States," he said.
The federal appeals judges, however, addressed much the same questions while listening to oral arguments a month ago. In retrospect, their concern -- that federal courts were asked to change the rules that govern society -- foreshadowed Thursday's opinion.
The Justice Department has argued that wartime presidents often assert extraordinary powers, and that the Constitution anticipates this. In World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared seven captured German spies enemy combatants, even though one held U.S. citizenship. In the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln detained thousands of men.
But the appellate judges Thursday rejected this argument. During the Civil War, the court stated, Lincoln stepped in where courts had ceased working. More to the point, the panel noted that only Congress can grant the president extraordinary expansion of powers.
Congress "understood that in times of war -- of serious national crisis -- military concerns prevailed," the court stated. But "absent express congressional authorization, the President's Commander-in-Chief powers do not support Padilla's case."
Except for Padilla himself, no one in this case has occupied a more curious position than his attorney, Donna Newman. Nineteen months ago, she sat down with her new client for more than 20 hours. She has not seen him since.
"I'm looking forward to a conference with him," she said. "And I won't have to wear a military uniform to meet my client, either."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Big boost for offshore wind power
REUTERS UK:
December 19, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23169/story.htm
LONDON - Fifteen groups have successfully bid for sites to build wind farms off the English and Welsh coasts, some of which will be among the largest wind power projects in Europe with hundreds of turbines embedded on the sea floor.
The projects will be clustered in three areas of shallow sea and could provide enough electricity to power four million homes, or one in six of households.
The two largest sites, both at least 1,000 megawatts - the size of a conventional power station, have been proposed by groups involving utility E.ON's Powergen and National Wind Power, a unit of RWE Innogy.
Developing offshore wind power is a key part of the government's aim to boost renewable electricity supplies and cut greenhouse gas emissions, which many scientists blame for causing global warming.
"We have been delighted by the overwhelming number and very high quality of the bids we received," Frank Parrish head of the Marine Estate, at the Crown Estate said in a statement.
The Crown Estate is the land owner of the seabed and grants leases for companies to build offshore wind schemes.
This is the second round of offshore wind licences. Britain has a target of producing 10 percent of its power from green sources by 2010, up from three percent currently.
A spokesman for the Crown Estate said it had received 27 applications for projects but there was considerable overlap between many of the schemes.
The sites chosen are in three areas - the Thames Estuary, the Greater Wash off the east coast and along the north-west English and north Wales coast - with the potential capacity of 5.4 gigawatts and 7.2 gigawatts.
The range reflects the fact developers have flexibility to decide the final size of their projects although they must produce at least 75 percent of a site's generating capacity.
The British Wind Energy Association said this second wave of wind farms could produce half of the 2010 green energy target but schemes had to move ahead rapidly.
"It is critical that we ensure...these projects quickly obtain consents and the necessary finance to ensure they are built on time," Marcus Rand, chief executive of the association, said in a statement.
Wind farm developers have complained about difficulties in obtaining finance because of investors' doubts about the government's long-term energy policy.
In an effort to dispel this uncertainty, the government recently announced it would raise the quotas in its green power support scheme by five percent to 15 percent by 2015.
--------
British Plan Major 'Wind Farm' to Generate Power Along Coasts
December 19, 2003
By HEATHER TIMMONS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/international/europe/19WIND.html
LONDON, Dec. 18 - Energy companies plan to erect more than 1,000 turbines off England's coast in a $12.4 billion project to build the largest source of wind energy.
The wind farms, which received preliminary approval on Thursday, would generate as much as seven gigawatts of electricity - enough to supply four million households, or to meet 7 percent of Britain's energy needs. Britain has pledged that 10 percent of its energy will come from renewable resources by 2010.
The Crown Estate, which controls British public lands, including its seabeds, asked companies to submit bids for coastal wind farms in July.
Royal Dutch/Shell, Warwick Energy, Powergen and Total are among companies that won leasing rights of up to 50 years for the project, which involves 15 sites and is expected to start generating electricity in 2007.
The project is vast. Groups of hundreds of turbines will be installed in the shallow waters of the Thames Estuary, in the East Coast area known as the Greater Wash, and off the northwest coast of England.
"This is a massive development for our industry," said Marcus Rand, chief executive of the British Wind Energy Association. "This puts the United Kingdom in the fast lane to becoming a world leader in offshore power generation."
Before they can start building, energy companies need clearance from the public and the government, including environmental regulators. The turbines will be visible from the shore only on very clear days, the companies said, so that public outcry, at least about the view, is expected to be minimal.
The project's biggest obstacle may come in the form of a small waterfowl related to the American loon, the red-throated diver, which feeds in and around some of the sites. The Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds issued a cautionary statement on Thursday, asking the government to make sure the wind farms do not pose a "significant threat to birds."
Little definitive research has been done on the effect of offshore wind farms on the bird population.
"We're in a sort of Catch-22, because we have to prove that this project is not a danger to birds" but there is no project of its size to compare it to, said Peter Crone, a director of Farm Energy, a renewable energy specialist that is one of the winning bidders.
Of course, birds have died after colliding with turbines. "Clearly, birds have been flying into things for hundreds of years, and that hasn't caused any extinctions," said Dr. Mark Avery, director of conservation for the bird preservation group, one of the strongest environmental lobbies in Britain, one that supports renewable energy, including the development of large, offshore wind farms.
But, he pointed out, it might not make great sense "to construct a large number of objects where large numbers of birds are already flying."
-------- energy
US Energy Demand to Grow 1.5 Pct Annually
Story by Tom Doggett
REUTERS USA:
December 19, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23186/story.htm
WASHINGTON - U.S. energy consumption is expected to grow 1.5 percent a year over the next two decades, with America using less natural gas and crude oil but more coal, nuclear power and renewable energy sources than previously thought, the government said this week.
