NucNews - December 2, 2004 -------- NUCLEAR Evidence on Cold Fusion Remains Inconclusive, New Review Finds By KENNETH CHANG Published: December 2, 2004 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/science/02fusion.html In a new review of cold fusion - the claim that energy can be generated by running electrical current through water - the Department of Energy released a report yesterday that says the evidence remains inconclusive, echoing a similar report 15 years ago. Over the past several months, 18 scientists reviewed research in cold fusion, and two-thirds of them did not find the evidence for nuclear reactions in the experiments convincing. Almost all of them, however, said that aspects of cold fusion merited consideration for further research. "I think the new review has shed some light on the status of research that has been done over the last 15 years," said Dr. James F. Decker, deputy director of the science office in the Energy Department who agreed to the review at the request of several scientists involved with cold fusion research. Dr. Decker said the department was open to proposals for cold fusion research, but added that was not new. "We have always been open to proposals that have scientific merit as determined by peer review," he said. "We have never closed the door to cold fusion proposals." Cold fusion briefly appeared to promise an unlimited energy source in 1989 when Drs. B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Utah announced that they had generated fusion - the same process that powers the sun - in a tabletop experiment using a jar of water containing deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen. They claimed that an electrical current running through the water pulled deuterium atoms into two palladium electrodes, generating heat. The speculation was that the heat was coming from the fusion of the deuterium atoms. Other scientists, however, had trouble reproducing the findings, and at the end of 1989, a review by the Energy Department recommended against a specific cold fusion research program, although it did support further investigation into some aspects. After that, most scientists regarded cold fusion as a discredited farce, but a small group of scientists continued work in the field. Measurements have become better, but cold fusion experiments still produce heat at best half of the time. At the end of last year, several cold fusion scientists approached Dr. Decker, asking for a review. Dr. Decker agreed. In the review, nine scientists chosen by the Energy Department considered a paper submitted by the cold fusion scientists. Another nine listened to oral presentations by cold fusion scientists in August. "This was a very, very scientific, very level-headed, review by everybody," said Dr. Kirby W. Kemper, vice president for research at Florida State University and one of the reviewers of the oral presentations. But Dr. Kemper said, "I don't think we've made much progress since '89 in really nailing down the parameters that make it reproducible." He said there were interesting scientific questions on the behavior of hydrogen within metals that merited research, and he said his comments tried to offer a future research path. Dr. Michael McKubre, a scientist at SRI International, one of the scientists who approached Dr. Decker last year, said the conclusions were at least "mildly positive" in endorsing consideration of further research. "All we set out to demonstrate was there were serious issues of science that had to be developed further," Dr. McKubre said. "If you look through the materials, the majority, if not the entirety, agree on that point." -------- accidents and safety Planned Cleanup for Dirty Bombs Called Lax By H. JOSEF HEBERT December 2, 2004 Associated Press http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1152&slug=Dirty%20Bomb WASHINGTON -- Standards for cleanup after a "dirty bomb" terrorist attack would permit long-term radiation levels that pose cancer risks many times greater than those acceptable at Superfund sites, nuclear waste dumps and commercial reactors, according to a draft of a government proposal. The Homeland Security Department is expected to issue the proposed guidelines, which have been developed over the last two years, within a few weeks, probably before the end of the year. They would become final after a 60-day comment period. The draft acknowledges that the consequences from a dirty bomb, a device that spreads radioactive material using conventional explosives, "may range from a very small, localized area ... to conceivably many square miles." And it says that if there is widespread contamination from a dirty bomb or an "improvised nuclear device" - where there actually would be a crude nuclear detonation - areas may have to be put off limits permanently. In such cases "existing land uses may not be practicable," the document says. As a result, the interagency task force developing the guidelines decided against issuing specific numerical radiation levels to guide long-term cleanup goals, although an earlier draft written last year contained specific allowable radiation levels proposed by different agencies. The latest version says cleanup efforts should be guided by radiation benchmarks established by various advisory groups, such as the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) and the Health Physics Society, as well as federal agencies. "They basically punted," said Daniel Hirsch, head of an anti-nuclear advocacy group, Committee to Bridge the Gap. Hirsch said the ICRP benchmark would allow long-term levels of radiation from 100 millirems to as much as 10,000 millirems, a level equivalent to as many as 50,000 chest X-rays over a 30-year period. The benchmark levels from the Health Physics Society would allow an area to continue to emit 100 millirems to 500 millirems per year, the equivalent of as many as 2,500 chest X-rays over 30 years. A 500 millirems-per-year radiation exposure is estimated to produce about 1 additional cancer for every 80 people exposed, according to government cancer-risk calculations, said Diane D'Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a nuclear industry watchdog group. By comparison, the Environmental Protection Agency requires cleanup standards at Superfund toxic waste to assure an additional cancer risk no greater than 1 in 10,000 people exposed, said D'Arrigo. The government plans to limit the maximum radiation exposure to the public at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site to no more than 15 millirems per year. A typical chest X-ray exposes a person to 6 millirems. Normal background radiation is about 300 millirems per year. The draft says the guidelines are "not intended to define `safe' or `unsafe' levels of exposure or contamination" but represent "the approximate levels at which the associated protective actions are justified." The contents of the so-called "interim final" draft document were first reported by an independent newsletter, Inside EPA. Copies of the draft, as well as an earlier version dated July 18, 2003, were obtained and provided Thursday by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Don Jacks, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he could not comment on the contents of the draft. He said the document could still change as it goes through the final approval process at FEMA, the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Homeland Security Department and after the planned public comment period. "Trying to interpret (the guidelines) now is way ahead of the curve," said Jacks. ---- Drunken Pilot Who Buzzed Plant Sentenced By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: December 1, 2004 Filed at 6:15 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Plane-Diverted.html?oref=login NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- A drunken pilot who buzzed his plane near a nuclear power plant and came near six commercial airliners was sentenced to six to 23 months in prison on Tuesday. John V. Salamone had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 percent when he landed the plane after an erratic, four-hour flight on Jan. 15 over the Philadelphia region, authorities said. The legal limit for pilots, set by the Federal Aviation Administration, is 0.04 percent, half the amount for drivers in Pennsylvania. Salamone, 44, who faced up to nine years in prison, must also serve five years probation and undergo alcohol counseling, a Montgomery County judge ordered. Salamone was convicted of risking a catastrophe and reckless endangerment after prosecutors learned the initial state charge of driving under the influence does not apply to pilots. Lawmakers have since tried to rectify the legal loophole, passing a bill -- now awaiting the governor's signature -- that makes flying drunk a crime. Salamone, flying a single-engine Piper Cherokee, meandered into New Jersey and flew into forbidden airspace. He flew as low as 100 feet and within a quarter mile of the Limerick nuclear power plant, officials said. A Philadelphia police helicopter helped force the plane down. Officials acknowledged at the time there was little they could do, physically, to bring the plane down after the North American Aerospace Defense Command concluded it was not a terrorist threat. ------ Lax dirty bomb cleanup standards decried Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 17:29:07 -0500 From: Michael Mariotte COMMITTEE TO BRIDGE THE GAP NUCLEAR INFORMATION & RESOURCE SERVICE for immediate release DECEMBER 2, 2004 Contacts: Daniel Hirsch, CBG (831) 332-3099 Diane D’Arrigo, NIRS (202) 328-0002 x16 GROUPS CRITICIZE HOMELAND SECURITY PLANS TO RELAX RADIATION CLEANUP STANDARDS FOR A “DIRTY BOMB” OR TERRORIST NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVE Doses Equivalent to Tens of Thousands of Chest X-rays Could be Allowed, Officially Estimated to Cause Cancer in Up to a Quarter of Those Exposed WASHINGTON, DC - More than 50 public policy organizations today called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt plans to dramatically weaken requirements for cleaning up radioactive contamination from a terrorist radiological or nuclear explosive. The groups disclosed that DHS is about to release new guidance that could permit ongoing contamination at levels equivalent to a person receiving tens of thousands of chest X-rays over thirty years. Official government risk figures estimate that as many as a quarter of the people exposed to such doses would develop cancer. In a letter to outgoing DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, the groups said, “An attack by a terrorist group using a ‘dirty bomb’ or improvised nuclear device would be a terrible tragedy. . . .But should such a radiological weapon go off in the U.S, our government should not compound the situation by employment of standards for cleaning up the radioactive contamination that are inadequately protective of the public.” “Far from protecting us from the potentially catastrophic health effects of a terrorist dirty bomb, by permitting such high radiation levels to remain without cleanup, Homeland Security would actually be increasing the casualty count,” said Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “Approval of this guidance would also set a dangerous precedent to weaken the already inadequate cleanup standards for nuclear-contaminated sites across this country.” ”Benchmark” cleanup standards contemplated in the DHS guidance are up to 2500 times less protective than the risk levels considered by EPA as barely acceptable for cleanup of Superfund toxic and radioactive sites. “We recognize that response actions in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist incident may require extraordinary measures and doses,” said Daniel Hirsch, President of the Committee to Bridge the Gap and initiator of the group letter, “However, it is unacceptable to set final cleanup goals so lax that long-term cancer risks are hundreds of times higher than currently accepted for remediation of the nation’s most contaminated sites.” In a parallel letter to Environmental Protection Agency, the groups urged Administrator Michael Leavitt to resist any effort to establish cleanup standards that permit public risks significantly outside EPA’s longstanding legally allowable risk range. Signers include Committee to Bridge the Gap, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen, and Greenpeace. The full letters to Ridge and Leavitt and supporting attachments will be available on NIRS’s website on Friday afternoon, December 3, 2004. -------- britain Cracked reactors may force closure of nuclear plants Terry Macalister Thursday December 2, 2004 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,1364265,00.html British Energy could be forced to close some of its ageing nuclear generators due to cracking inside the core reactors. Such a move would throw the UK's energy supply into disarray as BE at present generates more than 20% of the country's electricity. The cracking problems cover all eight of the company's advanced gas cooled gas reactors, or AGRs. Only one BE site - at Sizewell in Suffolk - is not affected because it is a water-cooled design. Hartlepool and Heysham 1 power stations are already closed for repairs of a range of difficulties and BE admits it needs to spend £250m a year to bring others up to scratch. But the more critical problems are centred on the splitting of graphite bricks are used to "slow" the speed of neutrons in the AGR equipment. BE admits in a document prepared for stock market investors it is "not aware" of any technique for eliminating the problem. "The potential impact of the risk is that currently assumed nuclear power station lifetime may not be achieved, particularly at Hinckley Point B, Hunterston B, Heysham 2 and Torness, and extensions to station lifetimes at those stations may not be possible,"it said. "Our plants may require more frequent inspection to support our safety cases which could result in prolonged statutory or unplanned outages or a refusal by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate [NII] to permit us to operate a particular reactor." Nuclear power stations are generally thought to have a 25- to 35-year lifespan but Hinckley B and Hunterston B have been in service for nearly 30 years while Heysham 2 and Torness have been operating for about 20 years. The company declined to comment on the specific graphite problem, saying it had made its position clear in the prospectus. John Large, an independent consulting engineer who specialises in the nuclear sector, said he was aware graphite cracking had become a serious issue in the nuclear sector. "I don't think this is a political trick [by BE] to win permission to build new reactors or an accounting trick, it's a genuine problem. "But I am not surprised. The performance of graphite was always one of the industry's imponderables," he explained. The NII said it was unable to comment at this time but the Department of Trade and Industry argued that Britain was not dependent on one source of supply and did not expect a worst possible scenario. "You can always say that about anything. No decision has been taken to extend the lives of nuclear plants and we have always aimed for a diverse energy mix," said a spokesman for the DTI. But government plans for the future of nuclear energy were in serious trouble last night after the European commission launched an investigation into Britain's decommissioning strategy. The commission said it had opened a formal investigation "to check whether the establishment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency [NDA] ... complies with treaty rules requiring that state aids should not distort or threaten to distort competition." The move is a blow to the government, which is said to have told environmental groups in July it was not anticipating any such inquiry. The DTI sent details to the commission of its strategy for dismantling nuclear stations and dealing with waste nearly 12 months ago and believed it was in the clear, with the new agency set to start operations on April 1. Energy minister Mike O'Brien said he was confident of having his plans approved but had contingency plans to assure the NDA started on time, regardless. "We believe the NDA is compatible with EC state aid rules," he said. -------- iran Iran Reportedly Hides Work on a Longer-Range Missile By DOUGLAS JEHL Published: December 2, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/international/middleeast/02iran.html WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - Iran is secretly developing a longer-range ballistic missile than it has publicly acknowledged, with the capacity to strike targets as far away as Berlin, an opposition group plans to assert publicly on Thursday. The group says the missile, which it says could have the capacity to carry nuclear warheads, is being developed with help from North Korean scientists, even as Iran has agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in a new pact with three European countries. The dissident group says the new missile would have a range of more than 1,500 miles, hundreds of miles longer than the most advanced missiles now in Iran's arsenal, an upgraded version of the Shahab-3 that was tested in the summer. The group, the National Council of Resistance, is the political arm of the People's Mujahedeen, and is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization. It has had a mixed record of credibility about developments in Iran. But several of its disclosures have proved accurate and have played a significant role in unearthing secret Iranian nuclear activities. Iran's defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, said in early November that the country could "mass produce" its Shahab-3 missile, a weapon capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The versions of those missiles now in Iran's arsenal have a range of 800 miles to 1,000 miles but Mr. Shamkhani said his country recently upgraded that range to 1,250 miles. In remarks on state-run television, however, he rejected reports that Iran was seeking to produce a longer-range missile. But in an unclassified report issued last month, the Central Intelligence Agency said that Iran "is pursuing longer-range ballistic missiles" than the Shahab-3 and its follow-on versions. In public testimony last February, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, said that Iran could begin flight testing those longer-range missiles "in the mid- to latter part of the decade." Neither Iran nor the United States government has publicly described the new missile that the Iranian group says is being developed. Officials of the group said they believed the weapon is known as the Ghadr, which means capable or powerful, and would operate on solid-fueled engines, meaning it could be launched much more quickly than the liquid-fueled, medium-range missiles now in Iran's arsenal. Officials of the People's Mujahedeen, which is based in Paris, provided a detailed written outline of their contentions and discussed them in telephone interviews on Wednesday. One senior official, Muhammad Mohaddessin, said the group believed Iran could conduct test flights of the new missile within months. In New York, Morteza Ramandi, a spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, denied that Iran was developing a ballistic missile with a range greater than 1,250 miles. A C.I.A. spokesman said Wednesday that the agency would add nothing to its previous public statements about Iran's missile program. Iran has long sought to become self-sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles, and the C.I.A. said in the report issued last month that North Korea, China and the former Soviet Union had helped it toward that goal. In recent years, North Korea has been the most important source of Iranian missile technology. Mr. Mohaddessin said in a telephone interview that he believed the development of the new missile showed that Iran had "to a good extent become self-sufficient." While North Korean scientists were providing aid, he said, "the most important role is now played by the Iranians themselves." He said the group believed that the missile was being developed in close conjunction with efforts to design a warhead capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. -------- Arms Inspectors Said to Seek Access to Sites in Iran By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: December 2, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/international/middleeast/02nuke.html VIENNA, Dec. 1 -International inspectors are requesting access to two secret Iranian military sites where intelligence suggests that Tehran's Ministry of Defense may be working on atomic weapons, despite the agreement that Iran reached this week to suspend its production of enriched uranium, according to diplomats here. The inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency base their suspicions on a mix of satellite photographs indicating the testing of high explosives and procurement records showing the purchase of equipment that can be used for enriching uranium, the diplomats said. Both are critical steps in the development of nuclear arms. The suspicions were aired here as an Iranian opposition group was preparing to release what it called new information that Iran was secretly developing a nuclear-capable missile whose range is significantly greater than what the Iranians have publicly acknowledged to date. Iran has insisted that its uranium enrichment program is entirely for civilian nuclear energy production, but the areas the I.A.E.A. wants to visit are all in secure military bases. Traditionally, such facilities are considered off limits to the agency, whose primary mandate is to monitor civilian nuclear programs, unless there is strong evidence of covert nuclear activity at the military sites. Weapons experts cautioned that the equipment purchases and other activities could have nonnuclear purposes. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in an interview here on Wednesday that he had repeatedly asked Iran for access to the two sites, but that it had not yet been granted. "We are following every credible piece of information," he said. Understanding the exact significance of what is happening at the two military sites is "important," he added. "We still have work to do, a lot of work." He estimated that even with full Iranian cooperation, it would take at least two years to resolve all of the outstanding questions surrounding the country's nuclear program. "We're not rushing," he said. "It takes time." The deal the Europeans signed with Iran, which the United Nations atomic agency blessed on Monday, was designed to defuse the most urgent problem, Tehran's enrichment of uranium at civilian sites, which could have given it quick access to the raw material for making bomb fuel. With that problem at least temporarily under control, inspectors and the United States are now turning to the question of whether Iran has a parallel military nuclear program that it has not declared. Last year, the country admitted to inspectors that it had hidden critical aspects of its civilian program for 18 years. The inspectors now want to examine the military sites to see whether secret nuclear work is under way. Much of the equipment needed for centrifuges - which spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium for reactors and bombs - is "dual use," meaning it could be used for peaceful purposes as well. Some officials close to the atomic agency said a last-minute disagreement over centrifuges in Iran's civilian program, which emerged before this week's accord was signed, may have been designed as a diversion by Tehran to take attention away from the agency's request for access to its military bases. An Iranian official who was one of the negotiating delegation dismissed the idea of opening up the military sites, saying Tehran had no responsibility to do so. "There is nothing required for us to do," he said. "They should have evidence that there are nuclear activities, not just 'We heard from someone that there is dual-use equipment that we want to see.'" Diplomats and weapons experts here said in interviews that the intelligence on Iran's military activities came from several sources, including nations that are members of the United Nations nuclear agency. One of the suspect military sites under investigation by the I.A.E.A. is a huge, decades-old facility southeast of Tehran, the Parchin military complex. Inspectors believe Iran's military may be testing conventional high explosives at the site, of a type used to detonate nuclear weapons. If their suspicions are correct, inspectors say it could explain what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was referring to nearly two weeks ago when he disclosed new American intelligence suggesting that Iran is working to shrink a nuclear device to a size that could fit atop the country's missiles. While the United States has declined to discuss the intelligence Mr. Powell saw, the American representative to the I.A.E.A.'s board of governors, Jackie W. Sanders, at a meeting of the board on Monday, raised questions about Iranian efforts to obtain equipment "in the nuclear military area" and demanded a specific list of Iran's purchases "so we can make our own decisions about Iran's intentions." But because there is no hard evidence now of actual nuclear material at Parchin, the international agency is left in the awkward position of asking Iran to admit its monitors to the site voluntarily, to prove what one European diplomat called "the absence of nuclear material." The second site is a relatively new facility, called Lavisan II, built in northeastern Tehran, near the site of an older facility that was dismantled within the past year. The existence of the new facility was highlighted last month by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance, the political front for the People's Mujahedeen. Even though the State Department has called the group a terror organization, American officials have been intrigued by the intelligence it has gathered on Iran's program. Inspectors say they now possess procurement records showing that the military ordered a long shopping list of high-tech equipment for the Lavisan facilities - including specialized power supplies that smooth electrical currents to meet the exacting requirements of centrifuges. A European diplomat who is dealing with the Iranian government on nuclear issues, said of the array of ordered equipment, "We believe it's related to enrichment and uranium conversion." He added that "it's something they need to explain for us." The diplomat called the equipment orders "a little bit of everything" short of actual centrifuges. Each of the technologies on the order list, the expert said, had plausible uses both for nuclear and nonnuclear programs, making them "dual use" items. "But when you combine them all together," he said, "it looks like a shopping list for an enrichment program." He said it would make no sense for the military to buy the equipment on behalf of a civilian program. The more likely explanation, he said, was that the military itself "did the experiments," which would undercut Iran's argument that it has solely civilian nuclear projects under way. The Parchin military complex has hundreds of bunkers, buildings and test sites scattered over a vast area about 20 miles southeast of Tehran. For decades, it has developed and made such things as ammunition, rockets and high explosives. In September, the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington, issued a report claiming that Parchin contained "an isolated, separately secured site which may be involved in developing nuclear weapon s." The European expert on the Iranian program said that Parchin had helped develop Iran's long-range missiles and that evidence from satellite photographs and other sources suggested that some of its explosives work now centered on perfecting nuclear arms. "If you go for nuclear weapons development, you need those places at a fairly early stage of your program," he said. International inspectors, he said, need to inspect the site rule out such work and "assure the absence of nuclear material." Iran has so far refused to allow access to the military sites, even while denying that it has any hidden military program to develop nuclear arms. European experts and diplomats said they remained hopeful that the Iranians might eventually permit access to the disputed military sites, citing past cooperation. In October, 2003, they noted, Iran let the I.A.E.A. visit three locations at an industrial complex in Kolahdouz in western Tehran that the military controls. Despite rumors to the contrary, the inspectors found no work at those locations that could be directly linked to the enrichment of uranium. Moreover, the results of environmental sampling showed no signs of any use of nuclear materials. One European official said the Iranians might be stalling for time to clean up the sites and remove all evidence of nuclear research. -------- Iran nabs another nuclear 'spy': reports TEHRAN (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202124320.uk3n6ozp.html Iran's intelligence ministry has announced the arrest of a "spy" accused of setting up a fake nuclear company as part of a bizarre international plot to damage the Islamic republic's reputation, press reports said Thursday. "Asghar C., who has a past of spying for foreigners, was seeking to make centrifuges with a fictitious contract and under the name of a false company," the intelligence ministry was quoted as saying in a statement.. By pretending to manufacture centrifuges, the machines that can enrich uranium to make both fuel for a civilian reactor or the explosive core of a nuclear device, "this individual was trying to damage Iran's international commitments." The statement said the man "was arrested and handed over to the courts." It said the United States has put into action a bizarre plan so it can "accuse Iran of not respecting international conventions and past accords and in this regard certain individuals are taking actions to facilitate these accusations." Iran is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and is obliged to report all of its nuclear activities to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Agency (IAEA). This week Iran escaped the threat of being referred by the IAEA to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions after it agreed to suspend its controversial work on the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment. The United States accuses Iran of having violated the NPT and of seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Iran insists it only wants to produce nuclear fuel to generate electricity, and says it has declared all of its nuclear activities to the IAEA. The case is the latest announcement of action against nuclear spies. Last month four Iranians accused of spying on nuclear facilities for foreign governments reportedly went on trial in Tehran. In August, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi announced the arrest of a number of "spies" who allegedly sent information on Iran's nuclear programme to foreigners. He said the People's Mujahedeen, an armed opposition group based in Iraq that the regime in Tehran labels as "hypocrites", had played the central role in the espionage. The group's political wing, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, in 2002 revealed two key nuclear sites Iran had been hiding, including an uranium-enrichment plant in Natanz. ----- Lack of "unrestricted access" hindering UN nuclear inspection of Iran VIENNA (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202184943.db0lqz1a.html A clause dropped from a UN resolution on Iran this week calling for "unrestricted access" is now haunting UN inspectors as they investigate Tehran's nuclear program, diplomats and analysts said Thursday. The problem is that access is often restricted. Iran is still refusing to give allow inspectors from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the Parchin military site where there may have been nuclear weapons technology testing, diplomats told AFP. And UN inspectors have legal restrictions in checking out buildings at a location in Tehran known as Lavizan-II where Iranian resistance spokesmen said secret uranium enrichment was allegedly going on, they said. A Western diplomat said the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency"can't just go on fishing expeditions. It has to demonstrate some kind of nexus between a facility and nuclear equipment". In plain English, this means the IAEA has to show reason to believe there is nuclear material at a site before it can check it out. This is because the IAEA mandate "is to track nuclear equipment and nuclear material," not weapons, the diplomat said. Thus the IAEA can not check out Lavizan-II in Tehran because it does not yet have the hard nuclear evidence it needs to be allowed a visit, a diplomat close to the IAEA said. This limited access is spelled out in the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a protocol which actually was drawn up in 1997 to give IAEA inspectors wider powers. The powers fall far short of unrestricted access, said David Albright of the Washington think tank the Insitute for Science and International Security. Albright said South Africa and Libya, two states which have dismantled their nuclear weapons programs, had given the IAEA access even to sites involved in testing or development but where there was no atomic material. But Iran, which insists its nuclear activities are civilian and peaceful, refuses this, insisting that a resolution adopted Monday at a meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors in Vienna keep to the terms of the Additional Protocol. A first version of the British-French-German resolution had called for "unrestricted access to all sites as deemed necessary by the agency." But the resolution as adopted, in a watered-down form to reward Iran for agreeing to a full freeze of uranium enrichment activities, spoke only of "any access deemed necessary by the agency in accordance with the Additional Protocol." This leaves the IAEA handicapped in trying to trace possible atomic weapons development. A diplomat close to the agency said the IAEA's legal authority was "quite limited when you get into the area of nuclear weapons related activity" since actual nuclear material may not be present. But even when such material is alleged things can move slowly. The IAEA in October sent a "note outlining modalities" for a visit to Parchin, where Iran's Defense Industries Organization (DIO) does work in explosives, but has still not been allowed to go, diplomats said. US officials have said the Iranians may be testing in Parchin "high-explosive shaped charges with an inert core of depleted uranium" as a dry test for how a bomb with fissile material would work. One diplomat said the IAEA "has some nuclear evidence (for Parchin), some reasons to ask, or otherwise it wouldn't ask to go there." But "the obstacles increase when one is trying to visit a military site," the diplomat said. -------- Inspectors Said to Seek Access to Sites in Iran The New York Times By WILLIAM J. BROAD, DAVID E. SANGER and ELAINE SCIOLINO December 2, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/international/middleeast/02nuke.