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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 US: [southnews] No point searching for WMDs: Kay
2 Guardian Unlimited: Ignorance is no excuse
3 FOXNews.com:  Powell Dismisses Latest Iraqi Offers
4 Aljazeera.Net: Russia proved right on Iraq WMD                 
5 UK Independent: Jones breaks cover again: Blair raised 'false expect
6 SF Chronicle: Iraq questions won't go away
7 TheStar.com - Editorial: Bush cried 'wolf' on Iraq's threat
8 Chicago Sun-Times: Bush still not coming clean on Iraq 
9 Chicago Sun-Times: Trust fades as war cry rings too hollow 
10 US: AJC: Bush bullied CIA in order to dupe us     
11 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Military Chiefs Stand by Iraq War
12 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Passes Law on North Korea Sanctions
13 Townhall.com: Alarm Raised over Possible Nuclear Links Between Burma
14 Townhall.com: North Korea Got Uranium from Pakistan, Defector Says
15 Las Vegas SUN: N. Korea Touts Support From China
16 US: NYT: Panel Member Says Bush Erred on Details of Threat to Reacto
17 [sm] WMD: Libya probably never had weapons it is "destroying"
18 Palast: Khan Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistan Bomb...
19 [du-list] "nukky" Osama
20 PTI: We knew of A Q Khan's indiscretion, admits Powell
21 BBC: Pakistan's nuclear claim disputed 
22 miamiherald: Russian Envoy: U.N. Credibility Intact
23 Miami Herald: Closing Dr. Khan's nuclear-arms bazaar
24 Washington Post: Pakistan's Nuclear Ali Baba 
25 The Hindu:  China denies n-proliferation charge 
26 PakTribune: US satisfied with Pak nuclear probe - Boucher
27 SF Chronicle: Nuclear know-how feared widespread 
28 Hi Pakistan: No more nuclear leaks: Musharraf 
29 Hi Pakistan: No secret deal with Dr Khan: Musharraf 
30 Hi Pakistan: US history replete with ‘mother of all pardons’ --
31 Hi Pakistan: Pakistan to cooperate with IAEA in N-probe = Kasuri --
32 Hi Pakistan: Crowds still cheer for Dr Qadeer -
33 Hi Pakistan: PPP demands discussion on N-issue in parliament --
34 Hi Pakistan: Who are the proliferators? - 
35 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear confessions - 
36 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Rebuts Pakistan on Nuclear Leaks
37 Townhall.com: Pakistan Denies US Pressure Forced Probe into Nuclear 
38 Pakistan Times: Nuclear Establishments are Impregnable -  Pakistan 
39 Pakistan Times: Pakistan calls for collective effort to control spre
40 Las Vegas SUN: Musharraf Suspected Nuclear Scientist
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
41 US: Grossly Misleading Headline: NRC Panel Member Says Bush Erred
42 US: NRC: NRC Special Inspection Starts at Susquehanna Nuclear Plant
43 US: NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
44 US: North County Times: Refueling ritual begins at San Onofre
45 US: newsobserver Duke Power president: Nuclear power here to stay
46 US: Norwich Bulletin: NNE whistleblower sues attorney general's offi
47 US: Hampton Union: Value of aging power plant a taxing issue 
48 US: York Daily Record: NRC watching Peach Bottom - 
49 US: WFSB: Nuclear power plant worker seeking reinstatement
50 Sofia News: Bulgaria's Nuclear Sector to Be Rendered Meager EU Finan
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
51 US: USEC workers facing beryllium disease
52 US-Russia Plutonium disposition plan poses environmental, proliferat
53 [DU-WATCH] Inquiry into gulf illness urged
54 [du-list] As The Danger of Depleted Uranium is Confirmed
55 [du-list] More info on Kenny Duncan
56 [du-list] nothing depleted about Depleted Uranium--this is
57 OECD: Revised Nuclear Third Party Liability Conventions Improve 
58 ic NorthWales: Nuclear link to child leukaemia 'cluster'?
59 US: Portsmouth Daily Times: USEC workers facing beryllium disease   
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
60 Las Vegas SUN: Senators quiz Energy Department on Yucca Mountain bud
61 US: NRC: IAEA transportation safety regulations 
62 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Hold firm on waste 
63 US: Salt Lake Tribune: New battle heats up over hot waste 
64 US: Star Trib: House shoots down fee hike for nuke waste trucking
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
65 Tri-Valley Herald: Lab chief leaving post after 15 years
66 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Fernald
67 Las Vegas RJ: LETTERS: Nanny staters seek more and more sin taxes 
68 Tri-City Herald: Dirty job nears end 
69 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Budget is great -- for some states
70 Daily Californian: Berkeley Lab Director To Step Down
71 KGW: Federal government agrees to pay $6.8 million 
72 EurekAlert: Sandia helps DOE take first steps in control, tracking o
73 Newswise: Sandia Helps DOE in Control, Tracking of Potential 'Dirty 
74 Oak Ridger: ORNL gets new division director; two get National Academ
75 PRN:  Two Whistleblowers File Retaliation and Wrongful Termination 
76 Daily Californian: Livermore Lab Fined Millions for Accounting Error
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
77 [du-list] DU in the news 10th Feb. 04
78 BBC: Wind turbines divide
79 Capital Times: Higher rates boost earnings for MGE 
80 Renewable Energy News: White House Maintains Wind Energy Research
*****************************************************************
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 [southnews] No point searching for WMDs: Kay

   *No point searching for WMDs: Kay*

 >From correspondents in Washington
AFP 11feb04

THERE was no point in continuing to hunt for arms which "really did not
exist", the former chief of the group of experts responsible for finding
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, David Kay, said today.

"I think finding them is probably the wrong approach, the wrong
strategy," Kay told a news conference.

"Iraq is as large as California, Baghdad is as large as LA (Los
Angeles). Have you looked every possible place? The answer to that
question is always going to be no.

"My confident prediction is that 20 years from now, maybe 50 years from
now, people will still be digging things up in Iraq," he said.

When you "look for the production processes, learn where they have been
produced, look for the people that have been involved in that
production, look for the records, ... pretty soon you reach the
conclusion they really did not exist", he said.

"My personal conclusion is that there were no large stockpiles of
chemical and biological weaponised material."

Kay resigned in January and has blamed intelligence failures, not
political leaders, for the much-publicised accusations that Saddam
possessed chemical and biological weapons and sought nuclear arms - the
core of President George W Bush's case for war.

Key defector source was known to be unreliable, possibly coached

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , WASHINGTON
Sunday, Feb 08, 2004,Page 1

An Iraqi military defector identified as unreliable by the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) provided some of the information that went
into US intelligence estimates that Iraq had stockpiles of biological
weapons at the time of the US invasion last March, senior government
officials said on Friday.

A classified "fabrication notification" about the defector, a former
Iraqi major, was issued by the DIA to other US intelligence agencies in
May 2002, but it was then repeatedly overlooked, three senior
intelligence officials said. Intelligence agencies use such
notifications to alert other agencies to information they consider
unreliable because its source is suspected of making up or embellishing
information.

Because the warning went unheeded, the officials said, the defector's
claims that Iraq had built mobile research laboratories to produce
biological weapons were mistakenly included in, among other findings,
the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which concluded that
Iraq most likely had significant biological stockpiles.

Intelligence officers from the DIA interviewed the defector twice in
early 2002 and circulated reports based on those debriefings. They
concluded he had no firsthand information and might have been coached by
the Iraqi National Congress, the officials said. That group, headed by
Ahmad Chalabi, who had close ties to the Pentagon and Vice President
Dick Cheney, had introduced the defector to US intelligence, the
officials said.

Nevertheless, because of what the officials described as a mistake, the
defector was among four sources cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell
in his presentation to the UN Security Council last February as having
provided "eyewitness accounts" about mobile biological weapons
facilities in Iraq, the officials said. The defector had described
mobile biological research laboratories, as distinct from the mobile
biological production factories mounted on trailers that were described
by other sources.

The intelligence about the mobile facilities was central to the prewar
conclusion that Iraq was producing biological arms, senior intelligence
officials have said. No such arms or production facilities have been
found in Iraq since the war, and David Kay, the former chief weapons
inspector, has said he believes that Iraq never produced large
stockpiles of the weapons during the 1990s.

Soon after the invasion, US troops in Iraq discovered suspicious
trailers that were initially described by the CIA as having been
designed as factories for biological weapons. But most analysts have
since concluded that they were used to make hydrogen for weather balloons.

Kay reported in October that American inspectors had found "a network of
laboratories and safe houses controlled by Iraqi intelligence and
security services" that contained equipment for chemical and biological
research. But US officials have not described any discovery of the
mobile laboratories described by the Iraqi major.

The archives of South News can be found at
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited: Ignorance is no excuse

[UP] 

Comment 
		
The premise for this war was not security but politics
- and it is our politicians who should be in the dock 		
		
Gary Younge
Monday February 9, 2004
The Guardian 		
		
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, could learn a great deal 
from how his son has handled Janet Jackson's right breast. The 
singer bared her bosom during a raunchy dance with Justin 
Timberlake in the Super Bowl half-time show last weekend. 

Jackson apologised, saying that she did plan a "reveal", but 
Timberlake was supposed only to rip off her rubber black bustier 
to show a red lace bra (so that's all right then). Timberlake 
blamed it on a "wardrobe malfunction". The National Football 
League, which staged the match, blamed CBS, the television 
network which screened it. CBS blamed MTV, to which it had 
contracted out the half-time entertainment. MTV blamed Janet 
Jackson. And the media conglomerate Viacom, which owns both CBS 
and MTV, insists that it has nothing to do with them. 

So it was left to Michael Powell, the chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission, to declare his "outrage" and order a 
"swift and thorough" investigation, which could result in fines 
worth millions of dollars if CBS and its affiliates are shown to 
have breached indecency guidelines. 

Let's leave aside for a moment the value system of a government 
that can order an immediate inquiry into a bare breast and take a 
year to launch one into a bare-faced lie presented as a pretext 
for war. For there is a far more important principle at hand than 
the US government's calibration of indecency. 

At best somewhere along the way on Super Bowl night there was an 
unfortunate mistake, either individual or systemic. At worst, and 
more likely, this was a cynical, tasteless publicity stunt. 
Either way it was wrong, and Michael Powell is going to make sure 
that whoever is responsible will pay the price. 

Hold that thought. Now cast your mind back to the United Nation's 
security council chamber a year ago last Friday. With the help of 
tapes, aerial photographs and a PowerPoint presentation, Michael 
Powell's father, Colin, illustrates the US government's case that 
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Jabbing the air and 
slapping the table, he offers "not assertions, but facts" and 
"evidence, not conjecture". 

Colin Powell's "evidence" and "facts" have been proven to be not 
only "assertions" and "conjecture", but erroneous ones at that. 
But one year, one war, no UN resolution and thousands of deaths 
later, we are still waiting for someone to pay the price for a 
conflict that never needed to start and sparked a resistance that 
shows no sign of ending. 

Fatal blunders like these, it seems, are priceless. The 
politicians who authorised the war, at a time when to stand 
against it posed a political risk, say they were tricked. The 
intelligence agencies who provided the material to justify it say 
they were pressured or misinterpreted. The leaders who used that 
material to make their case for it say they were misinformed or 
misunderstood. And the military, of course, just follows orders. 
No one takes responsibility, no one has yet been held 
accountable. 

Sooner or later a hopeless minister or hapless civil servant, 
possibly even the head of the CIA, might be sacked. This would be 
the equivalent of Jackson firing her dressmaker. It will satisfy 
not those who want to solve the problem, but those who want it to 
go away. 

Sadly the inquiries to be launched in Britain and the US have 
been limited to intelligence. The premise for this war was not 
security but politics - it's the politicians who should be in the 
dock. 

The fact that they will not be reflects badly not just on the 
governments concerned but on all of us. If a country can be led 
to war on false pretexts and there are no substantive 
consequences as a result, there is something seriously wrong with 
both politicians and the political culture that produces them. In 
a democracy worthy of the name, if the machinery of government 
cannot call those responsible to account, civil society and the 
ballot box must. 

This war is not just killing Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters 
and coalition soldiers. It's murdering any pretence that we live 
in countries that value, let alone practice, the principle of 
democratic accountability. It calls into question our ability to 
rein in political excess and to root out state-sponsored 
incompetence. 

"We had no choice," Bush said yesterday. But the case for war was 
always weak and unpopular on its own terms. Iraq posed no 
immediate threat and had no connection with September 11, and the 
action did not have the support of the UN. Even if the invasion 
had uncovered WMD, it would have been wrong. That it didn't makes 
its failure, by the miserably low standards the US and Britain 
set themselves, abject and absolute. 

The most compelling defence of both governments is ignorance. 
They thought Saddam Hussein had WMD and it turns out he didn't, 
but it was impossible to know because he ran a dictatorship and 
had a record of lying. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, 
took this to absurd extremes this weekend, claiming that Saddam 
tricked the US into war with his "deception and defiance". "It 
was his choice," says Rumsfeld. None the less, it is true that 
nobody knew for sure before the war if Saddam had WMD. But it is 
even truer that anyone who claimed to know for sure that Iraq did 
have them was lying. 

Two different US panels concluded in 1998 that there was no hard 
evidence of secret weapons programmes. The first, the arms 
control and non-proliferation advisory board, consisted of 
eminent scientists. It found the CIA's intelligence mostly 
speculative. "There were suspicions, hints, but nothing hard," 
one member told Newsweek. The second was led by none other than 
Rumsfeld and reached similar conclusions. 

That was precisely why the UN sent in inspectors - to ascertain 
if there was any substance to these suspicions. For most of the 
world - including most US citizens - ignorance was a reason to 
wait and see. Left to his own devices, Hans Blix would have told 
us through peaceful means what we now know as a result of war and 
occupation - that there are no WMD. 

But for the US and Britain, ignorance was used as an excuse to 
attack. The Bush administration's policies of regime change and 
pre-emptive strike required no proof before prosecution - it's 
Britain's disgraced shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland gone 
global. 

Now ignorance seems to be their only defence. George Tenet says 
the CIA "never said there was an imminent threat". Well, somebody 
did. Tony Blair says he did not know that Saddam was incapable of 
firing long-range chemical and biological weapons. Well, somebody 
did. President Bush now says he wants "to know all the facts". 
What did he want to know before? "The absence of a stockpile 
changes the political calculus," says Powell Sr. "It changes the 
answer you get." Wrong again. If the question is "Should we have 
gone to war?" then the answer is still no. What is changed is 
that with each dissembling statement, the public is listening 
just that little bit more closely. 

g.younge@guardian.co.uk
	
Guardian Newspapers Limited
*****************************************************************
 3 FOXNews.com:  Powell Dismisses Latest Iraqi Offers
 
Saturday, October 05, 2002                                                                                                                      

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa  — Secretary of State Colin Powell
dismissed as "utter nonsense" Iraq's call Tuesday for talks on
resuming weapons inspections and hinted that President Bush is
nearing a decision on how to deal with Saddam Hussein. 	 		 			
			 				 				

On his flight to Johannesburg for a U.N. summit, Powell told 
reporters that Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz's offer to 
discuss resuming U.N. searches for destructive weapons is an old 
trick played by Baghdad. "Tariq Aziz knows perfectly well what 
must be done," Powell said. "For years, he has been getting on 
television and manages to have reported without comment his 
assertion that they have no such weapons, which is nonsense -- 
utter nonsense."                                                                             
			 				 
At the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Powell will hold 
meetings Wednesday with various heads of state. Powell said he 
will try to keep his focus on summit issues, but Iraq was 
destined to become a top item on his agenda.                                                                                                    
				 
Aziz, who also was attending the summit, said Tuesday that Iraq 
was ready to discuss a return of U.N. weapons inspectors but only 
in a broader context of ending sanctions and restoring Iraqi 
sovereignty over its territory. "If you want to find a solution, 
you have to find a solution for all these matters, not only pick 
up one certain aspect of it," Aziz said after meeting with U.N. 
Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "We are ready to find such a 
solution."                                                                                                  
				 
To that, Powell replied: "He knows it's nonsense. We know
it's nonsense. It's the con that the Iraqi regime and especially
Mr. Tariq Aziz have been pulling on the international community
for years. Where we are now is that it is time for the
international community to speak back." 			 				 			 			 				 

When asked what that implied about the U.S. position, Powell
said: "The president will articulate it. He will articulate
fully and in the near future." 			 				 			 			 				 

Powell turned aside talk of dissent over Iraq among Bush's
top advisers and tried to tone down the rhetoric of Vice
President Dick Cheney and other U.S. officials who have
advocated pre-emptive U.S. action to remove Saddam. 			 				 			
			 				 
That idea, Powell said, was offered as part of "full, free,
open debate" among Bush's advisers. He acknowledged differences
in the options they offered, adding: "Some are real, some are
perceived, some are overhyped." 			 				 			 			 				 

But Powell said there is no divergence of views when it comes
to the core U.S. position that Saddam cannot erase the world's
grievances with Baghdad by simply allowing weapons inspections
to resume. 			 				 			 			 				 					 						 						 						
						 						 						 						 						 					 				 
Powell would not say whether Bush would spell out his plan
for Iraq next week at the U.N. General Assembly and said no
decision has been made whether the United States would seek
additional U.N. resolutions or Security Council action. 			 				
			 			 				 
On the sidelines of the gathering on Wednesday, he will meet
with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Japanese Foreign
Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail
Kasyanov, South African President Thabo Mbeki and President
Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. 			 				 			 			 				 

With Kasyanov, Powell said, he will review the status of
various U.S.-Russian issues since their presidents met back in
June. 			 				 			 			 				 

"We will shake hands and congratulate ourselves on having
solved the great chicken war of 2002," Powell said, referring to
a trade dispute over poultry exports. 			 				 			 			 				 

Powell also will address the summit on Wednesday. He said he
will stress that the private sector, not government, holds most
resources available to help poorer nations. He said he would
encourage poor countries to assure potential investors that in
their countries, "the money will be used properly, it will be
protected by the rule of law, and it will go to the benefit of
the people." 			 				   	 	 		
   	 		 	 		 		 	 	   	 
Copyright 2004 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.		
*****************************************************************
 4 Aljazeera.Net: Russia proved right on Iraq WMD                 
 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		
 				
10 February 2004, 13:20 Makka Time,

Lavrov says UN inspectors should have been allowed to finish 
their job                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Russia's UN ambassador said late on Monday his country was never
sure Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, despite assertions
from former US arms inspector David Kay that "we were almost all
wrong."  											

The furore over whether Iraq possessed unconventional weapons, a
justification for the the US-led war, recently flared again
after Kay said he believed there were no large stockpiles of
chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. 

Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov, at his annual meeting with the
press, said Russian officials repeatedly maintained they did not
have enough information.  

"We said that we don't have information which would prove that
the WMD, weapons of mass destruction, programmes remain in Iraq.
We also said we don't have information that those programmes
have been fully stopped," Lavrov said. 

Consequently, he said he supported a Security Council resolution
in November 2002 giving "an unprecedented, intrusive mandate to
UN inspectors and that is why we wanted the inspectors to finish
their job." 

  
"We said that we don't have information which would prove that
the WMD programmes remain in Iraq. We also said we don't have
information that those programmes have been fully stopped" 
Sergei Lavrov,
Russian ambassador to UN  

After Kay told Congress on 28 January, "we were almost all
wrong," many US and British officials said members of the UN
Security Council, as well as United Nations inspectors, got it
wrong also.  

Russia opposed the war and at one time was Iraq's closest ally
on the Security Council. Lavrov said Moscow believed UN
inspectors provided an objective evaluation. 

Lavrov said the current UN Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, could perhaps analyse
any information the United States weapons hunters found.  

"If remnants are there, could be revived, we want to make sure
they are eliminated. We don't want some wrong groups in Iraq to
lay their hands on WMD in Iraq, if there are any," Lavrov said.  

But he said Iraq could not be a long-term job for UNMOVIC.
Solutions should be found to retain the expertise of the
commission, particularly on biological arms and ballistic
missiles, for which there were no international inspection
mechanisms. 											

*****************************************************************
 5 UK Independent: Jones breaks cover again: Blair raised 'false expectations'
 
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
 
10 February 2004

Tony Blair undermined the global fight against weapons 
proliferation by raising "false expectations" about Iraq's 
arsenal and by marginalising intelligence experts, Brian Jones, 
the key witness of the Hutton inquiry, has warned. 

Dr Jones said there was a real danger that the failure to find 
chemical and biological weapons would lead the public to conclude 
that Mr Blair's justification for war was "a political sleight of 
hand". 

In his first media interview, Dr Jones also told The Independent 
that intelligence on the Government's 45-minutes claim was so 
threadbare that it was impossible to know whether it referred to 
battlefield or strategic weapons. 

There were calls for the Prime Minister to resign last week after 
he admitted he had not been briefed that the 45-minutes claim 
might refer only to battlefield munitions. Dr Jones's revelation 
that the intelligence was vague about the precise threat could 
ease the pressure on Mr Blair. But it also undermines one of the 
key claims in the Iraq weapons dossier. 

Dr Jones, the former head of the nuclear, chemical and biological 
branch of the MoD's Defence Intelligence Staff, made headlines 
when he told the Hutton inquiry that he had formally complained 
about the dossier. 

In today's interview, Dr Jones made it clear that his biggest 
fear wasthat his life's work on the dangers of nuclear, chemical 
and biological weapons proliferation risked being undermined by 
the failure to find stockpiles in Iraq. 

He said: "There is a great danger that the whole Iraq issue is 
now muddying that pond. People have been told to look in that 
direction; 'Here is something to worry about'. Suddenly it 
appears that there was nothing. Personally, I don't think they 
will find stockpiles in Iraq and have been given a false 
expectation that they were there. So people will say WMD in 
general was never a problem because the whole thing was a 
political sleight of hand." 