Oil demand was revised lower because of expected increases in federal vehicle gasoline mileage requirements, and higher natural gas prices will push down gas demand, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's long-term forecast.
Nonetheless total U.S. energy use will increase more rapidly than domestic energy production and more imports - particularly oil - will be needed to meet a growing share of energy demand, EIA said.
The Energy Department's analytical arm said U.S. crude oil production will increase from 5.6 million barrels per day (bpd) last year to a peak of 6.1 million bpd in 2008 and gradually decline to 4.6 million bpd in 2025.
At the same time, domestic oil demand will jump from the current 20 million bpd to 28.3 million bpd in 2025.
As a result, petroleum imports - including both crude oil and refined oil products like gasoline - will account for 70 percent of demand, up from 54 percent last year.
Separately, U.S. natural gas demand is forecast to grow 1.4 percent a year from 22.8 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2002 to 31.4 Tcf in 2025, primarily because of more power plants being built that use gas as a fuel for generating electricity, EIA said.
However, domestic gas production is not expected to grow as fast and imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) will have to close the widening gap between supply and demand.
Tighter supplies of natural gas mean U.S. production will be 23.79 Tcf in 2020 - significantly lower than the 25.1 Tcf that the EIA forecast one year ago for 2020. The change is due to declining production from existing gas wells and new fields that are typically smaller than the large, older fields already tapped.
LNG imports are forecast to increase to 4.8 Tcf in 2025, double the EIA's estimate last year in its long-term energy outlook. The increase would mean LNG would account for 15 percent of total U.S. gas demand in 2025.
LNG is natural gas super-cooled for transportation aboard special tankers. The manufacturing process cools the gas to minus-259 degrees Fahrenheit, changing the gas into liquid and shrinking it to less than 1/600 of its original volume.
Other highlights of the EIA's energy forecast between 2002 and 2025 include:
Are We Going Nuclear?
Washingtonian January, 2004
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003
From: "Chris Allen" <callen@efn.org>
http://www.washingtonian.com/thismonth/0401contents.html
DOUG AND COLLEEN SMITH BUILT A WEEKEND dream house on Lake Anna, creating a rustic retreat 90 minutes south of their Ashburn home.
But first they did a little research about nuclear power. The North Anna nuclear-power plant in Louisa County churns out electricity about ten miles from their weekend refuge. "We certainly thought about it, but it's not a hazard we're overly concerned about," Doug Smith says in the spacious living room of the family's two-story log house as boats skim across the shimmering lake outside.
A tour of North Anna's visitors center alleviated most of the Smiths' worries. When friends visit, the couple sometimes points out the nuclear plant's containment domes as the party glides by on their boat. Otherwise, the Smiths and their two sons don't think much about North Anna. "Once you get down here and start enjoying the lake life, you forget that it's there," Colleen Smith says.
North Anna is indeed easy to overlook. But like the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in southern Maryland, it is quietly helping shape nuclear power's future in America.
Once touted as the solution for the nation's energy needs, the nuclear industry encountered a series of economic, political, and public-relations woes. In 1979 the United States suffered its worst nuclear accident ever with the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Interest rates and inflation soared during the Carter years, triggering big cost overruns. No plant ordered after 1974 was finished; dozens were started and canceled. Demand for electricity slowed as the oil embargo spurred conservation initiatives. Fears mounted about safe storage of nuclear waste. Construction problems sparked congressional hearings. The last nuclear plant to come online, Watts Bar in Tennessee, took 23 years to complete and cost $7 billion--more than ten times initial estimates.
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster further etched nuclear dread in the public consciousness. And the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks stirred fears about plant security.
Even with all this anxiety, the nuclear industry and the Bush administration are campaigning to brighten nuclear power's future, and the two plants closest to Washington are playing vital roles. Richmond-based Dominion Resources, the principal owner of North Anna, is talking about what it would take to order the first new reactor since 1978. Constellation Energy Group, the Baltimore-based owner of Calvert Cliffs, recently showed another path to the future: extend an existing reactor's life span by renewing its 40-year license for an additional 20 years.
IN 2000, CALVERT CLIFFS BECAME THE nation's first plant to win license renewal from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its two reactors, a victory closely watched by Dominion and others in the industry. Now Dominion is taking its turn in the lead by testing the NRC process for building a new reactor.
"Both Calvert Cliffs and North Anna in their own ways are doing all the right things for providing stable and safe electrical supply to the region," says NRC chairman Nils J. Diaz.
Both Dominion and Constellation have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into upgrades over the past two years. North Anna replaced its reactor lids after employees discovered microscopic cracks in nozzles that connect to the reactor lids and guide the rods controlling the nuclear reaction. Calvert Cliffs replaced its aging steam generators to increase efficiency and updated its siren system.
Overlooking the Chesapeake Bay in Lusby, Calvert Cliffs is the closest nuclear-power plant to Washington--a 54-mile drive south and east from the White House. Its successful bid for license renewal stretches the operating life of Unit 1 from 2014 to 2034 and of Unit 2 from 2016 to 2036. "It was absolutely one of the [biggest], if not the biggest, watershed event" of the last two or three decades, says Michael J. Wallace, president of Constellation Generation Group.
IN THE MID-1990S, INDUSTRY OB-servers assumed that most plants would not renew their licenses because of unfavorable economic conditions, says David Lochbaum, a nuclear-safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group for safe nuclear practices. About ten plants had closed prematurely in the 1980s and early 1990s. The Yankee Rowe plant in western Massachusetts pursued license renewal only to shut down eight years early amidst questions about a brittle reactor vessel.