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=090819bd04b6ace2&hp&ex=1102050000&partner=homepage VIENNA, Dec. 1 -International inspectors are requesting access to two secret Iranian military sites where intelligence suggests that Tehran's Ministry of Defense may be working on atomic weapons, despite the agreement that Iran reached this week to suspend its production of enriched uranium, according to diplomats here. The inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency base their suspicions on a mix of satellite photographs indicating the testing of high explosives and procurement records showing the purchase of equipment that can be used for enriching uranium, the diplomats said. Both are critical steps in the development of nuclear arms. The suspicions were aired here as an Iranian opposition group was preparing to release what it called new information that Iran was secretly developing a nuclear-capable missile whose range is significantly greater than what the Iranians have publicly acknowledged to date. Iran has insisted that its uranium enrichment program is entirely for civilian nuclear energy production, but the areas the I.A.E.A. wants to visit are all in secure military bases. Traditionally, such facilities are considered off limits to the agency, whose primary mandate is to monitor civilian nuclear programs, unless there is strong evidence of covert nuclear activity at the military sites. Weapons experts cautioned that the equipment purchases and other activities could have nonnuclear purposes. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in an interview here on Wednesday that he had repeatedly asked Iran for access to the two sites, but that it had not yet been granted. "We are following every credible piece of information," he said. Understanding the exact significance of what is happening at the two military sites is "important," he added. "We still have work to do, a lot of work." He estimated that even with full Iranian cooperation, it would take at least two years to resolve all of the outstanding questions surrounding the country's nuclear program. "We're not rushing," he said. "It takes time." The deal the Europeans signed with Iran, which the United Nations atomic agency blessed on Monday, was designed to defuse the most urgent problem, Tehran's enrichment of uranium at civilian sites, which could have given it quick access to the raw material for making bomb fuel. With that problem at least temporarily under control, inspectors and the United States are now turning to the question of whether Iran has a parallel military nuclear program that it has not declared. Last year, the country admitted to inspectors that it had hidden critical aspects of its civilian program for 18 years. The inspectors now want to examine the military sites to see whether secret nuclear work is under way. Much of the equipment needed for centrifuges - which spin at supersonic speeds to purify uranium for reactors and bombs - is "dual use," meaning it could be used for peaceful purposes as well. Some officials close to the atomic agency said a last-minute disagreement over centrifuges in Iran's civilian program, which emerged before this week's accord was signed, may have been designed as a diversion by Tehran to take attention away from the agency's request for access to its military bases. An Iranian official who was one of the negotiating delegation dismissed the idea of opening up the military sites, saying Tehran had no responsibility to do so. "There is nothing required for us to do," he said. "They should have evidence that there are nuclear activities, not just 'We heard from someone that there is dual-use equipment that we want to see.' " Diplomats and weapons experts here said in interviews that the intelligence on Iran's military activities came from several sources, including nations that are members of the United Nations nuclear agency. One of the suspect military sites under investigation by the I.A.E.A. is a huge, decades-old facility southeast of Tehran, the Parchin military complex. Inspectors believe Iran's military may be testing conventional high explosives at the site, of a type used to detonate nuclear weapons. If their suspicions are correct, inspectors say it could explain what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was referring to nearly two weeks ago when he disclosed new American intelligence suggesting that Iran is working to shrink a nuclear device to a size that could fit atop the country's missiles. While the United States has declined to discuss the intelligence Mr. Powell saw, the American representative to the I.A.E.A.'s board of governors, Jackie W. Sanders, at a meeting of the board on Monday, raised questions about Iranian efforts to obtain equipment "in the nuclear military area" and demanded a specific list of Iran's purchases "so we can make our own decisions about Iran's intentions." But because there is no hard evidence now of actual nuclear material at Parchin, the international agency is left in the awkward position of asking Iran to admit its monitors to the site voluntarily, to prove what one European diplomat called "the absence of nuclear material." The second site is a relatively new facility, called Lavisan II, built in northeastern Tehran, near the site of an older facility that was dismantled within the past year. The existence of the new facility was highlighted last month by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance, the political front for the People's Mujahedeen. Even though the State Department has called the group a terror organization, American officials have been intrigued by the intelligence it has gathered on Iran's program. Inspectors say they now possess procurement records showing that the military ordered a long shopping list of high-tech equipment for the Lavisan facilities - including specialized power supplies that smooth electrical currents to meet the exacting requirements of centrifuges. A European diplomat who is dealing with the Iranian government on nuclear issues, said of the array of ordered equipment, "We believe it's related to enrichment and uranium conversion." He added that "it's something they need to explain for us." The diplomat called the equipment orders "a little bit of everything" short of actual centrifuges. Each of the technologies on the order list, the expert said, had plausible uses both for nuclear and nonnuclear programs, making them "dual use" items. "But when you combine them all together," he said, "it looks like a shopping list for an enrichment program." He said it would make no sense for the military to buy the equipment on behalf of a civilian program. The more likely explanation, he said, was that the military itself "did the experiments," which would undercut Iran's argument that it has solely civilian nuclear projects under way. The Parchin military complex has hundreds of bunkers, buildings and test sites scattered over a vast area about 20 miles southeast of Tehran. For decades, it has developed and made such things as ammunition, rockets and high explosives. In September, the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington, issued a report claiming that Parchin contained "an isolated, separately secured site which may be involved in developing nuclear weapons." The European expert on the Iranian program said that Parchin had helped develop Iran's long-range missiles and that evidence from satellite photographs and other sources suggested that some of its explosives work now centered on perfecting nuclear arms. "If you go for nuclear weapons development, you need those places at a fairly early stage of your program," he said. International inspectors, he said, need to inspect the site rule out such work and "assure the absence of nuclear material." Iran has so far refused to allow access to the military sites, even while denying that it has any hidden military program to develop nuclear arms. European experts and diplomats said they remained hopeful that the Iranians might eventually permit access to the disputed military sites, citing past cooperation. In October, 2003, they noted, Iran let the I.A.E.A. visit three locations at an industrial complex in Kolahdouz in western Tehran that the military controls. Despite rumors to the contrary, the inspectors found no work at those locations that could be directly linked to the enrichment of uranium. Moreover, the results of environmental sampling showed no signs of any use of nuclear materials. One European official said the Iranians might be stalling for time to clean up the sites and remove all evidence of nuclear research. ----- U.S. told of Iranian effort to create nuclear warhead THE WASHINGTON TIMES By Bill Gertz December 02, 2004 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041201-114749-5010r.htm Recent intelligence shows Iran has been working to produce a missile re-entry vehicle containing a small nuclear warhead for its Shahab missiles and has encountered problems developing a reliable centrifuge system for uranium enrichment, U.S. officials said. The officials, who discussed the intelligence on the condition of anonymity, said Iran's new nuclear warhead program includes what specialists call the basic "physics package" for fitting a nuclear bomb inside the nose cone of a missile. The officials provided details on the program after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell disclosed Nov. 17 that Iran was developing delivery systems for nuclear missiles. Iran has since agreed to halt uranium enrichment under pressure from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and three European governments, a deal the Bush administration views skeptically. The warhead is based on an indigenous Iranian design and is not being built from design information supplied by the covert nuclear network headed by Pakistani technician Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has admitted supplying nuclear goods to Libya, Iran and North Korea, the officials said. "They are moving ahead with a design for a warhead," one official said. Mr. Powell two weeks ago told reporters traveling with him to Santiago, Chile, that the intelligence shows that Iran is "actively working on [nuclear delivery] systems." "You don't have a weapon until you put it in something that can deliver a weapon," he said. Other officials said the intelligence revealed that Iranians belonging to the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran were conducting research and testing on development of a nuclear warhead for a missile. The information came from reliable intelligence sources and was not provided by an Iranian opposition group, they said. In November, the governments of France, Germany and Britain negotiated an agreement with Iran that calls on Tehran to suspend all uranium enrichment. In exchange, Iran received assurances that it will not be brought before the U.N. Security Council for potential sanctions. Iran demanded that it be allowed to keep 20 centrifuges for research. The IAEA said it will monitor the machines. U.S. officials said privately that the Iranians appear to be trying to buy time to continue covert work on nuclear weapons. The Bush administration wants to take the issue to the United Nations, where sanctions can be imposed on Iran. A U.S. official said the Iranians learned from Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq not to put all their nuclear programs in a single location. "They have multiple locations that can be used in case one facility is lost," the official said. A CIA report made public last week said the U.S. government "remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program." The program is based on making a nuclear fuel cycle "ostensibly for civilian purposes but with clear weapons potential," the report said. Regarding Iran's uranium enrichment program, the officials said Tehran is having problems with developing a reliable centrifuge "cascade," a series of hundreds or thousands of machines that spin uranium hexaflouride gas into highly enriched uranium — the key fuel for nuclear bombs, the officials said. However, the design work is close to completion and once testing is finished on a successful machine, the Iranians will begin large-scale production of centrifuges, they said. "They just need to make one machine that doesn't explode when it spins at 7,000 rpm, and then they'll go into large-scale production," one official said. Iran has deployed at least six 620-mile-range Shahab-3 missiles, said the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. U.S. officials think these missiles and future long-range versions will be the main system for the nuclear warheads. The IAEA, the watchdog group of the United Nations that has been dealing with the Iranian nuclear problem, announced Monday that it has verified most of Iran's claims about its nuclear material, after months of dissembling by Tehran. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, in a report to the board made public Monday, said Iran has been working on nuclear activities since the 1980s at various locations and is using several methods for making nuclear fuel. The report said Tehran has not fully cooperated in explaining its nuclear programs, although Mr. ElBaradei said he has accepted most of Tehran's explanations for discrepancies. The White House has disagreed. "Iran has time and time again deceived and denied, deceived the international community," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday. The IAEA report said that Iranians had provided false statements and conflicting responses to questions about the program, and that unanswered questions remain about Iran's uranium enrichment and its importation of centrifuges. ----- Why Iran wants its own nuclear deterrent The Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy December 02, 2004 http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1202/p04s01-wome.html CAIRO – Iran's declaration Tuesday that suspension of nuclear enrichment is only temporary shows how far European powers and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) remain from substantially slowing Iran's move toward a nuclear bomb. The problem, analysts say, is the apparent belief of Iran's leaders that the benefits of obtaining a nuclear bomb now outweigh the drawbacks. With President Bush having branded them "evil" and with US forces deployed in Iraq to their west and Afghanistan to their east, the Iranians seem to be gambling that their best interests lie in having their own nuclear deterrent. The Europeans - Britain, Germany, and France - are unable to provide Iran with what it wants most: a guarantee against US military action. Without that, analysts say, Iran is likely to continue a diplomatic game of alternating concessions and declarations of nuclear intent until there's direct engagement by the US. "They've been attacked by [weapons of mass destruction] in the past and the international community not only did nothing, but turned a blind eye," says Rob Malley, director of the International Crisis Group's Middle East and North Africa project. "They're in a regional environment where other countries have nuclear capacity, and they're surrounded by countries with a strong US military presence, so they feel finding their own independent means of deterrent is critical." The issue of national pride for Iran also looms large in discussions of a nuclear weapon. "They see themselves of the France or Great Britain of the Persian Gulf," Mr. Malley says. "They feel they should have the bomb." Malley argues that the only diplomatic solution would require that the US come to the table and "create the sense that [Iran is] no longer under siege and that their regime is not threatened." On Tuesday, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rohani, sought to paint Iran's agreement - which headed off possible UN Security Council sanctions - as a temporary step that is a major diplomatic victory over the US. Iran "has not renounced the nuclear fuel cycle [and] will never renounce it,'' he told reporters. "We have proved that ... we are capable of isolating the United States." The US has been skeptical of the accord, saying it amounts to little more than a first step. "The Iranians agreed to suspend - but not terminate - their nuclear-weapons program. Our position is that they ought to terminate their nuclear weapons program," President Bush said. Sam Gardiner, a retired US Air Force colonel who used to teach at the National War College, recently conducted a simulation for The Atlantic Monthly about American military options against Iran as it moves towards a nuclear bomb. The assessment of the team he put together was that the use of force would not work, or would come at too high a cost. "The thing I think people don't realize is how much leverage the Iranians have over us right now,'' says Mr. Gardiner. "We have limited military options particularly when we're in Iraq. Iran has the leverage to make things go very badly for us there." Other analysts point to Iran's ties to Hizbullah, and the chance the terror group could be used as a proxy to strike out at Israel in the event of an attack. The ICG's Malley says the best bet now is for the US to use the current interlude - assuming the temporary halt in uranium enrichment is confirmed by the IAEA - to get involved and put offers on the table that address many of Iran's concerns. He says that probably will not be enough for Iran to give up its hopes of obtaining a nuclear weapon, but may help rally members of the international community behind the US to consider other options. "If you don't have the feeling that a good faith effort was made, therefore you want be able to coalesce a group of countries against Iran,'' he says. "Before you get to something more drastic you need to exhaust diplomacy, or you're going to get into a go-it-alone situation again." Even sanctions now are a weak option, with Iran's important role in the global oil market. Analysts suspect the country has had a windfall of $20 billion over budgeted oil revenue this year, thanks to high prices caused by the war in Iraq. Mr. Gardiner says Iran's ability to drive prices even higher could do severe damage to the developed economies. -------- Diplomats: U.N. Lacks Right to Inspect Sites in Iran By REUTERS Published: December 2, 2004 Filed at 6:51 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran-nuclear-inspectors.html VIENNA (Reuters) - Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog would like to visit a secret military site in Iran that an exile group said was a nuclear weapons site, but they lack the legal authority to go there, U.N. diplomats told Reuters. Iran, which insists its nuclear program is solely for electricity generation, earlier this week escaped possible U.N. Security Council economic sanctions after agreeing to freeze all activities which could be used to make bomb-grade material. The New York Times reported Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes satellite photographs show that high explosives are being tested and that procurement records show equipment has been bought that can be used for making bomb-grade uranium, citing unnamed diplomats. The intelligence came from several sources, including nations that are members of the IAEA, the Times reported. But the military sites the inspectors would like to inspect -- the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran and Lavizan II in northeastern Tehran -- are legally off limits to the IAEA, which only has the right to monitor civilian nuclear programs. ``The IAEA simply has no authority to go to sites that are not declared nuclear sites,'' a diplomat close to the IAEA inspection process told Reuters. He said that the IAEA had not asked to inspect Lavizan II, although they would like to. Last December, Iran signed the IAEA's Additional Protocol, granting the agency more authority to conduct short-notice, intrusive inspections. Although the protocol has not been ratified, Tehran has been acting as if it was in force. However, this extended authority is only limited to declared sites. Additional access to locations like Parchin and Lavizan II has to be negotiated with the country under inspection. The diplomat described it as ``depressing'' that the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an Iranian exile group with a history of revealing hidden nuclear sites in Iran, said recently that Lavizan II was a secret atomic weapons site and then days later reported that it was being stripped clean. ``TERRIBLE BLOW'' TO IAEA INSPECTIONS ``If a country has a strategy for hiding its nuclear program, then the Additional Protocol is of little use,'' a U.N. diplomat said, adding that the IAEA would not have been able to prove that Libya had an atomic arms program if Muammar Gaddafi had not confessed and handed over his atom bomb designs. He said that if Iran was hiding a nuclear weapons program, as Washington believes, the IAEA would probably never find it without additional inspection authority. Diplomats and weapons experts said that the IAEA inspection process had been dealt a severe blow this week when France, Britain and Germany gave in to Iranian demands that a clause demanding Iran grant the IAEA ``unrestricted access'' to sites in Iran be removed from a draft resolution. The resolution passed by the IAEA board only calls on Iran to grant access ``in accordance with the Additional Protocol.'' ``It was a terrible blow to this effort to find these potential nuclear weapons sites,'' David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of a Washington-based think-tank, told Reuters. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has asked Iran many times for access to another military site called Parchin, also suspected to be a location for nuclear weapons activity. But a November report by the IAEA said it had received no response from Tehran. ElBaradei has said that it could take at least two years to resolve all the issues surrounding Iran's nuclear program, even if the country fully cooperates, because of the fact that its program was concealed for nearly two decades. -------- There are worse things than a nuclear Iran International Herald Tribune Borut Grgic December 2, 2004 http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/01/opinion/edgrgic.html Nuclear standoff II LJUBLJANA, Slovenia With so much attention now focused on Iran's nuclear potential and intentions, the bottom-line assumption is that Europe and America cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran. But that may not be the worst option. Convincing Iran to stay on the no-nukes track is an important trans-Atlantic security objective, and Washington and Europe should work together to ensure that the mullahs adhere to the deal presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency this week. The question is: What if they don't? Should Europe and America opt for the military card? Probably not. For one, the threat from a nuclear Iran is not immanent, particularly in light of the available deterrence option. Second, the goal of the Euro-American strategy for Iran should be a transformed, democratic, integrated Iran, and not necessarily a nonnuclear one. This means that if the price for a democratic Iran is Tehran's being allowed to develop limited nuclear capabilities, then so be it. Europe and American can afford it. There are also no good military options. For one, a military strike against Iran would probably not receive Security Council authorization - Russia and China, and most likely France, would not support it. Another use of force without UN approval would only further weaken the value of the multilateral approach to international crisis management. And what would come after an attack? The invasion of Iraq is a reminder that a top-down approach to democracy and a free-market economy is not necessarily the best way to transform decades of political stagnation and economic underdevelopment in an Islamic country. At this point, neither Europe nor the United States has the necessary staying power to see through a full transformation of Iran. A military strike short of an invasion would do little in terms of extinguishing what is in fact a national obsession in Iran to develop a nuclear bomb. It would, however, isolate the reformist camp and strengthen the hand of the radical mullahs. The transformation and democratization of the Middle East as a whole would also be undermined. A strike on Iran would only further enrage the Islamists and significantly complicate efforts to move the Palestinian-Israeli peace process forward. The opportunity to capitalize on Yasser Arafat's death and establish a Palestinian state would be lost. The central challenge for an effective Euro-American strategy on Iran is to preserve the reform process inside Iran, ensuring that reform continues and that pro-Western forces are strengthened. With oil prices shooting through the roof, sanctions against Iran, let alone force, would damage the world economy. Europe can't afford to lose Iran's natural gas supplies when that would only strengthen Russia's hand over the EU energy market, and the U.S. economy is too weak to lose Iranian oil. Finally, China, desperate for energy, would oppose sanctions. The Bush administration, it seems, has decided that it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. The perception in Washington is that the medium-term risks that come with Tehran's developing a bomb are higher than the longterm benefits associated with supporting and nurturing the democratic process. But what if the real risk comes from the Islamic radicals, whose power will swell in the event of a military attack? In this case, Washington is off the mark in its threat assessment, and Europe needs to find a way to preserve a common European approach. Another split inside Europe would be bad news for the future of a common European security and defense policy. Europe should avoid such a split, and agree ahead of time on a long-term strategy for Iran. (Borut Grgic is director of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Ljubljana.) -------- israel India, Israel wind up counter-terrorism talks NEW DELHI (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202133656.iphp52k9.html India and Israel Thursday wound up four days of talks on strategies to combat terrorism and held the maiden round of discussions on nuclear disarmament issues, officials here said. Indian foreign ministry officials said the talks were part of ongoing contacts between members of a joint working group set up by India and the Jewish State in 2000 to strengthen cooperation in their fight against terrorism. "Both sides reaffirmed their unequivocal condemnation of all acts of terrorism," an Indian government statement said following the talks in New Delhi. "They reviewed the global campaign against terrorism and discussed ways and means by which the fight against terrorism by the international community can be made more effective and how India and Israel can contribute to this," it added. Indian officials, however, said the two sides for the first time held talks on issues of nuclear disarmament. "On talks on disarmament, India and Israel exchanged views on current issues on the global agenda and decided to continue the dialogue in the future," the Indian statement said. India, which conducted a string of nuclear tests in May 1998, says it will only sign pacts like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty if permanent members of the UN Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- agree to a time-frame for disarmament and ban simulated atomic explosions. Israel has remained silent on its nuclear weapons capability, but is widely believed to have a nuclear weapons arsenal. The Indian statement said the two sides agreed to meet early next year to "expand inter-sessional exchanges in specific professional areas". Despite New Delhi's deep reservations on Israel's military actions in the Gaza strip, New Delhi and the Israel have forged close military bonds over the past six years. Israel has offered its latest counter-terrorism hardware including unmanned aerial vehicles, night-vision devices, and sensors to monitor cross-border infiltration in Kashmir, as well as communication equipment and the Phalcon airborne early warning system, an advanced radar system. India, on its part, has allowed Israeli personnel access to some of its classified sites for training in anti-terror measures, sources say. As leader of the non-aligned movement during the Cold War, India shunned Israel. But in 1992, New Delhi established diplomatic ties amid hopes of Middle East peace. The ties warmed dramatically after then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalists took office in 1998. -------- korea US calls for N Korean nuclear talks by first week of January TOKYO (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202002228.kvthf87a.html Washington hopes to hold a new round of talks to solve the North Korean nuclear issue by the first week of January, US State Department number two Richard Armitage said in an interview published Thursday. "We all hope to get the talks started again, maybe sometime in December or the first week of January," the mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun quoted Armitage as saying in the interview in Washington on Tuesday. China said Tuesday North Korea was waiting for a change in US policy towards Pyongyang before agreeing to a date for another round of six-party talks involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. The North has accused the United States of adopting a "hostile" policy towards the reclusive country. "I believe they're looking to see if a new Bush administration may have some softer people in it, to see if they can get a better deal. It's a mistake," Armitage was quoted as saying. "I don't think the North Koreans have yet to come to a decision on what to do," he added. Three rounds of multilateral talks to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions have taken place since the standoff erupted in October 2002. North Korea boycotted a fourth round of talks scheduled for Beijing in September in order to wait out the November US presidential elections, according to many analysts. Washington has called for a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of the North's nuclear weapons program. ----- Blair Holds Talks with South Korean President Scotsman.com By Andrew Woodcock 2 Dec 2004 http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3831852 Prime Minister Tony Blair will welcome South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to 10 Downing Street today for talks expected to be dominated by concerns over the nuclear ambitions of Seoul’s neighbour to the north. International moves to defuse tension over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme are currently stalled after Pyongyang signalled earlier this week that it was not ready to rejoin six-nation talks on the issue. Britain has sought to build bridges with the secretive North Korean regime in recent years, in the hope of persuading it to engage with the international community on issues like weapons proliferation. Diplomatic ties were restored in 2002 and Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell visited in September. Today’s meeting will give Mr Blair and Mr Roh – making the first state visit to the UK by a South Korean head of state – an opportunity to take stock of the situation and discuss how to bring Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. Six-nation talks involving both North and South Korea, along with the US, Russia, China and Japan, came to a halt when Pyongyang failed to return to the table in September following a summer break. Reports this week suggested dictator Kim Jong-Il is now waiting for President George Bush’s State of the Union address in January to assess the USA’s stance towards his regime before deciding whether to resume negotiations. Concern was sparked in 2002 when Pyongyang expelled international nuclear watchdogs and heightened in April last year, when it announced it had constructed an actual bomb. Iraq is also certain to be on the agenda at today’s meeting. South Korea has been a staunch supporter of the war to oust Saddam Hussein, and with 3,000 troops on the ground is the fourth-largest contributor to the multi-national forces. Mr Blair and Mr Roh will also discuss Anglo-Korean co-operation in the financial field, science, technology and trade, before appearing together at a joint press conference at the Foreign Office. South Korea was itself rebuked last week over uranium and plutonium enrichment programmes which could have led to the development of nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency criticised Seoul’s failure to report the activities, in which a tiny amount of uranium was enriched to a level close to that usable in an atomic weapons. But it was not referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, because there was no evidence the experiments were continuing. Mr Roh was also opening a high-technology forum in London, as well as meeting chief executives of leading British investors in his country at Buckingham Palace. In the evening, he will attend a banquet at the Guildhall hosted by the Lord Mayor of London. -------- missile defense Touchy question of ballistic missile defence raised in Bush-Martin talks (CP) December 2, 2004 http://canadaeast.