Dr Jones, who saw the intelligence assessment that included the 
45-minute claim, pointed out for the first time that it merely 
outlined "possible scenarios" as opposed to any specific threat 
posed by Iraq. 

"I think it was dealing with an attempt to think through possible 
scenarios. It wasn't, I think, dealing with, 'This is the 
threat'. It was saying something more like, 'If the threat we are 
worried about is there, how would it work? How would it play in a 
more practical sense?'." 

The controversy over which minister was told what about the 
45-minute claim had missed the real point. "The fact was that it 
was so nebulous that there was nothing you could really hang your 
hat on," he said. 

Dr Jones queried briefings given to ministers including Geoff 
Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, and Robin Cook, the 
former foreign secretary who resigned as Leader of the Commons, 
in which the 45-minute claim was linked with battlefield weapons. 
"Who was giving the briefings? Where were the experts? There were 
clearly no experts involved in those briefings. And a great 
confusion reigns about WMD," he said. 

He criticised the practice of giving ministers raw, unanalysed 
intelligence. He said he and other intelligence analysts directly 
briefed ministers in the last Tory government and were invited to 
sit in on Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) meetings. Successive 
governments had failed to fund analysts to keep up with the 
increasing amount of material on worldwide security threats, he 
said, and reorganisations left experts with less clout in 
Whitehall. Mr Blair has constantly warned about the dangers of 
WMD proliferation but it appeared that he was failing to fund the 
expert analysts needed to combat it. 

The growing threat of terrorism and proliferation meant that 
other arms of intelligence seemed to get more funding for WMD 
"but this was not matched in my part of the DIS", Dr Jones said. 
"I suppose everyone says this about their own team, but mine 
wasn't big enough. Certainly I think there was an imbalance in 
the WMD area, over the past five to 10 years. Latterly it did not 
match increases elsewhere nor the increase in the volume of 
reporting that there was to analyse." 

Dr Jones said analysts used to have much more influence and 
access, both on the JIC and on ministers. Sir Percy Cradock, a 
former JIC chairman, "would invite experts to come along and sit 
in on a JIC meeting for the relevant paper. Latterly that hasn't 
happened, certainly not in my area of expertise." 

Air Marshal Sir John Walker, who was chief of Defence 
Intelligence and deputy chairman of the JIC, also allowed the 
experts more access. "Walker used to say you go ahead, you brief 
the minister. I would say, are you coming in too and he would say 
'you don't need me, you're the expert'," Dr Jones said.        
       


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 6 SF Chronicle: Iraq questions won't go away
         
EDITORIAL   

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

AFTER WEEKS of missteps and feckless explanations by top 
administration officials, President Bush is trying to clear the 
air over the false intelligence that fueled the war in Iraq. 

In a rare talk-show setting over the weekend, the president 
showed neither remorse nor even much reflection. There was no 
admission of fault or misjudgment in packaging Iraq as a 
dangerous terrorist stronghold, bristling with lethal weaponry. 

The cost in lives, money and American stature has been 
considerable. But the president bulled ahead with his conviction 
that the war was necessary even though his main rationale -- a 
vast Iraqi armory primed for use -- had vanished. If Saddam 
Hussein didn't have forbidden arms back then, he had the capacity 
to make them, Bush said. 

The president's new pose is pure sleight-of-hand. Skip what we 
said in the past; let's worry about the future. 

The war's ever-changing story should worry everyone. A justified 
war against Afghanistan's safe-harbor for terrorism became a 
stepping stone for the White House to invade Iraq. There never 
was evidence of a clear link between Baghdad and al Qaeda, and 
few major nations other than the United States and Britain had 
any appetite for full-scale war. Nonetheless, Washington steamed 
on, adding reports of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear 
experiments to the list of charges against Iraq. 

But after months of hunting, Bush conceded it was "correct'' to 
say no major stockpiles or ready-to-fire weapons has turned up. 

Having flunked that test, Bush is substituting another measure. 
Call it the loneliness-of-command pose: "I'm a war president,'' 
he said in his Oval Office interview. 

Faced with pressure to stave off another Sept. 11 attack, 
rebuffed by uncooperative diplomats and confronted by a defiant 
Hussein, Bush said it was his duty to launch war. But it's a spin 
job that can't disguise a major miscalculation. 

The president's talk caps a string of course corrections by a 
normally sure-footed White House. The Bush team is noted for its 
steely ability to stick to a single message, in this case the 
need to remove the dangerous Hussein. 

But after weapons inspector David Kay found no major stockpiles 
in Iraq, the theme has shifted. If Hussein didn't have them now, 
the argument goes, he would have them in a few years. It was 
better to act now than wait until it was too late, the reasoning 
goes. 

This message from top Bush surrogates wasn't enough. He hurriedly 
named a commission to delve into the intelligence failures. Then 
there were declining poll numbers showing Bush neck-in-neck with 
Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry. 

The interview marks a bid to end the slide by presenting a 
sincere president doing his best to protect the country. It also 
lays out a re- election theme: Bush as tough-minded leader 
operating under chaotic and dangerous conditions. 

However, questions about the pretext for the war on Iraq -- and 
the president's credibility -- will not go away. 

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
*****************************************************************
 7 TheStar.com - Editorial: Bush cried 'wolf' on Iraq's threat
 
  Tue. Feb. 10, 2004. | Updated at 07:49 AM  

A year ago U.S. President George Bush warned the world that 
Saddam Hussein was "a grave and gathering danger" who "continues 
to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever 
devised," making him "an urgent threat to America."

"The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a 
threat to the security of free nations," Bush warned. He cited, 
approvingly, a British report that Iraq could launch weapons on 
45 minutes' notice. 

Vice-President Dick Cheney, too, saw a "mortal threat." Defence 
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Iraq a "terrorist state." 
Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, evoked the spectre 
of a "mushroom cloud."

It was all scare tactics. We now know Saddam had no serious ties 
to the 9/11 terrorists, and he had bowed to the United Nations 
and scrapped his nuclear, chemical and biological programs. The 
British report was bogus. Bush was crying wolf, and he's now 
scrambling to justify a $150 billion war, 600 U.S. and allied 
deaths and 13,000 Iraqi deaths.

All this was dismally evident in Bush's weekend interview with 
NBC, where he trotted out a feeble and incoherent Version B 
rationale for war.

After describing himself as a "war president" who makes decisions 
"with war on my mind," Bush vilified Saddam as a "madman" a 
half-dozen times. He said the U.S. had "run the diplomatic string 
in Iraq" (that is, exhausted diplomatic options) before 
attacking. He said Iraq "could have developed a nuclear weapon 
over time." So this was "a war of necessity."

Version B may have played well with Bush's core Republican 
constituency, but it isn't any more believable than Version A.

Saddam may have been a brutal despot with the blood of many 
Iraqis on his hands, but he's not a "madman." Indeed, he may be 
tried for his crimes. Moreover, the U.N. Security Council 
disagreed profoundly that Bush had exhausted all diplomatic 
means. U.N. inspectors begged for more time, to test Saddam's 
claim that he had disarmed. Bush refused, and attacked.

Had the U.N. inspections continued, Saddam couldn't have 
developed a nuclear or any other nightmare weapon. So the notion 
that this was a "war of necessity" is laughable. This was a 
"pre-emptive" strike, period.

In recent months Bush has also test-driven another line of 
argument, Version C, saying Iraqis are now better off. Yet Paul 
Wolfowitz, the hawkish deputy defence secretary, frankly admits 
that Saddam's brutality was "not a reason to put American kids' 
lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did." So Version C 
fails, too, as a reason for invading.

The polls suggest Bush has struck out three times with these ever 
shifting rationales. More Americans now mistrust him than trust 
him.

Prime Minister Paul Martin must keep this flailing in mind, if 
Bush proposes to use force against other threats "before they 
become imminent." Americans were sent to war on false pretences. 
Allies don't have to oblige.

Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.
*****************************************************************
 8 Chicago Sun-Times: Bush still not coming clean on Iraq 
 
        [Jesse Jackson] 

February 10, 2004

President Bush went on ''Meet the Press'' to explain his policies 
in light of a continuing bloody and costly occupation in Iraq and 
a jobless recovery at home. He made his case largely without 
interruption from the respectful interviewer. But he once more 
misled the American people and gave them every reason to question 
his leadership. 

The president's major theme is that he is a ''wartime 
president.'' He used the word ''war'' more than 30 times in the 
interview, turning the horrors of Sept. 11 from a call to action 
to a catchall excuse: for a bad call on Iraq, for a bad economy, 
for a record budget deficit, for racking up unprecedented 
national debt. 

On the war, the president persists in misleading the American 
people. He admitted, grudgingly, that his inspectors couldn't 
find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But he insisted that 
rushing to war was justified anyway. After all, Saddam Hussein 
was a ''madman,'' a ''grave and gathering threat,'' and America's 
defense could not be based on ''trusting'' him. 

But that is a shameful distortion of the choice the president 
faced. Saddam wasn't a ''grave and gathering threat.'' He was, as 
United Nations inspectors had reported at the time, a diminishing 
and minor threat. Contrary to the president's claims at the time, 
he had no active nuclear weapons program, no weapon that could 
even reach these shores. 

The president claimed that he relied on the intelligence he had, 
but, contrary to what Bush said on Sunday, the CIA had reported 
that Saddam was hostile to the Sept. 11 terrorists, and wasn't 
about to give them weapons except if he faced ruin upon a U.S. 
invasion. 

Moreover, the choice wasn't to ''trust Hussein'' and do nothing 
or invade alone. U.N. inspectors were on the ground and pleading 
for more time, having discovered nothing. Iraq was under 
sanctions, export-import controls, air occupation and constant 
monitoring. Saddam's weapons capacity had been dismantled by U.N. 
inspections over the course of a decade. 

Bush says containment doesn't work with a madman, but 
containment, sanctions, inspections and air occupation had worked 
for more than a decade and had dismantled Saddam's arsenal. 

There was no imminent threat. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 
lied when he said, ''We know where the weapons are.'' Bush, Vice 
President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice 
and Secretary of State Colin Powell distorted and hyped the 
intelligence reports, alarming Americans with warnings about a 
''mushroom cloud'' over America. We had time to build an 
international consensus for continued intensive inspection -- 
which Saddam was allowing -- or on the need to topple Saddam for 
defying the international community. 

If we had done so, we would have invaded with a true coalition. 
We would not have to bear the cost of the war -- now headed 
toward $200 billion -- ourselves. And most important, America's 
soldiers would not be at risk virtually alone, enforcing an 
occupation that lacks international legitimacy.

 In his rush to war, the president squandered the international 
support the United States had after Sept. 11, and made America 
more unpopular than ever in Europe, Asia and particularly among 
the Muslim countries. 

This is not water under the dam, for even on Sunday the president 
repeated his insistence that the United States reserves the right 
to attack anything it deems a threat ''before it becomes 
imminent.'' That embrace of aggressive war tramples the 
international law that U.S. administrations of both parties have 
worked to build over decades, and violates the spirit of America 
as a peace-loving nation.

 And the president remains the only president in American history 
to lead the country into war and ask the wealthy to pay less in 
taxes, abandoning any sense of shared sacrifice. The result has 
been unprecedented deficits that will be left for future 
presidents to struggle with and future generations to pay. How 
can anyone claim to be a wartime president while giving 
millionaires tax cuts averaging $100,000 a year? 

The key test of Bush last Sunday was whether he was prepared to 
level with the American people and whether he had learned 
anything from the unilateral war on Iraq. He failed both of those 
tests once more. 

Copyright 2004, Digital Chicago Inc.   
*****************************************************************
 9 Chicago Sun-Times: Trust fades as war cry rings too hollow 
 
[Mary Mitchell] 

February 10, 2004

BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST 

President Bush's appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday was the 
last straw.  For months, I've been hoping that the cache of 
weapons would actually turn up. For months, I've suffered cruel 
jokes about me trusting a Bush. And for months, I've watched the 
rationale for the war on Iraq shift from one that I could digest 
to one that makes me want to throw up.

 Now I feel betrayed.

 Not because I am a Republican. I am not. Not even because I 
couldn't join those who danced around their TV sets Sunday 
shouting: "I told you so." I feel betrayed because I am an 
American who wants to believe that America is not the big-footed 
bully that so many people outside of the United States claim it 
is. 

I still believe that when confronted with right and wrong, moral 
leaders choose to do the right thing.

 The capture of Saddam Hussein gave me a sliver of hope. Surely, 
if we could find one man hiding in a hole, we could find a 
stockpile of biological and chemical weapons. But that hope faded 
on Sunday.

 While President Bush reiterated that he "expected there to be 
stockpiles of weapons," he also tweaked his language about the 
threat, and ended up looking more like a man covering his behind 
than the leader of a superpower.

 "If I might remind you, that in my language I called it 'a grave 
and gathering threat,'" Bush told Tim Russert. "There was no 
doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America. No 
doubt."

 War cry unmasked

It is that kind of wishy-washy talk that belies the reality of 
Bush's war cry. 

The Bush administration consistently argued that America had to 
go to war because Iraq posed a threat on two fronts: The Iraqi 
government was supporting al-Qaida terrorists, and Iraq had 
weapons of mass destruction in defiance of the United Nations' 
order banning it from manufacturing such weapons.

 When you strip away all the other rhetoric -- including Bush's 
passionate words after 9/11 when he vowed to launch a war on 
terrorism; put aside the Iraqi dictator's abuse of his own 
people, and the ongoing battles in the Middle East; it is fair to 
boil down the war we are engaged in to the weapons argument.

 It was the fear that Iraqi terrorists were waiting to use these 
weapons on Americans that netted Bush support for this war. That 
is why so many mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, buried 
their anti-war sentiments, said their prayers and sacrificed 
their sons and daughters to a just war. 

I have no doubt that the Bush administration's fear-mongering 
made many of us reluctant warriors. 

Now we are hearing a different story from the Bush camp.

 Saddam Hussein was a danger -- not because he actually had 
weapons of mass destruction -- but because he had the capacity to 
have a weapon.

 "We thought he had weapons. The international community thought 
he had weapons. But he had the capacity to make a weapon, and 
then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist 
network," Bush said on Sunday.

 When raids go bad

I won't pretend to know anything about the CIA other than what we 
have all read or heard in the news. But without the weapons, how 
can the president justify killing the sons of a sovereign leader 
and chasing that leader into a hole based on expectations?

 I listened to Bush on Sunday and thought about Fred Hampton and 
Mark Clark, the Black Panther leaders who were gunned down in 
their West Side apartments during a police raid in 1969.

 At the time, the armed Black Panther Party was considered by 
police authorities as posing the most dangerous threat to 
Americans. In fact, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called the 
group "the most dangerous and violence-prone of all extremist 
groups."

 Police officers had gone to the apartment looking for weapons, 
under the direction of then-Cook County State's Attorney Edward 
V. Hanrahan. The police fired nearly 100 shots into the 
apartment, compared to a single shot fired by Clark. But the 
overwhelming police firepower wasn't initially admitted. 

Instead, Hanrahan insisted police officers were engaged in a 
violent confrontation with the Panthers. He went so far as to 
have the raid re-enacted for a WBBM-Channel 2 newscast. A Chicago 
Sun-Times reporter showed that the bullet holes allegedly made by 
the Black Panthers were actually heads of nails, which further 
fueled the controversy.

 An FBI investigation later proved that it was the police -- not 
the Black Panthers -- who did almost all of the shooting, and 
Hanrahan and several of the police officers involved in the raid 
were indicted for obstructing justice. Although the men were 
acquitted, the deadly raid gave rise to an enduring distrust of 
police by many of the city's citizens.

 That's what I'm feeling right now -- distrust and real fear.

 Because a war that is based on wrong is a war that can't be won.

*****************************************************************
 10 AJC: Bush bullied CIA in order to dupe us     
 
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 2/5/04 ]

 • E-mail: jbookman@ajc.com

The latest line from Secretary of State Colin Powell and others 
is that the Iraq war was such a just cause that we would have 
invaded even if we had known beforehand that no weapons of mass 
destruction existed.            

To some, that might sound like a feeble effort to downplay a 
massive intelligence failure. I think it's more than that. I 
think it's the truth.           

In effect, the Bush administration is now admitting that WMD were 
never the reason for the war. They chose to invade Iraq not to 
protect us from anthrax or nuclear attack, but because they hoped 
that an invasion would inspire new respect for U.S. power and 
would allow us to use Iraq as a base from which to transform the 
entire Arab world.          

In the fall of 2002, however, administration officials recognized 
that honesty was not the best policy. Americans would never 
support an unprovoked war based on some grandiose ambition and 
dubious strategic benefit. If Bush officials wanted war, they 
needed to terrorize the American public into supporting it, and 
they seized upon the CIA's assessment of Iraqi WMD as the perfect 
tool for achieving that goal.           

But first, the intelligence agencies had to be whipped into 
playing along.          

While the CIA believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, it had 
also concluded that his stockpiles posed little danger to us or 
the rest of the world. That widely held view was captured 
perfectly in remarks by Powell on Feb. 24, 2001:                

"Frankly, [sanctions] have worked," Powell told an Egyptian press 
conference. "[Saddam] has not developed any significant 
capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is 
unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."            

To get its war, the administration had to transform what it knew 
to be a minor, contained annoyance into a threat big enough to 
scare the American people. The solution it hit upon was 
ingenious: They fabricated a link between Saddam and Osama bin 
Laden.          

Once again, though, the "realists" at the CIA posed a problem. 
They knew that no such link existed, and they naively thought 
their job was to be honest about what they knew. So, CIA Director 
George Tenet told Congress that it was highly unlikely that 
Saddam would ever give WMD to terrorists, and CIA analysts 
confirmed that Saddam and bin Laden were far from allies and, in 
fact, hated and distrusted each other.          

That was true, but back then, the administration was more 
interested in fear than truth. It began a campaign to force the 
CIA to toe the company line, a campaign focused in the Pentagon 
and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Pressure was exerted in 
private, including visits by Cheney to cross-examine analysts at 
CIA headquarters. It took place in public, as well, as 
mouthpieces in the conservative press attacked the CIA as 
Saddam-loving apologists. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even 
created a whole new intelligence office to reinterpret evidence 
"overlooked" by the fools at CIA.               

Inevitably, the agency gave in, with surrender coming in the form 
of a letter from Tenet that grudgingly allowed for the 
possibility of a bin Laden-Saddam link. That was all the 
administration needed. "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other 
weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam," President 
Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. "It would take 
one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to 
bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."            

A similar sequence of events can be traced involving Iraq's 
nuclear program. The CIA's honest assessment was that "Iraq has 
probably continued at least low-level theoretical R&D associated 
with its nuclear program," but little more.             

Again, postwar analysis has confirmed the accuracy of that claim, 
but again, the administration didn't want accuracy. It wanted 
scary. It cowed the CIA and other agencies into silence, allowing 
Cheney, Bush and others to warn that Iraq had reconstituted its 
nuclear program, had sought to buy uranium, had tried to acquire 
ways to enrich that uranium. None of that was true, but it served 
its purpose.            

Looking back, then, the real scandal is not what the CIA got 
wrong. The real outrage is how much it got right, but was muzzled 
from telling us.                

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column 
appears Thursdays and Mondays.            

2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 	 
*****************************************************************
 11 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Military Chiefs Stand by Iraq War

Today: February 10, 2004 at 10:35:14 PST 

 By PAULINE JELINEK ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - 

Top U.S. military officials said Tuesday they were convinced
before invading Iraq that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction and stand by their actions a year later, even though
U.S. intelligence about such weapons was apparently wrong. 

"There's nothing I would do different," Marine Commandant Gen.
Michael W. Hagee told the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

The decision to go to war has been called into question again in
recent weeks since David Kay, who led the search for weapons of
mass destruction, said he now believes no weapons stockpiles
exist. 

The military chiefs, making their first joint appearance since
the U.S. invasion of Iraq, said they have not changed their
minds about the campaign that ousted Saddam. 

"I stand by my position at that time," says the Air Force Chief
of Staff. Gen. John P. Jumper. 

Adm. Vernon Clark, Chief of Naval Operations, read part of a
letter he wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the day the
invasion began. 

"For some this is about WMD," Clark quoted the letter. "For
others, this is about al-Qaida. For us, it's about all of that
and more. Iraq has been shooting at our aircraft for over five
years." 

He referred to U.S. aircraft that were patrolling no-fly zones
over northern and southern Iraq in what officials said was
designed to deny Saddam the ability to attack minorities living
in those regions. 

"It was my belief that this cause was just, and our people
believed in it," Clark said. "That was my position then and
that's what I believe today." 

The three were responding to a request from committee Chairman
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who noted that the chiefs have the
responsibility to tell a president if they disagree about the
need for war. 

"I think it's appropriate, since this is your first appearance
as a group before this committee since the commencement of
hostilities, that in your opening statements each of you ...
advise this committee," Warner said. "You had the opportunity to
approach the president ... if you had any doubts ... concerning
the advisability of the use of force at the time it was used." 

"I think it's very important for America to understand how their
professional military leaders felt about the decision to go to
war, before the use of force began," Warner said. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 12 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Passes Law on North Korea Sanctions

February 09, 2004 

 By NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON ASSOCIATED PRESS 

TOKYO (AP) - Japan passed a law Monday making it easier to
impose economic sanctions on impoverished North Korea, prompting
the communist country to demand that Tokyo be barred from future
multilateral talks on its nuclear program. 

The law allows Japan to impose sanctions on countries without a
U.N. resolution. It does not specifically mention North Korea,
but lawmakers have said it is aimed at the reclusive state. 

Tokyo could use the law to take steps such as banning North
Korean imports and freezing remittances from North Koreans
living in Japan - all desperately needed to help the North's
devastated economy. 