Several factors favored Calvert Cliffs when it embarked on license renewal in 1998. Natural-gas prices spiked in the late 1990s, making nuclear power more attractive economically. When lawmakers, prodded by the industry, threatened to slash the NRC's budget unless it improved efficiency, the agency streamlined its license-renewal process, infuriating watchdog and environmental groups but helping Calvert Cliffs' relicensing bid. The NRC deemed issues such as future handling of nuclear waste "generic," placing them outside the scope of Calvert's review. A federal environmental report determined that license renewal would have a slightly adverse impact on surrounding areas but did not justify a refusal.
After Calvert Cliffs' success, Lochbaum says, "many other plants jumped on that bandwagon."
Constellation launched a 25-person division to advise other plants in their license-renewal bids--a technique that also keeps company engineers abreast of the latest technological developments.
"Nuclear power has made an amazing comeback in this country," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a 2002 speech in which he cited Calvert Cliffs. Nineteen of the nation's 103 operating commercial nuclear reactors have secured license renewal, 16 applications are pending, and another 16 are expected through 2007, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's lobbying group.
"We kind of rode on Calvert Cliffs' coattails," says David Christian, Dominion's senior vice president for nuclear operations. "You've got to give them a lot of praise for blazing the trail."
IN MARCH, DOMINION BECAME THE first company to secure 20-year license renewals for multiple sites--North Anna and its older sibling, Surry, located near Jamestown. North Anna Units 1 and 2 have permission to operate until 2038 and 2040.
Dominion also is one of three companies testing phase one of a revised NRC process for approving new reactors; the other two are the New Orleans-based Entergy Corporation at its Grand Gulf site in Mississippi and the Chicago-based Exelon Corporation at its site in Clinton, Illinois. Dominion has no plans to build a new reactor, but an early site permit approving North Anna as a location would remain valid for 20 years, allowing Dominion to "bank" on the option. The second phase of the process would focus on reactor design, the third on construction and operation.
"Is there a scenario out there where nuclear might come back?" asks Christian. "We couldn't rule it out." But he adds, "I don't think you'll see any new sites pop up closer to Washington than North Anna."
There are two units at North Anna, but it was intended for four. Unit 2--the first plant to come online after the Three Mile Island accident--spent more than a year in limbo while the NRC toughened equipment standards and training requirements. Construction began on a third unit, but the two additional units were canceled in the early 1980s because of uncertainties generated by Three Mile Island and the darkening economic outlook for nuclear power.
WHILE NEW NUCLEAR BUILDING projects stalled in the United States, they have continued in other parts of the world. Between 2000 and 2002, 15 new nuclear plants came online: four in China, two each in South Korea and the Czech Republic, three in India, and one each in Japan, Russia, Pakistan, and Brazil, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 2002, the agency reported 32 reactors under construction worldwide, including eight in India, four each in the Ukraine and China, and three each in the Russian Federation and Japan.
Plants in the United States today operate at about 90-percent capacity versus 70 percent a decade ago. They supply 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Although the United States generates the most nuclear power, 18 other countries rely on it to a greater extent. France decided during the oil crisis of the early 1970s to decrease its dependence on foreign energy sources and standardized nuclear-plant designs to cut construction times; nuclear plants now generate 78 percent of its electricity. Nuclear power supplies nearly 40 percent of South Korea's electricity and 35 percent of Japan's. Germany, which draws 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, disconnected the first of its 19 plants in November and plans to close all its reactors over the next two decades as a result of a deal reached with the environmentalist Greens.
Energy demand in the United States is expected to grow by more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2025. How much of that demand will be met by nuclear power remains to be seen. The NRC has approved three new reactor designs by General Electric, Westinghouse Electric, and ABB Combustion Engineering (now part of Westinghouse). The new reactors increasingly rely on "passive" technology, which emphasizes natural processes rather than man-made devices. Cooling water, for example, could be brought into a reactor via gravity instead of pumps.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, heralding nuclear power as emission- free energy, envisions some 50 new plants over the next 20 years. Among the industry's allies is Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is one of the most outspoken proponents of the energy bill. Domenici believes nuclear power is vital to diversifying the nation's energy portfolio and is pushing to include tax incentives for the industry in the bill.
Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher estimates that its early site application will cost roughly $10 million and says the US Department of Energy will provide half that money as part of a government and industry cost-sharing effort to bring new nuclear plants online by 2010.
Other plant operators are monitoring Dominion's progress. "Sometimes it's great to lead, and other times it may be great to follow," says Constellation's Wallace. "We'll be glad to let them test the waters."
WHAT IS IT LIKE INSIDE A NUCLEAR-power plant? I toured North Anna in late summer, escorted by Dominion chief nuclear officer David Christian and spokesman Richard Zuercher. Nestled in wooded hills about 60 miles northwest of Richmond, its reactors are about a mile downhill from, and out of sight of, the visitors center, which offers presentations about nuclear power for tourists and school groups.
The facility's two units generate 1,842 megawatts, providing about 17 percent of Virginia's electricity. Electricity from nuclear, coal, and gas plants feeds into a massive power grid. "We have no way of knowing which way each electron travels," says Zuercher. "But a substantial amount of power from the power station lights up Northern Virginia." North Anna and Calvert Cliffs feed into different parts of the same Eastern grid. Calvert Cliffs' portion is managed by a regional transmission organization called PJM; Dominion manages North Anna's portion.