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041130/CPN/50820027 OTTAWA - Ballistic missile defence, which has become an anti-American touchstone for many Canadians, wasn't supposed to be discussed when U.S. President George W. Bush visited Tuesday. But it was - and that's likely to stoke the political fires under the controversial issue. Talks between Bush and Prime Minister Paul Martin were to have covered a range of topics, from mad cow disease to border security. But missile defence wasn't on the list outlined by officials. Bush said however that it did come up. "We also discussed ways to strengthen the security partnership that for more than six decades has helped to keep this continent peaceful and secure," he told a news conference following his meeting with Martin. "We talked about the future of Norad and how that organization can best meet emerging threats and safeguard our continent against attack from ballistic missiles." A Canadian spokesman said later that the president simply outlined why he backs missile defence and didn't link it to Norad, the 50-year-old Canada-U.S. defence pact. "He also indicated that he understands that there's a debate taking place in Canada and that he respects that," the official said on condition of anonymity. "The prime minister, for his part, essentially said, 'There is a debate taking place. We've made a commitment that we will consult Parliament and then we'll move forward or not on that basis'." The official said Bush understands there's a political debate over the issue in Canada and that he wasn't trying to push for a decision on whether Canada would join the program. A senior Bush administration official said the president raised NORAD's potential role in any missile defence system with Martin. "What the President was trying to do was share his views on missile defense . . . and recognizing that this is a Canadian decision, but also recognizing that ultimately our missile defense program is going to extend a security umbrella across North America, and that it was important that the Canadians understand his point of view." Martin has long downplayed missile defence. He says there is no U.S. pressure for Canada to join the missile shield plan. Nor, he says, is there any deadline for a decision. But the project was clearly on Bush's agenda. Missile defence has prompted demonstrations, speeches in Parliament and books and articles galore over the past year or so. The United States is in the process of deploying a handful of interceptor missiles in Alaska and California, which together with powerful radars in Alaska, Greenland and Britain, are the heart of the system. They say it's designed to protect North America against an accidental launch of a nuclear missile or against a deliberate, small-scale strike from some "rogue" nation. Opponents condemn the idea. They say it's too expensive, it won't work and will promote a new arms race leading inevitably to weapons in space. Supporters, and even some on the fence, express doubts about all or some of these concerns. But the issue has become highly political. The NDP and the Bloc Quebecois are solidly opposed. Even some in Martin's own caucus are dubious about the idea. The Conservatives, while generally supportive of closer ties with the United States, say they want to see the details of a missile-defence agreement before taking a stand. The government has promised a vote in the Commons on the issue, but it's not clear when that might be and it won't be binding on the government. -------- russia Rosatom Chief Rumyantsev letter reveals specific amounts of nuke usable material, but raises many questions bellona.no Charles Digges 2004-12-02 http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/nuke_industry/36391.html In what are the most specific data yet available, Rosatom Chief Alexander Rumyantsev essentially declassified nearly exact amounts of decommissioned weapons-grade nuclear materials outside nuclear weapons to be housed at the Mayak Fissile Materials Storage Facility (FMSF) in a letter to Russian nuclear analyst Lev Maximov, a copy of which was obtained by Bellona Web. The amount of fissile material slated for storage had remained a tightly guarded secret as the figures reveal Russia’s strategic nuclear capability, as well as the fact that they had, by the end of the Cold War, achieved near nuclear parity with the United States. The United States declassified information on its own nuclear weapons programme output some years ago, indicating that it had produced 662 tonnes of nuclear bomb grade material—112 tonnes of which was plutonium and 550 tonnes of which was uranium—since 1945. Rumyantsev’s letter to Maximov, dated November 19th 2004, was a response to an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding security concerns surrounding the FMSF, which is being built by the US Pentagon-Run Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme. In it, Rumyantsev disclosed that Russia produced between 599 and 626 tonnes of weapons grade plutonium and uranium currently outside of nuclear wepaons produced during the arms race. The total figure for weapons-grade uranium produced by the Soviet Union is estiamated on average by various western experts to be around 1050 to 1200 tonnees. Letting the cat out of the bag According to Maximov, the facility presents a dire national threat to Russia, both in terms of concentrating so much weapons-usable material in one place, making it vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and because the FMSF—CTR’s longest running project to date—gives the Pentagon an inside view at, and the ability to cripple, Russia’s nuclear defence capabilities But Rumyantsev’s response let the cat out of the bag: Of that, 599 and 626 tonnes of weapons-grade nuclear material, 533 tonnes is highly enriched uranium (HEU) and between 66.6 tonnes and 93.3 tonnes of it is plutonium, Rumyantsev wrote. In the letter, Rumyantsev specifies that the FSMF, initially conceived in 1992 as a two part structure, is envisioned to house 50,000 containers holding more than 600 tonnes of fissile material—more than 100 tonnes over the early 90s 500-tonne estimates—extracted from decommissioned warheads. In particular, Rumyantsev wrote that the construction of the FMSF—one of the US Defence Department Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme’s longest running projects—would take place in two stages. “The volume of the two-stage storage facility is 50,000 containers of fissile material,” Rumyantsev wrote. “It is envisioned that each storage facility will hold [in 25,000 containers per facility] 8.333 containers of plutonium and 16,667 containers of uranium. Of those containers, some will hold not more than 4 kilograms of alpha-stage plutonium, others 5.6 kilograms of delta-stage and yet others 16 kilograms of uranium (the 90 percent enriched uranium-235 isotope).” Much of this material, he indicated in his November letter, would be stored in metallic form, whereas the additional 1.2 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium still being produced annually by Russia’s three remaining plutonium production reactors in Seversk and Zheleznogorsk, would be stored in oxide, or power, form. Some 9 more tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium will be produced before these reactors are shut down within the next decade. The United States Department of Energy is currently financing the closure of those reactors. CTR’s initial plans for the FMSF Rumyantsev’s comments make surprising revelations and raise several questions. First, the current FMSF—which was officially opened with a ribbon-cutting in December 2003, but still has at least a year of additional construction before it can begin accepting nuclear material—is designed to hold only 50 tonnes of plutonium and 200 tonnes of HEU. It was initially planned in 1992 that CTR would help finance and construct two such facilities that would conceivably hold some 500 tonnes of fissile material. But that notion of building two identical facilities—one in Seversk and the current one at the Mayak Chemical Combine in the southern Urals—was unilaterally scrapped by Rumyantsev himself in a 2003 letter to his US CTR counterparts. Rumyantsev announced in the 2003 letter that the one wing of the FMSF at Mayak would house only 25 tonnes of plutonium in immobilizes form and no HEU, all of which would be diverted to the US-Russia HEU-LEU programme, via which Russia down-blends its excess HEU and sells the resultant low enriched uranium (LEU) to the United States for use in civilian reactors there. As a result, the current FMSF will operate only at quarter of its current facility and at an eighth of the initially-planned two wing approach. Why no second FMSF? Rumyantsev’s rationale for the decision not to build a second wing to the FMSF apparently hinged on the currently stalled 2000 US-Russia Plutonium Disposition Agreement, in which Washington and Moscow agreed to destroy 34 tonnes of surplus weapons grade plutonium. The dispositioning of this plutonium is to take place in mixed plutonium and uranium oxide (MOX) fuel to be burned in specially retrofitted commercial reactors in Russia and the United States. This surplus plutonium, initially declared at 50 tonnes, was later cut back to 34. No progress has been made on the MOX programme since last spring, however, because Russia and the US Department of State are locked in a heated liability over the project that could eventually kill it. While the infrastructure for the MOX programme was being built, the surplus plutonium was to be stored at the FMSF. But because both the United States and Russia agreed to destroy only 34 tonnes of surplus weapons-grade plutonium, Rumyantsev calculated that by slashing the 50 tonnes slated for storage at Mayak, and adding the 9 tonnes left over from the production reactors, we would meet his 34 tonne surplus plutonium obligation to the United States. No official agreement between the United States and Russia regarding the actual form and structure of the FMSF was ever signed, so Rumyantsev was technically free to issue this edict. Rumyantsev’s answers raise more questions Questions, therefore, still shroud Rumyantsev’s responses and which could not be cleared up by Rosatom. For instance, Rumyantsev writes in his letter to Maximov as if the 1993 two-wing FMSF was still on the boards. The 599 to 626 tonnes of weapons grade material that were apparently to have been put into storage could have been accommodated for in the initial two-wing plan, the CTR and Rosatom officials concurred. But Rumyantsev while writing makes no mention of the fact that he himself had abandoned that plan. Likewise, he makes no allusion to any Russian plans to build a second wing to the FMSF in the future. Such an option has been inconclusively discussed at high levels in the past, according to Rosatom officials. Nikolai Shingaryov, Rostatom’s chief spokesman said he was unaware of Rumyantsev’s letter to Maximov and could not confirm or deny any information or figures that it contained. He said, though, that he was not acquainted with any plans to deviate from Rumyantsev’s 2003 directive to store only 25 tonnes of weapons grade plutonium and divert 200 tonnes of HEU to the HEU-LEU programme. Another source in Rosatom’s fuel cycles division, who asked not to be further identified, confirmed that the 599 to 626 tonne figure was accurate. “I am not able to say to the kilogram how much material there is, but between 599 and 626 tonnes would be a very specific estimate—more specific than we have seen before” he said. An official CTR, who requested his name not be used, was surprised by Rumyantsev’s apparent candor. “Naturally, the original two wing plan for the FMSF gave the US some basic estimates of [Russia’s] Cold War nuclear output, but I have never heard of anyone so high ranking as Rumyantsev naming such specific figures before,” the official said in a telephone interview from Washington. “Granted, 599 to 626 tonnes is not pin-pointing it, but it’s by far the narrowest spread I have heard from them.” Many Western nuclear analysts in the past months have suggested that the current FMSF could hold significantly more material than even the initial 50 tonnes of plutonium and 200 tonnes of HEU it was slated to house. But the Rosatom source “doubted seriously” that the current facility could house anything near 626 tonnes of fissile material. “Conservatively, you could perhaps pack another 100 tonnes of fissile material into the FMSF, but nothing like what Rumyantsev suggests.” The CTR official concurred. He said the Mayak FMSF was constructed in such a way as it could handle more material that it was initially slated to take. “But the extra 305 to 376 Rumyantsev suggests wouldn’t be feasible without another facility, as was initially planned.” Both the CTR and the Rosatom official said they were unaware of any unilateral Russian plans to build a second wing for the FMSF, but the Rosatom official did say that such plans had been casually discussed in the corridors of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, Rosatom’s precursor. ‘But nothing, to my knowledge, was every put into official form,” said the Rosatom official. So where is this extra material going? The fate of the extra 305 to 376 tonnes of surplus weapons-grade material mentioned by Rumyantsev and that will not fit into the current structure of the FMSF remains a matter of speculation. It is doubtful that Rumyantsev and a close group of officials are planning on building a second wing to the FMSF with their own money for the simple fact that Rosatom has given every indication that it intends to pursue plutonium fueled reactors called breeders, for which this excess plutonium would be the backbone. -------- treaties Saddam's stunning strategy of nuclear bluff The Daily Herald Kenneth Adelman December 02, 2004 http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=41546&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Throughout history, world leaders have hidden their treaty violations and lied about it. No surprise there. But Saddam Hussein broke new ground in the world of strategic gamesmanship when he hid treaty compliance and lied about it. It may sound weird, but the Duelfer Report documents that the weird was true. Since the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Hussein actually complied with the U.N. resolutions that prohibited him from producing weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, he brazenly acted as if he were violating those resolutions. It was the mother of all deceptions, and he succeeded nicely (until the moment he was overthrown, that is). We never, for a moment, suspected he was a clandestine complier. Such behavior may seem inexplicable. Persuading the world's only superpower that you are not only a psychopath but that you are armed with the most dangerous weapons imaginable (when in fact you're not) seems, at the very least, counterintuitive. But not so fast. Instead of clinical psychologists, perhaps Hussein would be better analyzed by nuclear strategists. Because he may have created a stunning, new nuclear strategy. After all, if a Third World country cannot be a nuclear power, there might be some value to being a nuclear bluffer. This might work almost as well -- and without the cost of buying all those centrifuges and aluminum tubes clandestinely, and without the mess of dealing with dangerous uranium and plutonium. Like a nascent nuclear power, a nuclear bluffer (or a nation that bluffs about having chemical and biological weapons) can frighten its neighbors, thereby deterring any aggression on their part (which is, after all, a key objective of nuclear strategy). It can reap gobs of attention on the world stage. It can encourage the richer countries to offer aid, nonaggression pacts and increased trade -- if only the errant country would forgo the nuclear option (which, in fact, it isn't really pursuing). Look at North Korea. It's a failed state by any measure, and it would receive about the same amount of attention as Burkina Faso if not for its nuclear program. Pyongyang's building and exporting medium-range missiles was bad enough. But its nuclear program jumped this despotic nation to the top of foreign policy priorities. Envoys from the United States, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea arrive on a regular basis to beg this pipsqueak country to be their negotiating partner. That North Korea has an active nuclear program is deemed fact. U.S. intelligence reckons it already has a handful of bombs. But, then again, we were convinced of Iraq's nuclear program too. How do we really know? Could it be that Kim Jong Il is nothing but a shrewd nuclear bluffer, like Saddam? After all, North Korea is the most shrouded, secretive state on Earth, where facts about even the most mundane aspects of life are kept secret. It's to be expected therefore that the country's nuclear program -- a subject that is shrouded even in the most open of countries -- would be an especially dark hole. Especially because North Korea's program violates the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Yet on April 23, 2003, a top North Korean official -- the aptly named Li Gun -- took aside our assistant secretary of State, Jim Kelly, to "blatantly and boldly" announce that North Korea had at least one nuclear weapon, according to news reports. Li Gun popped the big question -- "Now what are you going to do about it?" -- and boasted that his guys would "prove" they had such weapons "soon." Well, that was a year and a half ago. Nothing more has been proved. But the United States, Japan, China, Russia and South Korea continue dangling aid, trade, contacts and other stuff before North Korea for nuclear cooperation. Could North Korea be a clandestine complier -- not a nuclear power but a nuclear bluffer? I suspect not. Moreover, I wouldn't want to take the risk of presuming these villains were bluffing when they were actually proliferating. But even I have to wonder. These tyrants -- Saddam, the leaders of North Korea, the leaders of Iran -- often seem like kids in their "terrible twos." They like all the attention reaped from bad behavior, more than any reward they'd reap from stopping such behavior. But under our new theory, perhaps these adults aren't really bad at all. They're just acting as if they were being bad. Then how should we deal with them? As you can see, this new nuclear strategy swiftly gets mind-bending. But don't all nuclear strategies? It's no more mind-bending than Robert McNamara's Mutual Assured Destruction (a.k.a. MAD), which presumed that the Cold War nuclear standoff was a good thing because neither Russia nor the United States would dare attack the other for fear of ultimately annihilating itself. Just wait until game theorists model a world of six or more nuclear bluffers. Saddam -- the first and trickiest of clandestine compliers -- may rejuvenate the field of nuclear strategy, just when we figured it had played out its last mind games. Kenneth Adelman, a U.N. ambassador and arms control director under President Reagan, is co-host of TechCentralStation.com, an online think tank. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Robert Bacher obituary: Nuclear physicist who helped to keep the Manhattan Project under civilian control and spoke up in defence of Oppenheimer The Times December 02, 2004 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-1383457,00.html THE experimental physicist Robert Fox Bacher was a key member of the Manhattan Project, the team of scientists who developed the atom bomb during the Second World War. He directed the experimental physics division at the Los Alamos Laboratory, New Mexico, a division known as the “G” division (G being for gadgets). When the operation reached the bomb production stage he became head of the bomb physics division. Bacher was born in 1905 in Loudonville, Ohio. In 1926 he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. In 1930 he was awarded a PhD and given an appointment as a National Research Council Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 1934 he went to Columbia University. He moved on to the physics department of Cornell University in 1935, where he became Professor of Physics and Director of the Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. When the Second World War started he was affiliated with MIT, where he conducted research into radar. In 1943 he joined the hundreds of other young scientists working on the Manhattan Project. He urged J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, not to place the enterprise under military control in order to increase secrecy and security. At the time, the Los Alamos Laboratory was officially classified as a military establishment, but Bacher strongly believed that, to be effective as scientists, the team needed to be able to think independently. The project remained under civilian control. Bacher was a member of the team that assembled the weapon for the first nuclear explosion, on July 15, 1945 at Alamogordo in the New Mexico desert. The test, at a site called Trinity, was a test of a weapon of the design that destroyed Nagasaki on August 9 that year. The nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, used highly-enriched uranium instead of plutonium. The uranium design was so straightforward that the scientists were confident that it would work without testing. The plutonium bomb was much more complex, and so a test was scheduled. By early July 1945, the Manhattan scientists had produced only enough plutonium for two weapons, and sufficient highly-enriched uranium for one. It was, therefore, possible to test a plutonium weapon and have just enough fissile material left over for the weapons dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The core of the weapon used for the Trinity test consisted of a sphere of plutonium, surrounded by a mass of high explosives to compress the sphere to obtain the nuclear explosion. The plutonium weighed 6.2 kilograms (13 lb 9 oz). The core was assembled at the George McDonald ranch house, two miles from ground zero. It was then transported to the base of the 30 meter-high (100 ft) steel tower on which the bomb was to be exploded. The core was inserted into the weapon with some difficulty. On the first try it stuck, as the plutonium was hotter than the rest of the assembly. Plutonium is radioactive, and the heat produced during the radioactive decay processes heated the core. After a little while, the temperatures of the plutonium and the casing equalised and the core slid neatly into place, much to the relief of Bacher and the others in the assembly team. The entire bomb was hoisted to the top of the tower. It worked perfectly, exploding with an explosive power equivalent to that of 20,000 tonnes of TNT. When the extent of the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki became clear, Bacher was concerned about the huge destructive power of such weapons. He believed that it would have been better if the threat of nuclear attack could somehow have been used to persuade the Japanese to end the war without the destruction of the two cities. Bacher was a staunch friend and supporter of Oppenheimer, who had considered resigning from the Manhattan Project when difficulties arose over the production of plutonium. Bacher persuaded him to stay, knowing that, if he quit, the project would be seriously delayed. Oppenheimer’s loyalty was questioned during the anti-Communist witch hunts, with a “trial” beginning on April 12, 1954, in an AEC Building in Washington. This bizarre episode began on November 7, 1953, when a former executive director of the Congressional Joint Atomic Energy Committee wrote to J. Edgar Hoover accusing Oppenheimer of being “an agent of the Soviet Union”. Given Oppenheimer’s role as “the father of the atomic bomb”, it is hardly surprising that the accusation was taken seriously. Bacher testified in his colleague’s defence, saying that, in his opinion, Oppenheimer was not a security risk. This was a very brave thing to do during the hysterical days of the McCarthy inquisition. The AEC verdict went against Oppenheimer. Bacher became one of the first members of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. As a commissioner, he testified before a joint congressional committee about the state of America’s nuclear weapons programme. After an investigation at Los Alamos, Bacher was surprised and shocked at how few nuclear weapons were in America’s arsenal. In 1945, six weapons were produced and three were used. During 1946, five more were produced. American nuclear weapon production increased soon afterwards as a result of technical improvements in the production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. At the end of 1950, the arsenal contained more than 360 nuclear weapons. -------- idaho DOE picks Idaho over Oak Ridge for plutonium project Associated Press Dec 02, 2004 http://www.volunteertv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2640449 OAK RIDGE, Tenn. A government project to produce a plutonium isotope used to power deep-space probes once headed to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is now destined for Idaho. Three years ago, the Department of Energy announced it would use the Oak Ridge research facility to process plutonium-238 for space power sources and other defense purposes. But D-O-E has now changed its mind and wants to consolidate the plutonium work at the agency's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory at Arco, Idaho. D-O-E says the change will significantly increase security, reduce risks associated with transporting nuclear materials across the country and reduce costs. Plutonium-238, a sister to plutonium-239 that's used in nuclear weapons, is considered an ideal power source for spacecraft too far from the sun to use solar panels. -------- new mexico Los Alamos specifications announced San Francisco Chronicle Keay Davidson December 2, 2004 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/12/02/BAGDLA4RAA1.DTL The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a draft version of specifications for those who would compete for the contract to run Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico. Officials at the University of California, which has run the lab without competition for six decades, have been on pins and needles for months, awaiting the Energy Department's release of the request for proposals, or RFP. UC officials and regents have not yet decided whether to compete for the next contract to run the lab. The present contract expires Sept. 30, 2005. After the document was issued Wednesday, UC Vice President S. Robert Foley issued a statement saying that UC officials "are reviewing the draft request for proposals, and we will submit comments to the U.S. Department of Energy after a thorough review is completed." "The final decision regarding (whether UC joins the) competition will be made by the University of California Board of Regents," Foley added. "We are pleased that the draft RFP has been released and that the competition process will now start in earnest." The draft request for proposals may be modified in response to comment from the public and potential contract competitors. UC's management of the lab has been bitterly controversial since 2002, following allegations of financial, managerial, security and safety screw-ups. Last year, the Energy Department and Congress ordered competitive bidding on future contracts to run Los Alamos -- where the atomic bomb was born in 1945 -- and certain other national labs. UC officials are still trying to decide whether to join the Los Alamos competition. They're delaying a decision partly because they're waiting to see if the final request for proposals will contain favorable terms; partly because of their frustration and embarrassment over the recent scandals; and partly over concern that at a time of state budget crisis, the state can't afford to pay for such a competition -- costing perhaps $25 million, according to one estimate. Potential competitors include the giant University of Texas system and private firms such as Battelle. The draft is available online at www.doeal. gov/lanlcontractrecompete/DraftRFP.htm. Public questions and comments can be sent to LANLRecompeteHelp@doeal.gov. "The final RFP will be issued after comments are addressed," says an Energy Department statement. Contract proposals "will be due ... 60 days after the final RFP is issued." E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. ----- Draft Guidelines for Lab Bid Released Department of Energy Blueprints Focus on Better Management Practices for Los Alamos Laboratory dailycal.org By JOSH KELLER December 2, 2004 Daily Californian http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=17127 A draft of guidelines governing the adminstration of the Los Alamos National Laboratory released by the U.S. Department of Energy yesterday emphasize reliable management in the wake of several scandals at the lab during UC management. UC must show it can clean up its tarnished record—including the loss of classified documents and enriched plutonium and the misuse of lab funds—of running the lab if it wants to keep its contract. The incidents prompted Congress to put the lab—as well as the other two UC-run labs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—up for competitive bidding last year for the first time in UC’s 61-year stewardship. “We want the winner of the contract to be able to demonstrate that they’re using benchmark business practices, things that will cause the day-to-day activities to be run in the best possible way,” said Al Stotts, spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Administration, a department in the DOE that oversees the bidding process. The lab—the birthplace of the atomic bomb—is New Mexico’s largest employer and a hub for the country’s national security research. The lab has an annual budget of $2.2 billion a year. The guidelines, which will be open for public comment until Jan. 7, would encourage more independent audits of lab activities in place of federal oversight. The department will release a final request for proposals sometime next year and a winner could be announced by July 1, according to a preliminary time line released by the nuclear administration in October. Although the UC Regents will not vote on whether it will enter a bid until the final guidelines are released, the university has signaled that it will likely pursue a bid. “I believe we will be in excellent position to submit a strong and winning proposal should the UC Board of Regents make the final decision to compete,” said Robert Foley, UC vice president for lab management, in a statement. Under the draft guidelines, the winner of the bid would be awarded a five-year contract starting in September 2005—when UC’s contract expires—with the possibility of a 15-year extension for “superior performance.” All lab employees, excluding the director and senior managers, would keep their jobs along with comparable pay and benefits regardless of who runs the nuclear weapons facility, according to the draft request for proposals. At least two other universities— University of Texas and Texas A&M—have expressed interest in competing for the lab, along with at least 12 private contractors, according to nuclear administration. UC and University of New Mexico are discussing a partnership, according to UC officials. UC is also exploring the possibility of teaming up with private industry to run the lab, lab Director Pete Nanos said at the last UC Regents meeting. Despite the string of security blunders under UC’s management, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson urged the regents to enter a bid with a corporate partner to secure the contract. -------- south carolina New plant means jobs are coming Augusta Chronicle By James Gallagher and Adrian Burns December 2, 2004 http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/120304/met_2728427.shtml A nuclear containment systems company is building a production facility in Aiken County and could bring 800 jobs with it. The facility will be used to design, manufacture, install and maintain nuclear containment equipment, according to Flanders' Aug. 24 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "GCS is ready to facilitate the requirements of the scheduled projects at Savannah River Site and other national laboratories and nuclear facilities worldwide," chief executive Robert Amerson said in the filing. "We are excited about the progress being made at the Savannah River National Laboratory and other sites to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and to develop a safe and efficient nuclear energy." The market for nuclear containment is a growing one that will be worth about $2 billion over the next 10 years, the filing says. Local officials confirmed that 600 to 800 jobs might be created once the plant is fully operational. They are still unsure how long that process will take. Officials also were uncertain about the size of the property purchased but confirmed that there is room for expansion. The plant will be an economic boon for the area, which has suffered as SRS has downsized. "A lot of surrounding communities right near the site, be it Jackson or New Ellenton, have seen economic stagnation from the downturn," said Scott Singer, the Aiken County councilman who represents New Ellenton. "I think we can see a multiplier effect for those two communities." Fred Humes, the executive director of the Aiken/Edgefield Economic Development Partnership, would not discuss details. "We will wait to Dec. 8 and make our announcements then," he said. Will Folks, a spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford, said the governor will be in the Aiken area next week. Flanders, whose products include air filters for Lysol and Arm & Hammer, has more than 2,100 employees in 13 facilities worldwide. The company has been expanding its product line to handle the needs of precision manufacturers in the semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries. South Carolina Bureau Chief Jim Nesbitt contributed to this story. What's Next: An official announcement for the plant will be Wednesday, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is scheduled to attend. Flanders Corp. Location: Based in St. Petersburg, Fla., the company has 13 production facilities in 11 states and two nations. Products: Flanders creates air filtration products for commercial and industrial customers. Employees: About 2,200 History: Flanders was founded in 1950 in Riverhead, N.Y., to produce filters for ventilation systems at atomic power and nuclear fuel manufacturing facilities. Since then, the company has broadened its product line to include consumer, industrial and hazardous waste applications. It is publicly owned and trades on NASDAQ under the symbol FLDR. Sources: www.flanderscorp.com, www.hoovers.com. Reach James Gallagher and Adrian Burns at (706) 724-0851. --From the Friday, December 3, 2004 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle -------- SRS's future lies in tritium Augusta Chronicle By Josh Gelinas December 2, 2004 http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/120304/met_2728470.shtml AIKEN - Amid all the uncertainties over the future at Savannah River Site is a mission that scientists there have been refining for half a century and will be working on long into the future. Although there are no plans to increase the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons, the site will continue to recycle or produce new tritium for at least the next 40 years to maintain the current arsenal. It must continue the process because the powerful gas loses its potency after about 12 years. "As long as we have thermonuclear bombs in our stockpile, we'll need tritium," said Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness. "The scope is going down, but it will not go away." Scientists at SRS say they prefer to leave the nation's policy on nuclear weapons to the politicians. "That's not our business," said Tom Foster, chief engineer of defense programs for Westinghouse Savannah River Co., the private contractor that runs SRS for the Department of Energy. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., like President Bush, has said the country should consider new weapons such as "bunker-buster" bombs that can penetrate deep into mountainous regions such as those in Afghanistan. But moderates, including U.S. Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the chairman of a key House subcommittee that sliced millions from SRS' budget for next year, have opposed expanding the arsenal. During a recent visit to SRS, Mr. Hobson said nuclear weapons work "isn't the future" for the federal nuclear reservation. Mr. McKibben and other SRS supporters disagree. Mr. Foster is part of a team that recently finished $142 million of work to modernize the site's recycling of tritium, allowing the Energy Department to close an outdated 72,000-square-foot building in 2005. For 37 years, the site had used cryogenic distillation equipment about 20 feet high to purify tritium, a process that used large amounts of energy to cool the gas to minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit. The site now uses a separation process that involves a system about the size of two 30-gallon drums, Mr. Foster said. The tritium is purified, recharged and stored in metal hydride beds, then shipped back to the U.S. Department of Defense for use in nuclear weapons. "We're trying to be more efficient," said Bob Rabun, a senior technical adviser for defense programs. The site also is building a $506 million tritium-extraction facility, which will receive irradiated rods from the Tennessee Valley Authority and produce tritium for the first time since 1988. It is scheduled to open in 2007. It will take 100 people to run the new extraction facility. Those positions are likely to be filled with employees from the existing staff of about 580, a Westinghouse spokesman said. powerful punchThe Savannah River Site is investing more than $640 million to build new facilities needed to create and recycle tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen used in the nation's thermonuclear weapons. Reach Josh Gelinas at (803) 648-1395, ext. 113, or josh.gelinas@augustachronicle.com. --From the Friday, December 3, 2004 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle -------- us nuc waste Judge blocks Hanford waste initiative By SHANNON DININNY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER Thursday, December 2, 2004 · Last updated 6:49 p.m. PT http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Hanford%20Initiative YAKIMA, Wash. -- A judge Thursday temporarily blocked a voter-approved initiative that bars out-of-state shipments of radioactive waste to the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation. Washington voters last month overwhelmingly approved Initiative 297, which forbids the Department of Energy from sending more radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear site until all existing waste there is cleaned up. The initiative was to have taken effect Thursday. But the federal government went to court in hopes of blocking the law, calling it a "draconian" measure that also violates federal laws governing interstate commerce and nuclear waste. Hanford, a federal site, is immune from state regulation, the government argued. The government also warned that some cleanup would stop and workers would be idled if the initiative were to take effect. Lawyers for the state, however, had given assurances that officials were still reviewing the initiative and would not begin to implement it in the next 60 days. Judge Alan McDonald sided with the federal government Thursday in granting a temporary restraining order, citing the importance of continuing clean-up activities at Hanford. A hearing on a preliminary injunction was set for Dec. 13. Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the state Ecology Department, said the ruling was not unexpected. "We're satisfied that shipments will not be coming in, and over the next 10 days we will prepare a vigorous defense," she said. More than 10,000 people work at the 586-square-mile reservation, which was created in World War II as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. It remains the most contaminated site in the nation, with cleanup costs expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion. -------- MILITARY -------- africa Uganda puts troops on border to bar rebels Washington Times December 02, 2004 http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041201-093740-3957r.htm KAMPALA, Uganda — The Ugandan army announced yesterday that it had deployed an unspecified number of troops along its border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to prevent incursions by "negative elements" based there. "We have made a precautionary deployment along the border on our side, especially in areas we think are possible crossing points for some negative elements based in eastern Congo," army spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza told Agence France-Presse, referring to Ugandan rebel groups purportedly based in eastern Congo. During a devastating 1998-2003 war in Congo, neighboring Rwanda and Uganda sent thousands of troops there to back rebels. Referring to the Ugandan rebels in Congo, Mr. Bantariza said: "They are not a great threat, but we are following them and picking up some of them one by one." The Ugandan government says a new rebel group — the People's Redemption Army (PRA), said to have been formed by renegade Ugandan army officers — was preparing to attack Uganda from eastern Congo. "They have taken advantage of the nonexistence of the state in much of eastern DRC to move around, though we have not got any information that they have bases there and that they are in any military formation that points to an attack," he added. Last week, the army paraded captives it said were PRA members arrested in northern Uganda. Soon afterward, a Rwandan diplomat accused of working with the PRA was expelled from Uganda, prompting Rwanda to throw out a Ugandan official working in the embassy in Kigali. Also yesterday, a spokesman in Kinshasa for President Joseph Kabila said the Congolese leader, after meeting the ambassadors to Congo of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, has decided to send additional soldiers to the troubled eastern part of the country. "10,000 extra men from the DRC army will be deployed in the coming days in North Kivu," spokesman Kudura Kasongo said. Mr. Kasongo said the troops would maintain security along the DRC's sprawling eastern borders by preventing Hutu rebels from neighboring Rwanda from entering Congolese territory and by dealing with other contingencies. Eastern Congo is an ethnic powder keg that was volatile before and after the 1998-2003 war that claimed an estimated 3 million lives through conflict, famine and disease. -------- business Boeing Deal Is Example of Ties Among Military Services, Defense and Congress E-Mails Provide a Glimpse Into 'Iron Triangle' Washington Post By R. Jeffrey Smith December 2, 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26464-2004Dec1.html "Everyone's nervous," Acting Undersecretary of Defense Michael W. Wynne warned in a confidential e-mail to Air Force Secretary James G. Roche on July 8, 2003. It was two days before the Bush administration was to send its first detailed report to Congress about a controversial Air Force plan to lease refueling tankers from the Boeing Co., and a few days after a fierce backroom struggle over its language between critics of the plan and Air Force enthusiasts. Wynne's anxiety, it turned out, was well-founded. Rather than solidifying congressional support, the report's release sparked more intense scrutiny of the most costly government lease in U.S. history, and ultimately helped end the government careers of some of those involved in preparing the report. From a program initially seen by Boeing and the Air Force as a clever way to acquire a new tanker fleet without having to budget for it and buy the planes outright, the lease has now developed a reputation as the most significant military contracting abuse in 20 years, according to a letter sent to the Pentagon last month by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and two other committee members. Three Boeing officials have resigned in connection with the controversy; two have pleaded guilty in federal court to ethics violations. Wynne has been unable to win confirmation as an undersecretary of defense, as a result of the "hold" placed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on most defense promotions to gain leverage in McCain's continuing battle for access to the Pentagon's internal communications about the deal. Air Force Gen. Gregory S. Martin, chief of the Air Force Materiel Command, withdrew from consideration for a more senior post after tussling publicly with McCain about the gravity of the ethics violations. Roche and Marvin Sambur, his top acquisition manager, announced their resignations from the government two weeks ago, just before McCain splashed some acerbic and revealing internal Air Force e-mails (quoted portions of which appear in italics below) about the plan into the Congressional Record. Roche said he never intended to serve longer; Sambur said he stepped aside partly to help ease tensions with Congress, which blocked the leasing plan this summer. The significance of the $30 billion tanker program to its supporters is reflected in the extreme language Roche and Sambur used in the e-mails to describe what they believed was at stake. The two were deeply invested in its success, and although it was principally an Air Force -- rather than a Defense Department -- initiative, they worried that any setback would be ruinous for them and others at the Pentagon. I will not give your enemies the tools to bury us! Sambur told Roche on June 25, 2003, during a dispute over the wording of the report to Congress. Two weeks later, Roche accused dissenting government officials in an e-mail on July 8, 2003, of wanting me to sign a suicide note. BUT I WILL NOT. This whole drill has gotten out of hand! Roche, a former executive at the Northrop Grumman Corp., is well-known for his take-no-prisoners political style. In one e-mail, he compared himself to World War II Navy Fleet Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., whose motto he quoted as: "Strike fast, strike hard, strike often." Both Roche and Sambur, a former executive at ITT Defense with a similar style, have said the lease was a good deal because it allowed the Air Force to acquire the planes faster than if they were purchased. But the e-mails indicate they saw themselves as primarily allied with Boeing and its congressional supporters in the dispute, rather than others in the Bush administration who considered the deal a costly rip-off and violation of federal procurement rules. Their missives, as a result, provide an unusual glimpse into part of what scholars described more than 20 years ago as the "Iron Triangle" -- the enduring alliance between the military services, the defense industry and their congressional advocates. Roche and former Northrop executive Ralph Crosby were once rivals at the firm, said sources who know them both. When Crosby was appointed in August 2002 as the head of the U.S. office of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. -- the parent of Airbus, a fierce Boeing rival with its headquarters in France -- Roche sent an e-mail to William Bodie, his top public relations aide, saying: Well, well. we will have fun with Airbus. Roche's hostility to Airbus was also reflected in an e-mail debate on April 16, 2003, between Wynne and Roche about inviting Crosby to lunch. Wynne opened the discussion by telling Roche and Sambur that he wanted Crosby to say how much a refueling tanker built by Airbus would cost. Wynne explained: They came in a couple of weeks ago and offered to build the majority [of the tankers] here in America. . . . I am not sure where this will lead, but the benefits of competition may be revealing. Roche replied: Mike, you must be out of your mind!!! Crosby has lots of baggage, as does Airbus. We won't be happy with your doing this. Wynne replied with a reference to Pentagon rules against sole-source contracting: But where will the competition come from? Roche replied by invoking U.S. anger over France's failure to support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: Neither you nor I can attend the Paris Air Show, we are getting into a possible flap over inviting the chief of the FAF [French Air Force] to a gathering next September, and you are inviting them to lunch? Hello? Within minutes of the invite, Crosby most likely used your call to butter his personal croissant in Paris, and EADS would then inform the [French presidential office] . . . in seconds. Be careful! Airbus was not the leasing program's only enemy, according to Roche's and Sambur's e-mails. Sometimes top Pentagon officials, such as Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused problems by deviating from the Air Force orthodoxy that replacing the tankers was urgent. Reacting to an interview with Myers published on April 9, 2002, in which Myers said that the existing tanker fleet was adequate for future needs, Gen. John P. Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, told Roche: I don't think there was malice. . . . We just have to articulate the problem we are trying to fix. In the summer of 2003, the Pentagon's office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (PA&E) also stoked Air Force pique by dissenting from its claim that leasing would essentially cost the same as buying the planes. In fact, said PA&E director Ken Krieg in a memo on June 20, 2003, to Wynne and others, lease costs would exceed purchase costs by $1.9 billion to $6 billion, depending on the accounting method used. He said the deal violated Pentagon procurement rules. Roche sent Wynne -- the more junior official, according to Pentagon protocol -- an e-mail two days later, warning that the bureaucrats who opposed the 767 lease have come out of the woodwork to kill it. . . . Ken Krieg's memo . . . is a cheap shot, and I'm sure has already been delivered to enemies of the lease on the Hill. It was a process foul. And Ken needs to be made aware of that BY YOU! Roche went on to say that PA&E was trying to set the Air Force up to be destroyed by Sen. McCain. . . . As you might imagine, I won't give them the chance, but I will make it clear who is responsible to Don [Rumsfeld]. I refuse to wear my flak jacket backwards to protect against friendly fire. Wynne then sent Krieg an angry note, and Krieg responded by suggesting a face-to-face meeting with Roche to clear air. He explained in an e-mail that: I am trying to get the strategy to drive the deal; the deal and contract to set the numbers; the numbers [price] to be reopened . . . without a lot of hype. Roche gave no ground in his reply: Kenny, I love you, and you know that. I think you have been had by some members of the famous PA&E staff. You never should have put what you put in writing. It will now be used against me and Don Rumsfeld. Roche and Sambur also resented an effort by analysts at the Office of Management and Budget to insert into a July 10, 2003, Pentagon report to Congress a single paragraph confirming that leasing the refueling tankers could cost at least $1.9 billion more than buying them. Sambur e-mailed Roche on July 8 of that year: What they are forcing us to say is that IF Congress gave us permission to PURCHASE under the same [terms] . . . then the lease is DUMB financially. Robin [Cleveland, a senior OMB official] wanted it in the text and Mike [Wynne] got her to accept it as a footnote. Sambur added that he had spoken the previous week to Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), whose district includes Boeing offices: Dicks told me to hold firm and not to go along with Robin. Roche, apparently alarmed by Wynne's willingness to accept the insert, also sent an e-mail to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz's top political aide, warning that OMB's attempt to include the paragraph was a bureaucratic trick to make a fool out of Don [Rumsfeld] as well as the Air Force. Roche also told Wynne in an e-mail: McCain and others who oppose the lease will leap to this number! Why is this so hard for you to see, Mike? But Wynne defended his decision the following day: I believe that addressing this point in this fashion takes the teeth out of their criticism. This will not embarass at all the Secretary [of Defense]. . . .This followed one full week of negotiation to remove it from the text and get it to only footnote status. . . . I think you . . . are letting a minor math point get in front of a major policy win. In the run-up to these discussions, OMB's Robin Cleveland had sent the résumé for her brother, Peter, then a law student, to Roche on May 9, 2003, saying: I would appreciate anything you can do to help with NG [Northrop Grumman]. Within an hour, Roche forwarded the e-mail to Stephen Yslas, a senior Northrop lawyer, at the firm's Los Angeles headquarters: STEVE -- I know this guy. He is good. His sister (Robin)is in charge of defense and intell at OMB. . . . If Peter Cleveland looks good to you, PLS add my endorsement. Be well. Roche then forwarded a copy of his e-mail to Cleveland, saying: Be well. Smile. Give tankers now (Oops, did I say that?. . .). Cleveland, for her part, congratulated her brother a week later on getting a job interview with Northrop, telling him in an e-mail: Hope it works before the tanker leasing issue get[s] fouled up. Northrop in the end did not hire Cleveland's brother, and by July 8, the Air Force was less solicitous of her. Sambur on that day sent Roche an e-mail saying: It is worth a shot speaking to Robin, or are you like me in that you would rather take poison? Cleveland declined to comment through OMB spokesman Chad Kolton. He said that after the e-mail exchange about the job was discovered and shared with Senate investigators two months ago, OMB Director Joshua B. Bolton sent it to the Justice Department to check for compliance with conflict-of-interest statutes; no result has been announced. Various e-mails make clear that leasing enthusiasts repeatedly assured top Pentagon officials that the deal was cost-effective and untainted by scandal. Despite the internal budget critiques, a special assistant to the defense secretary, Richard Greco Jr. -- now the Navy comptroller -- said in a January 2003 memo to Wolfowitz that the price is essentially neutral to a buy. After Boeing fired executive Darleen A. Druyun on Nov. 24, 2003, for violating its ethics rules -- but before she pleaded guilty in court to raising the tanker price as a gift to Boeing while serving as Sambur's principal deputy -- Sambur told Air Force Undersecretary Peter Teets that a thorough review of the Darlene situation had been completed, and . . . there was no way Darlene had had any influence on the leasing plan, according to an e-mail on Nov. 27, 2003, from Teets to Roche. When asked about the controversy at a news conference last week, Rumsfeld laid most of the blame on Druyun and the fact that she had "very little adult supervision above, below or on the side" while she steered contracting benefits to Boeing. He added, "I'm told that when Secretary Roche and Assistant Secretary Sambur came in, they looked at that situation, were uncomfortable with it, and began taking authorities away from her and trying to reestablish a different arrangement. "Obviously," Rumsfeld added, "there's something needs to be changed." -------- chemical weapons OPCW gives go-ahead for Libyan chemical weapons factory conversion THE HAGUE (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202202410.j3pganew.html A request by Libya to convert chemical weapons production facilities into a pharmaceuticals plant has been given the go-ahead by an international weapons watchdog. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on Thursday it had approved a scheme to covert the facilities into a plant that could produce low-cost medecine against AIDS and malaria for the African market. "These vaccines are urgently required in the treatment of AIDS/HIV, malaria and tuberculosis," a statement by the organization, which is based in the Dutch capital, said. The plant at Rabta produced about 100 tonnes of sulphur mustard gas and other nerve agents in the 1980s. It was closed in 1990 after the United States and others accused Libya of using the facility for nefarious purposes and hinted at action to stop it. Libya on January 6 agreed to adhere to the Chemical Weapons Convention following Tripoli's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction development programme. -------- europe China to tell Schroeder and EU to lift embargo, but to expect no concessions BEIJING (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202122456.qz92ry5f.html China made clear Thursday it would make no concessions in upcoming meetings with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the European Union where it will urge a lifting of the EU arms embargo. "Of course during these meetings and talks, the two sides will also touch on some problems, including the early lifting of the ban," foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said. "This is high time for the final resolution of this question." But she said Beijing should not be expected to prove its human rights record had improved or to make any concessions. "This is a very solemn, serious political issue. We think it's for the EU to make an early and appropriate decision. ... It's not for the Chinese side to make any concessions," she said. Schroeder will make a five-day visit to China and then Japan on December 5-10, his office announced Monday. In China, he will meet with President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Following Schroeder's visit, Wen will travel to the Netherlands to hold an annual China-EU meeting on December 8. The EU embargo was imposed on China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, but some EU states -- notably France and Germany -- argue that it is outdated. China, unable to purchase advanced weapons from the United States, wants to buy them from Europe and countries such as France and Germany are believed to want to cash in on such trade. The Chinese government spends heavily on military hardware. European countries are also eager to boost trade ties with China, the largest market in the world. Germany also wants Beijing's support in its hopes of gaining a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Several EU countries, however, cited China's poor human rights record as a concern. The European Parliament voted last month to maintain an EU arms sales embargo against China until it improves its human rights record. Zhang argued Thursday that China and the EU have had "fruitful and effective" dialogue on human rights. It was "natural" for the two sides to have differences on human rights but those differences could be resolved through dialogue instead, she said. The ban was "incompatible with the reality of our strategic partnership" and resolving the issue will benefit the development of China-EU relations, she said. ----- EU takes over Bosnia peacekeeping from NATO SARAJEVO (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202150820.ohivhc3g.html The European Union launched its biggest military operation Thursday, taking over peacekeeping duties in Bosnia from NATO, nine years after the bloody inter-ethnic war in the former Yugoslav republic. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer attended the ceremonial transfer of power from the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) to the EU's 7,000-strong EUFOR at Camp Butmir in Sarajevo. "Today the EU assumed a new responsibility in your country ... that will be done with the same spirit and with the same efficiency as our predecessors from NATO," Solana said. A 60,000-strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) mission, including 20,000 US troops, was deployed in Bosnia-Hercegovina to keep the peace after the 1992-95 war and was gradually scaled down to 7,000. "Although NATO's role is changing today, its commitment to Bosnia-Hercegovina's future development remains as solid and resolute as ever," de Hoop Scheffer said. "In the safe and secure environment that NATO's presence has created, Bosnia-Hercegovina has made considerable progress. The citizens of this country no longer live in fear. State institutions have been established and human rights are now respected." His words were echoed by Borislav Paravac, the Serb chairman of Bosnia's tripartitite presidency. "This undoubtedly confirms another big step for Bosnia-Hercegovina in building a lasting peace on its path to European integration," Paravac said. The handover had little logistical significance as the majority of the NATO soldiers already deployed in the country will simply change their badges and armbands to become members of the EU's so-called "Althea" force. It is the EU's third military operation after a small security mission in Macedonia and a French-led force in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003. More than 30 countries including 22 EU nations are contributing to the force, which is being led by British General David Leakey. While peace has returned to the mountainous republic of around two million people, inter-ethnic tensions between Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Bosnian Muslims continue to simmer below the surface. The EU peacekeepers may also have to deal with problems arising from flourishing organized crime and corruption, as well as the possible presence of foreign Islamic extremists who entered the country during the war and remained behind. But the EU's Bosnia mission is being seen mainly as a key test of the European Security and Defence Policy, the military and security arm of the Union. If successful it could pave the way for other such missions in areas where NATO has long borne the brunt of the responsibility for collective security on the contintent, for example in neighbouring Kosovo. NATO will maintain a small contingent of troops in Bosnia, including some 250 US soldiers, notably to hunt alleged war criminals such as wartime Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. NATO's record here has been blackened by its failure to arrest the pair, who are wanted on charges including genocide. Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who was expected to meet General Leakey here Thursday to urge him to step up the hunt for the fugitives, said she hoped EUFOR would do a better job. "I'm very disappointed with the action of NATO in relation to the arrest of war criminals," she said in an interview with the Tribune newspaper in Geneva. Scheffer rejected the criticism, saying it "doesn't help the common cause" and pointing out that SFOR has made many arrests of war crimes suspects in Bosnia. "SFOR has done everything it could. I cannot accept the criticism. SFOR arrested 28 persons," Scheffer said. -------- iran Iran Working On Secret Missile Programs: Opposition Group "Give it time and Iran will really have something to show off". London, UK (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-04zzzd.html Iran is developing new medium- and long-range missiles which can reach Western Europe and target US-led forces in Iraq, an Iranian opposition group claimed Thursday. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said the new long-range missiles, the Ghadr and Shahab-4, had a planned range of 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) which would allow them to reach as far as Berlin. It also said an upgraded version of the Zelzal missile could hit targets as far as 300 kilometers (190 miles) away with minute precision and was specifically designed for "offensive use" in foreign countries, notably against US-led multinational forces in Iraq. One NCRI source, speaking anonymously, said North Korean and Chinese scientists were "definitely" helping the Iranian missile programs. The NCRI, the political branch of the main Iranian armed opposition group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), or People's Mujahedeen, acknowledged that none of the missile programs it described actually contravened any international weapons agreement signed by Tehran. But if Iran could produce missiles with a capacity to carry nuclear and chemical warheads it would "represent an endgame" for the Islamic regime, Ali Safavi of the NCRI said. "Had Hitler been able to acquire a nuclear bomb... the entire situation at that time would have changed with respect to peace and security in the world. And in that sense, I think that the danger and the threat posed by the Iranian regime is no less than that," Safavi told a press conference in London. The NCRI and People's Mujahadeen are listed as terrorist organizations in the United States, and have a mixed record for exposing clandestine activities within Iran. But they have been instrumental in unveiling Iranian nuclear activities, most recently alleging that a site near Tehran is a secret nuclear bomb facility. Citing a leaked report from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Air Force and unnamed sources within the regime, Safavi provided detailed descriptions of the capacity of the Ghadr, Shahab-4 and Zelzal-2 missiles, as well as of an alleged top-secret missile storage site. The Ghadr, he said, was an improved version of the Shahab-3, a ballistic missile believed to be based on a North Korean design that can reach Israel. The Shahab-4 has greater precision than the Shahab-3 and, like the Ghrab, has a range of up to 3,000 kilometers depending on payload, he added. Safavi described the Zelzal-2 as a "very, very precise missile" due to its non-directional beacon frequency system (NDB), a guiding system, and said it was designed by Iran's mullahs with the US forces in mind. He quoted the leaked Iranian air force report saying the Zelzal-2 "has been produced for deploying in other countries and in Iraq in particular." It was designed "with particular attention to the military forces, specifically coalition forces in Iraq", Safavi added. The anonymous NCRI source said Chinese and North Korean authorities had few fears about potential reprisals from Western powers if they supported Iran's missile programs because, like Tehran, they sensed a "lack of resolve" to deal with the regime's potential threat. "There's no question that Iranians have enjoyed the support of the North Koreans and the Chinese in their missile program," the source said. The NCRI also claimed the Iranian regime was working to create nuclear and chemical warheads for the missiles and had "made enormous efforts in this field". But Safavi, who also heads a Washington-based consulting group, Near East Policy Research Inc., provided no proof for the claims aside from naming the alleged head of the nuclear work and its alleged production site. -------- Iraq Neighbors Vow to Cooperate on Borders Associated Press By ALI AKBAR DAREINI December 2, 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_IRAQS_NEIGHBORS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- High-level officials wrapped up a security summit on Iraq Wednesday with a commitment to boost cooperation on border control and to combat the transfer of money that finances terrorist activities. In a final statement after an unusual two-day meeting in Tehran, participants said they would focus on exchanging information and intelligence "with an aim to control and prevent the movement of terrorists, subversives and other illegal elements to and from Iraq." The summit gathered senior representatives from Iraq's neighbors - Jordan, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey - as well as Iraq, Egypt and the United Nations, to discuss sealing Iraq's borders. "I hope we will be able to translate into action the achievements of this conference," Iranian Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari told the closing session. The gathering, an attempt at high-level coordination on security, is designed to help participants share intelligence on groups suspected of ties to the Iraqi insurgency. Iraq blames much of its insurgency on foreign fighters and has called on its neighbors to more closely guard their borders against infiltration. Neighboring countries have expressed concern that instability in Iraq poses a threat to the entire region. The final statement said the countries must increase "cooperation on border security, border entrances and cross-border movements." It also said the delegates "supported the fight against illegal movements of capital supporting the terrorist activities, smuggling of goods, arms and narcotic drugs across their borders." A month ago, Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said authorities had 167 Arab foreign fighters in custody. More were arrested in last month's U.S.-led military offensive in Fallujah. Allawi has said the foreigners include Syrians, Saudis, Egyptians, Sudanese, Afghans and Moroccans. Insurgents in Iraq now carry out almost daily attacks on U.S.