The upper house of Parliament approved the bill by a vote of
210-23 Monday after the lower house passed it last month. 

"This is meaningful in that it widens Japan's options," Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi said after the vote. 

North Korea said the move exacerbated regional tensions amid an
ongoing standoff over Pyongyang's suspected development of
nuclear weapons. 

The United States and allies Japan and South Korea are demanding
that North Korea eliminate its nuclear program. The countries,
together with China and Russia, are to hold a second round of
six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program on Feb. 25 in
Beijing. 

"The DPRK-Japan Friendship Association requests the government
of the DPRK not to have any bilateral contact with Japan nor
allow Japan to participate in the six-way talks," the North's
official Korean Central New Agency said. The acronym DPRK stands
for Democratic People's Republic or Korea, or North Korea. 

KNCA added that North Korea would consider sanctions a
"declaration of war." 

Japanese officials have said they don't have any plans to impose
sanctions, but the government has been trying to pressure
Pyongyang to hold talks on Japanese citizens abducted years ago
by North Korean agents. 

Tokyo wants the North to release the relatives of five Japanese
who returned home in 2002 after being kidnapped by North Korea
in the late 1970s to teach its spies Japanese language and
customs. 

The government also wants North Korea to disclose more details
about eight other Japanese it has admitted to abducting - all of
whom the North says have since died - and investigate claims
that as many as 100 more Japanese may have been kidnapped. 

North Korea says it resolved the abduction matter when leader
Kim Jong Il met Koizumi in late 2002 and apologized for the
kidnappings. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 13 Townhall.com: Alarm Raised over Possible Nuclear Links Between Burma, North Korea
 	 
 214 Massachusetts Ave NE Washington, DC 20002 202-608-6099 Fax 
202-544-7330

 Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - U.S. policymakers were urged 
Monday to pay close attention to the "growing relationship" - 
including reported nuclear links - between the Stalinist regime 
in North Korea and the military junta in Burma.

Keith Luse, an Asia specialist aide to Sen. Richard Lugar 
(R-Ind.), said that the North Korea-Burma issue was a key area of 
concern to the Foreign Relations Committee chairman.

"Is North Korea providing nuclear technology to the Burma 
military?" he asked during a panel discussion in Washington, 
hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

In 2002, Yangon announced that Russia was helping it to build a 
10-megawat nuclear reactor which both countries stated was for 
peaceful purposes.

Burmese Foreign Minister Win Aung at the time said his country 
wanted the facility for medical research purposes and possibly to 
generate nuclear power.

Hundreds of Burmese technicians have received nuclear training in 
Moscow, and last April regional media reported that two shiploads 
of Russian equipment for the reactor had arrived at a Burmese 
naval base.

But it was also reported later last year that Russia had pulled 
out of the project as Burma was unable to meet the costs 
involved.

"What is the construction status of Burma's nuclear reactor," 
Luse asked. "Is North Korea providing nuclear technology to the 
Burma military?"

He also asked whether North Korea was possibly selling Scud 
missiles to Burma.

Luse noted that China was working to end North Korea's nuclear 
programs, but questioned what Beijing was doing to help 
preventing Burma from developing a nuclear program.

China, which has been Yangon's closest ally since a military coup 
in 1988, has also been the junta's main weapons supplier.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, last November denied a report in a 
Hong Kong-based publication about possible nuclear cooperation 
with North Korea.

"Logically, why would Myanmar want to develop WMDs [weapons of 
mass destruction] when the country needs all her strength and 
resources in pursuing a peaceful, stable and smooth transition to 
a multiparty democracy and an open-market economy?" a government 
spokesman said in a statement.

As a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) since 
1992, Burma is entitled to pursue peaceful nuclear capability, 
under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

Asked about Luse's remarks, State Department spokesman Richard 
Boucher said Monday he could not confirm Burma and North Korea 
were engaged in such activity.

He added that the Administration's views about North Korean 
proliferation efforts were clear and strong.

"Any attempt by Burma to acquire nuclear missile or other 
technologies from North Korea, or by North Korea to provide it 
and sell it, it would be completely contrary to the kind of 
evolution we want to see in that region."

This is not the first time Lugar has raised questions about
Burma's nuclear ambitions.

In an op-ed column last September, the Indiana Republican said
that even if the claims of peaceful research were true, "it
would add an unnecessary proliferation risk to a world where
terrorists are on the prowl for nuclear material."

"Most disturbing of all, Burma is renewing ties with North
Korea," he wrote.

"The link-up of these two pariah states can only spell trouble.
North Korea's main export is dangerous weapons technology, and
there have been reports that Burma is getting missiles and other
arms from Pyongyang."

Lugar called for U.S. to make Burma a priority in its relations
with Asian nations, "so that we can forge a multilateral plan to
turn the generals from their dangerous course."

If Yangon and Pyongyang have begun to develop clandestine ties,
it comes against a background of hostility.

Burma cut diplomatic ties after North Korean agents tried to
assassinate South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during a 1983
visit to Yangon, failing in the bid but killing 21 people in a
bomb blast.

Burma was targeted last year by U.S. sanctions under the Burmese
Freedom and Democracy Act, which imposed a ban on all imports
and other punitive restrictions on junta members.

The action followed the junta's treatment of opposition leader
Aung San Suu Kyi, who was placed in "protective custody" after a
violent clash between her supporters and a pro-junta crowd.

Stories from CNSNews.comare Copyright © 2000 by the Cybercast
News Service. Reuters are Copyright © 2000 by Reuters Limited.
*****************************************************************
 14 Townhall.com: North Korea Got Uranium from Pakistan, Defector Says
 	 
 214 Massachusetts Ave NE Washington, DC 20002 202-608-6099 Fax 
202-544-7330
 
 Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Pakistan provided Pyongyang 
with uranium for use in making atomic bombs, a top defector from 
North Korea has claimed.

Hwang Jang-Yop told a Japanese newspaper that a top military
official had returned from a month-long trip to Pakistan in
1996, and told him that North Korea could now make nuclear
weapons using uranium Pakistan had agreed to provide.

Hwang, the former secretary of the ruling Worker's Party, in
1997 became the most senior North Korean to defect from the
reclusive Stalinist state.

The founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer
Khan, recently confessed to leaking nuclear secrets to foreign
governments. Investigations found that Iran, Libya and North
Korea benefited from the illicit trade.

U.S. officials in late 2002 confronted North Korea with evidence
of a covert uranium-enrichment program, a violation of a 1994
agreement with Washington.

Diplomatic efforts to end that program, and a separate
plutonium-based one, are continuing, with a second round of
six-party talks scheduled for later this month in Beijing.

*****************************************************************
 15 Las Vegas SUN: N. Korea Touts Support From China

Today: February 10, 2004 at 3:05:12 PST 

 By JAE-SUK YOO ASSOCIATED PRESS 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea said Tuesday that it has
received support from China for its proposal to freeze its
nuclear weapons programs in return for free oil and other
economic concessions from the United States. 

China signaled its support at a meeting in Beijing of the
foreign ministers of the two countries that ended Tuesday,
according to KCNA, North Korea's official news agency. 

The Chinese foreign minister "recognized the rationality" of
Pyongyang's proposal to help end the nuclear dispute, a North
Korean foreign ministry spokesman told KCNA. 

The United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and
Russia are scheduled to begin talks on Feb. 25 over U.S. demands
that North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in a
"complete, irreversible and verifiable manner." 

North Korea has proposed to freeze all its nuclear activities,
as a first step to resolving the nuclear dispute if the United
States provides free oil shipments, lifts economic sanctions and
removes the Communist country from its list of countries that
sponsor terrorism. 

The Bush administration insists North Korea begin dismantling
its nuclear programs before it makes concessions. 

China cautioned against expecting a swift resolution of the
standoff, saying all sides should have "realistic" expectations
about the upcoming talks. 

"The question is a very complicated one ... and we have
different views about the issue," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Zhang Qiyue said Tuesday. She added that the sides "should not
expect to solve the issue within one or two rounds of talks." 

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea denied receiving nuclear weapons
technology from Pakistan, and accused the United States of
spreading false rumors. 

"This is nothing but a mean and groundless propaganda," a North
Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told KCNA. 

Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of the Pakistan's nuclear
program, was forgiven by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez
Musharraf on Thursday after admitting that he had spread nuclear
secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea through an international
black market. 

North Korea runs a nuclear weapons program using plutonium. But
U.S. officials also believe North Korea has a separate program
based on enriched uranium, possibly using technology imported
from Pakistan. North Korea has denied the allegation. 

North Korea accused the United States of "hyping" the transfer
of Pakistan's nuclear technology as a way to scuttle the
six-nation talks. 

The nuclear dispute flared in October 2002 when U.S. officials
said North Korea admitted running the uranium-enriching program
in violation of international agreements. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 16 NYT: Panel Member Says Bush Erred on Details of Threat to Reactors
 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission    

 By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: February 10, 2004

[W] ASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — President Bushwas probably wrong when he 
asserted in his 2002 State of the Union address that American 
forces routing guerrillas of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan had found 
designs for nuclear power plants, one of the three members of the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said.

 The commissioner, Edward McGaffigan Jr., who was appointed to 
the N.R.C. by President Bill Clinton in 1996, said in interviews 
last week that he and other members of the commission had 
scratched their heads when they heard the speech.

The president was "poorly served by a speechwriter," Mr. 
McGaffigan said.

 In the 2002 speech, Mr. Bush said of Qaeda terrorists: "The 
depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the 
destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American 
nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed 
instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of 
American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in 
America and throughout the world."

 Mr. Bush's statement has been repeated often by opponents of 
nuclear power, who argue that the operation of reactors is too 
risky when the country is under threat of terrorist attack. The 
point has also been repeated by members of the House and Senate, 
and Mr. McGaffigan has raised his contention in closed hearings, 
people in the hearings have said.

 In one telephone interview, Mr. McGaffigan said the commission 
was deeply interested in any intelligence gathered by the United 
States on the subject and would like to see details on which 
plants were portrayed in the designs and what type of plant and 
which systems in the plants were targeted. But he said that 
despite repeated questions in the first half of 2002, he had not 
found anyone who could confirm that such plans were recovered.

 Word of his argument has recently emerged among nuclear experts, 
and Mr. McGaffigan confirmed it in the interviews last week. On 
Wednesday, he sent a letter outlining his position to Greenpeace, 
the environmental group, which had written to ask about his 
position.

 His letter said he was "aware of no evidence" that diagrams of 
American power plants had been found in Afghanistan.

 Richard A. Meserve, who was chairman of the commission at the 
time of the speech, said in an e-mail message that he was 
"uncomfortable commenting on classified information."

 Nils J. Diaz, the current chairman, would not comment. 

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Sean McCormack, 
said that in the days before the speech American intelligence 
officials had observed "suspicious downloading by computers in 
the Middle East" and that diagrams were available on the Web.

 Mr. McCormack also said intelligence officials received a tip 
that an associate of Osama bin Laden had discussed crashing a 
plane into "large facilities" like a reactor. He added that 
"sources and methods considerations did affect the language used 
in the speech."

 The term "sources and methods considerations" indicates caution 
about describing intelligence findings, to avoid disclosing how 
the information was gathered.

 In the interviews, Mr. McGaffigan said that despite his doubts 
about whether diagrams were found in Afghanistan, he had no doubt 
that Al Qaeda was interested in nuclear plants and that it was a 
reason the commission had changed the security rules for plants 
five times since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

 Mr. Meserve, the former chairman, said in his e-mail message 
that based on intelligence information about Qaeda targets, "I 
was very comfortable in putting the nuclear industry at high 
alert." 

Mr. McCormack, of the National Security Council, in a separate 
interview, gave a chronology of indications, before and after the 
State of the Union address, of Al Qaeda's interest. He said that 
a Qaeda operative captured in Karachi, Pakistan, had a photograph 
of a reactor in North Carolina, for example.

 A spokeswoman for the commission, Beth Hayden, said Mr. 
McGaffigan's letter to Greenpeace had been given to the 
commission's office in charge of classification to decide whether 
it had any classified information.

         Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home|
*****************************************************************
 17 [sm] WMD: Libya probably never had weapons it is "destroying"
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:16:17 -0600 (CST)

 
The demonization of Libya is a big lie of our age.  The only consolation
is that the lies are so blatant as to be funny.  From the article below:

  it was not clear then how advanced Libya's programmes were and whether
  it had actual weapons to destroy.

-Sanjoy

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=490047&host=3&dir=75

Libya decided 10 years ago against developing WMD, Foreign Minister says

By Mary Dejevsky

Independent (London)
11 February 2004

Libya decided more than 10 years ago not to develop any weapons of
mass destruction, Abdul Rahman Shalgam, its Foreign Minister said
yesterday.

His appeared to contradict the co-ordinated announcements in London,
Washington and Tripoli last December that Libya was renouncing its
WMDs and would comply with international inspection regimes. Despite
the reports that Libya would destroy its illegal weapons and
programmes, it was not clear then how advanced Libya's programmes were
and whether it had actual weapons to destroy.

The first doubts were cast by Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general
of the IAEA, who said after visiting Tripoli that Libya was several
years from developing a nuclear capability. Yesterday Mr Shalgam said
it was not true that Libya had made "concessions". This was a view put
about by "poisonous" pens in the Arab media. Libya, he said, "reviewed
a number of issues, including programmes and equipment called weapons
of mass destruction.

"We had the equipment, we had the material and the know-how and the
scientists. But we never decided to produce such weapons. To have
flour, water and fire does not mean that you have bread."

Libya's renunciation of such weapons, he said, went back to at least
1992, since when it had been in periodic talks with the US, and was
well-documented. Mr Shalgam insisted it was Libya that had taken the
initiative in renouncing its weapons programmes and it would be
subject not to "inspections" but to "verification".

He admitted Libya had possessed "some equipment" that violated the
non-proliferation agreement, but this had already been given up to the
IAEA. Any suggestion that Libya had been scared into making
concessions by the US and British use of force in Iraq had been put
about by "malevolent journalists". Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary,
asked whether the war in Iraq was seen by the British Government as
responsible for Libya's apparent change of policy on its weapons,
pointed out that the rapprochement with Libya had begun in the late
Nineties.

The "breakthrough" had come with the visit of the Foreign Office
minister, Mike O'Brien, to Tripoli 18 months ago, "a good while before
military action was contemplated in respect of Iraq". But, he
insisted, he would not "claim any crude connection ... between
military action in Iraq and what has happened in Iraq and in Libya".

It was rather, he said, that the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had
made for a "more secure environment" in the region and this, in turn,
could have "eased" the delicate negotiations with Libya.
*****************************************************************
 18 Palast: Khan Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistan Bomb...
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 22:58:59 -0600 (CST)

 
Monday, February 9, 2004

KHAN JOB: BUSH SPIKED PROBE OF PAKISTANS DR. STRANGELOVE, BBC REPORTED IN
2001

Khan Job: Bush Spiked Probe of Pakistans Dr. Strangelove, BBC reported in
2001

On November 7, 2001, BBC Television's Newsnight and the Guardian of London
reported that the Bush administration thwarted investigations of Dr. A.Q.
Khan, known as the "father" of Pakistan's atomic bomb. This week, Khan
confessed to selling atomic secrets to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.

The Bush Administration has expressed shock at disclosures that Pakistan,
our ally in the war on terror, has been running a nuclear secrets bazaar. In
fact, according to the British news teams' sources within US intelligence
agencies, shortly after President Bush's inauguration, his National Security
Agency (NSA) effectively stymied the probe of Khan Research Laboratories,
the Pakistani agency in charge of the bomb project. CIA and other agents
told BBC they could not investigate the spread of Islamic Bombs through
Pakistan because funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia.

Greg Palast and David Pallister received a California State University
Project Censored Award for this expose based on the story broadcast by
Palast on BBC television's top current affairs program.

According to both sources and documents obtained by the BBC, the Bush
Administration spike of the investigation of Dr. Khans Lab followed from
a wider policy of protecting key Saudi Arabians including the Bin Laden
family.

Noam Chomsky, who read the story on page one of the Times of India, has
wondered, Why wasnt this all over US papers?

To learn why, read the following excerpt from the 2003 edition of Palasts
book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy:

The "Back-Off" Directive and the Islamic Bomb

.. A top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest
anonymity said that, after Bush took office, "There was a major policy
shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back
off " from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks,
especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the
Bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the
Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the
exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely
at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow
the money," was now violated, and investigations-at least before September
11-began to die.

And there was a lot to investigate-or in the case of the CIA and FBI under
Bush-a lot to ignore. Through well-known international arms dealers (I'm
sorry, but in this business, sinners are better sources than saints) our
team was tipped off to a meeting of Saudi billionaires at the Hotel Royale
Monceau in Paris in May 1996 with the financial representative of Osama bin
Laden's network. The Saudis, including a key Saudi prince joined by Muslim
and non-Muslim gun traffickers, met to determine who would pay how much to
Osama. This was not so much an act of support but of protection-a pay off to
keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Arabia.

The crucial question here is that, if I could learn about this meeting, how
did the CIA miss it? In fact, since the first edition of this book, other
sources have disclosed that the meeting was monitored by French
intelligence. Since U.S. intelligence was thus likely informed, the question
becomes, Why didn't our government immediately move against the Saudis?

I probed our CIA contact for specifics of investigations that
were hampered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that the Khan
Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.

You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to
pieces this year, it will likely be thanks to Kahn Labs' creating nuclear
warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking
the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under
Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were
lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on September 11.)

Dr. A. Q. Khan is the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan, the "father" of their
bomb and, says a former associate, a crusader for its testing . . . on
humans. On April 25, 1998, Kahn met at the Kushab Research Center with
General Jehangir Karamat, then army chief of staff, to plan a possible
preemptive nuclear strike on New Delhi, India. The Saudis lit a fuse under
this demented scheme by telling Pakistan intelligence that Israel had
shipped India warplanes in preparation for a conventional attack on
Pakistan. We only know these details because a young researcher who claims
he was at the meeting wrote a horrified letter threatening to make the plan
to bomb India public, a threat which appears to have halted the scheme.

After writing down his objections, the whistle-blower, Iftikhar
Khan-Chaudhry, ran for his life to London, then the USA, seeking asylum.
Khan-Chaudhry, when questioned, seemed to know too little to be the top
nuclear physicist he claimed, and far too much about A. Q. Khan's bomb
factory to be the tile company accountant Pakistan claims. Pakistan police,
failing to arrest him, jailed, beat and raped his wife, suggesting they
wanted him to keep secret something more interesting than bookkeeping
methods.

Whether his story was real or bogus, I can't possibly tell. The point is
that intelligence agencies under Clinton, based on many other leads as well,
were following up on the Saudi connection until the Bush team interfered.

----------

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=312&row=0

----------

Subscribe to Greg Palast's writings and view his report for BBC on the Bin
Ladins and the Bushes at www.GregPalast.com

----------
*****************************************************************
 19 [du-list] "nukky" Osama
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:21:54 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
Al-Qaida may have nuclear weapons

Sunday 08 February 2004, 22:05 Makka Time, 19:05 GMT
A pan-Arab newspaper has said al-Qaida bought tactical nuclear
weapons from Ukraine in 1998 and is storing them in safe places for
possible use.   .....
___________________________________
Source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F660673E-66F7-48A0-868B-
E4E9FBC7469F.htm


....There was no independent corroboration of the report on Sunday,
which appeared in the newspaper al-Hayat under an Islamabad dateline
and cited sources close to the Islamist network.
The newspaper claimed al-Qaida bought the weapons in suitcases in a
deal arranged when Ukrainian scientists visited the Afghan city of
Kandahar in 1998.
The city was then a stronghold of a Taliban government that refused
to hand over Usama bin Ladin for trial abroad.

The report claims al-Qaida could use the weapons inside the United
States or anywhere else should the network face a "crushing blow"
which threatened its existence.
Feasible
Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union but in 1994
it agreed to send 1900 nuclear warheads to Russia and sign up to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, a former Russian National
Security Adviser, Alexander Lebed, said that up to 100 portable
suitcase-sized bombs were unaccounted for.
Moscow has denied such weapons existed, but Lebed said each one was
equivalent to 1000 tons of TNT and could kill as many as 100,000
people.

Al-Hayat did not say how many weapons al-Qaida bought or say who
exactly had provided them.

The United States has repeatedly said its worst fear is that a group
like al-Qaida might obtain access to weapons of mass destruction and
use them against the American people.






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</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 20 PTI: We knew of A Q Khan's indiscretion, admits Powell

February 10, 2004 09:22 IST

Secretary of State Colin Powell has confirmed the United States 
was aware about the nuclear proliferation activities of top 
Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan for 'quite some 
time'.

In an interview, he expressed happiness over President Gen Pervez 
Musharraf 'relieving him (Khan) of his responsibilities, to get 
all the information he can from him about his activities'.

"And, he (Musharraf) has also granted him (Khan) amnesty.
(Because) He is considered something of a national hero in
Pakistan. But he will no longer be in the business of
proliferating this kind of technology," added Powell.

Powell also said that Musharraf has assured him that the pardon 
granted to Khan was 'conditional' and that he shared the US goal 
of pulling up Khan's proliferation network by its roots.

About his conversation with Musharraf, Powell said, "We had a 
very good conversation. The Pakistani Government has done quite a 
bit now to roll up the network."

"I said to President Musharraf that we wanted to learn as much as 
we could about what Mr Khan and the network was up to, and it has 
to be pulled up by its roots and examined to make sure that we 
have left nothing behind. He assured me that that was his 
objective as well, and that he would share with us all of the 
information that they came up with," he said.

"We also talked about the issue of amnesty for Dr Khan, and 
President Musharraf reminded me that it was a conditional 
amnesty. And that is the way they are dealing with the matter," 
Powell said.