Christian says nuclear energy is the cheapest Dominion produces. In 2002, North Anna spent about 1.2 cents to generate a kilowatt-hour and was one of the lowest-cost producers, according to Margaret Ryan, editorial director of the Platts Global Nuclear & Coal Group, which publishes newsletters about commercial nuclear power. Calvert Cliffs did not report its costs; when it last reported in 2000 before electricity deregulation, it was spending 1.6 cents to generate a kilowatt-hour--about the US median for nuclear power at that time.
Both Calvert Cliffs and North Anna, "particularly Dominion and North Anna, are leaders in performance worldwide," says Marvin Fertel, the NEI's chief nuclear officer. "Calvert's coming that way, but North Anna's there."
The reactors at the North Anna Power Station--its formal name does not contain the word "nuclear"--were manufactured by Westinghouse for $1.3 billion. Unit 1 began commercial operation in June 1978; Unit 2 followed in December 1980. The plant borrowed its name from the North Anna River, dammed to form the big lake that supplies cooling water for the station. Today Lake Anna is a tourist attraction and popular fishing spot. Once I exited Interstate 95, marinas dotted my path to the power station.
MY TOUR BEGAN AT THE VISITORS center, which remains open to the public on weekdays despite heightened post-9/11 security. Christian lamented that popular culture has distorted public perceptions of nuclear power: "Images that come to mind are things they've seen on The Simpsons," where green slime seeps from pipes and pools in corners of the reactor where Homer Simpson toils.
North Anna is a pressurized-water reactor, as are Calvert Cliffs and most nuclear plants in the United States (the other type is a boiling- water reactor). Uranium atoms in fuel rods in the reactor vessel split, heating water inside the vessel. High pressure prevents the water from boiling, though it's heated to three times normal boiling temperature. The hot, pressurized water is then pumped through a closed circuit to nearby steel containers called steam generators. Here the water passes through thousands of small tubes, roughly the diameter of a little finger, and transfers its heat to a slightly cooler water system in a second closed circuit before returning to cool the reactor core.
This secondary water is heated into steam, which flows through large pipes that spin the turbines in an adjoining building. These turbines drive a generator that produces electricity, which flows to a transformer. The steam is condensed back to liquid via a heat exchange with cooling water in a third closed system before returning to the steam generator to begin again.
At North Anna, water for the cooling system is taken from Lake Anna and returns to the lake slightly warmer. Dominion officials extol their care of the lake, which hosts a popular annual bass tournament. Area newcomer Doug Smith delights in the fishing but admits that he's heard a few jokes about the "fish being large and green"--humor no doubt discouraged at North Anna.
Before entering the plant, we passed through metal and bomb detectors. Even though Dominion's chief nuclear officer escorted me, an armed security guard joined us while we toured the plant. Before entering the plant, the 850 employees must swipe their badges and place their hands on a device that confirms their identities.
THE REACTORS ARE HOUSED IN RE- inforced-concrete cylindrical containment structures 4H feet thick and 140 feet tall; a steel containment liner fits between the reactor and the containment structure. A jungle of color-coded piping branches through support buildings--reds, oranges, blues, and whites, each of which signifies a function or hazard. Dominion also color-codes its control-room operators by seniority: Maroon shirts signify senior reactor operators. Operators train and practice in a simulator--a replica of the control room, as required by the NRC after the Three Mile Island accident.
In the turbine building, I glanced at the backup diesel generator that would power the plant if outside power failed. On August 14, the largest power failure in US history cut power to eight states and parts of Canada. The blackout did not reach this area, but nine nuclear reactors at seven sites elsewhere automatically shut down. The rapid shutdown protects equipment from failure when power cannot be delivered reliably to the grid. Control rods plunge into the reactor core to halt the fission process, and backup diesel generators support essential systems such as coolant pumps and security cameras.
Advocates say the blackout underscored the need for nuclear power. "The implications really are a learning experience now about investment in the grid and the generation side," says the NEI's Fertel. "We've got to maintain diversity of technology and fuel." Fertel says nuclear plants provide stability to the grid because of their large output and steady production.
But the blackout also fueled opponents' arguments. "The major lesson for the public is it doesn't help to have nuclear plants because they're the first things that have to shut down," says Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "Shutting them down in that fashion poses a greater risk because it challenges safety systems."
The backup generators were not needed during the power outages resulting from Hurricane Isabel in September, either, though Dominion shut down its units at Surry after a tree limb fell on a power line that feeds electricity to pumps that draw cooling water from the James River. North Anna reduced its output from Unit 2 to 60 percent for about 12 hours during the storm because so many customers lost power that the grid needed less electricity.
Calvert Cliffs never lost power and remained at full output throughout the storm. Some of its emergency sirens lost power because of line problems, but backup systems remained available.
ONE OF THE CHIEF CONCERNS OF industry opponents is the problem of nuclear waste. Every 18 months, Dominion employees replace about one- third of the fuel rods in the reactor core. Storage of the spent fuel is the crux of an ongoing debate over Nevada's Yucca Mountain, which Congress finally approved as a nuclear-waste site in 2002 after more than two decades of debate but which remains mired in technical and court challenges. North Anna and Calvert Cliffs both use two waste- storage methods: spent-fuel pools, where the fuel cools for at least five years and loses much of its radioactivity, and above-ground casks that hold older spent fuel.
Surry in 1986 became the first nuclear site to develop and use above- ground storage containers; North Anna began using them in 1998. Zuercher says that existing on-site storage will cover North Anna's needs through the original 40-year life of the plant--about 2018 to 2020. But Mariotte objects to the dry casks as a "semipermanent radioactive-waste dump" and potential terrorist target.
Nuclear plants in other countries generally store spent fuel on site. France, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and Japan reprocess spent fuel to use again. No nations use underground repositories like the one planned at Yucca Mountain, although Finland has passed legislation calling for the development of an underground repository.