-led forces, civilians and government buildings and institutions. More than 170 foreigners and many more Iraqis have been kidnapped; more than 30 foreign hostages have been killed. -------- Marines Find Alleged Iraqi Torture Chamber Associated Press By KATARINA KRATOVAC Dec 2, 2004 http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=535&ncid=535&e=3&u=/ap/20041202/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_torture_chamber_1 FALLUJAH, Iraq - Down a steep staircase littered with glass shards and rubble, U.S. Marines descended Thursday to a dark basement believed to have been one of Fallujah's torture chambers. They found bloodstains and a single bloody hand print on the wall — evidence of the horrors once carried out in this former insurgent stronghold. "We had sensed that there was a pure streak of evil in this town, ever since the first days of engagement here," said Maj. Wade Weems. The basement, discovered while Marines fought fierce battles with Fallujah insurgents last month, is part of the Islamic Resistance Center, a three-story building in the heart of this city 40 miles west of Baghdad. Maj. Alex Ray, an operations officer with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said all evidence indicates the 15-foot-by-20-foot space was used by insurgents to imprison and torture their captives. "Based on the evidence we have found here, we believe people were held here and possibly tortured — we have found enough blood to surmise that," Ray told reporters shown the basement Thursday. On the wall adjacent to the hand print, human fingernails were found dug deep into the porous gravel around a hole in the wall — evidence, the Marines say, of a tunnel-digging attempt. Although most of the evidence had been taken away, there was enough to suggest "they tried to dig their way out," Ray said. No bodies or human remains — except for the fingernails — were found when the Marines discovered the underground chamber on Nov. 11, but they found "plenty of blood," he said. Marine experts have collected samples for forensic and DNA testing. "This is tangible proof how horrific they were," Weems, of Washington, D.C., said of the insurgents, shuddering as he gazed at the bloody hand print. Although unmarked, the center was a known base of operations for the insurgents who ruled Fallujah with terror and fear until U.S. forces and Iraqi troops captured it last month. The assault was launched Nov. 8 to wrest Fallujah from the control of radical clerics and fighters who seized it after the Marines lifted a three-week siege of the city in April. The city fell after a week of fierce battles and overpowering airstrikes which reduced many of the buildings to rubble. Two weeks later, Marines continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with holdouts as they clear streets, homes and buildings of weapons caches and rubble. More than 350 weapons caches have been found so far. As Weems' troops inspected the Islamic Resistance Center on Thursday, gunshots and small arms fire reverberated from Fallujah's northeastern Askari neighborhood. The Marines said it was a sign the insurgents are still active. On the Islamic center's first floor, the Marines discovered a weapons-making factory at the back of what appeared to be a legitimate computer store. It contained boxloads of empty shotgun shells and a primitive-looking reloading machine on one of the tables. On the second floor, they found a sack of gunpowder and numerous mortar launcher cases. Elsewhere in Fallujah, the Marines have discovered DVD recordings of beheadings, as well as a cage and chains bearing traces of human blood. They say it was "apparent the cage was not holding animals." "It's the combination of the chains, the cage, the blood — there were not nice people here, that's for sure," Ray said. "They certainly didn't have the morals I would expect in a human society." Reporters were not taken Thursday to the other sites, many of which have been cleared of evidence and the buildings destroyed by the Marines. Maj. Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer, has said Fallujah's "atrocity sites" were used by the insurgents to imprison, torture and kill hostages. In some, knives and black hoods, many of them blood-covered, have been found. More than 30 foreign hostages have been killed by their captors in Iraq (news - web sites) this year, including three Americans. Many of the victims have been beheaded and their deaths shown on grisly videos posted on the Internet. Iraqi police and other security forces have also been killed after their capture by insurgents. "We believe the majority of the hostages were held in Fallujah because it was such an insurgent haven," said Ray. The military says an estimated 1,200 insurgents and more than 50 Marines have been killed in the assault on Fallujah. -------- iraq Child Sacrifice in Iraq by Kathy Kelly Voices in the Wilderness, December 2, 2004 http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kelly.php?articleid=4093 Shortly before sunrise this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to U.S. warfare in Iraq. On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14-year-old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on Sept. 21, 2003. As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her. Had Johan lived in a country that wasn't reeling from 13 years of economic sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered Iraq's healthcare delivery system. Writing my mental letter, I thought of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's words of comfort to bereaved parents of four little girls who were murdered when the Birmingham Baptist church was bombed on Sept. 18, 1963. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan was convicted of the crime. Addie, Carol, Cynthia, and Carole had been praying inside the church. "These children – unoffending, innocent, and beautiful – were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity," Dr. King said. But he offered comfort. "In a real sense," he continued, "they have something to say to each of us in their death ... they did not die in vain. ... Indeed, this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience." This morning, columnists in major U.S. papers will continue alerting U.S. people to possible wrongs, even crimes, committed by UN officials in the course of the "oil-for-food" program that coordinated and monitored sales of Iraqi oil while economic sanctions ravaged the country. These economic sanctions constituted the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history. It's not likely that Saddam Hussein ever missed a meal, but children, hundreds of thousands of children, suffered gruesomely. Their suffering and death can be likened to child sacrifice, certainly the most egregious instance of child abuse in modern times. They had committed no crime, yet they were brutally – and lethally – punished for the government of the country into which they were haplessly born. You aren't likely to find this story in the current exposés of UN wrongdoing. In fact, many UN officials tried valiantly to put an end to the economic sanctions. Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday resigned their posts and crisscrossed the globe educating people about the effects of the economic sanctions that Halliday termed "genocidal." UNICEF Executive Director Carole Bellamy held a 1999 press conference to announce the release of a "Situation Analysis of Women and Children in Iraq," which carefully explained that the economic sanctions contributed to the "excess deaths" of over 500,000 Iraqi children under age five. Not one U.S. television network aired coverage of the press conference. Only two of 50 leading U.S. papers reported the actual shocking number of one half million "excess deaths" of children. The Wall Street Journal asserted that it was all Saddam's fault. The New York Times echoed this in an 800-word story quoting Jamie Rubin of the State Department questioning the study's methodology. The sanctions punished children while Saddam's regime profited through smuggling: Many Westerners who traveled to Iraq tried to communicate this to people in their home locales. The smuggling and the rake-offs were no secret, especially in the final years of the sanctions when there were many reports of lucrative kickbacks and inflated prices. Many witnessed the sanctions actually strengthening Hussein's control, as the regime became the only source of food and stability for an increasingly desperate and disempowered population. The children were punished. When the pictures of those little ones, writhing in pain, wrinkled with wasting, desperate and bewildered, held by equally despairing and tortured parents – when those pictures were held up, sometimes as we fasted, sometimes while we were being led off in plastic handcuffs, sometimes at press conferences in front of the UN in Baghdad, sometimes in the middle of Basra cesspools and cemeteries – when those pictures were held up, many people looked the other way. When I try to understand why columnists in faraway places wouldn't take on the story of these worthy victims, I try to remember that there are many worthy victims and one person can't undertake care and concern for every devastating, brutal injustice. Pick your battles. But I can't for the life of me understand how a steady stream of columns have appeared on op-ed pages, in the NYT and other papers, alerting us to possible crimes committed by UN officials in the course of the "oil-for-food" program while there has been no mention of the crime of child sacrifice in Iraq. The concern generating reams of verbiage at this point is that UN officials may have looked the other way as Saddam Hussein and a number of collaborators pocketed rake-offs in underhanded dealings using profits from Iraqi oil sales. I'm not equipped to comment on those charges. But is there no columnist who will remind us that 500,000 children under age five died as the U.S. used the UN to wage economic warfare against children? Let's consider the UN workers who stood a chance of getting food and medicine into Iraq – were they to look Iraqi families straight in the eyes and say, "Sorry, we'll have to prevent these contracts from going through because you, in your pitiful weakness, can't prevent the dictator that rules you from getting rake-offs on the deal. We can't compromise our principles..." They looked the other way. I looked the other way myself. We in our delegations looked the other way even as we knew that normally we'd be hopping mad and demonstrating in front of any government bastion that inflicted so much fear on its people ... but that would have been the wrap-up for our entry into neighborhoods, families, hospitals, schools ... it was a tradeoff. King said, "And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled here that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair. We must not become bitter. ... Somehow, we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality." But this said, what words of comfort can I offer to Johan's brother Laith? I can tell him where we stood this morning, and whose picture I held. People looked. -------- You call this liberation Pentagon experts have made a discovery: Muslims do not hate America's freedoms, but its policies The Guardian Sidney Blumenthal December 2, 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1364249,00.html Who wrote this - a pop sociologist, obscure blogger or anti-war playwright? "Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic - namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is - for Americans - really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is ... heightened by election-year atmospherics, but none the less sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims, they are talking to themselves." Actually, this is the conclusion of the report of the defence science board taskforce on strategic communication - the product of a Pentagon advisory panel - delivered in September. Its 102 pages were not made public in the presidential campaign, but, barely noticed by the US press, silently slipped on to a Pentagon website on Thanksgiving eve. The taskforce of military, diplomatic, academic and business experts, assigned to develop strategy for communications in the "global war on terrorism", had unfettered access, denied to journalists, to the inner workings of the national security apparatus. There was no intent to contribute to public debate, much less political controversy; the report was for internal consumption only. They discovered more than a government sector "in crisis", though it found that: "Missing are strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources, and a culture of measurement and evaluation." As it journeyed into the recesses of the Bush foreign policy, the taskforce documented the failure of fundamental premises. "America's negative image in world opinion and diminished ability to persuade are consequences of factors other than the failure to implement communications strategies," the report declares. What emerges is an indictment of an expanding and unmitigated disaster based on stubborn ignorance of the world and failed concepts that bear little relation to empirical reality, except insofar as they confirm and incite gathering hatred among Muslims. The Bush administration, according to the defence science board, has misconceived a war on terrorism in the image of the cold war. However, the struggle is not the west versus Islam; while we blindly call this a "war on terrorism", Muslims "in contrast see a history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration" against "apostate" Arab regimes allied with the US and "western modernity - an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a 'war on terrorism'". In this conflict, "wholly unlike the cold war", the Bush administration's impulse has been to "imitate the routines and bureaucratic ... mindset that so characterised that era". So the US projects Iraqis and other Arabs as people to be liberated, like those "oppressed by Soviet rule". And the US accepts authoritarian Arab regimes as allies against the "radical fighters". All this is nothing less than a gigantic "strategic mistake". "There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-US groundswell among Muslim societies - except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the US so determinedly promotes and defends." Rhetoric about freedom is received as "no more than self-serving hypocrisy", highlighted daily by the US occupation in Iraq. "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom', but rather they hate our policies." The "dramatic narrative ... of the war on terrorism", Bush's grand storyline connecting all the dots from the World Trade Centre to Baghdad, has "borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars". As a result, jihadists have been able to transform them selves from marginal figures in the Muslim world into defenders against invasion, with a following of millions. "Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world is not one of 'dissemination of information', or even one of crafting and delivering the 'right' message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none - the United States is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims ... Inevitably, therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the 'loud and clear' channel: the enemy." Almost three months ago, the board delivered its report to the White House. But, a source told me, it has received no word back. The report has been ignored by those to whom its recommendations are directed. For the Bush administration, expert analysis is extraneous, as it is making clear to national security professionals in its partisan scapegoating of the CIA. Experts can only be expert in telling the White House what it wants to hear. Expertise is valued not for the evidence it offers for correction, but for propaganda and validation. But no one, not in the White House, Congress or the dwindling coalition of the willing, can claim the catastrophe has not been foretold by the best and most objective minds commissioned by the Pentagon - perhaps for the last time. · Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of www.salon.com sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com -------- israel / palestine Sharon Turning to Rivals to Save Coalition Associated Press By STEVEN GUTKIN Dec 2, 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Fresh from a painful parliamentary defeat, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday he'll turn to his old rivals in the Labor Party to save his shattered coalition and get the support he needs to leave the Gaza Strip. Speaking to Israeli newspaper and broadcast editors, Sharon also extended something of an olive branch to the Palestinians, saying Israel won't launch offensives in their territory if the situation remains calm. As Sharon's government hung in the balance, Palestinians were playing out their own political drama. The presidential candidacy of interim leader Mahmoud Abbas took a hit when Marwan Barghouti, an uprising leader jailed by Israel, entered the race for Jan. 9 elections to replace Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president. Barghouti, who enjoys folk hero status in the West Bank, was criticized by fellow Palestinian leaders for jeopardizing the unity of the Fatah party and hurting prospects for a smooth transition of power in the wake of Arafat's death Nov. 11. Hopes for an uncomplicated transition suffered another blow when the militant group Islamic Jihad announced Thursday that it would boycott the vote, joining the larger of the two violent Islamic groups, Hamas, which on Wednesday called on its members to stay away from the polls. On Wednesday, Sharon dismissed one of his key coalition partners, the secular-rights Shinui party, after it voted against his 2005 budget. That left Sharon, whose government was already close to collapsing due to hard-line opposition to his Gaza withdrawal, with only 40 seats in the 120-member Knesset. If Sharon can't patch together a new coalition, he would be forced to call early elections, an outcome that could stall his plans to withdraw all Israeli troops and civilians from Gaza next year. Speaking to the Israeli journalists, Sharon said he'd seek to bring Labor and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties into his government. "We are standing before fateful decisions, and it's important that there be a broad and stable coalition," Sharon said. Labor is seen likely to agree to join to salvage the Gaza pullout. However, many Labor stalwarts oppose linking up with Sharon, their traditional ideological and political rival. The withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements is seen as key to restarting Mideast peace talks. Sharon said nothing will stop him from carrying out the withdrawal. "Disengagement will be implemented, period," he said twice. The plan had been intended as a unilateral action, but since Arafat's death, Sharon has spoken of coordinating the pullout with the Palestinians. Palestinian election officials announced Thursday that 10 candidates have qualified to run for the presidency, including Abbas and Barghouti. Sharon said Barghouti will stay in prison. "He can (campaign) according to the conditions in the prison in which he sits," the prime minister said. Israel has said it planned to ease conditions in the West Bank and Gaza so as not to interfere with the election. Since Arafat's death, the level of violence between the two sides has decreased. Sharon said Israel would carry out military actions only if it sensed an imminent attack or if it were attacked. "If there is quiet, we of course will not act," Sharon said. -------- landmines Countries Gather to Lighten the World's Burden of Landmines NAIROBI, Kenya, December 2, 2004 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2004/2004-12-02-03.asp A project to clear anti-personnel land mines from a wildlife sanctuary in southern Africa was introduced today at a global conference on land mines in an effort to give thousands of elephants and local residents fresh hope. The initiative, backed by the California based organization Roots of Peace, demonstrates that land mines are an environmental as well as a humanitarian concern. The US$1 million project initially aims to clear mines, sown during the Angolan civil war, to help restore an ancient elephant migration route linking Botswana with Zambia and Angola. Deminer works in Angola. (Photo courtesy UNDP) There are very few ecotourism initiatives in Angola, mainly because of land mines. Restoring this area is part of a plan to create a large transboundary park known as the Okavango/Upper Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area which will stretch from Zimbabwe through Botswana, Namibia, Angola and Zambia. An estimated 120,000 elephants, whose numbers are growing at five percent annually would be able to move north into Angola and Zambia if the mines were cleared. The Roots of Peace elephant project was announced during the Nairobi Summit for a Mine-Free World taking place at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The Nairobi Summit is the first five year review of the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines. At the Summit, the international community is expected to adopt a powerful action plan to address challenges that remain on the path towards a mine-free world. Heads of state and ministers of foreign affairs from several countries are expected to address the Summit’s two day high level session that opens today. At the Summit Ethiopia became the 144th state to accept the Ottawa Convention. The announcement came Monday on the first day of the Summit. “I am ecstatic that on the first day of this historic event one of the world’s most mine-affected states has joined the effort to end the suffering caused by anti-personnel mines,” said Summit President Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch of Austria. Petritsch noted that Ethiopia will destroy its existing stockpiles of anti-personnel mines within four years, clear mined areas within 10 years, and cease any use, production or transfer of the weapons immediately. “Every state in Sub-Saharan Africa except Somalia has now accepted the Ottawa Convention’s comprehensive solution to the humanitarian catastrophe caused by anti-personnel mines,” said Ambassador Petritsch. “In addition, I have great hope that Somalia will soon join this global movement given as the new Somali Prime Minister has confirmed that he will attend the Nairobi Summit.” The official five year review document offers a hopeful outlook. Since it was adopted in Oslo on September 18, 1997, the Convention’s "unique spirit of cooperation has been sustained, ensuring the Convention’s rapid entry into force and over five successful years of implementation," the document states. The review charts progress and points out considerable challenges that remain before the world will be free of mines. Despite great progress towards universal adherence, 51 countries have not yet ratified or acceded to the Convention, including the United States. "The U.S. will not sign the Ottawa Convention because of concern for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform, and because of our responsibilities around the world for the security of friends and allies," the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs said in a statement issued November 26. "The Ottawa Convention would remove from U.S. forces munitions our commanders say they may need for these purposes, munitions that self-destruct or self-deactivate within hours or days of being used, and thus do not remain hazardous to innocent people after the military conflict has ended," the State Department said. "The U.S. has ratified the Amended Mines Protocol to the Convention on Conventional Weapons, a separate international landmine treaty that establishes reasonable, transparent and verifiable standards for the use of landmines to minimize risks to civilians," said the State Department, which assured the global community that "at present, the United States maintains no minefields anywhere in the world, and has not exported anti-personnel landmines since 1992." But 12 countries that are not parties to the Ottawa Convention have used anti-personnel mines since the Convention entered into force - Ethiopia, Georgia, India, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan, as well as Iraq under its former regime, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), a network of 1,400 nongovernmental organizations in 90 countries. The ICBL has estimated that six countries that are not Parties to the Ottawa Convention may hold a total of more than 180 million stockpiled antipersonnel mines. They are China, India, South Korea, Pakistan, the Russian Federation and the United States. Together, the Parties have destroyed more than 37 million landmines since the Ottawa Convention took effect. From a financial perspective, the five year review acknowledges that some States Parties, particularly developing countries, do not possess the financial means to destroy their stockpiles of antipersonnel mines given pressing needs in other areas. "It should be recognized that while an investment of typically less than US$1 per mine will destroy a stockpile of mines, the costs to clear emplaced mines are hundreds or thousands of times higher," the review document says. Many States Parties do not have the means to obtain accurate data on casualties or even a general sense of the extent to which populations are at risk underscores the need for assessments in order to determine what needs to be done to initiate or advance mine education activities. From a technical perspective, the remaining main challenges include the destruction of a unique type of mine, the PFM1 mine, the review document explains. This type of mine is tough to destroy because it cannot be disarmed once armed, and it contains a liquid explosive that gives off toxic fumes once detonated. Belarus, which is a Party to the Convention, holds millions of PFM1 mines. In addition, some States that are not Parties including one signatory, Ukraine, have large stockpiles of them, the review says, pointing out that "the destruction of those stockpiles would be an important challenge should they join the Convention." Another technical challenge relates to a lack of expertise by some Parties to develop and implement national stockpile destruction plans. Mine detection efforts are getting more creative, although most mine clearance still depends on the mainstays - manual deminers, mine detection dogs and mechanical systems. But new techniques are in development. Tests have been conducted on combined ground penetrating radar and metal detectors and on infrared detectors. The use of creatures other than dogs to detect antipersonnel mines is being investigated, with certain types of rats, trained honey bees, and genetically modified plants showing some promising results. Once areas have been demined, they can be converted - carefully - to peaceful uses. Roots of Peace, which works with bodies including the UNEP, the United Nations Development Programme UNDP, the United Nations Mine Action Service and the UK based Mine Advisory Group, is developing agricultural projects in de-mined areas. In Afghanistan, the de-mined areas have been restored into grape growing fields and in Cambodia, the once deadly soils are now being used to cultivate rice. "Together we have planted rice in Cambodia, grapes in Afghanistan, orchards in Croatia and wheat in Iraq converting swords into plough shares in war torn countries," said Heidi Kuhn, founder and president of Roots of Peace. UNEP, which has a Post Conflict Assessment Unit (PCAU) based in Geneva, has carried out studies in several war-torn countries and regions including the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. It recently conducted a post conflict assessment of Liberia and has received similar requests from other African countries including Angola. Henrik Slotte of the Unit said, " Mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO's) have been problem in many areas where UNEP-PCAU has been working such as Afghanistan, in Kosovo, in Serbia-Montenegro, in Bosnia-Hertzegovina and in Iraq." "In addition to immediate risks for the local population and returning refugees after the conflicts, mines and UXO's are also posing a threat to the wildlife and to the use of nature protection areas such as National Parks and wildlife reserves," Slotte said. Klaus Toepfer, UNEP's executive director, said, "Land mines are among the horrendous legacies of war that play their deadly role in perpetuating poverty. The direct threat to people from these seeds of misery must be our first concern but it is clear that the environment, upon which local people depend for items such as food, shelter and natural medicines suffers, too." "Land mines effectively bar people from productive land forcing them to clear forests and other precious areas for agriculture with consequences for the fertility of soils, accelerated land degradation and loss of wildlife," said Toepfer. "We need more initiatives like this Roots of Peace and Conservation International project in Angola that not only remove these discarded weapons but replace them with the chance for local people to earn a sustainable livelihood." Access to "opportunities to earn a living and be accepted as part of society" is an important part of the Landmine Survivors Summit Declaration issued Sunday after the parallel gathering of survivors in Nairobi convened by Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan. In their Declaration, the survivors called upon Ottawa Convention States Parties to do many things including, "integrate landmine survivor assistance into national health and rehabilitation policies and development programs." In addition, the survivors ask for recognition that "as a necessary condition of adequate victim assistance, landmine survivors must be treated on an equal basis with all other members of society and protected from discrimination on the basis of their disability in accordance with recognised civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights." Read the Survivors Summit Declaration here. View the Draft Five Year Review of the Ottawa Convention. -------- russia / chechnya Russia To Shore Up Support To India In Cruise Missile Project (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-04zzze.html New Delhi, India - Russia on Thursday agreed to expand its role in a joint project to build a sophisticated cruise missile with India and assured steady supplies of military spare parts to its largest customer and old Cold War ally. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is in New Delhi to prepare the agenda for President Vladimir Putin's three-day state visit, also said the two countries would hold their first joint military exercises in India involving paratroopers next year. "In the coming days executive orders will be passed so that the share of Russia's side in the project will be scaled up," he said of the project to build the BrahMos cruise missile. "India, Russia relationship has now moved from a buyer-seller relationship to joint technology development of new projects," he added. The two sides have tested the multi-target BrahMos, which can be launched from submarine, ship, aircraft or land, three times since the start of the multi-million dollar project in 2001. The missile, which can be launched from vertical or inclined positions, has a range of up to 280 kilometres (175 miles) and is one of the most potent cruise missiles in the armoury of both Russia and India. "There has been happy developments and the Russian president will be visiting the BrahMos complex and it has been decided that there will be fresh investment into the project," said Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Putin was due to arrive early Friday to hold talks with leaders including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Neither Ivanov or Mukherjee elaborated on their talks of assuring supplies of critical spares for India's Soviet origin military equipment but they said the matter, which in recent years had caused friction, had been sorted out. "The Russian government has given an assurance that there will be a comfort period (in the supply chain)," Ivanov told reporters at a joint press conference with Mukherjee on the eve of Putin's arrival. Seventy percent of India's military hardware is of Soviet origin and since the Soviet Union's 1991 breakup the army, navy and air force have complained of problems obtaining spares from debt-ridden Russian armament factories. Ninety percent of hardware in the inventory of the Indian air force is of Soviet origin and on several occasions including during a near-war between India and Pakistan in 1999 Russians armament firms failed to deliver on time. There was also no word on India's call for a breakthrough in stalled talks with Moscow to reach a tripartite pact with Israel for revamping India's fleet of Tu-142 maritime surveillance aircraft. It bought the planes from the Soviet Union in 1988. Russia on the other hand is pressing India to sign an agreement on the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) to safeguard against military technologies jointly developed or produced under licence being copied by third countries. Mukherjee said there was some progress on the issue. "By January the first meeting will be held on the draft and in four-five months the draft (for an IPR treaty) should be ready," he said, without elaborating. -------- spies Tenet Criticizes Intelligence Bill Ex-CIA Director Opposes Proposed Separation of Duties Washington Post By Walter Pincus December 2, 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26456-2004Dec1.html Former CIA director George J. Tenet yesterday criticized an intelligence restructuring bill's plan to create a director of national intelligence, saying it would separate the new intelligence chief from direct control over the case officers and analysts who are overseas and "taking risks." Under the bill, which could come up for a vote next week, the director would become the president's chief adviser on intelligence. Yet he would only "monitor the implementation and execution" of intelligence operations that are carried out by the directors of the CIA, the FBI and 13 other agencies within the U.S. intelligence community. "I don't think you should separate the leader of this country's intelligence from a line agency," Tenet told an E-Gov Institute conference, according to Government Computer News. "This person has to be leading men and women every day and taking risks," Tenet said. The CIA director now directly manages the agency and all its personnel and also serves as the director of central intelligence (DCI), the president's senior intelligence adviser. The commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks recommended that the new intelligence chief be separated from the CIA, a proposal incorporated in the legislation that has been deadlocked on Capitol Hill for more than a month. Lawmakers are scheduled to return to work on Monday for a two-day session. Proponents of the restructuring bill have urged President Bush to use his influence with House and Senate Republican leaders to permit a vote. The objections of two senior House Republicans -- Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (Calif.