"And it is a matter for the Pakistani government to handle and to 
make their own decisions with respect to how to roll up the 
network and what the appropriate action might be with respect to 
Dr Khan," he said.

Powell said he has no current plans to travel to Pakistan. "I am 
sure I will before the spring and summer are out," he added.

     
  © Copyright 2003 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or
redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar
 Copyright © 2003 rediff.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 21 BBC: Pakistan's nuclear claim disputed 
 
  Last Updated: Wednesday, 11 February, 2004
 
[Abdul Qadeer Khan (left) meeting President Musharraf]                              
Khan's public confession shocked the nation                     
			   		
The US says it has been sharing information with Pakistan for 
several years about the illegal proliferation of nuclear weapons 
technology. 

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the issue had 
been a long-standing concern for both countries. 

On Monday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the US gave 
him evidence of the illegal deals of Pakistan's top nuclear 
scientist only last October. 

Last week, Abdul Qadeer Khan confessed he had sold nuclear 
secrets abroad. 

Dr Khan, regarded as the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, 
publicly admitted that he had supplied nuclear technology to 
North Korea, Iran and Libya through a black market. 

He was pardoned by President Musharraf on condition he would 
co-operate fully with the ongoing inquiry. 

Mr Khan insisted he had acted alone, but many experts are 
questioning how he was able to do this without the knowledge of 
the Pakistani authorities, the BBC's Jannat Jalil in Washington 
reports. 

Contradicting Musharraf 

"We have discussed non-proliferation issues with Pakistan 
repeatedly over a long period of time, and it's been an issue of 
concern to us and to President Musharraf," Mr Boucher said in 
Washington. 

 If they (US officials) kn it earlier, they should have told us. 
Maybe a lot of things would not have happened Pakistan's 
President Pervez Musharraf           

He said American officials had from time to time given Pakistan 
what he described as "pieces of information" on the issue. 

The spokesman stressed that "certainly our non-proliferation 
dialogue with Pakistan goes back much further than" last October 
- as claimed by President Musharraf. 

But Mr Boucher said he could not give more details, because that 
might reveal where America was getting its information from. 

In an interview with the New York Times published earlier on 
Tuesday, President Musharraf said he had suspected for at least 
three years that Dr Khan was sharing nuclear technology with 
other countries. 

But he said that he needed proof and only got that with the help 
of Washington last October. 

"If they knew it earlier, they should have told us," the paper 
quotes the president as saying. 

"Maybe a lot of things would not have happened." 



*****************************************************************
 22 miamiherald: Russian Envoy: U.N. Credibility Intact

AP Wire | 02/10/2004 | 

  [miamiherald.com -

 EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS - The credibility of the United Nations remains 
intact and may even have been strengthened since the Iraq war 
because the reports of U.N. weapons inspectors have now been 
confirmed by U.S. search teams, Russia's U.N. envoy said Monday 
night. 

A year after Secretary of State Colin Powell put the U.S. case 
for war against Iraq to a bitterly divided Security Council, 
countries that supported the war and countries that did not are 
all pressing for the United Nations to play a central role in 
rebuilding Iraq, Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said. 

"This fact testifies to the U.N. credibility being still there - 
and maybe even strengthened," he told a news conference. 

Last year, Powell's arguments failed to convince the Security 
Council, which refused to authorize the war against Iraq. France, 
Russia and Germany led the opposition, and in the weeks and 
months that followed some politicians and pundits predicted that 
the United Nations would become irrelevant. 

But Lavrov said "as far as U.N. credibility is concerned ... I 
would say that it did not suffer." 

He said Russia and many other Security Council members relied on 
the conclusions of U.N. weapons inspectors, who returned to Iraq 
in November 2002 and reported to the council that Iraq had 
finally started to cooperate fully and had provided immediate 
access to sites. 

"Through this Iraqi cooperation, the inspectors were allowed to 
establish quite a number of facts, but basically confirming that 
there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no signs of 
a resumption of weapons of mass destruction programs which had 
existed before the 1991 Gulf War," Lavrov said. 

"The search teams employed by the (U.S.-led) coalition in the 
past few months basically came to the same conclusion," he told a 
news conference. 

Last month, David Kay, the former CIA special adviser on Iraqi 
weapons who led the U.S. hunt for banned Iraqi weapons, said "we 
were almost all wrong" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. 

"We were relying on the conclusions and the opinion of the 
inspectors who were saying that given two or three more months, 
they'd be able to give us some kind of definite report," Lavrov 
said. "We trusted the inspectors - and they so far have not been 
proven to be wrong." 

He said the U.N.'s credibility "was proven by the fact" that U.N. 
nuclear, chemical, biological and long-range missile inspectors 
"were reporting objectively," he said.   


The Miami Herald
*****************************************************************
 23 Miami Herald: Closing Dr. Khan's nuclear-arms bazaar

| 02/10/2004 | 

  [miamiherald.com - The miamiherald home page]       

 OUR OPINION: PAKISTAN SHOULD SIGN NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION
TREATY
 
Now that the mastermind of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program 
stands revealed as a venal scientist who sold nuclear weapons 
technology to the likes of Libya and North Korea, the country can 
be expected to change course and adhere to a more-disciplined 
weapons policy. Pardon us if we don't hold our breath. In today's 
Pakistan, it appears, this is asking too much. In fact, only one 
day after an ostensibly penitent Abdul Qadeer Khan accepted blame 
for his roguish behavior, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez 
Musharraf, pardoned Dr. Khan. Even as Gen. Musharraf decried the 
scientist's actions, he called him a hero and declared that Dr. 
Khan would not face prison or a fine or any other punishment. 

Coddling a scientist who ran one of the world's largest 
underground networks of nuclear weapons technology is bad enough 
-- whatever happened to getting a slap on the wrist? -- but 
failing to address the country's unpardonable behavior is even 
worse. Gen. Musharraf was adamant in declaring that Pakistan will 
not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which would go a 
long way toward making the country conform to international 
standards. 

Further, he said, neither will the army's role in Dr. Khan's 
dealings be investigated, nor will U.N. inspectors be allowed to 
supervise the country's nuclear-weapons program. 

Much has been made of Gen. Musharraf's precarious political 
situation. Pakistanis are overly proud of their country's de 
facto membership in the group of nations that possess nuclear 
weapons, and Dr. Khan is regarded as a national prize. Gen. 
Musharraf, who has escaped several assassination attempts, 
already is seen by Islamic fundamentalists as too eager to do 
Washington's bidding. Thus, say his defenders, he risks fanning 
the flames of political instability by punishing Dr. Khan. 

The problem is that this leaves Pakistan with a free hand to 
renew its egregious pattern of deception. Dr. Khan could not have 
acted as an agent selling Pakistan's most valuable technology 
without the endorsement of the military. Where did all that 
technology go, and what happened to the proceeds? U.S. officials 
should not commend Gen. Musharraf for stopping Dr. Khan's 
activity until U.N. inspectors are satisfied that Pakistan is 
cooperating fully in an investigation that uncovers the trail of 
secret nuclear sales. 

Gen. Musharraf has courageously rejected the lure of 
fundamentalist ideology, and he has been a valuable U.S. ally in 
perhaps the most dangerous part of the world. But contributing to 
the spread of nuclear weapons is no minor transgression. Given 
Dr. Khan's role in the spread of nuclear weapons, the general's 
refusal to consider making Pakistan a signatory of the Nuclear 
Nonproliferation Treaty is unacceptable. It is time not only to 
shut down Dr. Khan's arms bazaar, but to allow international 
supervision to ensure that Pakistan has modified its behavior.   

*****************************************************************
 24 Washington Post: Pakistan's Nuclear Ali Baba 

(washingtonpost.com)

By Jim Hoagland
 Tuesday, February 10, 2004; Page A23 

MUNICH -- "Nobody could touch him," says Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, 
Pakistan's foreign minister. The regret in his voice is palpable. 
"Imagine an American government doing this to Charles Lindbergh, 
or Albert Einstein, at the height of his popularity. Dr. A.Q. 
Khan is that kind of national hero in Pakistan." 

Abdul Qadeer Khan, an accomplished scientist, is also by his own 
account a thief of Ali Baba proportions. He became a national 
hero by stealing the designs of a European nuclear centrifuge 
system that enabled Pakistan to explode several nuclear devices 
in 1998. Khan's original nuclear larceny, as Kasuri says, "gave 
us strategic balance." 

Now Khan stands accused by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez 
Musharraf, of single-handedly running a smuggling operation that 
traded nuclear wherewithal to Iran, Libya and North Korea for 
huge payoffs. In an hour-long conversation at the Munich 
Conference on Security Policy, Kasuri provided a detailed 
description of the scientist's operations, Musharraf's tracking 
of and final confrontation with Khan, and the scientist's 
confession of wrongdoing. 

The foreign minister's passionately delivered account was clearly 
designed to dispel the view that Khan is in fact performing one 
more service for Pakistan by taking the rap for a far-flung 
national operation. If that is the case, Khan would be more 
scapegoat than goat. 

But Kasuri, a lawyer and human rights activist before becoming 
Musharraf's foreign minister 15 months ago, was eager to drive 
home a message that even we skeptics have to welcome: 

"We are a responsible nuclear nation," he said, adding that 
Pakistan is ready to observe recognized international 
restrictions on the proliferation of nuclear weapons. "We had to 
demonstrate to the Pakistani people and to the world that not 
even A.Q. Khan is above the law. The United States should take 
this into account and engage Pakistan more fully on nuclear and 
defense matters." 

Musharraf immediately pardoned Khan after the scientist went on 
television Feb. 4, took "full responsibility" for the cascading 
disclosures of Pakistan's determined proliferation and tearfully 
asked for mercy. Kasuri asserted that Pakistani public opinion 
made it impossible for Musharraf to impose legal penalties on 
Khan and survive. 

"Look, we knew we would be accused of knuckling under to the 
Americans," he said. "We are not doing that. The Pakistani people 
must understand that there will be no nuclear rollback. We have 
scheduled new missile tests to make that point. We are a declared 
nuclear power and the world must accept it. We are, however, 
taking steps to control our nuclear assets" more carefully and 
halt proliferation, Kasuri added. 

Musharraf became suspicious of Khan in 2001 and eased him out of 
control of the country's nuclear laboratories, according to 
Kasuri. Up to that point, the government and the public seemed to 
accept Khan's lavish lifestyle and grandiose philanthropy as 
Pakistani corruption as usual, as he had access to unaudited 
public funds. 

"But five months ago international leaders came to President 
Musharraf with new information that made us understand we had to 
take measures. We were devastated," said Kasuri, who declined to 
be more precise. Others pinpoint a voluminous CIA file on 
Pakistani proliferation as the source of the damning intelligence 
that U.S. officials passed to Musharraf. 

Our talk then went like this: Why, then, did you wait so long to 
act? "This is very difficult for us." Does the timing have to do 
with the nearly successful assassination attempts on Musharraf by 
extremists with whom Khan and Pakistan's intelligence service are 
suspected of sympathizing? "No. That is utter nonsense." 

But Kasuri acknowledged that the Pakistani cabinet recently asked 
Musharraf to move to the capital, Islamabad, rather than continue 
a daily 30-minute commute from Rawalpindi. Pakistani sources say 
three serious attacks on Musharraf's convoy have been mounted in 
recent weeks, only two of which have been publicized. Moreover, a 
European intelligence service has detected signs that some 
commanders in Pakistan's intelligence service are increasing 
their cooperation with Islamic extremist groups rather than 
following Musharraf. The president is engaged in a 
self-protective showdown with his enemies, this information 
suggests. 

Kasuri's message was more diffuse but no less urgent: "There is a 
one-year window of opportunity" in an embryonic peace effort with 
India. "While Musharraf is both president and chief of staff" of 
the armed forces, "we will be able to speak with one voice, and 
breakthroughs can be made." 

Musharraf's recent actions give new credibility to such appeals 
for U.S. support. But conditions should still be attached: An 
urgent one is to be sure that Pakistan has in fact learned 
everything about the networks of proliferation that have been 
centered there -- and is fully disclosing that information to the 
United States. 




               © 2004 The Washington Post Company
         
*****************************************************************
 25 The Hindu:  China denies n-proliferation charge 
 
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 : 1915 Hrs
 
Beijing, Feb. 10. (PTI): China today rejected as "baseless"
charges of its complicity in the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction even as it "took note" of the nuclear
technology transfers between two of its closest allies, Pakistan
and North Korea. 

"We have taken note of related reports. We have also noticed the
statements of the two parties," Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said when asked to comment on North
Korea's denial that it received nuclear technology from
Pakistan. 

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman in Pyongyang said the
allegation that it received nuclear technology from Pakistan is
"nothing but a mean and groundless propaganda." 

Expounding China's position on the issue of proliferation of
WMDs, Zhang said Beijing attached "great importance to and
resolutely opposes the proliferation of WMD". 

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of
*****************************************************************
 26 PakTribune: US satisfied with Pak nuclear probe - Boucher

PakTribune.Com
 
Tuesday February 10, 2004 (1624 PST)
 		 		 		
WASHINGTON, February 11 (Online): US reaffirming its support to 
Pakistan has said that we welcome the progress they've made and 
we look forward to their continuing and finishing the 
investigation on nuclear proliferation and sharing the results 
with the appropriate international organizations. 

US State Department Spokesman in his weekly press briefing said
that the US is completely satisfied with the investigation being
carried out by the Pakistani authorities on transfer of nuclear
technology. 

President Musharraf, has indeed stopped the activity that was
going on. The Pakistani Government, both through the President
and the Foreign Ministry statements, has made clear that they're
going to find out everything they can and share that information
with the International Atomic Energy Agency”, he said. 

So we welcome those statements, we welcome the progress they've
made, and we look to Pakistan to take action on proliferation.
We've seen Pakistan do that. And that's what we're following now
and what we're trying to support. 

The President of Pakistan has made clear that the pardon is
conditional that there be no activity from this particular
individual, and that they are continuing to investigate the
others who might have been involved in this activity so that
they do get to the bottom of it. 

He said Pakistan has always taken action against possible
proliferations and commitment in this regard has been observed
and now we are seeing action. 

In response to a question regarding possible US operation inside
Pakistan for hunting down al-Qaeda Boucher said, “ There's
tripartite cooperation between the United States, Pakistan and
Afghanistan in the border areas to try to make sure that we all
do our part in tracking down the remnants of al-Qaida and the
Taliban that may be in those areas, and making sure that they
are rooted out and that we take care of the problem together. 

The main goal is to end this activity, and we think the best way
to do that is through cooperation between the United States,
Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

Refuting claims that US had offered Pakistan assistance for
safeguarding its nukes the US Spokesman said, “ We have had with
Pakistan is some discussions about safety of nuclear materials.

But we are prevented by law and the Nonproliferation Treaty, for
that matter, from getting involved in the safety of nuclear
weapons, questions involving nuclear weapons.” 
End.  
    
Pakistan News Service © PakTribune.com Pvt Ltd
*****************************************************************
 27 SF Chronicle: Nuclear know-how feared widespread 
/ U.S. concerned Pakistani secrets are circulating
 
James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer        

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

 [San Francisco Chronicle] 
  
The administration's top arms control official said Monday the 
United States is concerned that a nuclear weapons proliferation 
ring run by a Pakistani lab may have spread banned arms to states 
beyond Iran, North Korea and Libya, which bought the weapons 
technology from Pakistani scientists. 

John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and 
international security, said in a telephone interview with The 
Chronicle that Washington has accepted the Pakistani government's 
explanation that a small number of rogue scientists were acting 
on their own, without the government's knowledge, when they sold 
technology for enriching uranium as well as warhead designs to 
Iran, North Korea and Libya. 

But he said an urgent concern is whether other nations also may 
have acquired secrets from the Pakistani scientists and whether 
any of the buyers later resold nuclear arms technology to other 
hostile countries or groups. "If part of that network is exposed, 
you don't really know whether you've exposed all of it or not, or 
brought it down," he said. 

Bolton refused to provide details or mention specific countries, 
citing concerns about sensitive intelligence, but he said 
black-market rings trafficking in nuclear technology, parts and 
components are so wide and extensive that shutting them down, 
even after the admissions by the Pakistani scientists, is proving 
to be an enormous challenge. 

"One of the things that's been of concern for this administration 
from the beginning is the depth and complexity of the global 
black market in WMD (weapons of mass destruction) materials," he 
said. 

The Bush administration has scored a string of successes, as well 
as encountering deeply troubling and dark surprises, in recent 
months in its effort to contain the spread of nuclear warheads, 
which the president has said is the single greatest threat to the 
United States. 

It scored major successes when Libya announced in December that 
it was abandoning its programs for developing weapons of mass 
destruction and when Iran agreed in principle to allow more 
rigorous international inspections of its nuclear labs. Even 
North Korea has admitted publicly that it has built at least a 
few nuclear weapons and has agreed to negotiations with the 
United States, as well as China and other Asian countries, on 
conditions for a possible freeze in the program. 

But the administration has struggled in recent weeks to deal with 
the disclosures coming out of Pakistan, which have confronted the 
United States with the real possibility that one of its closest 
allies in the war on terror has also provided America's most 
implacable enemies with the secret to developing the ultimate 
weapons of mass destruction. 

Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is considered the father of Pakistan's 
nuclear weapons program and a national hero, said in a televised 
mea culpa Wednesday that he sold technology for enriching uranium 
for bombs with the assistance of a handful of other top 
scientists, all of whom work within the government's weapons 
complex. 

Echoing claims made by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez 
Musharraf, Khan said he and the other scientists had been 
motivated by greed and operated without the knowledge of the 
government or military. The day after Khan's confession, 
Musharraf pardoned him. 

On Monday, Musharraf admitted to the New York Times that he had 
suspicions about Khan's activities for three years but said the 
United States had not provided convincing proof that Khan was 
selling nuclear weapons technology. Because of his fears, 
Musharraf said, he removed Khan from his position as head of the 
weapons lab in 2001. But instead of sidelining the revered 
scientist, which would have angered many Pakistanis, he made him 
a special adviser to the government. 

Many nuclear experts have expressed deep doubts about Khan's 
claim that he acted virtually alone. 

"It's simply impossible to accept" that Khan acted without the 
government's knowledge, said Jon Wolfsthal, a former U.S. weapons 
inspector and now deputy director of the Nonproliferation Project 
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "No one 
seriously believes Khan was a rogue. " 

But President Bush has said he accepts Pakistan's assurances, and 
Bolton said in the interview that the United States had 
independent information suggesting they are backed by facts. 

"It's consistent with what we believe ourselves," said Bolton. 
"As best we can tell -- not simply based on the assertions by 
Musharraf -- Khan was doing this on his own with a network of 
suppliers and contacts and middlemen around the world that were 
able to produce components of a nuclear weapons program that he 
sold at great profit." 

He added, "I don't think that just because a Pakistani ... was 
the ringleader you should assume that the government of Pakistan 
was involved." 

Even within Pakistan, however, some have expressed doubts and are 
demanding an independent inquiry to determine whether any members 
of the government or the military, which maintains strict control 
over the nuclear program, were aware of the illicit sales or 
participated in it. 

On Monday, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim 
League and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan 
People's Party called for a parliamentary debate and an 
investigation into the affair amid concerns that Khan is being 
made a scapegoat for the military. 

"The people of Pakistan clearly feel that the apology and 
confession obtained from Dr. Khan were obtained under pressure, 
and the whole world seems to feel this process has basically been 
a coverup," said Muslim League leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. 

On Monday, Pakistan left open the option of criminal prosecution 
against Khan, saying the presidential pardon he was awarded could 
be revised if new revelations came to light. "This is not a 
blanket pardon,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said, 
adding that Abdul Qadeer Khan is cooperating with the 
government's probe. 

Asked if there were concerns that Syria had purchased the 
technology to build nuclear weapons from the Pakistani 
scientists, Bolton refused to comment directly. 

But in testimony last September before a House subcommittee on 
the Middle East and Central Asia, he identified Syria as having a 
number of successful programs aimed at developing weapons of mass 
destruction. 

"There is no graver threat to our country today than states that 
both sponsor terrorism and possess or aspire to possess weapons 
of mass destruction, " Bolton told the subcommittee. He added 
that Syria "falls into this category of states of potential dual 
threat." 

Despite these uncertainties and the potential threat they pose 
for the United States, Bolton described the disclosures in 
Pakistan as a major success, particularly for U.S. intelligence 
agencies, which are being criticized for improperly claiming 
before the war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of 
weapons of mass destruction. 

"You have to understand that this is a great intelligence 
success," Bolton said of the Pakistani revelations, "and the 
direction we're going in is an enormous victory in the overall 
campaign against WMD proliferation." 

Chronicle correspondent Juliette Terzieff in Pakistan and 
Chronicle news services contributed to this report.E-mail James 
Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com. 

Page A - 1 

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ

*****************************************************************
 28 Hi Pakistan: No more nuclear leaks: Musharraf 

February 11 2004     
    
WASHINGTON: President Pervez Musharraf defended his decision to 
pardon Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, who admitted selling 
nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korean and Iran.

In an interview with NBC News from Islamabad, Musharraf also said 
he would support the deployment of more US troops in 
Afghanistan’s border region with Pakistan to hunt down members of 
al-Qaeda network.

Responding to NBC anchor’s questions about his handling of the 
confession by the nuclear scientist last week and pardoning him, 
Musharraf said, "Abdul Qadeer Khan is a great man. He’s a hero, 
and he’s a hero of every individual in the street. He is a hero 
even for me. Yet he has done something, which could bring harm to 
the nation. Now how do I deal with it? We had to handle it very 
carefully, as there’s an international perception. There’s a 
domestic perception."

He said that Pakistan had put a stop to the covert export of 
nuclear weapons know-how. "Please let it not be thought that the 
same proliferation activity will start again. Never! That will 
never happen," he asserted.