The spent-fuel pool at North Anna, partially underground between the containment domes, looks like a glorified swimming pool. Before entering, I donned an alarmed dosimeter, which resembles a skinny pager and monitors radiation exposure. A second, more sophisticated dosimeter recorded a more official but less immediate measure of radiation exposure.
As I signed a form regarding my entry to a high-radiation area, I felt a funny sensation in my stomach. It might have been hunger--I hadn't eaten lunch--but I don't think so. As one who maybe has been unduly influenced by popular culture, I had a fleeting vision of myself henceforth giving off a pale-green glow. But my escorts didn't look worried, and I followed them to the spent-fuel pool.
At the bottom of the pool, 12-foot-tall cells covered by 20 feet of water hold the spent fuel rods. Employees handle the fuel using elongated tools, minimizing the need for divers to expose themselves to the highest radiation levels. Dominion requires a minimum of 157 empty spaces inside the cells in case fuel rods from the reactor core suddenly need to be off-loaded.
After leaving the pool area, I stood inside a contamination monitor that resembles a shower without a shower head. The monitor discerned no traces of radiation on me; my reporter's notebook and pen emerged trace-free from a separate, smaller monitor resembling a microwave.
I confess I was relieved. But not registering any radiation at all after my trip to the spent-fuel pool was, well, anticlimactic.
ON THE ISSUE OF PLANT SAFETY and maintenance, Kerry Landis, the NRC branch chief in Atlanta who oversees inspections at North Anna, says workers there have "done well at operating, maintaining, and finding their own issues and correcting them."
In 2002 Dominion discovered tiny cracks in the nickel-alloy nozzles in Unit 2's reactor lid--a problem similar to but much less severe than one at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear plant, where leaking boric acid ate a five-by-seven-inch hole in the reactor head. Dominion employees also found leaks in welds where the nozzles attach to the reactor lid and boric acid on the lid. Dominion replaced that lid and the three others at North Anna and Surry at a cost, Zuercher estimates, of $175 million.
Lochbaum, a critic of industry "negligence" regarding safety of aging plants, says early detection of the cracks at North Anna prevented the threat to public safety that emerged at Davis-Besse, where the near-release of cooling water in the reactor triggered fears of a meltdown. "It's indicative of the company that rather than Band-Aid or paper over the problem, they just fixed it," he says of Dominion.
NRC records indicate that North Anna has paid about $257,000 in fines during its history, the most recent being a $15,000 fine in 1994. Its largest fine, in 1988, was $100,000 for an inoperable steam-flow channel. But fines no longer provide a window into performance because the NRC revamped its enforcement policy three years ago and decided not to levy civil penalties except in extreme cases.
Lochbaum says in recent years both the North Anna and Calvert Cliffs plants have been "above-average performers" on safety.
NORTH ANNA IS THE LARGEST private employer in Louisa County, population 26,500. It paid $11.2 million in 2002 county taxes from Dominion and Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, a wholesale-power supplier that owns nearly 12 percent of North Anna. "Like anything else, it has some people who are critical of it, but by and large the county is very supportive," says Willie Harper, chairman of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors and an area manager of a new Wal- Mart distribution center that opened earlier this year.
Louisa County also boasts a Food Lion, an industrial park, myriad convenience stores, and at least seven marinas, says Tom Filer, president of the Louisa County Chamber of Commerce and assistant vice president of the Virginia Community Bank. Timber and farming are still the major industries, but as farming declines and Jet Skis crowd Lake Anna, the county is trying to protect its rural charm. About one-third of North Anna's employees live in Louisa or Orange counties, one-third in the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania areas, and the remaining third in Richmond.
"I've never had any concerns about living next door to a nuclear- power station," Filer says. "I admit September 11 got people to thinking. Being next door, we realized that would probably be a target for terrorists to attack. But I never saw anybody say, 'I don't want [North Anna] anymore,' or pack their family and move. While many people would say, 'I live in a rural area, so I'm not a target,' we're aware that we are a target."
IN CALVERT COUNTY, MARYLAND, the threat of terrorism at a nuclear plant also has seeped into public consciousness. The Calvert Cliffs plant once was among the county's most popular attractions, listed in guidebooks and touted at tourist information centers. Its visitors center, set in one of Maryland's oldest barns within viewing distance of the power plant, attracted nearly 30,000 people each year.
But after September 11, Constellation shuttered the visitors center. Company officials, citing security concerns, denied my requests to visit the plant.
"Obviously, with Calvert Cliffs being the closest [nuclear power plant] to Washington, DC, there is probably the highest level of concern," Constellation's Michael Wallace says in his 18th-floor office at Constellation headquarters in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. "We have taken a rather black-and-white approach to this." Wallace says the close proximity of Calvert's visitors center to its plant presents too many security and logistical challenges for it to remain open.
Calvert Cliffs generates about 1,700 megawatts a day--enough to meet roughly 20 percent of Maryland's electricity needs. Most of its power goes to central Maryland, but the grid also can direct its power to Washington and elsewhere.
Calvert Cliffs Unit 1 began operating in May 1975; Unit 2 followed in April 1977 at a total cost of $778 million.
In April, Calvert Cliffs finished replacing its four aging steam generators--each unit houses two--at a cost of $305 million. The intricate work for Unit I, performed in 2002 during a routine refueling shutdown, was slowed by a shortage of specialized labor and ended 31 days behind schedule. But about 2,500 employees and contract workers who replaced the steam generators in Unit 2 finished 32 days ahead of schedule--a world record, Constellation says, for the fastest replacement of a steam generator of its type.