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (Wis.) -- have kept House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) from bringing the bill to the floor. Tenet previously warned against separating the head of intelligence from direct control of the CIA during congressional testimony and in appearances before the Sept. 11 commission. Until yesterday, however, he had steered clear of the debate over the bill. A senior administration official echoed that position privately yesterday, asking "who will brief Congress and the president" under the new proposal? "Since the CIA director would continue to supervise all-source intelligence analysis within the government," said this official, who has long intelligence experience, the proposed director of national intelligence would be "a new layer" in the process. The Sept. 11 commissioners and the authors of the legislation back the separation because they do not want the new national intelligence director to appear to favor the views of the CIA over those of other intelligence agencies. Some senators felt so strongly about the issue that they initially proposed that the new intelligence chief should not be based at CIA headquarters. The compromise measure allows the new director to occupy space there until October 2008, near the end of Bush's second term. Tenet's speech, one of a series of presentations the former CIA director has been giving around the country, was closed to the national news media but was open to reporters for trade publications. -------- us The way our country treats returning soldiers is a national shame Asheville Citizen-Times Dec. 2, 2004 http://www.citizen-times.com/cache/article/editorial/71703.shtml Supporters of our invasion of Iraq cheerlead from their armchairs for the women and men of our military. Some folks send packages of goodies and letters to soldiers and sailors. Veterans for Peace stand on a street corner each week asking to bring our troops home. These are all examples of different ways we express our support for U.S. soldiers. But what about support when they come back? While some historical references reflect an effort to support our soldiers upon their return from battle, our history of neglecting soldiers also flourishes and seems to be getting worse. For example, in 1693 Plymouth Colony offered support with an order that any disabled soldier injured while defending the colony would be maintained by the colony for life. And in 1780, the Continental Congress offered half pay for seven years to officers who served until the end of the war. However, the Continental Congress also promised some soldiers land in exchange for their service. Looking at genealogy sites on the Internet, one can find desecendants of these soldiers still trying to collect on those unfulfilled promises. In 1917, Congress authorized disability compensation, insurance and vocational rehabilitation to help support the 200,000 wounded and 5 million returning soldiers from World War I. On the other hand, in 1924, these same World War I veterans were promised a bonus payment of $1,000. In July of 1932, during the Great Depression, between 12,000 and 15,000 veterans and their families marched in Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of their bonus. They camped in shantytowns along the Anacostia River until their numbers grew to 25,000. At one point, 20,000 veterans walked slowly up and down Pennsylvania Avenue for three straight days protesting the government decision not to pay their bonus. By late July, riots began after police shot two of the marchers. Gen. Douglas MacArthur then led a machine-gun squadron, troops with fixed bayonets and a number of tanks to destroy the shantytowns and disperse the marchers with tear gas, injuring hundreds of veterans in the process. In 1944, the GI Bill of Rights was enacted. Veterans were supported by providing money for education, low-interest mortgage loans and $20 a week while looking for employment. While some of these benefits are still available today, nearly 300,000 current veterans can be found homeless each night, and more than 500,000 veterans will experience homelessness sometime during the year. Korean and Vietnam veterans received little of the support and recognition that previous veterans received. Thirty years after being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, and suffering numerous medical problems, a neighbor of mine finally began to receive compensation from our government's admission that Agent Orange is toxic. Because of situations like this, nearly three times the number of Vietnam veterans died after coming home than died during the war. Today, there are reports of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, being secretly transferred from Andrews Air Force base, under the cover of darkness, to military transport planes and dispersed out to military hospitals across the country. Why? So that we do not see them. Coffins of dead U.S. soldiers cannot be photographed returning home. Why? So that we do not see them. Is this the kind of support we want to give to our soldiers? Hiding them from the public eye? Relegating them to the streets to fend for themselves? Are we trying to hide something? Is it easier to support the mythical, invisible image of a brave soldier fighting for "glory" and "freedom" than it is to support the very real limbless, psychologically damaged or lifeless person returning from Iraq? Why are we increasing spending in Iraq to make more disabled veterans, and then cutting spending to care for them when they come home by closing VA hospitals and decreasing benefits? Come on. We can do better than that. If we really want to support our soldiers, let's demand proper medical care and compensation when they come home. Let's make sure that every soldier returning from duty in a war zone is evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) so that we can detect and treat the estimated 1 in 3 Iraq veterans who will have it. Let's assure that all U.S. soldiers from the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq are tested for exposure to the wind- dispersed, depleted uranium (DU) that is suspected to have caused numerous illnesses in more than 200,000 Gulf War veterans, and has caused and will continue to cause birth defects, cancer and early deaths for decades to come. Support our troops? Yeah, bring them home and help them heal. Tim Pluta is a veteran currently living in Mars Hill. He can be contacted at timpluta@hotmail.com. -------- U.S. to Increase Its Force in Iraq by Nearly 12,000 nytimes By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER December 2, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/02/politics/02military.html?pagewanted=2 WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - The American military presence in Iraq will grow by nearly 12,000 troops by next month, to 150,000, the highest level since the invasion last year, to provide security for the Iraqi elections in January and to quell insurgent attacks around the country, the Pentagon announced Wednesday. The Pentagon is doing this mainly by ordering about 10,400 soldiers and marines in Iraq to extend their tours - in some cases for the second time - for up to two months, even as their replacement units begin to arrive. The Pentagon is also sending 1,500 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division in the next two weeks for a four-month tour. By extending the tours of some 8,000 soldiers from two brigades, the Army is risking problems with morale and retention by breaking its pledge to keep troops on the ground in Iraq for no more than 12 months, some commanders and military experts said. Commanders had signaled for weeks that there was a likelihood that additional troops would be needed to provide security for elections scheduled for Jan. 30, and the Pentagon took a first step in October by ordering 6,500 troops to extend their tours. But the force levels announced Wednesday are larger than many officers had expected and reflect the insurgents' deadly resiliency and the poor performance by many newly trained Iraqi security forces in the face of rebel assaults, military officers said. Senior officers in Iraq and Washington said that after the Falluja offensive, they did not want to lose the momentum in pressing insurgents in other restive parts of Iraq, like Mosul and Babil Province. At the same time, commanders say they need to keep a sizable force in Falluja to stabilize the city as reconstruction efforts get under way there. But those requirements demand more troops, especially combat-hardened forces whose experience is seen as essential in attacking the insurgents and providing support to Iraqi security forces. Putting even a squad of Americans inside police stations will stiffen the resolve of local forces and prevent routs like that in Mosul, where newly minted Iraqi police forces fled last month when attacked by small numbers of rebels, American officers said Wednesday. "It's mainly to provide security for the elections, but it's also to keep up the pressure on the insurgency after the Falluja operation," Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, a military spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon. Under the military's plan, about 3,500 members of the Second Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex., were ordered to stay an additional 45 days, until early March, for a total of about 14 months. The unit had originally been scheduled to leave in mid-November, but that departure was delayed until Jan. 12, General Rodriguez said. The First Cavalry Division is responsible for security in Baghdad, but it also provided soldiers for the cordon around Falluja. About 4,400 troops from the Second Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, a Hawaii-based unit now operating as part of the First Infantry Division north of Baghdad, had its departure date in early January delayed 60 days, bringing its total deployment to about 14 months, General Rodriguez said. The tours of 160 soldiers from the 66th Transportation Company, based in Germany, were also extended by two months, he said. In addition, the departure date of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 2,300 marines from Okinawa, Hawaii and California, will be extended to mid-March, he said. The two 82nd Airborne battalions will be sent to conduct security missions in Baghdad's International Zone, where top American and Iraqi government officials work, General Rodriguez said. This will free up more experienced troops from the First Cavalry Division to carry out missions elsewhere in Iraq, he said. In advance of the elections in Afghanistan in October, the military sent about 600 troops from the 82nd Airborne to provide security there. Military officials said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, had decided to extend the tours of more experienced troops, and to take advantage of their knowledge of the insurgents and region, rather than accelerate the arrival of fresh troops from units like the Third Infantry Division, which will be arriving in January. In particular, a senior military officer in Iraq said, American and Iraqi forces have forced insurgent and terrorist leaders to flee their former safe haven in Falluja, and additional troops would ensure that they remained on the run and could not settle in another Iraqi city. At the Pentagon, civilian officials and military officers said they had been concerned that the order to increase troops would be heard by the American and Iraqi public and by insurgents as an acknowledgement that the mission was in trouble. "But what we're really saying today is that we are committed to the mission, and that we are going to do everything we can to achieve security before the elections," a senior officer said. American commanders said they learned an important lesson when insurgents responded to the offensive against Falluja by mounting their own counteroffensive, attacking police stations and a range of Iraqi security forces in other cities. In Mosul, for example, a number of Iraqi policemen simply surrendered their neighborhood stations and headquarters when they came under insurgent attack, even though the guerrillas were vastly outnumbered. But one Army commander in Iraq said that in those Mosul police stations where American troops were operating, even in small numbers, the new Iraqi security forces had shown resolve and held their ground. The additional American troops will allow commanders to salt more Iraqi police stations with small, squad-size units of American forces to train the police, advise emerging Iraqi commanders and help steel the wills of Iraqi forces to stand up to the insurgents, this officer said. More troops will also allow commanders to ease, even if slightly, the grueling days and long nights of missions now assigned throughout the American military in Iraq. But military personnel specialists warned that the temporary force increases, which are scheduled to last from January to mid-March, might last longer than officials expect. "The department is managing the force as frugally and carefully as possible, but we may not fall much below the 150,000 level for more than a year," said Richard I. Stark, a retired colonel who is a troop specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. The Army has previously extended deployments for soldiers in Iraq twice, causing complaints from some soldiers and some families. ----- Marines to Resume Public Report of Deaths By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS December 2, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Military.html?oref=login WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than a month after it stopped publicly reporting individual Marine deaths in Iraq, the Corps' main headquarters there intends to resume the announcements, a spokeswoman said Thursday. Col. Jenny Holbert, spokeswoman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said it was decided that during the Fallujah offensive the Marines would stay silent until the Defense Department's public affairs office in Washington released identities of Marines killed. The names are not released in Washington until 24 hours after the victim's relatives are notified, a procedure that usually takes a few days. Previously, the Marines would announce the fact of a death on the day it happened, without details. That practice ended sometime before the Fallujah offensive was launched Nov. 8. ``We decided not to issue press releases on a casualty because we did not want to aid the enemy in determining the success of their actions,'' Holbert wrote in an e-mail response to questions about the practice. Marines suffered most of the U.S. casualties during the fighting in Fallujah. The Los Angeles Times on Thursday quoted Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the top Marine commander in Iraq, as saying 71 U.S. troops died in the battle to retake the city, although it did not say how many of those were Marines. ``Now, since operations have slowed down, we are taking few casualties and the enemy has been severely disabled, we will go back to publishing releases as casualties occur,'' Holbert wrote. The Marines had three deaths in Iraq on Monday, but they were not officially reported. The official who revealed the three deaths did so on condition of anonymity because the policy has not changed yet. Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said the blackout on information about Marine casualties was a practice the Marines chose on their own, not a policy encouraged or required by the Pentagon. The Marines felt it was in their best interest to ``not provide measures of effectiveness to your adversary'' by reporting the number of troops killed on a given day, Whitman said. Waiting for the Pentagon to release the identity of each Marine killed in Iraq provided ``enough time away from the (fatal) event that the information would have little value to the enemy,'' Holbert said. The Army has taken a different approach. It has continued throughout the conflict in Iraq to report deaths at the time they occur, without immediately providing details such as the victim's name. The Army has also provided more details, such as the town or city in which a soldier was killed, whereas the Marines have made it a practice since the start of the war in 2003 to identify only the province in which it happened. Most Marine deaths have been in Anbar province, which covers a vast area stretching from Baghdad to Iraq's borders with Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The Army also publicly names the type of weapon used to kill a soldier, such as a roadside bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade or a sniper rifle. The Marines have withheld that information, saying it would benefit the insurgents by telling them which approaches are most effective. For November, the Marines had at least 83 deaths and the Army had at least 49, although the official accounting is not yet complete. The Pentagon has not announced a final figure for the number of U.S. military deaths in November, but preliminary figures put it at 135, which equals the highest number for any month since U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March 2003. ----- U.S. Psychological Operations: Military Uses Networks to Spread Misinformation democracynow.org December 2nd, 2004 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/02/1513248 The U.S. military is reportedly distributing misinformation to the media as part of a campaign of psychological operations. The Los Angeles Times uncovered how the military sent spokespersons to major news networks to deliberately lie about military operations in Iraq in an effort to deceive the Iraqi resistance. We speak with retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner. [includes rush transcript] The U.S. military is reportedly distributing misinformation to the media as part of a campaign of psychological operations. This according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The paper has uncovered incidents where the military has sent spokespersons to major news networks to deliberately lie about military operations in Iraq in an effort to deceive the Iraqi resistance. In one case, on Oct. 14, a Marine spokesperson appeared on CNN from Fallujah and said "Troops crossed the line of departure." CNN was soon reporting the battle for Fallujah had begun. In fact it wouldn't begin for another three weeks. A senior Pentagon official told CNN that Gilbert's remarks were "technically true but misleading." It was an attempt to get CNN "to report something not true," the official said. The military claimed it wanted to see how Iraqi fighters responded to the so-called news report. Several top officials told the LA Times that they see a danger of blurring what are supposed to be well-defined lines between the stated mission of military public affairs and psychological and information operations. One senior defense official told the paper "The movement of information has gone from the public affairs world to the psychological operations world. What's at stake is the credibility of people in uniform." * Col. Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force Colonel. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, AirWar College and Naval War College. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: We are joined on the phone by Colonel Sam Gardiner. He's a retired Air Force colonel. He's taught strategy and military operations at National Air War College and Naval War College. We welcome you to Democracy Now! SAM GARDINER: Good morning, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: Your response to this latest report? SAM GARDINER: Well it's actually more of the same. Interesting to me that people would pick up on this right now because it was so pervasive before and during Gulf 2. This is just a small incident compared to what we have seen before. The real distinction, however, is in the past, most of these falsehoods, psychological operations, strategic communications, themes came from civilians. This is one of the first times when a military officer has actually and visibly crossed the line. And that's a big deal because the military is the only profession I know where lying is a criminal offense. In the uniform code of military justice, it is a court martial offense for an officer to tell a lie. And frankly, this lieutenant who talked to CNN is subjected himself to potential court martial. AMY GOODMAN: Last night, watching FOX, the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich basically said whatever it takes to protect our troops. SAM GARDINER: But Amy, we are supposed to be protecting democracy. The troops have taken an oath to protect democracy. And if we destroy democracy to protect the troops, something's gone terribly wrong. I think--I couldn't disagree more with Newt Gingrich. The other part of that, Amy, is as a former officer, this just is sort of goes to my essence. And that's the notion that an officer's word is his bond. Whether he is speaking to the troops, to other officers, or in public. When we cross the line, when you begin to not be able to trust the word of an officer, we have begun to destroy the military from within. AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain this idea of psy-ops, psychological operations, how it's used abroad and what's happening now at home? SAM GARDINER: Well, Amy, this has a very long tradition in the U.S. Military and in militaries in the world which is the notion that you use bad information or distorted information to target the enemy. Up until probably about 15 years ago, that notion was meant that it would be done on the battlefield. It became a growing idea within the military of a thing called information warfare which was sort of the concept that you would bring it outside the battlefield. And what's happened, and this is what's so serious, is that it has now been taken into the public airways and we can't tell whether or not we are getting the truth from the military or psychological operations. And I have to say frankly, I think, and again I would very strongly disagree with Newt Gingrich, because you don't have to--let's say that this is a valid notion, we wanted the bad guys in Fallujah to think we were coming early. That doesn't have to permeate and distort the worldwide media for that message to get across. That's the kind of thing that you deliver locally. They aren't communicating with the world. If you want to do it by attacks, if you want to do it, by leaflets, that's fine. But don't put it on CNN for all of us to hear. AMY GOODMAN: What do you think should happen right now about this information? I mean, the military at least in this report, being quite clear about what they are doing. That psychological operations is their new approach here at home and abroad. Or not their new approach, as you have pointed out in your own report on the analysis of stories that came out of Iraq from the military that were simply psy-ops, not true, going right to Jessica Lynch. SAM GARDINER: I think the U.S. military ought not to be allowed to tell other than the truth to the media. The military has no business being in the strategic communications deception business. Let me just give you an example of what ought not to happen. There is, from the special operations command in Florida, an ad on the web right now for P.R. Firms to come and bid a proposal, do government work, so that they can do media operations that have a psychological dimension that, and I will quote the document, to be broadcast worldwide. Amy, the military ought not to do that. You know, this is the kind of thing that politicians do and in fact that was the way the administration controlled the message in the war was to send politicians down to do it. But when the guys in uniform begin to tell untruths, we have problems. AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Sam Gardiner, I want to thank you for being with us. Colonel Sam Gardiner is a retired Air Force colonel. Thank you very much. -------- Army seeks more help as war expenses outpace funding CongressDaily By Amy Klamper December 2, 2004 http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=30048&printerfriendlyVers=1& As the Army continues to shoulder the brunt of operations and expenses in Iraq, service officials are counting on Congress to approve at least $45 billion in fiscal 2005 supplemental funds early next year, part of an anticipated emergency spending package estimated to be as high as $75 billion, Pentagon officials told CongressDaily. Army officials do not expect to see any of that money until June, but in the interim, the service's "burn" rate in Iraq is rising -- from roughly $3.8 billion a month over the past year to as much as $4.7 billion a month today. And budget experts say that while Congress approved $25 billion in additional funds this summer to pay for war-related costs, the Army's share of that money will be gone by the end of January. Last month, the Army submitted a fiscal 2005 supplemental funding request of $51 billion to top Pentagon leaders but expects Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to whittle the request to $45 billion before the wartime supplemental is submitted to lawmakers with the fiscal 2006 budget in early February. Pentagon officials said $8 billion of the $51 billion is needed to cover equipment costs resulting from increased wear and tear on Army vehicles and weapons systems in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the service needs at least $2 billion of that money by February, and it recently asked Congress to shift funds out of fiscal 2005 military personnel appropriations to cover equipment costs. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the services have frequently dipped into certain accounts -- usually military operations and maintenance funds -- to pay for more immediate shortfalls in procurement and other areas during the early part of the fiscal year. This practice assumes the borrowed money will be reimbursed through wartime supplemental funding later in the fiscal year. The Army's requested $2 billion transfer, if approved by lawmakers, would allow the service to swap worn out equipment accompanying troops returning from Iraq with new vehicles and other military hardware under the Army's long-term restructuring plan. Army officials admit that their effort to develop new medium-weight brigades is part of a broader transformation initiative that will take several years to complete. But they insist that the new brigade structure, coupled with new equipment, including the Army's Stryker armored vehicle, will provide better fighting capability to soldiers in Iraq. Army officials say they have had a hard time garnering supplemental funds to pay for the initiative despite the immediate benefit they say it offers soldiers overseas. Pentagon leaders, they say, view the brigade restructuring effort as something that should be paid for in the regular budget. "The Army has sought supplemental funds to cover these costs, but [the Defense secretary's office] has always rejected it because they don't view this as an emergency need," one Pentagon source said. This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1204/120204cdpm1.htm -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- drug war Federal Agent Fired in Cancun Drug War Associated Press By MARK STEVENSON Dec 2, 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CANCUN_DRUG_WAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME CANCUN, Mexico (AP) -- Federal prosecutors fired their top agent here and arrested a high-ranking local police official on suspicion of involvement in nine recent drug-related slayings, the latest signs that drug violence and corruption returned to this Caribbean coast resort with a vengeance. The killings last week appear to be the result of a war between rival northern drug gangs that have moved from the U.S.-Mexico border south to Quintana Roo, a state that includes Cancun and became infamous in the 1990s when the state governor allegedly protected traffickers moving Colombian cocaine. Three years after the arrest of former governor Mario Villanueva, official corruption apparently once again allowed the drug trade to flourish to the point where drug lords like Osiel Cardenas and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman are fighting over the trade here. The killings - including the execution-style murder of three federal agents - may have been the work of a gang of feared hit men known as "The Zetas" working for Cardenas. "There is evidence that 'The Zetas' from Osiel Cardenas' cartel, and 'El Chapo' are trying to fight it out over this territory," Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said Wednesday. Macedo said he had fired the attorney general's top representative in Cancun, Miguel Angel Hernandez, and ordered him and the rest of his office investigated. Federal agents on Wednesday also arrested Felipe de Jesus Arguelles, who oversees Cancun's police, traffic and emergency departments, on suspicion of involvement in the killings, and whisked him and other suspects - reportedly including several federal agents - to Mexico City on a police aircraft. The Caribbean coast region was a major drug corridor in the 1990s, until Villanueva left office in 1999 and went on the lam, only to be arrested in 2001. Police implemented a plan to "seal" the coast against trafficking. However, the smugglers from Cardenas' Gulf cartel appear to have taken advantage of the last three years to move into the territory; Cardenas' forces have fought bloody battles against Guzman's men for control of several northern border cites over the last year. "We could be witnessing a sort of territorial struggle between these two gangs" in Cancun, top organized crime prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos said Tuesday, after the Cancun office was surrounded by soldiers and those inside questioned. "Remember that the coasts of Quintana Roo were for many years an ideal shipping point for drug shipments. We can't allow that to happen again." Santiago Vasconcelos said it appears the three agents found shot in the head on Nov. 25 along with two other victims had something - apparently information - the drug smugglers wanted. Four other charred bodies were found in a separate location, in a burned-out car. The dead agents, who were members of the elite Federal Agency of Investigation, the Mexican equivalent of the FBI, did not appear to have been working with drug gangs, as has been the case in the past, Santiago Vasconcelos said. A day later, two other agents from the Federal Agency of Investigation were discovered before dawn outside Cancun with gunshot wounds to their legs. The sudden unwanted attention has tourism officials in Cancun worried. The resort - known for its white-sand beaches, sprawling hotel complexes and all-night discos - is one of Mexico's most popular destinations. But the raids, violence and investigation have mostly occurred in parts of Cancun that tourists don't visit. For residents, recent events have conjured up bad memories of the violence and drugs of a decade ago. Others, like taxi driver Oscar Herrera, said things have gotten even worse. "There were drugs back then, but there weren't massacres like now," Herrera said as he waited for a fare on a busy avenue. -------- homeland security / national intelligence Homeland Security's Personnel Rules Overhaul Will Proceed Without Ridge Washington Post By Stephen Barr December 2, 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26831-2004Dec1.html The departure of Tom Ridge as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security will not slow plans to overhaul rules for how thousands of Homeland Security employees are paid, promoted and disciplined, a top official said yesterday. "We are continuing on the path of establishing the new HR [human resources] system," said Janet Hale, the department's undersecretary for management. "The department needs the new HR system, and we need to act quickly and decisively to meet our mission needs. We know that it is a priority of his to complete before his departure." Ridge said on Tuesday that he would leave the department by Feb. 1. That deadline suggests that the department will try to publish its final rules in January. The rule changes were authorized by Congress two years ago. The department has scheduled a meeting Monday with union leaders, and Ridge's aides will probably lay out a timetable for sending the department's plan to the Office of Management and Budget, which will trigger the Bush administration's formal clearance process. The overhaul of the department's personnel system, which will affect about 110,000 workers, will be one of the most far-reaching changes in civil service rules since government-wide reforms enacted in 1978 and will probably serve as a model for other agencies seeking more flexible ways to hire, pay and discipline employees. The changes at Homeland Security almost certainly will be taken into account at the Pentagon, which is planning a shake-up of its own civil service rules. The Homeland Security rules -- which will be phased in over many months, if not years -- will move most department employees out of the General Schedule, the government's white-collar pay system, and into one that gives more weight to occupation, location and job performance. The rules also will likely weaken the clout of unions in the department. Although federal unions have heavily criticized the proposed changes, labor leaders have praised Ridge for listening to their concerns and working with them to reassure employees that the new system will treat them fairly. "Two years ago they had this legislation, and for two years he has been supportive of and engaged us in these issues," Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said yesterday. "He always said that the opinions of the frontline workforce matter to him." In a statement Tuesday, John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union "has been proud to work closely with Secretary Ridge" and "looks forward to working with Mr. Ridge's successor to ensure that federal workers are treated fairly and equitably and are given the tools and training necessary to serve as our nation's first responders." Now, with implementation of the new personnel system growing near, union leaders are concerned about who will replace Ridge and whether that person will be willing to act on constructive criticism from employee groups. "I worry about the future," Kelley said. In addition to the personnel system overhaul, some parts of the department's workforce remains uneasy about job changes brought on by the merger of 22 agencies. Union leaders say the department continues to have problems in combining customs, immigration and agriculture inspections into one job at ports of entry. "We all have the same uniform. We all have the same badge. But we don't have the same training or experience or skill sets needed to effectively and properly do the job," said Charles Showalter, president of AFGE's National Homeland Security Council. T.J. Bonner, president of AFGE's National Border Patrol Council, said there is "much disarray" in various bureaus in the department. "It was a bad idea to think you could have one person being expert in three different areas," he said. Asked on Tuesday if some department employees were "at each other's throats," Ridge told reporters that "change is always difficult" but that he believes the nation is safer. "In a department where we've had to move so quickly and change so rapidly, the notion that there might be some people out there that are still a little uncomfortable with it is not surprising to me," Ridge said. "But we continue to work our way through whatever these irritants are to give people the comfort level so they're more worried about securing the country rather than job security." E-mail: barrs@washpost.com -------- POLITICS Bush Adamant on Iraq Election Schedule Associated Press By SCOTT LINDLAW Dec 2, 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Thursday that Iraq's elections must not be delayed from their scheduled date of Jan. 30, rejecting calls from more than a dozen political parties there to postpone them until security at the polls can be ensured. "It's time for Iraqi citizens to go to the polls," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office at the start of a meeting with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. Bush also weighed in on the matter of the election crisis in Ukraine, saying more forcefully than he had previously that other countries must not meddle as that country sorts through the disputed vote. If there is to be a new election, as many government leaders and Ukrainian demonstrators have demanded, it "ought to be free from any foreign influence," Bush said. He did not single out any country, but his words seemed to echo those of Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, with whom Bush met this week and who explicitly said Russia must not inject itself into the Ukrainian matter. Bush steered gingerly around allegations of corruption in the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq, which first surfaced in January. The charges have escalated. Two weeks ago, a congressional investigation uncovered evidence that Saddam Hussein's government raised more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting U.N. sanctions against Iraq, including the oil-for-food program. Bush did not answer two questions about whether Annan should resign, as Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., has urged. But he said a thorough investigation was necessary to ensure that U.S. taxpayers can "feel comfortable" as their government pays U.N. dues. "I look forward to a full disclosure of the facts, a good, honest appraisal of that which went on and it's important for the integrity of the organization," he said. Bush said last week he hoped the elections scheduled for next month in Iraq are not postponed, after 17 political parties in Iraq called on the interim government to put them off for at least six months. Those groups want security at polling places to be ensured. Thursday, he was more forceful in his remarks on the matter. "The elections should not be postponed," he said. "It's time for the Iraqi citizens to go to the polls and that's why we are very firm on the Jan. 30 date." Bush said he had personally approved an expansion of U.S. troop levels in Iraq ahead of the elections. His commanders there had asked for more boots on the ground, and "I've honored their request," he said. Bush predicted that Iraq's elections would leave the world "amazed that a society has been transformed so quickly." Bush was more pointed in his comments on the Ukraine, where a disputed runoff election last month sparked massive protests that have paralyzed the government. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned that Ukraine's problem must be solved without foreign pressure. While it was delivered in a phone call with the German chancellor, Putin's message appeared aimed more at the United States, seen by the Kremlin as behind a campaign to install Ukraine's pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko at Ukraine's helm. On Thursday, Putin sharply criticized the Ukrainian opposition's proposal to hold a repeat of the nation's disputed presidential runoff, telling Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma that a new vote "would yield nothing." Meeting with Kuchma at a government airport outside Moscow, Putin said he was "surprised" by the idea of repeating the runoff, which Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is demanding. Bush has largely confined his previous comments to assertions that the will of the Ukrainian people must prevail, and has said the United States is watching the situation closely. He was more pointed Thursday about the prospect of a new vote in the Ukraine. "I think any election, if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence," Bush said. Yet a moment later, he thanked the leaders of Poland and Lithuania and the European Union for their involvement in helping to defuse the situation. "There's different options on the table and we're watching very carefully what is taking place," Bush said. "But any election in any country must reflect the will of the people and not that of any foreign government." Obasanjo told Bush his country, which supplies some 10 percent of America's oil, would seek to pump more, which could help ease petroleum prices in the United States. ----- U.S. denies Ukraine crisis frays ties with Kremlin THE WASHINGTON TIMES By Nicholas Kralev December 02, 2004 http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041201-093731-1396r.htm The Bush administration will not let differences with the Kremlin over the disputed Ukrainian election become an issue in U.S.-Russian relations, officials said yesterday, even as the two countries deplored each other's "interference" in the ex-Soviet republic. "We have not tried to make this an issue in our bilateral relationship, and we don't see it as part of it," a senior U.S. official said. But with the two powers on opposite sides, there has been a surge of anti-Americanism in Russia, where many think the turmoil in Ukraine is a CIA plot aimed at destabilizing Moscow's back yard, diplomats and analysts said. "This is being portrayed as some conspiracy by the CIA in the national media," said Michael McFaul, a leading Russia specialist at Stanford University and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who follows affairs in both Russia and Ukraine. "People are trying to use this as an overtly anti-American campaign," he said. "That is dangerous because it fuels nationalistic ideas and doesn't help the democratic forces in Russia." U.S. officials said Russian conspiracy theorists fail to understand American interests in the region. Unlike Russia, which still thinks in terms of spheres of influence, the United States does not consider this a geopolitical issue, the officials said, adding that Washington's only goal is to ensure that true democracy takes hold in Ukraine. Washington and allies in Western Europe have refused to accept the official results naming pro-Russia candidate Viktor Yanukovych as the next president, but have not endorsed his opponent, Viktor Yushchenko. Accusations of massive fraud and manipulation in the Nov. 21 runoff election have prompted huge demonstrations in the Ukrainian capital and separatist calls in the eastern Russian-speaking regions. The Bush administration was so alarmed by a Sunday gathering where the separatist issue was discussed — particularly by the presence there of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Russia's deputy ambassador to Kiev — that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell immediately called outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But while U.S. officials accuse Moscow of inciting separatist feelings, Mr. Lavrov yesterday blamed those feelings on "provocations" from the West. "Excessive involvement of certain European representatives in the process taking place in Ukraine has increased tension" there, Mr. Lavrov said during a visit to Bangkok. Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski are in Kiev to mediate talks between the two candidates on how to resolve the crisis. Although there is no direct U.S. involvement in the group, it has the backing of President Bush. Russian President Vladimir Putin had called on Tuesday for the Ukraine dispute to be resolved without foreign pressure. Many Western diplomats found that remark ironic, given that Mr. Putin made two visits to Ukraine at the height of the campaign to support Mr. Yanukovych. Mr. Putin also sent a representative to participate in the Kiev mediation group. U.S. officials acknowledge that American organizations, such as the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, have supported Ukrainian opposition parties with money and advice — as they do around the world. But the officials insist that the U.S. government has been interested only in supporting free and fair elections. Foreign diplomats who deal with the Russian Foreign Ministry said some of their colleagues there think Mr. Putin went too far with his involvement in the Ukrainian elections. "For the political elite in Moscow, this is a foreign policy disaster," Mr. McFaul said. ----- Ukraine Court Adjourns Without Decision Associated Press By MARA D. BELLABY Dec 2, 2004 http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UKRAINE_ELECTION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Tens of thousands of opposition supporters partied in Kiev's main square Thursday, erecting a Christmas tree and waving orange flags, in a show of confidence as the Supreme Court heard final arguments on whether to overturn disputed election results. With Ukraine's political crisis nearing a decisive turning point, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the government's side in a deepening dispute over how to proceed once the judges issue a ruling. Putin denounced the opposition's demand for a repeat of the contentious Nov. 21 run-off vote rather than holding entirely new elections for president, as the government wants. Putin said a new run-off "would yield nothing." "A revote could be conducted a third, a fourth, 25th time, until one side gets the results it needs," a grim-faced Putin said, standing alongside his longtime ally, outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. The two held a hastily arranged meeting at Moscow's airport just before Putin left for India. Kuchma flew to Russia for support as his goverment appeared to be losing momentum in the 11-day standoff with the opposition. Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko repeated his stance rejecting an entirely new election in an address to his supporters filling Kiev's Independence Square. "We won't take part in any (negotiation) process if they talk about a new election," Yushchenko said, dressed in a fur trimmed black coat and orange sweater and tie. Behind him, his top aides were lined up, also decked out in scarves, sweaters and ribbons in orange, the opposition's campaign color. The opposition wants a repeat of a run-off between Yushchenko - a reformist who favors closer ties with the West - and Kuchma's ally, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Kuchma seeks an entirely new election, possibly so he can replace Yanukovych with a stronger, more charismatic candidate. President Bush said Thursday that any new vote in Ukraine "ought to be free from any foreign influence" - an apparent veiled reference to Russia. The mood among the throngs of Yushchenko supporters rallying in their Independence Square tent city was celebratory, confident that the Supreme Court will annul the official results that declared Yanukovych the winner of the Nov. 21 run-off. They waited all day for a ruling they expected Thursday, watching live broadcasts of the court sessions on televisions in the square, showing the 18 red-robed judges, behind stacks of documents hearing testimony in the cramped chamber. But the justices adjourned in the evening after beginning final arguments. They will hear more arguments Friday, then retreat for deliberations before ruling. It was unclear how long the process would take. Protesters erected a Christmas tree spray-painted orange in the tent camp, while rock banks played on stage, their instruments fluttering with orange ribbons. Other protesters kept up their blockade of the Cabinet building despite an agreement the day before to lift their sieges of government offices. "We aren't letting anyone through. Why should we? We are so close to victory, why surrender now?" said Natalya Nechipurenko, 38, one of dozens of protesters standing shoulder-to-shoulder to block entrances to the building. They banged cans against the ground to distract whatever workers had managed to slip past. In talks mediated by European officials, Yushchenko and Yanukovych agreed Wednesday to respect the court's ruling. The opposition charges that government fraud cheated Yushchenko of victory in the runoff, and his campaign has appealed results from eastern regions where the prime minister's support is strongest. During Thursday's session, the court rejected Yanukovych's objections to parts of the opposition's appeal - leaving open the possibility that the judges could name Yushchenko the president based on results from the election's first round, which the opposition leader won by a narrow margin. Ruslan Knyazevich - a member of the Central Election Commission who refused to sign the official results - told the court that after the polls closed on Nov. 21, "one million more votes were thrown in." He also noted election data from the east came in later than from other regions, after what he suggested was an order to "increase the numbers." Yanukovych has submitted his own appeal against the results, focusing on pro-Yushchenko western provinces and the capital. But if the Supreme Court rules in Yushchenko's favor and declares the vote invalid, considering Yanukovych's would be pointless. The two rivals' meeting late Wednesday pointed to the likelihood of a new election in this bitterly divided nation of 48 million. But it remained unclear whether it would be a repetition of the runoff or a whole new election. Kuchma told Putin that "it seems a compromise has been reached." However, he said, "how events will develop further - I don't have an unequivocal answer." Ukrainian media have said Kuchma wants to replace Yanukovych with his former campaign chief, Serhiy Tyhypko, to run. Tyhypko, a young and charismatic politician, might fare better against Yushchenko in any new race. Putin warned the West not to interfere in the crisis. "Neither Russia, nor the European Union, nor international organizations will solve the problems," he said in his meeting with Kuchma. "They all can play the role of mediators, but the Ukrainian people have the last word." Putin told Kuchma that was worried about the possibility of a split in Ukraine - divided roughly between Yanukovych supporters in the east and Yushchenko backers in the west who are wary of Moscow's centuries-old clout in the country. "We are not indifferent about what is happening there," Putin said. -------- budget Quo Vadis: Playing For Keeps, 'toward an economic 9/11' tompaine.com Patrick C. Doherty December 02, 2004 http://www.tompaine.com/print/quo_vadis_playing_for_keeps.php When the chief economist at Morgan Stanley says we have a one-in-10 chance of avoiding economic Armageddon, one tends to take notice. When America's second-largest creditor tells us to get our economic house in order the same week, two points begin to determine a line. But the Bush administration has not so much as flinched. In the latest installment of Quo Vadis?, Patrick Doherty says that when GOP strategists ask, "Where do we go from here?" they answer, "toward an economic 9/11." Patrick C. Doherty is associate editor at TomPaine.com. Previously, he spent a decade working on conflicts and economic development in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus. His column, Quo Vadis, means "Where do we go from here?" and focuses on America's strategic dysfunction and how to transform it. “Democrats play for lunch. We play for keeps.” —Grover Norquist Last week, America received two pieces of monstrously bad news. First, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley (along with Robert Reich, Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, China and the currency markets) warned us that the U.S. economy is about to collapse. Second, we learned that the Bush administration is willing to ignore the likelihood of collapse and will push ahead aggressively with tax and Social Security reform. Put these two pieces of information together and you get a nightmare scenario. Movement conservatives are willing to tank the economy while they control the federal government in order to remake it according to their liking. Impending Economic Collapse You know things aren’t looking good when the chief economist of Morgan Stanley uses the word Armageddon in a briefing to the world’s largest equity investing house. In an article published last Tuesday, Stephen Roach reportedly told his colleagues at Fidelity that America has a one in 10 chance of avoiding economic Armageddon. His comments came toward the end of a string of bad economic omens. China’s central banker told America to get our own house in order, European and Asian central bankers began talk of buying Euro-based securities, and OPEC felt enough pressure to announce that it had no intention, for the moment, of pricing oil in euros instead of dollars. Three days later, Roach revised and extended his remarks in an op-ed in The New York Times : “The day could come when foreign investors demand better terms for financing America's spending spree (and savings shortfall).That is the day the dollar will collapse, interest rates will soar and the stock market will plunge. In such a crisis, a United States recession would be a near certainty. And the rest of an America-centric world would be quick to follow.” Rather than focus on the downside risks on Black Friday, Roach reframed his NYT analysis on what it would take to secure that one-in-10 chance of avoiding the reckoning. In short, he says the world’s central banks must arrange the world’s accounts such that Americans spend less and save more while everyone else spends more and saves less. It’s easy to see why Roach is so cynical. Such a solution would entail reversing the flow of the global economy. China, Japan and Europe would have to voluntarily reduce their companies’ exports, profits, and shareholder return. Not to mention that to most world leaders, such a deal would reward George W. Bush and the GOP-dominated Congress for their reckless fiscal and military policies that both created the economic crisis and increased global insecurity. So foreign rescue is not likely. But it doesn’t matter. The Bush administration is not interested in rescuing the economy. Shock Therapy, Norquist-Style In the 1980s, Reagan’s chief budget adviser, David Stockman, admitted that it was White House policy to expand the federal deficits in order to squeeze out social entitlement spending. The Bush administration has taken that tactic one step further, explained by the pre-eminent Republican operative Grover Norquist’s famous goal, “to get government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” And they have already declared their intentions to do just that. The Bush administration has identified its top three legislative priorities in the next term, and none of them involves reducing American consumption and increasing American savings. Instead, their priorities represent the final operations of the battle started in 1964: tort reform, Social Security reform and tax reform. Tort reform to curtail consumer protections. Social Security reform to force every working American to buy risk-filled investment accounts. Tax reform to make taxation fully regressive, placing the highest burden on the lowest earners through either a flat tax or a value-added tax. Given our severe account imbalances, this second-term agenda of the Bush administration will signal to our global creditors that we are not serious about our debts. That will make dollar-denominated securities worthless and the dollar will cease to be the global currency, as America will no longer be the mass market of last resort. At some point, OPEC will have to switch to a new currency—probably Euros—and the price of oil for Americans will rise significantly as the dollar continues to fall. As Roach’s collapsing stock market ushers in a recession, the inevitable job losses will pop the housing bubble across the country. Americans, with trillions of dollars of consumer debt leveraged on the value of their homes, will find that their futures will have disappeared. Hard-earned home equity will be gutted and stock values will have crashed. Unemployment will be widespread. With a full four years in the White House, two years of hegemony in Congress, and an escalating, multi-fronted war, the far right has plenty of time and cover to push their agenda through. With no interim accountability, they can ignore reality and continue to spin wildly to the American public. Indeed, this administration has already shown that it can use a national crisis to advance goals that in fact reinforce the causes of the crisis. It happened with 9/11, and it can happen again. Too Crazy To Believe The movement conservatives leading the GOP have decided that the way to get what they want is to throw out all the rules—whether that means speaking truthfully to American citizens, comity in the Senate, stare decisis in the Supreme Court or fiscal discipline in the budget. These concepts once defined the American form of government and placed the republic above partisanship. But to operatives like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist, they represent Democratic blind spots to be exploited. Bipartisanship, as Norquist once said, is merely another word for date rape. Destroying the economy in order to remake it is just the kind of gambit that Democrats would believe so unlikely that it is not worth considering. It defies logic and credibility. Just like the possibility that Christian Zionists could take over Congress or that Bush might invade Iraq with no real evidence of a threat. It’s hard to write such a depressing analysis. It feels overly cynical. But then I remembered Ron Suskind’s profile of George W. Bush in the NYT Sunday Magazine. In it, a senior adviser to Bush told Suskind: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” And then I think I might just be right. -------- investigations Sweden to launch fresh probe into Estonia ferry tragedy STOCKHOLM (AFP) Dec 02, 2004 http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041202195922.dk7uktyv.html Sweden is to reopen an inquiry into the 1994 sinking of the Estonia car ferry, Europe's worst post-war maritime disaster, to determine why military equipment was on board the ship in the days prior to the disaster, Prime Minister Goeran Persson said on Thursday. A Swedish television documentary revealed this week that Soviet military equipment seized by Swedish intelligence services had transited twice on board the Estonia shortly before it went down in the Baltic Sea, claiming 852 lives. Persson, who claims the government had no knowledge of the secret transits, expressed his "indignation" and has ordered an investigation to be carried out by the Stockholm court of appeal. The court will also examine the "extent and modalities of the use of civilian transportation to transport military equipment," Persson said. The results of the inquiry are to be released in January. The Swedish armed forces confirmed that the Estonia had been used to transport military equipment on September 14 and 20, 1994, but denied that any equipment could have been on board when the ship sank on September 27-28. Only 137 of the 989 passengers and crew on board survived the shipwreck, which occurred off Finland's southwestern coast during a crossing from Tallinn to Stockholm. A joint Swedish-Finnish-Estonian commission concluded in 1997 that "weak locking devices of the bow visor" door, which had provided an entry point for cars and trucks to roll onto the ferry, had been the main cause of the tragedy. Survivors and families had been pressuring the government to begin a new investigation into the tragedy. -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy Schwarzenegger aide calls for energy alternatives The Associated Press 12/2/2004 http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-12-02-calif-energy_x.htm LOS ANGELES (AP) — A top aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described the administration's plans to reduce California's oil dependence, calling Thursday for more conservation, fuel-efficient vehicles, and hydrogen power. Terry Tamminen, the governor's newly appointed Cabinet secretary, delivered the speech by videotape at a conference on transportation. It was sponsored by Calstart, a consortium of government agencies and private companies, including automakers. Tamminen said drivers should try to conserve fuel in the near-term, with the midterm goal of buying more fuel-efficient cars and the long-term goal of finding cleaner fuels than petroleum, including hydrogen. "Proper tire inflation, using your air conditioner more sparingly, driving the speed limit — basic simple things. No matter what you drive you can save 15 to 20% of your current fuel use," Tamminen said. Tamminen, a former Santa Monica-based activist who once sued the state over ocean pollution, served as Schwarzenegger's director of the California Environmental Protection Agency until he took over Wednesday as Cabinet secretary. In his new role he serves as a liaison between the governor and Cabinet. Tamminen said unless California reduces its reliance on petroleum, it will likely face a shortage of petroleum in the next few years that will threaten the state's economy. He said drivers should conserve supply and seek alternative-fuel vehicles, such as those powered by electricity. "We know battery electrics work extremely well," he said. "I drive a battery-electric around Sacramento and it's one of the best cars I've ever driven." Tamminen predicted that the state would rely much more on hydrogen fuel in the next decade. "By 2010 we will have a network of hydrogen fueling stations in the state, thousands of hydrogen vehicles to select from, initially from fleets and buses and mass transit but then expanding to consumer vehicles, and beyond that we can look for ways of moving toward hydrogen," he said. Schwarzenegger has made hydrogen a key part of his environmental plans, but even some supporters of the technology say his timeline is overly optimistic. Andy Weisser, an American Lung Association of California spokesman who attended the conference, commended the administration for backing hydrogen. But he said the state should also urge automakers to produce larger numbers of existing vehicles that are clean-burning and fuel efficient. He noted that there are long waiting lists of people hoping to buy electric, natural gas, and hybrid vehicles. "We need to focus on those existing technologies in addition to the governor's future plans," Weisser said. ----- Soy Biodiesel Plus Heating Oil = Bioheat WASHINGTON, DC, December 2, 2004 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2004/2004-12-02-09.asp#anchor6 To cut down on home heating costs and polluting emissions, a growing number of customers are turning to biodiesel to power oil furnaces and boilers. Blends of biodiesel and heating oil, known as bioheat, offer a cost-competitive alternative to regular heating oil. Bioheat is becoming increasingly available, particularly in the Northeast, according to the National Biodiesel Board. Two Northeast companies have recently joined the small number of energy retailers that provide bioheat to their customers. MASS BIOFUEL, the sister company of Fisher Churchill Oil Co. in Dedham, Massachusetts, began offering a blend of soy biodiesel and low sulfur heating oil on November 1. Bob Warren, MASS BIOFUEL president, says that although marketing has just begun the initial response from his customers has been positive. “Bioheat's time has come,” said Warren. “Customers are looking for alternatives. They are fed up with OPEC. Bioheat will reduce our dependency on foreign oil, help clean up the environment and increase income for our American farmers.” In Manheim, Pennsylvania, Worley & Obetz, Inc. began providing bioheat to its customers this year. Company officials estimate that, on average, there are five gallons of renewable fuel in each home heating oil delivery. Testing conducted by the Massachusetts Oilheat Council and the National Oilheat Research Alliance found that a blend of 80 percent low sulfur heating oil and 20 percent biodiesel (B20) reduced sulfur oxide emissions by at least 80 percent. Nitrogen oxide emissions were lowered by about 20 percent. In addition, carbon dioxide emissions can be lowered by 20 percent. -------- OTHER -------- environment Grants to Reduce Lead Poisoning Available WASHINGTON, DC, December 2, 2004 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2004/2004-12-02-09.asp#anchor5 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is offering $750,000 in new grant funding to prevent poisoning from lead paint in high risk areas. The incidence of childhood lead poisoning has been reduced by half since the early 1990s, and the agency's stated goal is to eliminate lead poisoning in children by 2010. Under a new competitive lead grant program, the EPA will provide funding to communities having high rates of elevated blood lead levels, as well as to communities where there are conditions associated with elevated blood lead levels. Children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning because of their metabolism and hand-to-mouth activity. Lead can cause neurological problems and learning disabilities in young children. State and local governments, federally-recognized Indian Tribes and Tribal consortia, territories, institutions of higher learning and non-profit organizations are eligible to apply for grants that will range from $25,000 to $100,000. Applicants must represent communities with historical and likely incidences of elevated blood lead levels. Proposals should include ways to address unique and challenging issues in lead-poisoning prevention, particularly ones that could be replicated in other high-risk areas, the agency says. Applicants should submit written applications on plain paper to regional lead contacts. Decisions will be made on the basis of this informal application; successful applicants will then be required to submit the full application. The grantees will be announced in April 2005. More information about the proposal process, the new grant program and measures to prevent lead poisoning is available at: http://www.epa.gov/lead. -------- Bhopal Disaster 20 Years Later: A Look at One of the Worst Industrial Disasters in History Thursday, December 2nd, 2004 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/02/1513256 On the night of December 2nd, 1984, tons of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. Clouds of suffocating gases blanketed the city of half a million people. 7,000 people lost their lives within days. 15,000 more lost died in the following years. 100,000 others are still suffering chronic and debilitating illnesses. Today to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy, we take an in-depth look at one of the worst industrial disasters of the 20th Century. [includes rush transcript] On the night of December 2nd, 1984 in the city of Bhopal, India, tons of lethal gases leaked from a U.S. pesticide factory into the air. The factory's safety systems were either malfunctioning or turned off. Clouds of suffocating gases blanketed the city of half a million people. Residents awoke with throats burning and tears streaming. They began a desperate flight through the dark streets. The gases produced so much fluid in people's lungs that many drowned in their own body fluids. Many fell dead as they ran. No alarm ever sounded a warning and no evacuation plan was prepared. 