Asked to comment on the report that US Secretary of State Colin 
Powell is coming to Pakistan, and one of the items on his agenda 
will be putting more troops in Afghanistan to put more pressure 
on al-Qaeda, Musharraf said he would support the deployment of US 
troops near the Pakistani border, but that it would be impossible 
for them to cross over to Pakistan. "I have been all along saying 
that there’s a vacuum in Afghanistan. So I’m for increasing 
strength there," he said adding that al-Qaeda members hiding 
there are not in strength and Pakistan has developed a very 
effective, quick reaction force, which is capable of dealing with 
them.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri promised that 
Pakistan would cooperate with the UN nuclear agency in a probe 
over the selling of nuclear expertise. Kasuri said in Berlin that 
Islamabad’s proliferation probe into the illicit trade of Abdul 
Qadeer Khan had been launched despite huge public criticism.

"All that has happened is highly regrettable," he told reporters 
after talks here with his German counterpart Joschka Fischer. 
"When we started investigating we were under tremendous pressure. 
We did not spare anybody. Khan named other people," he added. 
"Despite his hero status we did not spare him. We told him he 
would have to cooperate or there would be a trial. We made him go 
on television."

He said that among names given by the International Atomic Energy 
Agency (IAEA) and the Iranian government as potentially involved 
were two Pakistanis, three Germans, one Dutch national and a Sri 
Lankan based in Dubai.

Kasuri said that the list of those investigated was then enlarged 
to 11, of whom three were "let off". He did not say who. "We will 
share all this information with the IAEA," he went on. "The IAEA 
is not an investigative body. The IAEA has a certain role, and we 
will do all we can to support the IAEA in that role. Any 
information that we have got which bears on Iran or Libya or 
terror, we will cooperate fully."

Kasuri said that measures now in place would prevent a repeat of 
the scandal. "Our (nuclear) programme was covert, clandestine. 
When we became open and a declared nuclear power, we instituted 
command and control systems. We have now imposed very vigorous 
personal dependability tests and security rings around our 
nuclear stations." The minister also defended Pakistan’s nuclear 
programme, saying that it had been drawn up to achieve a regional 
balance with India.

Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 29 Hi Pakistan: No secret deal with Dr Khan: Musharraf 

February 11 2004     
    
NEW YORK: President Pervez Musharraf has said that Pakistan has 
put a stop to the covert export of nuclear weapons' technology, 
and assured that "it will never happen again". 

In an interview with the NBC TV network on Sunday, the president 
said: "Please let it not be thought that the same proliferation 
activity will start again." 

Asked whether pardoning Dr A. Q. Khan was a whitewash or whether 
he agreed with the perception that a deal had been struck with 
the scientist, the president said: "I disagree with it 
absolutely. One must understand reality. 

There's an international perception. There's a domestic 
perception. There's a person involved who's a hero because of 
what he's done for us. He's a hero - he was a hero even for me. 

And here's a person who's brought the deterrence - given us 
deterrence, potential in the unconventional field. So this 
certainly is - is a very, very sensitive issue. 

Now, he did something that could hurt the nation. I was in a 
dilemma, certainly. The dilemma is: he's a great man, he's a 
hero, and he's a hero of every individual in the street. Yet he 
has done something which could bring harm to the nation. Now how 
do I deal with it? We had to handle it very carefully." 

Asked whether he would oppose the spring offensive planned by the 
Pentagon in Afghanistan, Mr Musharraf said: "No, I would support 
it. I have all along been saying that there is a requirement of 
more force. I have all along been saying that there's a vacuum in 
Afghanistan which we have to fill in the countryside. So I'm for 
increasing strength there. That is the way forward." 

However, he underscored that the American operation had to be on 
the Afghan side of the border, saying that any operation inside 
Pakistan "is not required". 

"Here is no, the enemy, I am calling the Al Qaeda or the Taliban 
abettors; they are not in such strength that a whole operation, a 
massive operation has to be launched. There are people, there are 
groups hiding in small numbers. And we have developed a very 
effective quick reaction force. A mobile, hard-hitting, quick 
reaction force. So that is what is required, and we are capable 
of doing all of that," Gen Musharraf noted. 

SAFETY OF N-ARSENAL: Groups like Al Qaeda had obtained neither 
nuclear weapons nor know-how from Pakistan, despite a 
proliferation scandal linking a top scientist with Libya, Iran 
and North Korea, an official said on Monday in Rawalpindi, 
according to a Reuters' report. 

"We exclude the possibility," Inter-Services Public Relations 
chief Major-Gen Shaukat Sultan said when asked if Dr Abdul Qadeer 
Khan's leaked nuclear technology and hardware could have reached 
groups like Al Qaeda. 

"It has not come out of our investigations, or any other 
intelligence agency. There has been no such hint," he maintained. 
Meanwhile, an AFP report quoted a military spokesman in Islamabad 
as having insisted that the nuclear arsenal was in safe hands and 
denied that Islamabad was working with Washington to stop weapons 
falling into extremists' control. 

"Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and is fully capable of 
defending its assets without any outside help," the spokesman 
said. The National Command Authority had shown its "complete 
confidence in the command and control system put in place", he 
said. 

The NBC television on Friday quoted an unnamed US official as 
saying that the United States had held talks with Pakistan on 
ensuring that the country's nuclear technology and arsenal did 
not fall into the hands of extremists. But the military spokesman 
rejected the report as "totally baseless".                                        
							 				 				   				 				
      
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 30 Hi Pakistan: US history replete with ‘mother of all pardons’ --
         
February 11 2004     
    
ISLAMABAD: "The mother of all pardons" that President General 
Pervez Musharraf granted to the architect of Pakistan’s atomic 
bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, is not unique, and America’s own 
history has quite a number of examples.

The US media is calling names to Dr Khan and attacking Musharraf 
and the Pakistan government, ignoring what the successive 
American administrations had been doing, in America’s supreme 
national interest, to leading personalities, who were found 
guilty of highly serious criminal charges.

Take the highly interesting and engaging example of J Robert 
Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," the wisp-thin 
scientist, who had steered the super-secret "Manhattan Project" 
to success in the blinding flash of the world’s first nuclear 
blast.

In 1953, at the height of the Cold War anxiety, the US federal 
government branded Oppenheimer a security risk and told him to 
get lost. On November 7, 1953, William Borden, the executive 
director of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, 
wrote a letter to the FBI in which he said Oppenheimer was a 
hardened Communist and that more probably than not he has been 
functioning as an espionage agent.

Oppenheimer’s "Q" clearance, the pass that gave him access to 
top-secret information, was swiftly suspended. His home was 
wiretapped and placed under surveillance. Oppenheimer fought back 
to the atomic energy commission or AEC, which filed a formal list 
of charges against him. No. 1 on the list was his known 
association with Communists, something the government had 
conveniently overlooked back in 1941.

No. 2 was the fact that the scientist had showed "insufficient 
enthusiasm" for the hydrogen bomb project. No. 3 was the most 
serious. It alleged that Oppenheimer had lied, either by accusing 
his friend Heakon Chevalier of being a spy or then denying it. In 
AEC hearing in Washington, where Oppenheimer tried to get his 
clearance, he came under withering cross-examination.

Was the story about Chevalier a lie? "Yes" Oppenheimer said. Why 
did you tell it? "Because I was an idiot." Dozens of leading 
physicists around the American nation, including Albert Einstein, 
rallied to the defense of the "Father of the Atomic Bomb." But 
Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, sandbagged his old 
friend, Oppenheimer, and testified before the AEC that 
Oppenheimer seemed "confused and complicated."

On June 29, 1954, the AEC formally took away Oppenheimer’s 
security clearance. The scientist’s deviousness, his opposition 
to hydrogen bombs and his ties to Communists were all cited. He 
never got the clearance back. In 1967, Oppenheimer died of throat 
cancer. He was 62.

From Princeton, where he lived and served as director of the 
Institute for Advanced Study, to Washington, where he advised 
presidents and generals, Oppenheimer had become the expert on the 
atomic weaponry he created. The "J" in Oppenheimer’s name stood 
for nothing, none of the many enigmas about the shy, delicate 
child born to German Jewish immigrant parents in New York City. 
Possessing an inexhaustible energy for reading, he plowed his way 
through Harvard and five post-graduate colleges, dazzling 
profession with the broad range of his intellect.

By his 25th birthday, Oppenheimer was a professor of physics at 
Caltech and a leading authority on quantum theory. He could speak 
six languages including ancient Sanskrit and ruminate on 
spiritual themes in any one of them. In deep thought, he would 
chain-smoke and jangle his spindly arms.

His wife, Kitty, had been a Communist member in the thirties when 
other dreamy eyed activists looked to Soviet Russia as an earthly 
paradise and her previous husband was killed fighting fascists in 
Spain. Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank, was a Communist too.

Oppenheimer joined a variety of communist front groups in 
California, but he came to detest Communist dogma as rigid and 
anti-individual. When America was plunged into World War II in 
1941, the military establishment overlooked his leftist 
affiliates and recruited him for its crash programme to developed 
an atomic bomb.

As director of the atomic lab at Los Alamos - a site he 
personally selected for its isolation and soothing desert vistas 
- Oppenheimer threw himself into his work. He recruited America’s 
top physicists and helped them crack the tremendous problems 
involved in splitting atoms. Under the strain, his weight - 
previously 130 pounds on a 6-foot frame - fell to 115 pounds. It 
was super sensitive work and the US Army required every man to 
undergo rigorous background checks.

In 1943, Oppenheimer reported to the army intelligence that 
Soviet agents were spying to root out information on the A-bomb. 
They had approached a friend of his, he said, a languages 
professor named Heakon Chevalier. Then Chevalier had come to him 
with inquiries about getting data on microfilm.

Army intelligence never went after Chevalier. Oppenheimer soon 
recanted his whole tale as a "cock-and-bull" story, but never 
explained why he offered it. It was forgotten in the rush to 
build the A-bomb, but would later come to stain Oppenheimer’s 
reputation.

On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated. 
Oppenheimer, trembling nervously in an underground bunker, felt 
the tremble of the mightiest weapon ever devised by man, a blast 
with the power of 20,000 tons of TNT. Oppenheimer and General 
Leslie Groves looked over the world’s first atomic blast site. 
The experience of using science as a fiery instrument of death 
haunted Oppenheimer. "The physicists have known sin," he said," 
and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."

The success of the A-bomb made Oppenheimer a national hero. From 
a wide choice of government and academic jobs, he took an offer 
from Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study, an oasis of pure 
contemplation where scholars like Albert Einstein worked. The 
turning point came in September 1949, when the Soviets exploded 
their first A-bomb. No longer did the Untied States enjoy a 
monopoly on the atomic secret.

And the fact that the Soviets used spies to pry away precious 
data from Los Alamos compounded America’s panic about its 
security. President Harry S Truman ordered the Los Alamos lab to 
embark on a new programme to build a hydrogen bomb, a nuke whose 
explosive yield would be measured in millions, not thousands of 
tons.

Oppenheimer objected, on moral and practical grounds. The bomb, 
under the direction of Oppenheimer’s old friend Edward Teller, 
was built anyway. The second American case relates to nuclear 
scientist Dr Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese naturalized citizen, who was 
accused of mishandling nuclear weapons data and theft of nuclear 
secrets.

The case against Dr Lee collapsed in September 2000 when the 
government dropped all but one of the 59 felony charges against 
him. He pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling nuclear 
secrets and the case became an embarrassment for the FBI, which, 
conducted the criminal inquiry that led to the criminal charges 
against him. Critics had accused investigators of singling out Dr 
Lee because of his Chinese ancestry.

The third case pertains to senior Bush’s 24 December 1992 
exercise of constitutional power to pardon former Defence 
Secretary Caspar Weinberger and others for their conduct related 
to Iran-Contra affair. In his proclamation, senior Bush wrote: 
"He [Weinberger] saved his best for last. As secretary of defence 
throughout most of the Reagan Presidency, Caspar Weinberger was 
one of the principal architects of the downfall of the Berlin 
Wall and the Soviet Union. He directed the military renaissance 
in this country that led to the breakup of the communist bloc and 
a new birth of freedom and democracy. Upon his resignation in 
1987, Caspar Weinberger was awarded the highest civilian medal 
our nation can bestow on one of its citizens. The Presidential 
Medal of Freedom."

". . . I am pardoning him not just out of compassion or to spare 
a 75-year old patriot the torment of lengthy and costly legal 
proceedings, but to make it possible for him to receive the honor 
he deserves for his extraordinary service to our country."

Then comes another presidential pardon granted by President 
Gerald R Ford to Richard Nixon. ". . . I, Gerald R Ford, 
President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power 
conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, 
have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free absolute 
pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United 
States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have 
committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 
1969 through August 9, 1974," the presidential proclamation said.

Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved. No part 
*****************************************************************
 31 Hi Pakistan: Pakistan to cooperate with IAEA in N-probe = Kasuri --
 
February 11 2004     
    
BERLIN: Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said on Monday that 
Pakistan would cooperate with the UN nuclear agency in a probe 
over the selling of nuclear expertise. 

Speaking to reporters after meeting his German counterpart 
Joschka Fischer here, he said Islamabad launched the 
proliferation probe despite huge public criticism. "When we 
started investigating we were under tremendous pressure. We did 
not spare anybody. Dr Khan named other people," he added. 

"Despite his hero status we did not spare him. We told him he 
would have to cooperate or there would be a trial. We made him go 
on television." He said that among names given by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Iranian 
government as potentially involved were two Pakistanis, three 
Germans, one Dutch national and a Sri Lankan based in Dubai. 

Mr Kasuri said the list of those investigated was then enlarged 
to 11, of whom three were "let off." He did not say who. "We will 
share all this information with the IAEA," he went on. "The IAEA 
is not an investigative body. 

"The IAEA has a certain role, and we will do all we can to 
support the IAEA in that role. Any information that we have got 
which bears on Iran or Libya or terror, we will cooperate fully." 

The foreign minister said measures now in place would prevent a 
repeat of the scandal. "Our (nuclear) programme was covert, 
clandestine. When we became open and a declared nuclear power, we 
instituted command and control systems.                                                                                              
 			   				 					 					 					 						 					 				 			   			  
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved. No part 
*****************************************************************
 32 Hi Pakistan: Crowds still cheer for Dr Qadeer -
 
February 11 2004     
    
LONDON - The interesting question is not why Abdul Qadeer
Khan became a villain. That’s easy. Money, money, money. Nuclear
physicists toiling away on ú15,000 tend to run short of it. No,
the real question - the one with the legs and authentic WMD
mushroom cloud - is why, to this day, he remains a hero to his
own people. 

What, after all, is so heroic about flogging your country’s
nuclear secrets and surplus kit to the likes of North Korea,
Libya and Iran? Why should the average Pakistani peasant revere
this clever, arrogant, corrupt creature of the army, an exporter
of mass destruction? 

And yet, clearly, he does. There are, of course, plenty of
seamier reasons why President Musharraf has pardoned Dr Khan and
banned any independent inquiries into his activities. The
international “nuclear supermarket” now revealed was big
business, and Pakistan’s generals, from Musharraf down, are big
businessmen during and after their years of service. They
clearly can’t countenance any kind of open investigation. Even
Butler of Brockwell would set them trembling. 

But still the crowds cheer for Khan. Still their reverence keeps
him untouchable. They think he made them safe from war, safe
with a seat at any summit table. He gave them the bomb and the
bomb is a national boon. They think they’ve learned their
western lessons well. 

India and China, after all, had joined the nuclear club.
Islamabad could have been the odd, vulnerable one out. Through
the second half of the 20th century, remember, New Delhi and
Beijing went to war, and Pakistan fought India three times. But
no more, brother. Now we’re all MAD together and mutually
assured destruction sets us free to do vital things - like
negotiate over Kashmir - that the west is always begging us to
do. 

The trouble, though, is that the west also wallows in double
standards. Why shouldn’t North Korea, matched against Seoul and
America’s nuclear umbrella, have a little MAD of its own? Why
shouldn’t Iran have a modest counter-balance to the bombs it
faces north, east and west? If you can have a Christian bomb, a
Hindu bomb, a Chinese communist bomb and a Jewish bomb, why
can’t there be Muslim bombs as well? 

Disingenuous? Up to a point. The world is full of bad, bad men
and such arguments - as self-serving as Dr Khan’s assorted bank
accounts - pretend that they don’t exist. Equally, though, don’t
miss the duff arguments on our side. 

We spent more than 40 years telling the world that MAD struck a
wonderful balance, that being strong was the nuclear way to keep
the peace. We strutted as our own WMD came into service,
champagne bottles smashing on the subs - and we strut still in
our security council berths where nukes buy us seats at the top
table. What’s the essential problem here? 

No problem from where we sit, to be sure. And no problem for
countries of pragmatic prudence who, sooner or later, prefer
trade and aid to the thrill of rusting rocketry. But that view
has its limitations, too. It reflects a balance of power frozen
in the past (essentially, 40 years ago again). It says that only
those countries which happened to make a bomb are worthy of
keeping it. And it seals that case in non-proliferation aspic,
as superintended by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

The one small snag, however, is that none of this holds any
longer. As the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, observes:
“The spread of nuclear technology and knowledge is out of the
tube - and we won’t be able to put it back.” The world, beyond
MAD, has gone genuinely mad; and there is no pat theory, no
leftover control system, that can make it suddenly sane again.

The west doesn’t have the intelligence to save itself: see how
Colonel Gaddafi shopped Abdul Qadeer Khan. Nor, after Iraq, does
it have the physical resources to go zapping every transgressor,
real or alleged. 

The force is not with us; and that, alas, includes the force of
argument. When I wrote here a few weeks ago about the Israeli
bomb, I harvested a shoal of furious responses. Why, asked the
cod, don’t you and France give up your bomb first? Why, demanded
the haddock, should we ever put our Jewish homeland security at
risk by negotiating about the ultimate weapon which keeps us
safe in a sea of enemies? Two questions requiring non-fishy
answers. 

Yes: what, indeed, is the point of our unilateral weapons of
mass destruction? Do they make London - or Paris, for that
matter - in any way safer from any conceivable outside threat?
If you want others to go down the route of nuclear renunciation
then you have to be honest about your own immobilities. But is
that, any longer, the only route available? 

The spread, says Dr ElBaradei, is out of the tube. Unstoppable,
irreversible. He could be talking about that other failed war,
on drugs - and he could, equally, be trying the other drug road:
of acceptance, legalisation, of licensed growth. The trouble now
is that black supermarket, selling to all with cash under the
table. But if the cash comes openly from states with money to
burn on nuclear technology and its alleged wonders, then those
states themselves have a vested interest in keeping it out of
maverick hands. For they are in danger too. Their secrets may be
used against them. And more might really be less peril. 

Is that totally mad in turn? Are we, from George Bush down, just
stuck delivering the same old portentous lectures and
flourishing the same old self-serving fears? Perhaps. But it’s a
cry without logic now: not one way or another, but failure in
between. And listen to the noises off, the cheering as Dr Khan
takes us all further down his terrible tube. - Courtesy The
Guardian. 					     							 				 				   				 				
      
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 33 Hi Pakistan: PPP demands discussion on N-issue in parliament --
 
February 11 2004     
    
KARACHI: The Pakistan People's Party on Monday accused the 
government of mishandling of the nuclear issue and decided to 
launch a week-long protest campaign, demanding the issue should 
be discussed in the parliament. 

"The way some of the nuclear scientists were accused of betraying 
the nation and the manner in which pardon was given by the 
president smacks rat. It is an issue of the people and cannot be 
closed in such a manner. It should be discussed in the 
parliament," PPP Parliamentarians chief Makhdoom Amin Fahim said 
after the Sindh Council meeting at the Bilawal House. 

The meeting was held in the backdrop of Feb 20 meeting of the 
party leadership, summoned in London by the PPP chairperson Ms 
Benazir Bhutto "to discuss the current political situation both 
at home and externally, besides discussing party's organizational 
matters." 

Although Mr Fahim did not elaborate on this, some insiders were 
of the view that the London meeting had been called to discuss 
the fresh "package" which the government had allegedly conveyed 
to the PPP chairperson through "intermediaries. "However, the 
provincial chief of the party, Nisar Khuhro, rejected such 
presumptions while briefing newsmen after the council meeting. 

Mr Khuhro alleged that by its mishandling of the issue "the 
regime, which does not respect democratic rights and institutions 
of the people, has projected Pakistan as headquarter of nuclear 
proliferation." 

He said that as an ARD component, the PPP had decided to organize 
protest rallies to mobilize support for removing Gen Pervez 
Musharraf from Feb 13 to Feb 20. 

Replying to a question, he said :"We are protesting over the 
mishandling of the nuclear issue, due to which Pakistan has been 
dangerously exposed to external pressures and interventions." 

He agreed with a questioner that Gen Musharraf, in his lengthy 
press conference, had in fact read out charge sheet against 
Pakistan, which the external forces would exploit when it suited 
them. 

Mr Khuhro was of the view that after the fall of Dhaka, the 
handling of nuclear scientists' issue was the gravest tragedy, 
which had shocked the people who had been denied their basic 
rights, made jobless, compelled to commit suicides and pushed to 
the wall. 

Giving details of the week-long protest plan by the party, in 
accordance with the decision taken by the ARD, Mr Khuhro said 
that about 250 members, who attended the Sindh Council's meeting 
today, had decided that daily protest camps would be set up in 
every district headquarter, where the party activists and 
supporters, including MNA, MPAs, ticket holders, workers, jobless 
people and those who had been pushed to the wall by the regime 
would assemble between 11am and 4pm to inform the people about 
"misdeeds" of this government. 