Constellation also spent $2 million to upgrade 72 sirens in a ten- mile radius of the plant in Calvert, St. Mary's, and Dorchester counties. The new sirens can sound as a group or individually to communicate emergency information to the public.
IN PLACE OF A VISIT TO CALVERT CLIFFS, Constellation spokeswoman Elleen Kane offered me a "virtual tour" with photos and explanations. While it could not compare with the real thing, Kane did provide some interesting information.
Calvert Cliffs works with the Nature Conservancy to protect the site's population of half-inch-long tiger beetles. More than 90 percent of the world's population of Puritan and Northeastern Beach tiger beetles reside at Calvert Cliffs; most have been destroyed by shoreline development. More than 700 deer also seek refuge at the 2,300-acre site, particularly during hunting season, because no firearms--except those of the 24-hour security force--are allowed on the property.
Calvert Cliffs will reach its existing spent-fuel storage capacity in 2020. Besides its storage pool, the plant has used dry casks since 1993. In 1997, the NRC fined Calvert Cliffs $176,000--the second largest fine in the plant's history--for allowing a diver to enter a potentially dangerous radiation area during a repair mission in the spent-fuel pool. The diver was not injured, according to NRC records.
Calvert Cliffs has experienced some safety setbacks. NRC records indicate that it has paid $1.15 million in fines, most recently $55,000 in 1998 for improper radiological-control procedures. It paid its largest fine--$300,000--in 1989 for violations regarding untested electrical connections.
In its youth, Calvert Cliffs was lauded as an industry model. But its safety record deteriorated in the late 1980s, and the NRC placed Calvert on its "watch list" of troubled plants from 1988 until 1992. (The watch list, which chairman Diaz criticizes as "very biased," no longer exists).
Calvert improved after 1992 but encountered troubles in the mid- 1990s, primarily for radiological-control violations. In the late 1990s, plant managers instituted more structured training and procedures. (Constellation Energy was formed in 1999 in preparation for Maryland's deregulation; former plant owner BGE became a subsidiary responsible for electricity distribution.)
"It appears at this point they've done a pretty good job of turning things around," says NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. Federal regulators have issued several recent citations, including one for a violation of "substantial importance to safety" in 2001 after mechanics put too much gasket seal on an auxiliary feedwater pump, a backup system for removing heat if the plant trips offline. The pump "remained in a condition where it couldn't perform its function for a lengthy period of time," says Jim Trapp, the NRC branch chief who oversees inspections at Calvert Cliffs. Overall, he says, Calvert Cliffs is "doing quite well."
ADDING TO SAFETY AND SECURITY concerns in the area around Calvert Cliffs is the reopening of the Cove Point liquefied-natural-gas plant off the Chesapeake Bay: Foreign tankers hauling the gas pass within three miles of the nuclear plant. Some neighbors worry that terrorists could somehow ignite the gas and blow up the nuclear plant. Cove Point LNG closed in 1980, but Dominion purchased it in 2002 and reactivated shipments with a security operation coordinated with the Coast Guard.
"There's always apprehension about having nuclear power in your community," says David Hale, owner of an information-technology consulting business and president of the Calvert County Board of Commissioners. "Concerns get heightened when other things happen, like the gas plant opening and 9/11 occurring. But day to day, people go to work, take care of their family, and don't think about the plant."
Calvert Cliffs, employing about 1,000 workers, is the county's largest private employer. Most workers live in Calvert County; others reside in Charles, Anne Arundel, Prince George's, and St. Mary's counties.
The plant paid $13 million in property taxes to the county in 2002, providing about 9 percent of the county's tax base. The economy has diversified in the county; electricity deregulation also reduced the county's intake of property taxes from the plant by about $8 million annually, Hale says. The state provided $6 million in each of the 2002 and 2003 budgets to bridge the shortfall, but cash-strapped state lawmakers last summer reduced the 2004 grant by almost $700,000, to $5.3 million.
Lochbaum says the success of Calvert Cliffs, North Anna, and other plants in obtaining license renewal makes new plants less likely. With existing plants "getting 20 more years of operation, it kind of pushes back a need for replacements," he says.
Even companies like Dominion and Constellation that are investing in existing nuclear facilities, extending licenses, and buying additional plants remain unconvinced that building new ones makes financial sense.
And public worries persist.
"Would it concern me? Maybe a little bit," weekend homeowner Doug Smith says of a possible new reactor at North Anna. "If it was up to me, I'd say don't build it. But if they do it, I'm not going to worry to the point I would want to leave."
SIDEBAR:
THREAT FROM THE AIR:
Could Terrorists Attack a Nuclear Plant and Cause an Explosion?
What might have happened if the plane hijacked out of Dulles on September 11, 2001, had crashed into North Anna or Calvert Cliffs?
Experts say there would not have been a nuclear explosion because of the low concentration of uranium used in US plants, but some fear that such an attack could result in a release of radiation into the atmosphere.
The industry says its plants are well protected and would not release radiation if a plane attacked. A December 2002 study requested by the Nuclear Energy Institute analyzed computer models of the Boeing 767 hitting a nuclear plant and concluded that the containment structures would not be breached. Tests indicate the spent-fuel pools and dry- storage containers also would not be breached, although there would be "crushing and cracking" of the containers' concrete enclosures.
But David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists argues that control rooms located outside the containment structures are vulnerable. "It's not a guarantee that if you hit the control room, you cause an accident," Lochbaum says. But if terrorists damaged the control room and disrupted the supply of cooling water, a meltdown or partial meltdown might result that could release radiation. "There could be an accident worse than Three Mile Island," Lochbaum says.