7,000 people lost their lives within days. 15,000 more lost died in the following years. Around 100,000 others are still suffering chronic and debilitating illnesses. It was one of the worst industrial disasters of the 20th Century. These are the personal stories of some of the victims. * "Scared Sacred" - Excerpt of documentary narrated and produced by Velcrow Ripper. The factory that caused the disaster was owned by a U.S. company called Union Carbide. In 1987, the Bhopal District Court charged Union Carbide and its officials, including CEO Warren Anderson, with culpable homicide, grievous assault and other serious offences. Union Carbide and its officials have repeatedly ignored the Court's summons. In 1989, Union Carbide and the Indian Government arrived at a negotiated settlement of $470 million for all gas-disaster related injuries. A large portion of those funds have been held by the Indian government. In total, the average pay out for personal injury was around $400 per person. In 2001, Union Carbide was bought out by US multinational Dow Chemical. Today on the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, we will spend the rest of the hour taking a look at Bhopal, one of the worst industrial accidents of the 20th Century. * Satinath Sarangi, a metallurgical engineer turned activist who arrived in Bhopal a day after the disaster and stayed on to become a key figure in the struggle for justice in Bhopal. He is a founding trustee of the Sambhavna Clinic, a non-profit clinic dedicated to the holistic treatment of gas-affected persons in Bhopal. He is a member of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. Link: http://www.bhopal.net * Jack Doyle, author of the new book Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical & the Toxic Century (Common Courage). * Ryan Bodanyi, coordinator of Students for Bhopal, which is organizing events at colleges around the world. * Vijay Nagaraj, consultant with Amnesty International in India and author of the report: "Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On". * Union Carbide audio press releases - Spokesperson Tomm Sprick. READ TRANSCRIPT HERE http://www.democracynow.org/static/bhopal.shtml AMY GOODMAN: But first we go to a clip of the film that looks at Bhopal and other areas. It's called Scared Sacred. MEHBOOB BI: My husband used to work in Union Carbide. And he knew that there was something deadly going to happen one day. I remember the day before on a Sunday we went very happily because all our family was together. We were all feasting, and we went in a happy way. That day, everyone was [inaudible] on Sunday night. They kept telling us don't go back. Stay behind. Go tomorrow morning. But my husband had to go to Union Carbide for his work. When we came back from there, we went back to sleep. I put all the children to bed. I couldn't sleep somehow. I was very, very restless that night. I don't know what it was, but something just didn't let me sleep all night. In the middle of the night, we woke up choking and started coughing. And my eyes started watering. And I heard voices outside the house. People were screaming "Run! Run for your life! There's a deadly gas!" And we would not run away because all our children were very small. I remember that morning when I woke up and I had my dead son in my arms, I couldn't even open my eyes to see him, see the last of him, because my eyes were so swollen that I had to force them with my fingers. And I remember that there was a tree outside my house which had lovely fruit and that whole tree had turned black the next morning. SATINATH SARANGI: I came on the train and went down to the train station and all over people were groaning in pain and people falling down and fainting, hundreds and hundreds of people like this. And there were some volunteers were giving some medicine, some food, some water. So I came out of the station and I joined these volunteers. After working for a week in trying to provide to me what was very clear was it was too big. There were too many people crying out for medical relief and care and it was impossible for private bodies or nongovernmental bodies to do this. And what was very clear was that, by that time, it was becoming clear that the government would not help people on its own unless it was pressured into doing this. And the third thing that was very clear was that the Indian government and the multinational Union Carbide were together. NARRATOR: After the disaster, Union Carbide focused its resources on evading responsibility. When doctors asked for the ingredients of the pesticide so they could find a way to treat the wounded, the company said it was a trade secret. And even as the graveyards and crematoriums were filling with bodies, they insisted there's nothing more than a potent tear gas. A phase the survivors call re-victimization began. MEHBOOB BI: I'm sure my husband watches me from somewhere, and his soul must be in pain. There's not a day that goes by when I don't think about the people who I have lost. This is my youngest and every time I look at him and I feel like maybe there is hope, maybe the world isn't that bad, but then my memory keeps going back to the people I have lost in this world. AMY GOODMAN: The words of people who survived the Bhopal disaster 20 years ago remembering. From Scared Sacred by Velcrow Ripper, a new film that is out. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We turn first to Satinath Sarangi of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, joining us from Bhopal. Welcome to Democracy Now! SATINATH SARANGI: [inaudible] Hello, Amy. AMY GOODMAN: Hi Sati. Can you start off by talking about the situation today in Bhopal? SATINATH SARANGI: In many ways, you could say that the situation today in Bhopal is worse than it was twenty years back on the morning of third December. Because there was 150,000 people are still chronically ill, and still there is no treatment known because Union Carbide and now Dow Chemical is still withholding information, medical information. So there is no treatment protocol, and then there is new diseases like cancers and tuberculosis that people are getting. We know that the next generation is affected, and this study was published in the journal of the American Medical Association which shows that the children born to exposed parents are shorter, thinner, lighter, and have smaller heads and also the girls born to exposed parents have a range of menstrual disorders, painful menstruation, irregular cycles. And on top of that, you have the health problems of 20,000 people living next to the factory who are drinking ground water [inaudible] hand pumps that are contaminated with cancer-causing and toxic chemicals in heavy concentrations. AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the settlement with Union Carbide, and I wanted you to respond to Union Carbide's statement. We called Union Carbide and Dow Chemical to ask for a response. They wouldn't join us on the show, but they did send us an audio clip of Union Carbide spokesman Tomm Sprick. This is what he had to say. TOMM SPRICK: We are gratified to learn that this past July, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the government of India to release the remaining funds in the settlement, estimated to be in the neighborhood of $325 million. We feel that money will go a long way towards helping the victims and their families. AMY GOODMAN: Your response to that, Sati Sarangi? SATINATH SARANGI: I'm sorry, Amy, I could not -- I could not understand it clearly. AMY GOODMAN: He said -- SATINATH SARANGI: Can you repeat -- AMY GOODMAN: He basically said Union Carbide has said that a large portion of the funds that they negotiated a settlement with the Indian government have been held and they're now gratified to hear that those funds are being released. SATINATH SARANGI: That is, what was left behind, the balance of the settlement fund, was basically the interest it had earned and because of the [inaudible] change of the dollar value. That is now getting distributed. But the point remains that more than ninety-five percent of the people who still get something like $1,000 maximum for injuries that are going to last till a lifetime, till their deaths. AMY GOODMAN: What are you demanding? What are you demanding? SATINATH SARANGI: Union carbide should-- Pardon? AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead. What were you saying? SATINATH SARANGI:What I was saying was Union Carbide should know that the settlement would not have been accepted in any U.S. court, because not a single victim was consulted when the settlement was made secretly between the government of India and Union Carbide. It was totally spelled out by the government and most possibly through pressure brought upon by the United States government, which has once again been exposed as supporting Union Carbide and Warren Anderson. AMY GOODMAN: We're going to turn now to Jack Doyle. He is author of the book Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical & the Toxic Century. Jack Doyle, can you talk about Union Carbide and its relationship with Dow Chemical? JACK DOYLE: Well, yes. Dow initially made the announcement in 1999 that it was acquiring Union Carbide and, you know, there were questions at the time. I mean, some analysts were wondering why Dow Chemical would make an acquisition of a company not only that had this unsettled Bhopal liability still hanging over it, but also had asbestos liability questions. And Dow apparently was confident that it could acquire this company and resolve these issues and -- and as it continues to this day to sidestep some of these key questions about Bhopal and leading us to where we are today. But, I mean, from an economic standpoint, Dow looked at Union Carbide and saw that it had, it had assets in the Middle East in terms of some energy and petrochemical resources that it felt outweighed some of the liability that the other -- that Bhopal and the asbestos question offered. So, it's kind of amazing to reflect on how a corporation like Dow makes a decision like this from a liability standpoint. They're confiden -- I mean, when you look at Dow, as I have, over a seventy, eighty-year period, and you see this continued business-like approach in terms of how it looks at assets and its business plan, it just marches forward and uses the best lawyers and the best lobbyists that money can buy to -- to get what it wants. AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined on the phone by Ryan Bodanyl. He is coordinator of Students for Bhopal, which is organizing events at colleges around the world. Can you talk about how you got involved with this issue, Ryan? RYAN BODANYL: Yeah. I think that the process by which I got involved is very similar to that by which other students are getting involved and that -- that's very simply that I learned the truth about what had happened in Bhopal. You know, there are many students that are my age that are simply unfamiliar with the disaster. They've never heard of it before or they think that it's over. Because it happened, you know, when we were very young. However, when students find out that this is the world's worst industrial disaster, that the survivors have never had justice, that people are still being contaminated today, they're outraged, just like any human being would be. And so, now, just like they -- they did in the 1970's, they're demanding that Dow Chemical end its association with death and destruction around the world. And so what we have this year is there's about sixty students at about sixty colleges and universities and high schools around the world that are taking action. They're organizing vigils, they're organizing protests and they're organizing demonstrations and in those cases where their institutions -- their educational institutions are associated with Dow Chemical, they're demanding, just like they did during Vietnam War, that those associations end. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what different schools are doing today and tomorrow and this weekend? RYAN BODANYL: Yeah. There's -- as you can imagine with 60 schools, there's quite a variety of different events that are planned. There are an awful lot of vigils to commemorate, you know, the suffering of the people of Bhopal and those who have died. There are recreations of the disaster. There are movie screenings, there're performances, there're demonstrations and protests outside of Dow facilities and outside the homes of Dow board members. So there's quite a variety of events. It's limited only really by the creativity of students who are involved. AMY GOODMAN: How do people find out about these events? RYAN BODANYL: Well, you can find out about the events that are planned by students around the world by visiting studentsforbhopal.org; and you can find out about the international events that are planned which are right now scheduled to take place in I think over twenty countries in 300 different locations around the world by visiting bhopal.net. AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Jack Doyle, author of Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical & the Toxic Century. Your book has just come out. You talk about the history of Dow Chemical. Can you talk about when it acquired Union Carbide? JACK DOYLE: Yeah. The announcement was made in 1999, when Dow acquired Carbide, but it had to run through the regulatory -- the Securities and Exchange Commission review, the Federal Trade Commission. And after it was approved, it was finally, fully integrated into the company in 2001. And it was, you know, it was a sizeable acquisition. It put -- It put Dow at the top of the list of chemical -- Dow is now the largest chemical company in the world and that essentially, for the last four or five years running, it has -- it dominated the global chemical company list. It is simply the largest chemical company out there today. And because primarily of the acquisition of Union Carbide. AMY GOODMAN: On the line with us also is Vijay Nagaraj, a consultant with Amnesty International, author of a new report out called, "Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal Disaster Twenty Years On." Can you talk about the findings of your report and why you and Amnesty decided to take on this project? VIJAY NAGARAJ: Yeah. Hi. I think the most-important finding of the report is -- is nothing new. It's what everybody knows: that twenty years later after 20,000 deaths and more than 540,000 people being injured, and more than 150,000 people being chronically ill, nobody, nobody has been held responsible for what happened. And I think that's the biggest concern of this report. The other big concern that the report deals with of course is that multi-national corporations today are playing an increasing role in the everyday lives of people; and however, at the s -- there is no regulating framework that covers and regulates their activities to ensure that they don't result in human-rights violations. As far as Bhopal is concerned, quite clearly, the immediate crisis is, firstly, of the survivors who are suffering; their immediate need for comprehensive medical, economic, and social rehabilitation; the immediate need for just compensation for the survivors. And, of course, in terms of the company, the fact that the criminal case is still continuing in Bhopal and that Union Carbide Corporation now owned by Dow Chemical has -- has to face trial for -- for what happened in 1984. And the other big issue that is still open is that of the contamination, the continuing pollution of ground -- ground and -- ground water and soil because of -- because of the poisons that are leaching from the abandoned factory site. So, there are a whole set of issues around Bhopal and a lot of them I think tend to be at the point where hazardous technology, the power of multi-national capital, and states' reluctance linked to turn what was really industrial callousness into a human rights disaster. AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break, and then we're going to come back with this discussion and also hear more from the audio clips that were sent by Dow Chemical. We're sorry they wouldn't participate in the conversation, but they did send some clips of their spokesperson. We'll hear about what they have to say about safety and we'll continue this discussion of Bhopal, Union Carbide, and now Dow Chemical. [break] AMY GOODMAN: This is the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster in the early morning hours of December 3, late in the night of December 2, the Bhopal pesticide plant of Union Carbide leaked gas. In the ensuing days, 7,000 people were killed. Years following, another 15,000 people died. Now 100,000 people still suffer debilitating and chronic illnesses. It was considered one of the worst industrial disasters in the 20th century. As we hear now from Tomm Sprick, a Union Carbide spokesperson, an audio clip that was sent to us by the company. TOMM SPRICK: The 20th anniversary of Bhopal continues to evoke strong emotions around the world. And rightly so. None of us at Union Carbide, including myself, will ever forget the scope of this tragedy. Union Carbide and the chemical industry as a whole has learned a great many things from this tragedy, such as the importance of continuing to improve community awareness, emergency response and process safety standards. AMY GOODMAN: That is Tomm Sprick of Union Carbide. I am wondering Vijay Nagaraj, author of the Amnesty Report "Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On," if you can respond to that. VIJAY NAGARAJ: Well, I think Union Carbide's sympathy for the victims of Bhopal sounds rather shallow to me. For the simple fact that it's been 20 years since the gas leak occurred, and it's time to remind the world that there was also 11 tons of reaction product and this reaction product could include hydrogen cyanide, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, and the fact that there was 11 tons of reaction product is stated in Union Carbide's own investigation report. But 20 years later despite all the talk of sympathy for the victims of Bhopal, UCC has not named what those reaction products were. I think UCC and Dow Chemical really have to walk the talk. And if they are really so concerned about the victims of Bhopal, forget about everything else. They should just start by telling them what was the composition of the reaction products. What is the toxicology of these products? What is the resource they have, why haven't they made it public? I mean it's all very well to say that it evokes strong emotions and they remember it and so on and so forth, but quite obviously they have forgotten the victims of Bhopal. They don't remember the fact that it cost them just 48 cents a share. AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to the author of an Amnesty Report, Vijay Nagaraj, who is in New Delhi, India. Can you go on from that issue of responsibility, and talk about at this point what needs to be done? VIJAY NAGARAJ: Well I think there are clearly, as far as Dow and Union Carbide is concerned, like I said, the first thing that needs to be done is for them to give us information. What was leaked that night, what was the toxicology? The second important thing is for them to clean up the plant site. Let's remember that the pollution around the plant began way before the gas leak. It began in the early 1970's because of poor waste disposal practice. And it will continue to poison the ground water of the people in the community. The plant site needs to be cleaned up. And thirdly, they have to cooperate with efforts that are being made to find out exactly how to detoxify the victims of Bhopal. But most importantly, they have to appear in court to face trial. We must remember that no court in the world, in the United States or in India, has declared that Union Carbide is not liable. That has yet to be decided. The criminal trial is ongoing in Bhopal. And Union Carbide and Dow É has the responsibility to ensure that Carbide appears before court and faces trial. And as far as the victims are concerned, the government of India and the government of the British have an obligation to ensure that justice is done, that they have done everything possible to secure justice for the victims and including and especially insuring comprehensive social and economic rehabilitation for the victims. And I think Amnesty International in the report also calls on the international community, including the government of the United States, to cooperate with the efforts of the government of India to ensure that the victims get justice, as well as the United Nations to ensure that not just providing technical assistance to the victims of Bhopal, but also to ensure that there is the framework to ensure that there are no more Bhopals ever again. AMY GOODMAN: Let me play another comment of the Union Carbide spokesperson. And of course the way they are doing it by sending clips is they don't respond directly to any questions. They put out what they want to put out. So that's why we are sorry they can't be a part of the discussion. But this is Union Carbide spokesperson Tomm Sprick on the cause of the Bhopal disaster. TOMM SPRICK: There's no question in the mind of Union Carbide that a disgruntled employee who introduced an unusually large amount of water into the tank of methyl isocyanate was responsible for causing the runaway reaction. An exhaustive study proved that and our study was in turn substantiated by an independent study conducted by A.D. Little Company. AMY GOODMAN: Vijay Nagaraj, of Amnesty International, is this what you found? VIJAY NAGARAJ: Well, I think it's important to recollect that what Carbide referred to as an independent study by A.D. Little was a study paid for by Union Carbide. And they were the ones who first floated the sabotage theory. And in fact, even though Carbide claimed that they knew who the employee was, they have never named employee. In any case, the sabotage theory is probably not going to stand in court, but that's beside the point. The fact of the matter is that as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian's premier scientific body, their studies show, and CarbideÕs own studies acknowledge, the fact is that the methal isocyanate that leaked that night was manufactured more than two months ago. I think it doesn't require extraordinary intelligence to understand that if you store hazardous material in large quantities for long period of time you are inviting trouble. That's what Union Carbide did in Bhopal. The plant was designed by Union Carbide and designed in such a way as to store large quantities of hazardous material. Not to mention the fact that crucial safety systems failed. In violation of Union Carbide's own safety regulations, the MIT that leaked was not kept safe under liquid nitrogen pressure as their own manuals said it should be stored. The emergency mechanism to burn off any that could possibly leak was not working that night. It was out of service. And what is crucially important is the fact that we have, the report discusses how Union Carbide safety, levels of safety between, in Bhopal and in West Virginia, an institute in west Virginia were vastly different. The Bhopal plant was not equipped to the same degree of safety mechanisms. And Union Carbide knew in September 1984, there was an operational safety survey conducted of the institute plant, and they were warned that there was a possibility that a runaway reaction could occur and could lead to a leak and that exactly what happened in Bhopal. But we don't have any evidence in our possession to the effect that UCC actually warned the Bhopal plant people about, or shared this information with them. So there's overwhelming evidence to show that Union Carbide knew that there were problem was safety in the plant. And there were problems. It was well-known in the public. It was in the public domain, and the crucial safety systems failed that night. They stored quantities of hazardous material for long periods of time under inappropriate conditions that were in violation of their own safety regulations. And well, what do you expect? AMY GOODMAN: Again we are talking to Vijay Nagaraj who has done a comprehensive report for Amnesty International, called "Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On." What happens to people who continue to organize 20 years later? You have a segment in one of your chapters called repression of activists. VIJAY NAGARAJ: Well, I think we have seen in the past there have been instances where there are people who have been working with the victims, have had to face the ire of state authorities. And this has happened particularly in the context of large organized protests on various aspects. And I think this is only part of a larger set of violations that the survivors and victims have been subjected to where they have been treated less like victims and more like people who are demanding certain special privileges. It's very important to remember that what happened to the victims of Bhopal would have gone, by now, 20 years later, largely unnoticed and forgotten if it wasn't for the fact that they have struggled and organized so hard over the last 20 years and very often against all odds and very often, also had to face the acts of aggression. So, I do think the fact that we are talking about Bhopal today after 20 years to this extent, we owe that to the struggle of the people of Bhopal. AMY GOODMAN: I want to go now to Jack Doyle, author of Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century. The crisis of Bhopal was one issue that Union Carbide, and then Dow Chemical acquiring it, has to deal with. What about Dow's history and other major disasters like Agent Orange? JACK DOYLE: Yeah, Amy, if I could come back to that in a minute, I wanted to react to one thing that Tomm Sprick said in his taped message, if that would be ok. He alluded to the fact that Union Carbide has learned lessons about chemical plant safety since Bhopal. And while that's true, I mean there have been laws passed, I mean there's been a lot of requirement for posting releases of toxic materials and there's a right to know statute that was passed in the wake of Bhopal, and a lot about chemical plant safety has been improved since Bhopal, here in the States. But it's interesting that Union Carbide, the parent corporation now, Dow Chemical, just most recently, there was in the wake of 9/11, there have been chemical safety and security measures advanced in Congress. And in 2002, Senator Corsine had legislation for chemical plant safety and security called the Chemical Security Act of 2001. And July 2002, that was passed unanimously out of committee, but it was blocked by 30 chemical and oil companies, Dow among them. And this legislation had requirements for EPA to oversee security at a facility and to require inherently safer technologies in the plants that would prevent accidents from occurring in the first place. So here you have Dow and Union Carbide spokesmen today saying that they have learned lessons from Bhopal, but yet with the other hand, they are in congress lobbying to actually prevent improved chemical plant security by lobbying against these laws and preventing better provisions from getting into law. But the book that I have done on Dow, Trespass Against Us, this book tries to get a larger issue here of chemical body burden: the fact that today, places like the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta are finding toxic substances in the blood and body tissue of most Americans. So far, 500 substances have been detected in human blood and body tissue. AMY GOODMAN: Jack Doyle, Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century is his book. I wanted to go back to Vijay Nagaraj in New Delhi, who is the Amnesty consultant who did "Clouds of Injustice." Warren Anderson lives out on the east end of Long Island. The former CEO of Union Carbide. At this point, what is the status of his case? Vijay, are you still with us? Ok, then let me just put that question to Jack Doyle, author of Trespass Against Us. Jack Doyle, what is the status of the former CEO of Union Carbide, Warren AndersonÕs case at this point? JACK DOYLE: I am not certain on the case there. I believe there are still outstanding issues in that case, but I am not absolutely expert on the Warren Anderson situation at the moment. But I believe there are still some outstanding questions about that case. AMY GOODMAN: Ultimately, the subtitle Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century, what do you conclude about Dow Chemical? JACK DOYLE: Well, I think today we have to be concerned, all of us have to be concerned, about the enormity of the synthetic chemical burden that's out there today. We have tens of thousands of chemicals that are in use in commerce daily, and many of these substances have never had real final toxicological profiles. ThereÕs a vast chemical experiment going on, and what we have tried to do with this book is raise the visibility of invisible trespass that our bodies, our biology, mothers nursing children today are passing dioxin on to their children for example and other substances that have become products of the synthetic chemical revolution. We have all of this material that's woven into a global economy today, and it's now invading our biology, and our ecology, everywhere. And we really have to make a change in terms of how this material makes its way into commerce and we have to have it better toxicological screening before these things get released into the world. Dow is one example, and certainly Dow is not alone in this group of companies who have brought these products, you see 10, 20, 30, 40 years of fighting going on to keep a product on the market that shouldn't have been on the market in the first place. In this book, there are some case histories of 245-T, a herbicide that was in use for over 40 years before it was removed from the market. AMY GOODMAN: Jack Doyle on that note, we are going to have to wrap up. Author of Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century. That does it for today's program on this 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, one of the worst industrial accidents in the history of the century. -------- ACTIVISTS Protestors Plan Big Anti-Nuclear Rally in New York 02 Dec 2004 21:46:46 GMT U.S. National - Reuters By Nicole Maestri http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02426349.htm NEW YORK (Reuters) - With tensions rising over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, peace activists on Thursday said they are planning a rally of 60,000 people next year to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Organizers from United for Peace and Justice and Abolition Now said they want to stage the demonstration in New York's Central Park on May 1, before a United Nations meeting to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The rally also comes ahead of the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by the United States, which ended World War 2 in Asia. The anti-nuclear weapons groups are working with the Mayors for Peace to get representatives from around the world, including the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to come to the rally and the treaty review conference. "Survivors (of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) are growing increasingly concerned, watching developments around the world, that nuclear weapons will again be used and that nobody who will actually remember hell on earth will be alive," said Jackie Cabasso, U.S. coordinator for Abolition Now. United for Peace and Justice is applying with New York City's parks department to hold the rally at Central Park's Great Lawn -- the same location the coalition was denied access to this summer ahead of the Republican National Convention. Instead, it held a rally in the streets that it estimated drew a crowd of 400,000. The police declined to estimate the size of the crowd, but it stretched out more than a mile along two main avenues in central Manhattan. Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, said at a news conference she was "optimistic" they would get permission to use the park this time. "People's voices will be heard on May 1," Cagan said. "That is a critical moment for people in this city and this country to speak out for complete and total nuclear disarmament." The non-proliferation treaty's objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology. The treaty, which went into force in 1970, is reviewed every five years. Carah Ong Communications Director Nuclear Age Peace Foundation PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1 Santa Barbara, California 93108-2794 Tel: (805) 965-3443 Fax: (805) 568-0466 http://www.wagingpeace.org http://www.nuclearfiles.org -------- $835,000 to settle suit over protester's injury San Francisco Chronicle Jaxon Van Derbeken December 2, 2004 http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/02/BAGDLA4UFN1.DTL An anti-war protester who sued San Francisco after a police officer broke her arm with a baton strike during a demonstration would get one of the city's largest-ever payouts in a police case, under an $835,000 deal that the Police Commission approved Wednesday. The settlement was reached in a federal lawsuit filed by Linda Vaccarezza, 39, of Sonoma, who claimed her civil rights were violated when Police Officer Anthony Nelson clubbed her during the street protests that swept through downtown March 20, 2002, the day after U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq. Nelson struck Vaccarezza with his baton as officers confronted a crowd of protesters along Market Street after ordering them to clear the streets. Vaccarezza suffered a broken forearm during the incident, which another protester recorded on videotape. According to an investigation by the city's Office of Citizen Complaints, Nelson said he had been forced to hit Vaccarezza with his baton when she charged him with a wood-backed sign. Vaccarezza, however, told investigators that she had simply been complaining about how police were treating other protesters and had done nothing aggressive. The Police Commission did not disclose the size of the settlement, but sources familiar with the arrangement confirmed that the sum was $835,000. The deal still must go before the Board of Supervisors. Nelson, 33, is a four-year veteran of the department. Police officials filed misconduct charges against him earlier this year, including allegations that he lied to superiors about what happened during the protest. Officials sought to resolve the charges by having him suspended for 30 days without pay, but the Police Commission rejected the deal as "inadequate." The commission will hold a hearing next month on the charges, which could result in Nelson being fired. In the meantime, Nelson has returned to full duty at Southern Station. Lee Davis, his attorney, did not return phone calls seeking comment. Vaccarezza's attorney, Leslie Levy, would not discuss the settlement sum but said it was "adequate compensation.'' "My client's concern continues to be that the people of San Francisco be protected from this officer and similar officers,'' Levy said. She said the outcome of the disciplinary hearing set for January will "determine whether the city of San Francisco is protected from police officers who have a history of being out of control.'' Levy said her client was a highly skilled court reporter at the time of her injury and is now forced to work part time. "She has lost a portion of her income, she has a metal plate in her arm and six grooves and has ongoing pain and limitation of motion,'' Levy said. "She is working, but she is not working anywhere near the capacity she had. Prior to this, she was in the upper tier of court reporters.'' Vaccarezza's permanent impairment was a significant factor in the size of the settlement. Records show that San Francisco's largest police settlement in recent years involving excessive force was reached in 1991, when the city paid $825, 000 to resolve a politically charged case involving Dolores Huerta, a United Farm Workers union leader. She suffered rib fractures and a ruptured spleen when police clubbed her during a September 1988 demonstration. Vaccarezza went to the Office of Citizen Complaints after she was injured. The agency's subsequent investigation concluded that "most of the witnesses and film footage of the incident do not support the accused officer's interpretation of the baton swing or the threat posed by the victim." The investigation also found that Nelson had left out any mention of injury in his report of the incident and misstated the facts leading up to the baton strike. E-mail Jaxon Van Derbeken at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com.