The other matter which was deliberated in the session was the 
plan of observing 25th death anniversary of the PPP founding 
chairman, late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. In this context, Mr Khuhro 
spelt out detailed plan according to which on Feb 21 the Peoples 
Labour Bureau would hold a seminar here, while its minority wing 
would do the same in Mirpur Khas on Feb 25. Lawyers Forum plans 
to organize a seminar here on Feb 29, whereas students and women 
wings would do the same in Hyderabad on march 4 and 8, 
respectively. 

Similar programmes had been drawn up by the Hari and Youth 
committees and cultural wings until March 20. Asked what were the 
compulsions for holding the meeting of party leadership in London 
on Feb 20, Mr Khuhro said political situation in and outside the 
country, besides organizational matters, would be discussed at 
the meeting. 

Mr Khuhro also announced that anti-greater Thal Canal and 
Kalabagh dam committee would take out a rally from Quaid's mazar 
to the Karachi Press Club, to demonstrate to the people that the 
regime and the provincial government, which had supported two 
resolutions in the Sindh Assembly, had allegedly bowed to 
pressure. He said that ANP and National Party had also joined the 
seven-party committee. 
					     							 				 				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 34 Hi Pakistan: Who are the proliferators? - 

By Azmat Rasul 
 
February 11 2004     
    
Pakistan has again become a focus of attention because of
her scientists' involvement in the proliferation of nuclear
technology. It has been quite fashionable in the west to
denounce countries like Pakistan for the leakage of nuclear
information to the so-called rogue states. But what is not
equally fashionable is to admit that advanced countries and
mafias operative in western societies are virtually responsible
for the violation of the non-proliferation efforts. 

When the NPT was established in 1968, only five states were
deemed nuclear. Today, that number has almost doubled. The
atomic era has been witness to the growth of nuclear arsenals
around the world, especially in Israel. Many commentators on
international politics believe that Israel has been involved in
the manufacture and proliferation of deadly weapons. 

Former Soviet Union is another proliferator. According to US
military intelligence, there are over 950 sites in the former
Soviet Union that house weapons-grade nuclear materials
(radioactive substances that can potentially be used to produce
weapons). Nearly every one of these locations has absolutely no
security or logging system that tracks inventory. Due to
economic problems after the collapse of former USSR, its nuclear
arsenal became critically vulnerable.

The "nuclear black market," defined as the trading of nuclear
devices between subnational groups, is alarming and difficult to
stop. In an interview, former Armed Services Committee Chairman
Senator Sam Nunn stated, "International nuclear smuggling is the
primary security challenge, I think not only for the United
States, but the world for at least the next five to ten years,
perhaps longer". Much like the illicit drug trade, authorities
are only able to stop an estimated 40 percent of the nuclear
trafficking. Instances of confiscated nuclear weapons from
former Soviet Union countries in 1994 doubled to 124 from the
previous year. This means that there is an enormous amount of
radioactive material that is being transported to all corners of
the globe.

It is estimated that a legitimately threatening bomb only needs
between three and 25 kilograms of uranium or between one and
eight kilograms of plutonium. One kilogram of either of the two
materials occupies only about one-seventh the volume of a
standard aluminum soft drink can. The most dangerous isotopes
are not very radioactive in comparison with other forms, and
thus are far more difficult to detect with standard contemporary
instruments.

There have been many accounts of thieves taking nuclear
materials from the USSR without any trouble at all. In November
of 1993, a thief climbed through a hole in a fence that guarded
the shipyard in Mumansk, Russia. He then proceeded to use a
hacksaw to cut through the padlock of a storage compartment that
housed over 3.5 kilograms of enriched uranium, which was
eventually recovered. Mikhail Kulik, the investigator in charge
of this case said, "Even potatoes are probably much better
guarded today than radioactive materials". Two years later, a
pair of Lithuanian smugglers was apprehended during a sting
while attempting to bring nuclear warheads into the US via Miami
airport. The US customs agents involved in the operation said
there were probably dozens of other cases of trafficking heavy
arms that went undetected.

The Americans cannot absolve themselves of the charge of
proliferating nuclear weapons. A closer examination of the
Clinton era shows that, despite perceived gains made in nuclear
arms control, the decade (90s) did see further (vertical) US
nuclear proliferation in terms of new weapon designs and new
posited uses for nuclear weapons. These changes seem likely to
quicken rather than retarded under Bush's presidency, although
it is also likely that the USA would make further numerical cuts
in its vast nuclear arsenal, a relic of the Cold War.

These qualitative "improvements" in America's nuclear weapons
were initiated after the end of the Cold War, when defense
planners began looking for new scenarios under which nuclear
weapons could be used. US nuclear weapons researchers began
exploring the use of small nuclear explosives for destroying
hardened underground targets and chemical and biological weapon
manufacturing facilities or storage depots. The most significant
product of this research is the B61-11 warheads that are also
known as mini nukes. In 1994 Congress enacted legislation
limiting such research, but loopholes were left allowing for
modification of existing warheads. 

There exists ample evidence which manifests that the western
countries shall have to set there own house right. Fixing the
responsibility of proliferation on Pakistani scientists alone
will not help resolve the issue. The Americans shall have to set
examples for others to follow suit. How can the Americans and
their allies expect other countries to abide by the principles
of non-proliferation when they are themselves violating the
essence of the treaty? The world and the IAEA shall have to be
very careful in tackling this issue of gigantic political
magnitude. There should not be double standards and the
proliferators, whoever they are, must be brought to the book.

The writer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass
Communication, University of the Punjab 					     							 				
				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 35 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear confessions - 

By Mushahid Hussain -- Detail
 
February 11 2004     
    
In a recent book on the Af-ghan jihad, 'Charlie Wilson's
War', the American author, George Crile, refers to the US
'concern' regarding 'nuclear proliferation' by Pakistan in the
days of General Zia. When President Reagan's Special Envoy, CIA
deputy director General Vernon Walters, confronted General Zia
with these allegations, the shrewd Pakistani leader looked him
in the eye and flatly denied that Pakistan had any nuclear
ambitions. Later, he was to privately tell, according to the
book, an associate of his that 'it is permissible to lie for
Islam.'

General Zia needn't have invoked religion to justify this
falsehood. Lying, as state policy regarding 'sensitive' aspects
of national security is an accepted, indeed, universal norm. In
a 19th century comment, Sir Henry Wotton even described a
diplomat as an 'honest person sent to lie abroad for his
country.'

The Americans lied about their biggest covert operation -
funding the Afghan Mujahideen - via $ 2.1 billion in arms via
the ISI in the 1980s. The North Vietnamese lied about their
support to the Viet Cong or that thousands of their troops were
secretly operating in South Vietnam. The Indians lied about
sponsoring cross-border terrorism either through the Mukti
Bahini in East Pakistan or Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Israel has
always lied about its nuclear programme - even deceiving
President Kennedy in 1963 when he demanded access to and
inspection of Dimona, Israel's Kahuta. US inspectors were taken
on a carefully choreographed tour of a fake facility that was
said to be engaged in research on peaceful uses of nuclear
energy!

The White House spokesman, speaking to reporters on January 28,
seemed relaxed in laying the matter to rest when he said that
whatever might have happened was 'one part of the past, and the
past is the past.' The Indians have been surprisingly quiet
about the whole affair, raising few eyebrows, with their press
too, otherwise prone to banging the drums when anything negative
regarding Pakistan occurs, also quite muted about it.

Three facts of the scientists' saga, whose most crucial chapter
seems to have closed after the confession and the clemency, are
noteworthy in this regard. First, the hard fact is that Pakistan
got the Bomb as legitimately as have China, India and Israel,
and the 'beg, borrow and steal' philosophy is based on
commercial, albeit covert, transactions between sellers,
invariably Western, and buyers, mostly 'outsiders' seeking to
gate-crash into the exclusive nuclear club. No European seller
or smuggler of nuclear technology seems to have been identified
or questioned, let alone charged, although specific names of
such merchants in the apparently thriving nuclear bazaar are
known to international organizations like the IAEA as well as
Western intelligence. Second, the recent inquiry into Pakistani
scientists proliferation activities began only after Iran (in
July 2003) and Libya (in October 2003) decided to confess,
naming names in the process. Libya even sent off tons of
equipment, data and files regarding its embryonic nuclear
programme to the Americans in a special chartered plan two weeks
ago. After their capitulation, Pakistan had no option but to
swiftly take measures, as President Musharraf put it, to meet
'international requirements.'

Third, the main country that could have caused trouble in this
regard, the United States, seems to be satisfied with the
measures Pakistan has taken, which means more pressure on the
legitimacy and future of the nuclear programme is unlikely. One
important indicator being the US Presidential Commission on
Intelligence failures in Iraq announced by President Bush on
February 7. It has been mandated to investigate weapons
programme and intelligence, past and present, regarding 5
countries that are specifically named: Iraq, Iran, Libya, North
Korea and Afghanistan. 

In any case, it was the United States that is now claiming
credit to tracking, uncovering and breaking the Dr Khan private
nuclear enterprise through the CIA and British intelligence.

President Bush, in an interview with NBC on February 9,
mentioned this and so did the CIA Chief, George Tenet, in his
speech before Georgetown University in Washington on February 6.

The CIA Chief said that 'we discovered the extent of Khan's
hidden network. We tagged the proliferators; we detected the
networks stretching across four continents offering its wares to
countries like North Korea and Iran. Working with our British
colleagues, we pieced together the picture of the network,
revealing its subsidiaries, its scientists, its front companies,
its agents, its finances and manufacturing plants on three
continents. Our spies penetrated the network through a series of
daring operations over several years. 

Through this unrelenting effort, we confirmed the network was
delivering such things as illicit uranium enrichment
centrifuges. And in the Libya case, we stopped deliveries of
prohibited material (a reference to the ship bound for Libya
that was seized last October).' According to a recent visiting
American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, Dr .A. Q. Khan
was on a VIP 'watch list' of American intelligence for the last
15 years where his every activity - phone calls, meeting
visitors, travel - was carefully monitored. 

Obviously, if some scientist went on a solo flight of personal
profit through a 'rogue' operation, then it is definitely a case
both of breach of security (since the procedures and systems in
place failed to detect such sales) and a breach of trust and
professional integrity. The conclusions of such an investigation
should be shared with the political leadership in parliament,
including the opposition. Pakistan's opposition is as patriotic
and responsible as the government and both need to work in
unison on this sensitive issue to protect national security,
particularly the nuclear programme, since this issue is above
partisan politics.

What's behind the current spate of orchestrated leaks in the
American media? Is it just the nuclear scientists proliferation
or something else, since, in any case, the White House itself
has said 'the past is the past'?

The American approach is interesting, because despite the
apparent focus, the real issue can sometimes be different. When
the Chicago mafia don, Al Capone, was finally nabbed in the
1930s, the FBI got him on a somewhat innocuous charge of tax
evasion, not the numerous serious crimes that he had actually
committed.

Is the current obsession with the nuclear scientists a cover for
the real American interest, namely, to pacify the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border by tracking the Taliban remnants,
and nabbing Osama bin Laden, with Pakistan's cooperation which
would be critical, in time to facilitate President Bush's
re-election, which is the number one priority of the Bush
Administration? After all, it is perhaps no accident that
suddenly, out of the blue, The Chicago Tribune on January 28
came out with a story on the Americans planning a 'military
operation inside Pakistani tribal territory' to nab Osama and
Taliban holdovers. It was more like a polite reminder at the
height of the nuclear scientists crisis that notwithstanding the
focus on the nuclear issue, nabbing Osama is what really matters
to the Americans. 

Finally, despite all that has happened in regards the nuclear
shenanigans of Dr A. Q. Khan and his team, they successfully
implemented a political decision made at the highest level, by
delivering on what was a 'Mission Impossible', helping to build
the Bomb despite stiff international controls, sanctions and
opposition. They outsmarted the Western Establishment, beat the
system and Pakistan managed to become a nuclear power, an
achievement that inspires justifiable national pride since it is
the principal bulwark deterring outside aggression. 

After all, where Pakistan succeeded, Iraq, Iran and Libya failed
despite their vast wealth and resources. The Presidential pardon
was, therefore, in the fitness of things, indeed, serving the
'supreme national interest', since 'nobody being above the law'
principle is, in any case, applied selectively. If NAB can look
the other way at errant influentials like politicians and
generals, surely 'Pakistan First' means protecting first and
foremost the nuclear programme and then those scientists who
made the acquisition of these nuclear assets possible through
tremendous expertise, hard work and risks spanning almost a
quarter of a century.

The basic lessons from this episode are obvious. Without
succumbing to doom-and-gloom conspiracy theories, Pakistan has
to protect its vital national interests in a world where
double-standards prevail on not just the nuclear issue, and
domestic 'house-cleaning' involves building a foolproof system
relying on institutions rather than individuals. And as
President Clinton discovered to his lasting regret when his
secret illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky was uncovered:
don't get caught.
 					     							 				 				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 36 Las Vegas SUN: U.S. Rebuts Pakistan on Nuclear Leaks

Today: February 10, 2004 at 11:35:17 PST 

 By BARRY SCHWEID ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON (AP) - 

Contradicting President Pervez Musharraf, the State Department 
said Tuesday that for years it provided Pakistani officials with 
evidence of a black market in nuclear technology. 

Apart from general concerns, American officials turned over 
"pieces of information" from time to time, State Department 
spokesman Richard Boucher said. 

While reluctant to expose U.S. intelligence activities, Boucher 
said "we have talked to them at different moments about different 
issues that might have arisen that we might have learned about." 

Pakistan's most prominent nuclear scientist, A.Q. Kahn, has 
confessed to selling nuclear technology to other countries. 
Musharraf at first granted him a pardon, then this week made it 
dependent on what a Pakistani investigation turns up. 

In Rawalpindi, Musharraf told The New York Times on Monday that 
the United States had not given him convincing proof and had 
provided him with evidence of Khan's activities only last 
October. 

But Boucher said "certainly our nonproliferation dialogue with 
Pakistan goes back much farther than that." 

"We have discussed nonproliferation issues with Pakistan 
repeatedly over a long period of time, and it's been an issue of 
concern to us and to President Musharraf, as well," the spokesman 
said. 

In Islamabad a government official told The Associated Press on 
Tuesday that warnings from fellow scientists about the father of 
Pakistan's nuclear program and his ostentatious wealth had raised 
suspicions that he was selling weapons technology abroad years 
before the government was compelled to take action. 

Scientists who worked in Pakistan's covert program to build a 
nuclear deterrent against rival India had warned the government 
even before its first bomb test in 1998 that Khan was involved in 
suspect activity, a government official said on condition of 
anonymity. 

Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted Monday that Pakistan, an 
ally in the U.S. war against terrorism, dismantle the network "by 
its roots." 

While dismissing reports he planned a trip soon to discuss U.S. 
concerns with Musharraf, Powell said the Pakistani president had 
told him in a telephone conversation during the weekend that the 
pardon he had granted Khan, once the scientist revealed his 
operation, was a conditional one. 

Powell did not provide any details about Musharraf's intentions 
in dealing with the revered father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, who 
was at the center of a widespread and sophisticated operation 
that sent nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, all 
of which are designated as sponsors of terror by the State 
Department. 

Since the Bush administration took office more than three years 
ago, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had made a point 
of looking into a Pakistani role in proliferation and has raised 
his concerns with Musharraf and other Pakistani officials, 
Boucher said Monday. 

Khan has said he acted without the knowledge of Pakistani 
authorities in leaking nuclear secrets to countries developing 
nuclear weapons. 

Only a few weeks before the scandal surfaced, Pakistan's 
ambassador to Washington brushed aside allegations that Pakistani 
scientists had provided Libya - and possibly Iran and North Korea 
- with advanced nuclear technology. 

"As far as we know, none was shipped out - ever. Nobody has 
presented us with evidence that this happened at such and such a 
time," Ambassador Ashraf Qazi said at the time. 

Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, in a telephone interview 
Monday with the San Francisco Chronicle, said the ring run by 
Khan may have spread banned weapons to states beyond Iran, North 
Korea and Libya. 

"If part of that network is exposed, you don't really know 
whether you've exposed all of it or not, or brought it down," 
Bolton told the newspaper. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 37 Townhall.com: Pakistan Denies US Pressure Forced Probe into Nuclear Leakage
 	 
 214 Massachusetts Ave NE Washington, DC 20002 202-608-6099 Fax 
202-544-7330 

 Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Pakistan's government has
denied reports that substantial U.S. pressure forced it to act
against the recently exposed black market in nuclear weapons
technology, or that American diplomats confronted Gen. Pervez
Musharraf with intelligence evidence of the leakage.

Islamabad also insisted that the proliferation had not benefited
terrorist groups, and that Pakistan's nuclear assets were in
safe hands.

A military spokesman told reporters that investigations had
found no evidence that nuclear know-how -- leaked to rogue
states by Pakistan's top scientists -- had reached terrorist
organizations like al Qaeda.

Musharraf last week officially pardoned the founder of his
country's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, after the
scientist confessed in a televised address to selling nuclear
secrets to foreign governments.

Khan absolved the government and military of any involvement in
the scandal, although the assertion that he could have acted
alone has been widely ridiculed by experts in South Asia and
beyond.

Khan is accused of helping Iran, Libya and North Korea obtain
nuclear weapons technology in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
via a proliferation network involving middlemen in several
countries.

While concerned about nuclear know-how reaching regimes like
Tehran and Pyongyang, the U.S. and other Western governments
also worry about "secondary proliferation" - from Iran and North
Korea to other countries or non-state groups.

In a report citing unnamed government officials, Pakistan's The
Nation newspaper said top U.S. officials last October presented
Musharraf with detailed evidence about the proliferation trade
and threatened sanctions and isolation if he did not act.

It said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Assistant
Secretary Christina Rocca warned the general that failure to act
would jeopardize relations with the U.S.

The evidence reportedly included proof that Khan had tried to
sell nuclear technology to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in
1992, The News said.

Intelligence agencies had tracked Khan's foreign travels in
recent years, including visits to Iran, North Korea, Libya,
Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, and had obtained evidence
of meetings and payments.

Musharraf launched an investigation and placed Khan under house
arrest in November.

Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan, on Monday
denied that Armitage and Rocca had presented Pakistani officials
with any evidence of proliferation activities during their
visits.

He said the government had conducted the probe voluntarily, to
stop the trade and demonstrate to the world that Pakistan is a
responsible country.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed Monday that
proliferation had come up during Armitage's October meeting with
Musharraf, but said he could not elaborate on the "contents" of
the discussion.

Boucher reiterated the Administration's view that Pakistan is
cooperating and has made "progress" in its investigation into
the proliferation.

The U.S. government has not criticized Musharraf for pardoning
Khan, characterizing it as an internal matter for Pakistan.
Islamabad said Monday the pardon was conditional on the
disgraced scientist's cooperation in the investigation.

'Double standards'

Many reports have noted that the illegal activities continued
during Musharraf's tenure - the army chief seized power in a
coup in 1999 - with centrifuge trade with Libya continuing as
late as last fall.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.,
Musharraf has become a key ally in the U.S.-led war against
terrorism, and in turn has won strong political support from
Washington.

Washington's muted public reaction to the revelations has drawn
flak internationally, particularly in South Asia.

India-based security experts, who have been researching and
writing on Pakistani proliferation for years, described the
affair as "extraordinary" and "a cover-up" to protect the
military and government.

Many analysts have pointed to the differences between the U.S.
response to the largest weapons of mass destruction network ever
uncovered, and to WMD proliferation in other contexts, including
Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

The deputy director of the Institute of Defense Studies and
Analyses in India, C. Uday Bhaskar, said the U.S. was using
"kid-glove treatment" in Musharraf's case and accused Washington
of inconsistency.

K.P.S. Gill, president of the Institute for Conflict Management
in New Delhi and publisher of the South Asia Intelligence
Review, said the recent events in Pakistan constituted "one of
the most consummate political charades in recent history."

Gill argued that it was the U.S. which faced the gravest threat
from Pakistan's leakage of nuclear technology to the rogue
states.

Yet while other players have been targeted by U.S. and
international sanctions, "the primary proliferator and central
protagonist in the sponsorship of international Islamist
terrorism escapes unscathed, again and again, irrespective of
the enormity of its transgressions," he charged.

Brahma Chellaney, strategic studies professor at the Center for
Policy Research in New Delhi, accused the U.S. of "double
standards" and said Musharraf had "exploited international
concerns about the situation in Pakistan to strengthen his hold
on power."

Heritage Foundation senior fellow Peter Brookes said Tuesday
that Pakistan was a "troubling strategic partner" but added that
"Islamabad remains critical in fighting terrorism and
proliferation."

He said the U.S. should use the revelations emerging from Khan's
debriefing to find out exactly what secrets had been leaked been
done, and to break up the covert proliferation network.

Although the "nuclear genie is out of the bottle," the U.S.
still had a chance, with Pakistan's "belated" help, to prevent
Iran and North Korea from spreading the technology further
afield, Brookes said.

 See related story:
*****************************************************************
 38 Pakistan Times: Nuclear Establishments are Impregnable -  Pakistan 

[PakistanTimes [PakistanTimes.net]]
 
 By Maria A Khan - Pakistan Times Special Correspondent  

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Monday said that the security system around 
its nuclear establishments was "impregnable" and there were no 
cases of any 'pilferage'.
 
"There is a multi-pronged intelligence system, there are several 
security rings ... our nuclear establishments are 100 percent 
secure and there are firm custodial controls," Pakistan's Foreign 
Office spokesman Masood Khan told the weekly press briefing.
 
No alien Penetration 

Masood Khan strongly denied that the American CIA or the British 
intelligence had penetrated the security of the nuclear 
establishments. "There has been no penetration, none whatsoever," 
Khan said in response to reports quoting the CIA chief George 
Tenet.
 