Each scenario relies on many assumptions, and experts disagree about the consequences. "You're putting too many ifs there," says George Apostolakis, a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT who serves on the NRC's advisory committee on reactor safeguards. "They have to hit the plant, cause the core to melt, have the right weather conditions to spread radiation--you're talking about an awfully low-probability event."
Apostolakis notes that there are much easier targets than nuclear plants. "If they attack a nuclear plant, I don't think they're going to do it to have the core melt and kill people," he says. More likely, terrorists would aim to spread fear: The news of a nuclear attack against a plant could lead to a public outcry to shut down the plants. "These are the more likely consequences, which we can fight as a nation simply by not getting scared," Apostolakis says.
SIDEBAR:
NUCLEAR POWER BY THE NUMBERS
Proponents tout nuclear energy as a clean, cheap form of electricity. Its low production costs, however, do not include the hefty price tag for plant construction.
Nuclear plants are "green" because they do not routinely emit sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide, as fossil-fuel plants do. Dominion calculates that in 2002, North Anna avoided 13 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions that would have resulted from a combination of coal and natural-gas plants generating the same amount of electricity.
"In terms of routine emissions, nuclear plants are a lot better option than fossil-fuel plants that emit greenhouse gases and, in the case of coal, a whole series of other nasty pollutants like mercury," says Thomas B. Cochran, a nuclear physicist who directs the Natural Resources Defense Council's nuclear program.
But "there are other problems with nuclear plants not shared by fossil-fuel plants," he says--in particular, the management and disposal of spent fuel. Cochran says a typical plant discharges about 20 metric tons of spent fuel a year, including a little over one metric ton of highly radioactive products. From an international perspective, the plutonium in spent fuel also creates proliferation concerns.
Here's a comparison of some of production costs and emissions produced in the generation of electricity.
Nuclear: 1.71 cents
Coal: 1.85 cents
Gas: 4.06 cents
Oil: 4.41 cents
Carbon emissions from generation of 1000 megawatt-hours:
Coal-fired plant: 265 metric tons
Oil-fired plant: 220 metric tons
Natural gas-fired plant: 150 metric tons
Nuclear-powered plant: 0 metric tons
Source: Nuclear Energy Institute.
GRAPHIC: Picture, Residents relax and play on Lake Anna in sight of the domes at the North Anna nuclear-power plant.; Photograph for The Washingtonian by James Kegley; Picture, Maryland's Calvert Cliffs nuclear-power plant, seen here from the Chesapeake Bay, was the first to get a 20-year extension on its operating license.; Photograph courtesy of Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant
-------- homeless
Survey Indicates More Go Hungry, Homeless
Aid Lacking as Greater Demands Conflict With Improving Economy, Report Says
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13291-2003Dec18.html
More cities have had residents turned away from emergency food and shelter assistance this year than in any year since 1997, according to a report released yesterday by the nation's mayors, who said that a weak though improving economy has made it harder to help the needy.
Overall, requests for emergency food assistance jumped by 17 percent this year and requests for shelter increased by 13 percent, according to the 25-city survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. On average, 14 percent of requests for food aid and 30 percent of requests for shelter went unmet. The annual survey pointed to unemployment and lack of affordable housing as the leading causes of hunger and homelessness.
"The survey underscores the impact the economy has had on everyday Americans," said conference president, Mayor James A. Garner of Hempstead, N.Y.
People were turned away from food assistance agencies in 56 percent of the cities and from shelter in 84 percent. Those figures -- the highest in six years -- reflect belt-tightening in cities and states, which has affected food banks and shelters, officials said.
"The economy coming back slowly has caused us to have more demands than we were anticipating," said Mayor Paul D. Pate of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who co-chairs the conference's task force on hunger and homelessness. "A lot of nonprofit agencies have been having a tough time financially. Private dollars have been slower in coming in, and there's no doubt that tax dollars are tighter."
The cities in the survey, which contained data through Oct. 31, varied widely in their experiences. Denver, for example, reported a 48 percent increase in demand for emergency food and a 20 percent increase in demand for shelter, whereas Chicago had a 13 percent increase in food requests and a 4 percent drop in shelter requests.
The District reported a 12 percent increase in requests for shelter and a 22 percent increase in demand for food.
The report found that the homeless population consists of 41 percent single men, 40 percent families with children, 14 percent single women and 5 percent unaccompanied youths. An average of 23 percent of the homeless population is mentally ill, 30 percent are substance abusers, 17 percent are employed and 10 percent are veterans.
Philip F. Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, said the Bush administration is pushing states and cities to develop plans to end chronic homelessness in 10 years. Forty states and 60 cities and counties have formed partnerships to develop such plans, he said.
Ten percent of the homeless population is chronically homeless, but they consume more than half of all resources because they "ricochet around" health care and social services agencies, Mangano said.
-------- religious freedoms
U.S. Chides France on Effort to Bar Religious Garb in Schools
December 19, 2003
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/politics/19RELI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - The Bush administration on Thursday gently criticized a French proposal to ban head scarves and other conspicuous religious items from the public schools, saying that such displays constitute "a basic right that should be protected."
In the first public comment by a United States official about the controversy, John V. Hanford, the administration's top-ranking official on issues of religious freedom, took issue with President Jacques Chirac's call for legislation to prevent the wearing of head scarves for Muslim girls, large crosses for Christians and skullcaps for Jewish boys.
"A fundamental principle of religious freedom that we work for in many countries of the world, including on this very issue of head scarves, is that all persons should be able to practice their religion and their beliefs peacefully, without government interference, as long as they are doing so without provocation and intimidation of others in society," Mr. Hanford said.