He however said that the CIA chief might have been referring to 
the penetration of American and British spies into the nuclear 
black market. He said the establishment of the Nuclear Command 
Authority has further strengthened the security set up and any 
pilferage was not possible.
 
To a question whether information from American and British 
intelligence was shared with Pakistan, Khan said "we received 
information from diverse sources."
 
Rocca n' Armitage
 
When asked about whether the information about unauthorised 
nuclear proliferation were first shared by Christina Rocca and 
Richard Armitage, Khan said he checked thoroughly and no such 
exchange took place.
 
Khan termed the reports of a Pakistani military C-130 aircraft 
spotted in North Korea as "utter nonsense". He said the 
aircraft's cargo comprised SA-16 shoulder fired Surface to Air 
Missiles. "There was no nuclear technology, or equipment or 
machines on-board."
 
Powell's Visit
 
About US Secretary of State Colin Powell's proposed visit to 
Pakistan, Khan said, no dates have yet been fixed. He said during 
his visit Secretary Powell will have a wide range of issues to 
discuss, including regional and international situation.
 
Scientists' Probe Continues
 
To a question Masood Khan said the investigation of nuclear 
scientists has not yet concluded. He said the pardon to Dr A Q 
Khan was conditional and was specific to the results of the 
current investigation.
 
He said the conditions specified that Dr Khan will cooperate in 
the investigation and will continue to do so, the pardon was only 
for specific charges, there has been "no blanket pardon" and 
strict security measures will be adopted for him and his 
associates.
 
Khan said "those investigated will not be able to pursue their 
normal duties." He said they will not be restored to their 
service.
 
Eschews Query on Specific Law
 
Khan refused to answer when asked about the specific laws under 
which the scientists were being interrogated.
 
He termed the events of the past few days as a "traumatic 
experience" for the government and the people of Pakistan. 
"However it was a necessary exercise and we had to go through 
this pain, as a nation, citizens and government," he added. He 
said the investigation has been received well by the 
international community. He said besides the United States, China 
France and other countries have also appreciated Pakistan's 
initiative and are supportive of it. He said the international 
community understands the dilemma Pakistan faced.
 
There was the supreme national interest on one hand and a 
personality seen as an icon on the other. The supreme national 
interest, he said, has precedent over this icon. 

Charges
 
Charges were established against him and the Federal Cabinet and 
the National Command Authority made a recommendation. He 
acknowledged that it was a difficult decision to make.
 
He said Pakistan was willing to cooperate with the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He said "if they want to seek some 
information we are ready to share." He said Pakistan would take 
all measures to help counter proliferation.
 
Internal Matter
 
To a question he said "the investigation was internal and we are 
to decide its time frame, according to our own procedures."
 
He denied that there were any linkages between the IAEA's probe 
into the Iranian nuclear programme, except to the extent of the 
nuclear black market.
 
No Contact with Iran
 
FO Spokesman said there have been no direct contacts between 
Pakistan and Iran over the nuclear issues and reiterated 
government's position that any institution or entity of Pakistan 
has ever been involved in any such transfers. Indo-Pak Talks
 
When asked about the forthcoming talks between Pakistan and 
India, Khan said, "this should be a good beginning." He said the 
talks are resuming after a long time and will focus on the 
agenda, structure and course for future action. He said the talks 
will prepare for a more robust talks in the future.
 
Khan said Pakistan would continue to cooperate with the 
international community in efforts to curb and discourage 
proliferation.   
       
Copyright © 2003-2004 TIMES Group of Publications All rights
*****************************************************************
 39 Pakistan Times: Pakistan calls for collective effort to control spread of WMD 

[PakistanTimes [PakistanTimes.net]]

Pakistan Times Federal Bureau Report  

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has stressed upon the international community 
to jointly work for the nuclear non-proliferation.
 
In a press briefing here on Monday, the foreign office spokesman 
Masood Khan said that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul 
Qadeer Khan had not been granted a blanket pardon and he may face 
further questioning in an on-going probe into leaking nuclear 
secrets to other states. 

"The pardon is specific to charges made so far and about the 
confessional statement Dr A Q Khan made," the spokesman said. 
"This is not a blanket pardon," he told reporters at his weekly 
press briefing.
 
The spokesman said the investigations into the proliferation 
scandal were continuing. 

"The investigations have not come to a closure. The pardon 
granted to doctor A Q Khan is conditional, because it is specific 
to the charges that came to the surface. They are specific to the 
results of current investigation established so far." 

He said, the Khan had been cooperating with the authorities in 
these investigations and "we expect that he will continue to 
cooperate. There are strict security restrictions which have been 
imposed on A Q Khan and his associates," he said, by adding; "Dr. 
Khan or those who have been investigated will not be allowed to 
resume their normal duties or activities. This has to be 
understood very clearly." 

No Deadline by IAEA
 
To another question Masood Khan said that no deadline has been 
given to Pakistan by IAEA to stop atomic proliferation adding 
that Pakistan was cooperating with the agency and the 
international community should make a collective effort for 
controlling the spread of WMD.   
       
Copyright © 2003-2004 TIMES Group of Publications All rights
*****************************************************************
 40 Las Vegas SUN: Musharraf Suspected Nuclear Scientist

Today: February 10, 2004 at 1:10:09 PST 
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

NEW YORK (AP) - President Pervez Musharraf suspected for at
least three years that his country's top nuclear scientist was
transferring atomic technology to other nations and removed him
as a head of a weapons lab because of those suspicions, a
newspaper reported Tuesday. 

Musharraf, in an interview with The New York Times, said he
forced the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer
Khan, to retire from the lab in March 2001. It was the first
time the president cited the suspicions as the reason for Khan's
ouster, the newspaper said. 

"We nipped the proliferation in the bud, we stopped the
proliferation," Gen. Musharraf told the newspaper on Monday.
"That is the important part." 

Khan was pardoned by Musharraf on Thursday after admitting that
he spread nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya through
an international black market. 

Musharraf told the Times that he couldn't act earlier on his
suspicions because he didn't have enough evidence to make the
politically sensitive arrest of Khan, a national hero because of
his role in developing Pakistan's nuclear weapons. 

"It was extremely sensitive," he said. "One couldn't outright
start investigating as if he's any common criminal." 

It was not until October that U.S. authorities provided Pakistan
with specific evidence of wrongdoing by the scientist, Musharraf
said. 

Musharraf denied allegations that Pakistan provided nuclear
technology to North Korea in exchange for ballistic missile
technology and he said his government was still trying to
determine exactly what technology was turned over to Pyongyang. 

The president also seemed to retreat from his earlier position
that he would shield Khan from the International Atomic Energy
Agency, the nuclear watchdog agency of the United Nations. "We
need to think about it," he said. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 41 Grossly Misleading Headline: NRC Panel Member Says Bush Erred
  on Details of Threat to Reactors  


   A more appropriate title for this story might be
"NRC Panel Member Has No Doubt Al Qaeda Interested
In Attacking USA Nuclear Power Plants Despite
Difference On Bush Line."  Grossly misleading to
anyone that only has the time to read the
headlines.
In the interviews, Mr. McGaffigan said that
despite his doubts about whether diagrams were
found in Afghanistan, he had no doubt that Al
Qaeda was interested in nuclear plants and that it
was a reason the commission had changed the
security rules for plants five times since the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A spokesman for the National Security Council,
Sean McCormack, said that in the days before the
speech American intelligence officials had
observed "suspicious downloading by computers in
the Middle East" and that diagrams were available
on the Web.

Mr. McCormack also said intelligence officials
received a tip that an associate of Osama bin
Laden had discussed crashing a plane into "large
facilities" like a reactor. He added that "sources
and methods considerations did affect the language
used in the speech."

Mr. McCormack, of the National Security Council,
in a separate interview, gave a chronology of
indications, before and after the State of the
Union address, of Al Qaeda's interest. He said
that a Qaeda operative captured in Karachi,
Pakistan, had a photograph of a reactor in North
Carolina, for example.

   http://www.nytimes.com
   http://snipurl.com/4eq4


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/10/politics/10NUKE.html

Panel Member Says Bush Erred on Details of Threat
to Reactors
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: February 10, 2004


ASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - President Bush was probably
wrong when he asserted in his 2002 State of the
Union address that American forces routing
guerrillas of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan had found
designs for nuclear power plants, one of the three
members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
said.

The commissioner, Edward McGaffigan Jr., who was
appointed to the N.R.C. by President Bill Clinton
in 1996, said in interviews last week that he and
other members of the commission had scratched
their heads when they heard the speech.

      Advertisement


The president was "poorly served by a
speechwriter," Mr. McGaffigan said.

In the 2002 speech, Mr. Bush said of Qaeda
terrorists: "The depth of their hatred is equaled
by the madness of the destruction they design. We
have found diagrams of American nuclear power
plants and public water facilities, detailed
instructions for making chemical weapons,
surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough
descriptions of landmarks in America and
throughout the world."

Mr. Bush's statement has been repeated often by
opponents of nuclear power, who argue that the
operation of reactors is too risky when the
country is under threat of terrorist attack. The
point has also been repeated by members of the
House and Senate, and Mr. McGaffigan has raised
his contention in closed hearings, people in the
hearings have said.

In one telephone interview, Mr. McGaffigan said
the commission was deeply interested in any
intelligence gathered by the United States on the
subject and would like to see details on which
plants were portrayed in the designs and what type
of plant and which systems in the plants were
targeted. But he said that despite repeated
questions in the first half of 2002, he had not
found anyone who could confirm that such plans
were recovered.

Word of his argument has recently emerged among
nuclear experts, and Mr. McGaffigan confirmed it
in the interviews last week. On Wednesday, he sent
a letter outlining his position to Greenpeace, the
environmental group, which had written to ask
about his position.

His letter said he was "aware of no evidence" that
diagrams of American power plants had been found
in Afghanistan.

Richard A. Meserve, who was chairman of the
commission at the time of the speech, said in an
e-mail message that he was "uncomfortable
commenting on classified information."

Nils J. Diaz, the current chairman, would not
comment.

A spokesman for the National Security Council,
Sean McCormack, said that in the days before the
speech American intelligence officials had
observed "suspicious downloading by computers in
the Middle East" and that diagrams were available
on the Web.

Mr. McCormack also said intelligence officials
received a tip that an associate of Osama bin
Laden had discussed crashing a plane into "large
facilities" like a reactor. He added that "sources
and methods considerations did affect the language
used in the speech."

The term "sources and methods considerations"
indicates caution about describing intelligence
findings, to avoid disclosing how the information
was gathered.

In the interviews, Mr. McGaffigan said that
despite his doubts about whether diagrams were
found in Afghanistan, he had no doubt that Al
Qaeda was interested in nuclear plants and that it
was a reason the commission had changed the
security rules for plants five times since the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Meserve, the former chairman, said in his
e-mail message that based on intelligence
information about Qaeda targets, "I was very
comfortable in putting the nuclear industry at
high alert."

Mr. McCormack, of the National Security Council,
in a separate interview, gave a chronology of
indications, before and after the State of the
Union address, of Al Qaeda's interest. He said
that a Qaeda operative captured in Karachi,
Pakistan, had a photograph of a reactor in North
Carolina, for example.

A spokeswoman for the commission, Beth Hayden,
said Mr. McGaffigan's letter to Greenpeace had
been given to the commission's office in charge of
classification to decide whether it had any
classified information.

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 42 NRC: NRC Special Inspection Starts at Susquehanna Nuclear Plant
 
News Release - Region I - 2004-00
 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 

Office of Public Affairs, Region I
  No. I-04-003   		        February 9, 2004   
  CONTACT:     Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330
 		Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331   		   E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov  
  

several events involving loose bolts on emergency diesel
generators. The twin-reactor plant is located in Berwick, Pa.,
and operated by PPL Susquehanna, LLC. 

The purpose of the inspection, which got under way today, is to
determine the facts surrounding the discovery that several bolts
on emergency diesel generators at the plant were found to be not
fully tightened during the period from March 2003 through
January. Among other things, the team will independently
evaluate the adequacy and quality of PPLs response and the risk
significance of the problem. 

Nuclear power plants generate and transmit electricity to the
grid, but they also receive power back for operational purposes.
If the flow of that off-site power is interrupted, emergency
diesel generators are relied upon to power key safety systems
and safely shut down the plant. As such, their proper
functioning is of vital importance to plant safety. The
Susquehanna plant has five emergency diesel generators. 

In March 2003, a bolt on a linkage that controls the diesel fuel
supply for one of the plants emergency diesel generators fell
off during routine testing, forcing the engines shutdown. On
January 25 -- again during routine testing -- PPL found the
mounting bolts for the governor, or control, on another
emergency diesel generator were not fully tightened. In
addition, workers observed oil leaking from under the control.
That engine also had to be shut down during testing due to the
problems. Subsequently, PPL on January 30 identified several
bolts that were not fully tightened on a lube oil cooler, or
heat exchanger, for a third emergency diesel generator. 

The three-member NRC team will document its findings in an
inspection report that will be issued no more than 45 days after
the exit meeting for the review.   



  


 	Last revised Tuesday, February 10, 2004 	   
*****************************************************************
 43 NRC: Sunshine Act Meeting
 
                         FR Doc 04-2932 
[Federal Register: February 10, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 27)] 
[Notices] [Page 6341-6342] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10fe04-136]                         
 
Agency Holding the Meeting: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Dates: Weeks of February 9, 16, 23, March 1, 8, 15, 2004.
 
Place: Commissioners' Conference Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, 
Rockville, Maryland.
 
Status: Public and Closed.
 
Matters to be Considered: Week of February 9, 2004 There are no 
meetings scheduled for the Week of February 9, 2004.
 
Week of February 16, 2004--Tentative Wednesday, February 18, 2004 
9:30 a.m. Briefing on Status of Office of Chief Financial Officer 
Programs, Performance, and Plans (Public Meeting) (Contact: 
Edward L. New, 301-415-5646).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web 
address--http://www.nrc.gov. Week of February 23, 2004--Tentative 
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 9 a.m. Discussion of Security Issues 
(Closed--Ex. 1). Thursday, February 26, 2004 9:30 a.m. Meeting 
with UK Regulators to Discuss Security Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). 
1:30 p.m. Status of Davis Besse Lessons Learned Task Force Issues 
(Public Meeting) (Contact: Brendan Moroney, 301-415-3974).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web 
address--http://www.nrc.gov. Week of March 1, 2004--Tentative 
Tuesday, March 2, 2004 9:30 a.m. Meeting with Advisory Committee 
on the Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI) & NRC Staff (Public 
Meeting) (Contact: Angela Williamson, 301-415-5030).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web 
address--http://www.nrc.gov.
 
[[Page 6342]] Wednesday, March 3, 2004 9:30 a.m. 25th Anniversary 
Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 Accident Presentation (Public 
Meeting) (Contact: Sam Walker, 301-415-1965).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web 
address--http://www.nrc.gov. 2:45 p.m. Discussion of Security 
Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). Thursday, March 4, 2004 1:30 p.m. 
Briefing on Status of Office of Nuclear Material Safety and 
Safeguards (NMSS) Programs, Performance, and Plans--Waste Safety 
(Public Meeting) (Contact: Claudia Seelig, 301-415-7243).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web 
address--http://www.nrc.gov. Week of March 8, 2004--Tentative 
Tuesday, March 9, 2004 9:30 a.m. Briefing on Status of Office of 
Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards (NMSS) Programs, 
Performance, and Plans--Material Safety (Public Meeting) 
(Contact: Claudia Seelig, 301-415-7243).
 
This meeting will be webcast live at the Web 
address--http://www.nrc.gov. 1:30 p.m. Discussion of Security 
Issues (Closed--Ex. 1). Week of March 15, 2004--Tentative There 
are no meetings scheduled for the Week of March 15, 2004.
 
*The schedule for Commission meetings is subject to change on 
short notice. To verify the status of meetings call 
(recording)--(301) 415- 1292. Contact person for more 
information: Timothy J. Frye, (301) 415- 1651.
 
* * * * * ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: By a vote of 3-0 on January 29, 
the Commission determined pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and section 
9.107(a) of the Commission's rules that ``Affirmation of 
COMSECY-04-0004 (Draft Notice and Order for Louisiana Energy 
Services)'' be held on January 30, and on less than one week's 
notice to the public.
 
By a vote of 3-0 on February 4, the Commission determined 
pursuant to U.S.C. 552b(e) and section 9.107(a) of the 
Commission's rules that ``Affirmation of SECY-04-0015 (Private 
Fuel Storage Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation)'' be 
held on February 5, and on less than one week's notice to the 
public.
 
* * * * * The NRC Commission Meeting Schedule can be found on the 
Internet at 
http://www.nrc.gov/what-we-do/policy-making/schedule.html. * * * 
* * This notice is distributed by mail to several hundred 
subscribers; if you no longer wish to receive it, or would like 
to be added to the distribution, please contact the Office of the 
Secretary, Washington, DC 20555 (301-415-1969). In addition, 
distribution of this meeting notice over the Internet system is 
available. If you are interested in receiving this Commission 
meeting schedule electronically, please send an electronic 
message to dkw@nrc.gov. Dated: February 5, 2004.
 
Timothy J. Frye, Technical Coordinator, Office of the Secretary.
 
[FR Doc. 04-2932 Filed 2-6-04; 9:21 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-M

 
*****************************************************************
 44 North County Times: Refueling ritual begins at San Onofre

February 9, 2004 9:49 PM PST 
 
By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer 

SAN ONOFRE --- San Onofre's Unit 2 reactor went dark Monday 
afternoon for refueling, taking enough electricity to power about 
1 million homes off the electrical grid for 45 days.

Every two years Southern California Edison, the plant's majority 
owner and operator, must remove and replace roughly half of Unit 
2's uranium-filled fuel rods. At the same time, independent 
inspectors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will examine a 
critical reactor component to make sure it hasn't sustained 
damage similar to that suffered by a reactor in Ohio. 

A crew of 1,500 temporary workers went to work on the idling 
reactor, in addition to the 1,800 full-time employees that work 
for Edison all year. The temporary workers and some Edison 
employees will log 12-hour shifts day and night for a month and a 
half to get the reactor back in service. 

Planning for the outage began months ago.

"We have a dozen or so personnel who are dedicated only to outage 
planning," said Edison spokesman Ray Golden. "We must script 
every single action that's going on in 10-minute increments."

Golden estimated that Edison will lose $600,000 in revenue for 
every day Unit 2 is not turning uranium atoms into electricity. 
The power lost during the outage is replaced by utility companies 
such as San Diego Gas and Electric that purchase electricity from 
other power plants throughout the Southeast.

The planned outage starts when nuclear technicians slowly drop 
dozens of "control rods" in between the reactor core's uranium 
fuel rods, stopping the process of nuclear fission. After two or 
three days, the reactor is cool enough for the real work to 
begin, allowing contractors to enter the containment dome and 
unbolt the top of the reactor's "pressure vessel," a large carbon 
steel pot that holds the nuclear fuel.

Because spent fuel is so radioactive, the entire transfer process 
is conducted under water.

"Water is a very good barrier to radiation," Golden explained.

After the space around the pressure vessel is flooded with water, 
half of the fuel inside will be removed with a specially designed 
robotic arm. Spent fuel assemblies will then be transferred to a 
deep holding pool through an underground water tunnel.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires Edison to use the 
refueling outage as an opportunity for preventive maintenance. 
Inspectors will spend much of the 45-day outage looking for signs 
of wear and tear that must be fixed before the reactor is 
restarted.

Clyde Osterholtz, senior resident inspector for the commission at 
San Onofre, said he will be giving careful attention to Unit 2's 
pressure vessel head, the metal cap that must be unbolted to add 
and remove fuel.

"We are going to be taking a very close look at that pressure 
vessel head," Osterholtz said.

Concern over the pressure vessel head comes after inspectors 
discovered a hole two years ago in the head of the Davis Besse 
nuclear reactor near Toledo, Ohio. Osterholtz said that since the 
hole was discovered at Davis Besse in February, 2002, nuclear 
power plant owners nationwide have used their refueling outages 
to inspect for similar holes in their pressure vessel heads.

Some people do not believe the commission is capable of 
preventing another Davis Besse.

Russell Hoffman, an anti-nuclear activist who lives in Carlsbad, 
said Monday that Unit 2 was inspected in early 2002 for the kind 
of rust and corrosion that could lead to Davis Besse-like 
problems. Despite that inspection, Unit 2 was recently shut down 
when a water pipe burst due to a broken weld.

"How thorough of an inspection did they really do?" Hoffman 
wondered.

A special team from the commission's headquarters will conduct 
the inspection. In addition, inspectors will examine a network of 
9,000 narrow tubes that carry radioactive water from the reactor.

Golden said the tubes are prone to cracking under the extreme 
heat and pressure of the reactor's coolant system. He added that, 
when a coolant tube cracks, Edison can either patch a damaged 
pipe or, if the crack is too severe to be repaired, the pipe can 
be plugged.

Golden said 8 percent of Unit 2's steam generator tubes are 
already plugged due to cracks discovered in previous refueling 
outages. No more than 21.4 percent of the tubes can be plugged, 
according to commission safety regulations. A reactor that 
reaches the 21.4 percent threshold must have its steam generator 
replaced, Golden said.

Unit 3, San Onofre's other operating nuclear reactor, was 
refueled last year and is scheduled for its next refueling outage 
in 2005.

Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or 
psisson@nctimes.com.

  webmaster@nctimes.com 
© 1997-2004 North County Times - Lee Enterprises    
editor@nctimes.com  
*****************************************************************
 45 newsobserver Duke Power president: Nuclear power here to stay
 
newsobserver.com   
	  
  [newsobserver.com, Raleigh, NC]     Site Updated:  8:21 PM |
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2004    
    
The Associated Press
 
GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) - Nuclear power will be around for years,
the president of Duke Power says, and wind and solar energy
won't be viable options anytime soon.