Mr. Hanford said that as long as people were wearing such items "as a heartfelt manifestation of their beliefs" - rather than as a provocative act - "this is, we believe, a basic right that should be protected."
Mr. Chirac's proposal on something so seemingly mundane is at the heart of a widening debate in France and some other European nations over how to maintain secular or Christian traditions as growing populations of Muslim immigrants seek to maintain their own ways. Mr. Chirac called the Muslim veil a sign of "religious proselytism" and some prominent French intellectuals have identified it as an emblem of the oppression of women.
A French official voiced dismay Thursday at Mr. Hanford's remarks.
"Very often there are debates on the pledge of allegiance or other religious issues in the schools," the official said. "Never have you heard a French diplomat comment on an internal debate in the United States."
Mr. Hanford was speaking as he released the government's annual report on religious freedom, which Congress mandated in 1998. The report criticized another secular ally, Turkey, for its ban on wearing Muslim religious dress in government facilities.
Turning to Saudi Arabia, a close ally, the administration repeated a longstanding assertion: "Freedom of religion does not exist."
The administration expressed some concern about Afghanistan, where American forces routed the fundamentalist Taliban government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. As Afghans convene in a loya jirga to prepare a new constitution, Mr. Hanford noted that they had incorporated language that could prove troublesome to religious minorities.
As it now stands, "freedom of religion is neither denied, but it's certainly not fully guaranteed," Mr. Hanford said. The administration's goal, he added, is to ensure "that we don't wind up with Taliban Lite."
-------- ACTIVISTS
School recruiters meet resistance
By Tommy Nguyen
The Christian Science Monitor
December 19, 2003 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1219/p13s02-legn.html
SAN FRANCISCO - Last summer Mark Spencer's 17-year-old son received a phone call from a military recruiter. Mr. Spencer told the recruiter not to call his son again. An hour later, the recruiter called their Mesquite, Texas, residence a second time. The next week he left phone messages.
"It's a predatory practice," says Spencer, "to keep calling students even if their parents object." Predatory practice or civic responsibility? The government, parents, and some school districts disagree.
"It's a George W. Bush thing," says Santa Cruz, Calif., school board commissioner Cece Pinheiro, referring to the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind federal education act, which became law in 2001. "We've been fighting this for some time."
Deep in the education law's 670 pages lies a provision that requires public secondary schools to give military recruiters the names, addresses, and phone numbers of their students (mainly high school juniors and seniors). Some school districts responded to the new law by designing consent forms. Unless parents signed them, information about their children was not sent to the recruiters.
This summer, however, over 20 California school districts - including those in San Francisco, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Santa Cruz - were warned that such consent forms did not comply with the law.
The problem: These consent forms automatically withheld student information from military recruiters unless parents stated that their child's information should be released. School officials refer to it as an "opt in" form because it contains only a "Yes" box to mark. There isn't a need for a "No" box because an unreturned form means a "No" decision, they say.
Jill Wynns, a commissioner on San Francisco's decidedly antiwar school board, says fewer than 80 out of nearly 19,000 district high school students returned the forms the previous school year.
The procedure didn't satisfy the US Department of Defense.
On July 2, it issued a joint letter with the Department of Education that read, "Contrary to an 'opt-in' process, the referenced law requires an 'opt out' notification process, whereby parents are notified and have an opportunity to request the information not be disclosed." In other words, an unreturned or missing consent form should indicate that a parent wanted his or her child's information given to military recruiters, and not the other way around.
Since parents and students often don't return school forms in a timely manner, "that's what the issue is really about," says Josh Sonnenfeld, student organizer of the current "opt out" campaign in Santa Cruz.
Sonnenfeld, who's trying to get all parents and students to send back their forms by the district's Dec. 19 deadline, says the military relies on the default procedure to increase its access to more student names.
Rather than risk losing federal funding for noncompliance (San Francisco, for instance, could lose $36 million), school districts are changing their consent forms to meet the government's demands.
But some dissenting school districts are protesting even as they comply, inviting antiwar groups to speak at their campuses. School officials in Eugene, Ore., have put a disclaimer on their consent forms that reads, "[We] do not support or endorse the Federal Law requiring information to be provided to military recruiters, but will comply with Federal Law."
San Francisco's response to the law, however, has now raised another issue. Back in November, when the city's school board approved a new consent form, school officials allowed students to complete and sign their forms in their own homerooms as a way to ensure that every form got returned. Parents eventually received their own consent forms through the mail - but, according to district procedures, if the parents' and child's responses on the consent forms differed from one another, any "No" response would override a "Yes" response.
In other words, a student's decision could override his or her parent's.
"We actually haven't come up against that scenario," says Ms. Wynns, who insists that the federal government's preference for an "opt out" notification process would logically place a greater value on any "No" answer.
Maj. Sandy Burr, press operations officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, criticizes San Francisco's student-signed forms. "The school district shouldn't be doing that, because it's not what the law says," says Burr. "The law states that parents be made aware of the 'opt out' opportunity."
Major Burr refers to a notice issued by her office stating that, under the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, student information would be available "unless parents have advised the [local educational authority] they do not want their student's information disclosed."
Wynns disagrees. "Our forms] are specific to No Child Left Behind, which says that the parent or the child can opt out. Nothing in the compliance letter we received said anything about the students not being able to opt out themselves."
So far, San Francisco's school district, which will start counting its returned consent forms this week, hasn't received any new warning letters.
Spencer has since hand delivered his consent forms to his school district in Texas to get both of his sons off the military's recruiting list.
He says he would have rather not gone to the trouble, but plans to remain vigilant. "It's up to parents to tell the schools that, where military recruitment is concerned, they'd prefer their children be left behind."
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