 "It's hard for me to see a future in which we're able to meet
the electric power demands of this country without new nuclear,"
said Ruth Shaw, president of the Upstate's largest electric
utility. "It is very important that there be some investment in
putting new nuclear on the ground."

 Many power solutions including wind, nuclear, coal or solar
have problems, said Frank Settle, a nuclear issues professor at
Washington and Lee University. He said he would support wind
energy, as long as nobody puts wind turbines on the mountain
outside his office window.

 "If you take the nuclear plants out of the power equation,
you've got a problem," he said. "I don't see a solution right
now that's acceptable."

 Nuclear opponents have promoted leasing space for wind farms on
existing farm land, giving farmers additional revenue. They've
also pushed wind and solar power because they don't pose the
problems with waste disposal that nuclear power presents.

 Shaw told The Greenville News that there have been advances in
technology for treating and storing nuclear waste and hopes the
Yucca Mountain waste dump is built in Nevada. Duke Power
customers have contributed $1 billion to building it, Shaw said,
but construction has been held up because of resistance from
Nevada's elected officials.

 The Bush Administration's energy bill would provide financial
incentives to companies building new power plants.

 But that's not the way to go, said Arjun Makhijani, president
of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research near
Washington. He said wind energy is cheaper than nuclear and has
been successful in Europe.

 "There is no case to be made that nuclear is the only answer,"
Makhijani said. "There have been more wind power plants in the
last few years than anything else."

 There are four nuclear power plants in South Carolina and two
are owned by Duke, which provides electricity to roughly 2
million people in North Carolina and South Carolina.

 The Oconee Nuclear Station is licensed through 2033, but if
replacement plants need to be built, the Upstate will have to
start the process in the next 15 years, Shaw said.

 The solution should be a combination of conservation and
renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biomass, the
process of turning landfill gases into energy, said Jill
Johnson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group
in Atlanta.

 
 © Copyright 2004, The News &Observer Publishing Company. All
*****************************************************************
 46 Norwich Bulletin: NNE whistleblower sues attorney general's office -

norwichbulletin.com
 
   Local News  -   Tuesday, February 10, 2004   

By BRIAN LYMAN

MONTVILLE -- A whistleblower at the Northeast Nuclear Energy Co.
is suing the state attorney general's office, claiming Richard
Blumenthal and an attorney for the utility entered into an
agreement to prevent him from returning to work. 

Clarence O. Reynolds of Montville, former employee of the
utility, alleges in the lawsuit that the Department of Public
Utilities did not enforce a preliminary ruling that found he was
unlawfully terminated in 1994 after "raising health and safety
concerns which were found to have merit." 

The DPUC upheld his complaint in 1997, but stayed the order
while waiting for a court decision on the constitutionality of
the state Whistleblower Act. 

Reynolds said Monday night the he discovered the agreement in
court documents related to the Whistleblower Act last year. 

Chris Reilly, a spokesman with Northeast Utilities, said the
company was reviewing the lawsuit, filed Monday afternoon in
U.S. District Court. 

The state attorney general's office could not be reached for
comment. 

The lawsuit claims that in proceedings over that lawsuit in U.S.
District Court on Oct. 9, 1997, Blumenthal and attorney Allan B.
Taylor, a representative of the utility, "agreed that DPUC would
not enforce its order to reinstate Reynolds to his employment at
Millstone." 

Reynolds' complaint with DPUC was dismissed in May 2001, two
months after he testified on the sale of Millstone to Dominion
Nuclear Connecticut Inc. 

Reynolds said after his termination, he gave information on
fueling at the plant to former Millstone engineer George
Galatis, whose complaint to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
concerning outdated refueling practices led to the plant's
temporary closure in the mid-1990s. 

The NRC repeatedly cited Millstone for retaliation against
whistleblowers in the early and mid-1990s. 

Reynolds claims the defendants denied him due process and
subjected him to "official retaliation" for whistleblowing. He
is seeking reinstatement, compensatory and punitive damages,
attorney's fees and court costs. 

bmlyman@norwich.gannett.com



Originally published Tuesday, February 10, 2004
 

  



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 47 Hampton Union: Value of aging power plant a taxing issue 

  Hampton, NH       Tuesday, February 10, 2004   

By Susan Morse
 smorse@seacoastonline.com

SEABROOK - As residents consider a warrant that could increase 
the town tax rate by 73 cents per $1,000 of valuation, another 
factor also could figure into pushing tax bills even higher - the 
property valuation of Seabrook Station.

FPL Energy’s Seabrook Station represents half of Seabrook’s tax 
base; and as the nuclear power plant depreciates in value, that 
base continues to erode. But the state, the town and the plant 
all offer significantly different estimates of that value.

This year the town assessed the plant’s value at $975 million, 
according to Seabrook tax assessor Scott Bartlett. The state put 
the value at $734 million.

FPL Energy, which has appealed the state’s assessment, placed the 
value of the plant at $402 million.

 The power plant has not yet appealed the town’s assessment of 
the plant, which was reflected in the November tax bill, but it 
is expected to, according to Town Manager Fred Welch.

 If Seabrook Station’s assessment value is used, tax bills would 
double, Welch said.

 "I don’t seriously think that’s going to happen," he added.

Town officials, including Bartlett, are negotiating with FPL 
Energy representatives to reach an agreement on the plant’s 
value. A town warrant article is requesting $100,000 to pay for 
the legal costs expected to be incurred by the negotiations.

 "To reach an agreement, we need expertise," Bartlett told 
residents at the town deliberative session last Tuesday.

 "I’ve been involved in negotiations over a year now," he said. 
"At this time, we have not come to an agreement."

 On Jan. 12, FPL Energy Seabrook LLC filed an appeal of the state 
utility property tax assessment with the N.H. Board of Tax and 
Land Appeals. The Department of Revenue Administration had levied 
utility property taxes against FPL Energy, the 88.2 percent 
owner, of $4,276,107.

 "We did file the appeal last month, which is our legal right to 
do," said Seabrook Station spokesman Al Griffith. "Our 
understanding is the talks are going to continue. This is all 
part of the process."

 The appeal process occurs every four to five years, said 
Griffith.

 "Our understanding," he said, "is the process is continuing to 
work to come to a conclusion on this. We’ve been able to do that 
in the past. We remain hopeful we’re going to come to an 
agreement."

 As for appealing the town’s assessed value, Griffith said he had 
no information.

 FPL Energy purchased an 88.2 percent interest in the 
1,161-megawatt Seabrook Station for a net adjusted value of $789 
million in November 2002.

Seacoast Online is owned and operated by Seacoast Newspapers. 
Copyright © 2004 Seacoast Online. All rights reserved. Please
*****************************************************************
 48 York Daily Record: NRC watching Peach Bottom - 

[ydr.com]                      

County’s many nonprofit organizations and charities to better
serve our readers. If you are the chief executive or director of
a nonprofit organization or charity, please take a minute to
fill out our nonprofit survey. 
			
The power station was issued violations after a September
reactor shutdown. 

By SEAN ADKINS Daily Record staff Tuesday, February 10, 2004 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be more vigilant of
Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station’s Unit 2 reactor as result of
a second-tier safety violation.

 	The commission has penalized the Unit 2 reactor with a “white”
finding related to the failure of an emergency diesel generator
during an unscheduled Sept. 15 reactor shutdown.

 	A white violation refers to an event at the plant that is
considered as of low to moderate safety significance.

 	Since the generator failure affected both of the plant’s
units, NRC officials tacked on a green violation in regard to
the power station’s Unit 3 reactor.

 	A green violation is an event characterized as being of very
low safety significance, said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the
NRC.

 	The commission decided on a green violation because fewer
safety-related electrical loads powered by the emergency
generator exist for Unit 3.

 	“This will help us better know where we need to focus an
increased level of attention going forward,” Sheehan said.

 	A bolt of lighting struck a Chester County power pole Sept.
15, generating an electrical surge along power lines that feed
into Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station.

 	The strike led to the automatic shutdown of the plant, which
triggered the formation of a special, augmented NRC inspection
team.

 	As part of its findings, the team found that faulty protection
circuitry and a loose wire failed to contain the surge that
disabled the plant.

 	Exelon has replaced all damaged fuses and tightened necessary
wires to help ensure a similar event will not shut down the
power station.

 	Within moments of the September shutdown, the plant’s four
diesel generators kicked on to power the station’s vital
equipment and offices.

 	About an hour later, one of the reserve generators seized.
Exelon declared a “discretionary” unusual event — the lowest of
the NRC’s emergency categories.

 	“This is not a common thing,” Sheehan said. “These generators
should operate smoothly.”

 	The commission’s inspection team found that deficient
procedures were followed during the 1992 installation of
generator adapter gaskets.

 	Combustion gas leaked into the jacket water cooling system — a
problem that led to the automatic tripping of the generator
Sept. 15.

 	In March and April 2003, Exelon took corrective actions to
repair the observed low jacket water pressure conditions.

 	The NRC team deemed those actions inadequate, since the
problem was not resolved.

 	Last June, commission inspectors documented that lube oil had
leaked from loose flange joint bolts on an emergency diesel
generator at the plant. That leak caused a small fire in the
exhaust manifold during a test.

 	The NRC responded to the fire by issuing a green violation.

 	Exelon has less than a month to reply to the commission’s
white finding. The company will not appeal the determination,
said Craig Nesbit, a company spokesman.

 	Exelon agrees with the NRC’s findings, he said.

 	Reach Sean Adkins at 771-2047 or sadkins@ydr.com. 


Copyright © York Daily Record 2004 122 S. George St., P.O. Box 
15122 York, PA 17405, (717) 771-2000
*****************************************************************
 49 WFSB: Nuclear power plant worker seeking reinstatement

February 10, 2004   

HARTFORD (AP) - A former nuclear power plant worker who claims he 
was fired in 1994 for raising health and safety issues alleges in 
a new lawsuit that state and private utility officials conspired 
to keep him from getting his job back.

Clarence Reynolds, of Montville, a former mechanic at the 
Millstone nuclear power complex in Waterford, makes the 
allegations in a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in 
Bridgeport. He is seeking reinstatement to his job and $10 
million in damages.

In November, the state Supreme Court upheld the decision of a 
lower state court, which dismissed Reynolds' claims that he was 
fired in an effort to muzzle his complaints about safety 
problems.

He said he alerted officials to problems such as radioactive 
waste discharges, waste handling and employee safety issues, 
including the alleged use of substandard ladders, at Millstone 
One, which was later shut down and ordered decommissioned.

The Supreme Court agreed with the lower court's ruling that there 
was no law under which Reynolds could sue to get his job back.

Reynolds lawyer, Nancy Burton, said she recently came across a 
transcript of a federal court hearing from October 1997 that she 
believes shows that the attorney general's office and lawyers for 
Northeast Utilities made a secret deal guaranteeing that Reynolds 
would not be returned to his job. NU owned Millstone at the time. 

Burton says the deal was made despite a preliminary ruling a 
month earlier by the state Department of Public Utility Control 
ordering NU to return Reynolds to his job. The DPUC, represented 
by the state attorney general's office, later dismissed Reynolds' 
complaint, saying the Nuclear Whistleblower Act did not contain 
provisions for getting his job back. 

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal strongly denied that 
his office made an illegal deal with NU to keep Reynolds from 
being reinstated.

"The allegations are completely false and unfounded, as they have 
been described to me," he said. "My office will review the 
complaint and respond in court."

Chris Riley, a spokesman for Connecticut Light & Power Co., an NU 
subsidiary, said NU will review the lawsuit. He declined further 
comment.

Reynolds, 61, got a job driving trucks after he was fired from 
Millstone, where he worked for 14 years. He is now unemployed 
because of an injury.

He claims in the new lawsuit that his civil rights and the 
Nuclear Whistleblower Act were violated and that he suffered 
physical and emotional distress.

"They did something wrong. They've been doing something wrong for 
years," he said. "I want to clear my name."


(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
All content © Copyright 2001 - 2004 WorldNow and WFSB. All
*****************************************************************
 50 Sofia News: Bulgaria's Nuclear Sector to Be Rendered Meager EU Finances
            
novinite.com

Politics: 10 February 2004, Tuesday.

The finances for Bulgaria's nuclear sector, provisioned in the EU 
financial framework for the early entry period of 2007-2009, are 
insufficient, Emil Vapirev, Head of the Committee for Peaceful 
Usage of Nuclear Energy said to private channel bTV on Tuesday.
 
To support the closure of the Kozloduy nuclear plant in Bulgaria, 
the EU Commission proposes extra EUR 350 M till 2009, including 
EUR 140 M to be granted between 2004 and 2007.
 
The total financial package for Bulgaria and Romania, amounting 
to some EUR 9 B, covers other aspects too, mainly with focus on 
absorbing the poor aspects of the two national economies, BBC 
Brussels correspondent said on Tuesday.
 
In drafting the common financial package, the European Commission 
has followed the model of the previous enlargement in reassuring 
the two countries that they will not end up worse off after they 
join than before, and that compensations will be due if they find 
themselves out of pocket.
 
As the head of the EU Commission Delegation to Bulgaria Dimitris 
Kurkulas announced on Monday, the financial framework for 
Bulgaria is very likely to be presented on February 10.[ width=] 

 All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2004 - Copyright
&Disclaimer - Privacy Policy   

Novinite.com (thebulgariannews.com also) is unique with being a
*****************************************************************
 51 USEC workers facing beryllium disease

Portsmouth Daily Times, Portsmouth, Ohio

Piketon
Jeff Barron, PDT Staff Writer
PIKETON Russ Sexton began working at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant 
in 1974, before stricter methods of preventing beryllium exposure were 
instituted.
Today he suffers from chronic beryllium disease one of eight plant workers 
who tested positive for the disease.
U.S. Energy Department officials said Thursday that aluminum blades used to 
produce enriched uranium at the plant contain the toxic material. The 
discovery was made last month.
I wouldnt say Im bitter,said Sexton, who was diagnosed in May. I just wish 
we had controls in place that would have protected workers from beryllium 
disease.
Chronic beryllium disease causes lung scarring and breathing problems and 
can be fatal. A federal compensation program gives workers who get the 
disease $150,000 and free medical benefits for life.
The DOE owns the plant and has leased it to the United States Enrichment 
Corporation since 1993.
Sexton is the safety representative for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, 
Chemical and Energy Workers union. He and Union President Dan Minter said 
the issue is not USECs fault. However, Minter and Sexton said USEC is 
taking steps to prevent further contamination. One step is to cordon off 
the machine room.
This is after the fact,Minter said. We will make sure no future acts might 
propose a risk. We will continue to test workers as we have in the past and 
make sure they are compensated.
Sexton said he does not suffer from any effects of the disease yet. He was 
diagnosed at the National Jewish Medical Center in Denver, Colo., after a 
blood test indicated he may have the beryllium disease.
I really hate that I have chronic beryllium disease,Sexton said. I wish I 
didnt. Some people can live a normal life with it and some regress and need 
treatment. About the only way to treat it is with steroids.
The DOE also owns the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and said it will 
continue to test workers at both plants for the disease.
The disease is not unique to the nuclear industry. Beryllium is present any 
time aluminum is present. But, the aluminum must be cut or melted to 
produce vapors or particles before it becomes dangerous.
clear3.gif
Story created Tuesday, February 10, 2004.






</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 52 US-Russia Plutonium disposition plan poses environmental, proliferation risks - press-release
 
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 07:13:18 +0300

 
PRESS-RELEASE
Moscow, February 10, 2004

For more info: in Moscow - +7 095 7766281, 2784642, Vladimir Slivyak.
E-mail: ecodefense@online.ru; Web: www.antiatom.ru

US-RUSSIA PLUTONIUM DISPOSITION PROGRAM POSES ENVIRONMENTAL,
PROLIFERATION RISKS
Environmental activists urges to halt dangerous MOX-plan while in the US
plutonium program faces delay. According to the New York Times, construction
of US facility producing MOX delayed to May 2005

In the framework of Russia-US agreement on utilization of 68 metric tons of
weapon grade plutonium, signed in September 2000, facilities to produce
so-called MOX-fuel for nuclear reactors must be built in both countries -
Savannah River site in the US and Tomsk-7 in Russian Siberia. MOX is mixed
oxides of uranium and plutonium - nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants.
Costs of Russian part of the program is nearly US$ 2.7 billion while US part
costs US$ 4.6 billion. It's known for the long time that Russia doesn't have
anough funds to build its facility and the effort of international community
to collect funds is underway. Today, it was announced in the US media that
US facility to turn plutonium into fuel delayed. According to the US
Department of Energy' preliminary budget released last week construction of
facility will not start before May 2005, earlier it was planned for July
2004.

One of the unresolved between USA and Russia issues is the liability in case
of accident at plutonium facility. In the US, Duke Power, Stone and Webster
and French Cogema contracted for facility construction. This consortium is
supposed to participate in Russian facility building. American side insists
on these companies would not be responsible for any accidents that my happen
when facility put in operation; Russia rejects it.

USA asked G8 to help with funding for Russian plutonium program, but only
about US$ 800 million contributed so far. Further, some contributors refuses
to allocate reserved funds until the liability issue is resolved.

Russian environmental groups strongly opposed to MOX program and proposes
another way to dispose plutonium - immobilization (mix with liquid glass and
radioactive waste to prevent smuggling). According to activists in Tomsk and
Moscow, MOX program may lead to increased risk of environmental pollution
and nuclear proliferation. Whole plan includes many transportations ofweapon
grade plutonium and fresh MOX-fuel across the country. It is very difficult
to insure high security while transporting fissile materials -
transportations are vulnerable to terrorist attacks and theft. According to
independent studies, there is also a serious risk of accident on railroads
that may lead to plutonium contamination of the environment.

"Plutonium utilization using aging Russian reactors is too risky technically
and may lead to proliferation through smuggling. Moreover, in both Russia
and United States MOX-program faces public resistance. Politicians must
finally face the reality - using plutonium as reactor fuel may present even
larger threat, than when it's simply stored in well-guarded storage.
Immobilization would be much cheaper and effective in preventing
proliferation", said Vladimir Slivyak, Ecodefense! co-chairman, anti-MOX
campaign coordinator since 1998.


*****************************************************************
 53 [DU-WATCH] Inquiry into gulf illness urged

Inquiry into Gulf illness urged


Clare Dyer, legal correspondent Friday February 6, 2004 The Guardian

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1142227,00.html

Calls for an independent inquiry into the plight of veterans with
Gulf war illness intensified yesterday after the collapse of their
eight-year compensation battle against the Ministry of Defence.

Lord Morris of Manchester, a supporter of the veterans, said he
would deliver a letter to the prime minister calling for an inquiry
and ex gratia payments to veterans suffering from a range of illnesses
after service in the 1991 Gulf war.

As revealed in the Guardian yesterday, the Legal Services Commission
is expected to withdraw funding for the claim by more than 2,000
ex-service personnel suffering from symptoms including neurological
problems, headaches, depression, muscle weakness, joint and muscle
pain, sleep disturbance, skin rashes and shortness of breath.

Former troops from several allied forces who served in the Gulf
have about twice the normal rate of ill health.

Several possible causes, including depleted uranium from munitions,
a cocktail of vaccinations and anti-nerve agents, have been suggested.

But their lawyers have told the LSC, which administers legal aid,
that there is not enough scientific evidence to prove that their
illnesses were due to their service.

Evidence of negligence on the MoD's part is also scant.

Paul Tyler, Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall and a member of
the Royal British Legion Group, said: "We are now absolutely
determined that we need urgently to press the case for an independent
inquiry."

The collapse of the legal battle means that "the government can no
longer pass the buck to the courts", said Mr Tyler.

"The fact that the legal case has petered out in no way implies
that the illnesses have petered out - far from it."

----

British lawyer calls for Gulf War syndrome review

2004-02-07 21:39:07 (Xinhuanet)

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-02/07/content_1303355.htm

LONDON, Feb. 7 -- A senior British lawyer has demandeda public
review of the issues surrounding Gulf War syndrome, the BBC reported
Saturday.

In a letter to Lord Morris of Manchester, who has

campaigned for Gulf War veterans, lawyer Stephen Irwin said:

"There is no doubt that many of them are ill. It is accepted by
experts worldwide that the veterans suffer ill health which is
associated with their active service in the Gulf."

Gulf War syndrome is a condition popularized after the war against
Iraq in 1991. Many of the 5,500 British troops who served in the
Gulf, together with US soldiers, have experienced a range of symptoms
including muscle weakness, neurological symptoms, headaches,
depression, fatigue,

short-term memory loss and difficulty in concentrating, joint and
muscle pain, sleep disturbances, skin rashes and shortness of breath.

There were also reports in the US of the same syndrome among Gulf
War veterans.

"Science has not explained the mechanism or mechanisms of theirillness,
much less that their suffering has resulted from fault," Irwin said
in the letter. "Nevertheless, we firmly believe that for very many
veterans, their suffering is genuine and has a significant impact
on their daily lives and the lives of their families."

"We would ask government to consider instituting a full public
review of the position of the veterans, as has been called for by
the Royal British Legion, and to instigate a process of conciliation
with the veteran groups,"

Irwin said.

"This should be designed to mark the effects of war service on the
veterans who are suffering and to make good, by ex-gratia payments,
the deficiencies of the War Pension Scheme," Irwin added.

Lord Morris was expected to deliver Irwin's letter to Downing Street
on Saturday.

Last week, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that an eight-year,
multi-million pound legal battle by more than 2,000 British veterans
for compensation for Gulf War syndrome has collapsed due to
insufficient scientific evidence either to prove the case or toshow
negligence on behalf of Britain's Ministry of Defense (MoD).

To succeed in their claim against the MoD, the veterans would have
to produce scientific evidence to prove their illness was caused
by service in the 1991 Gulf War and that the MoD had been negligent,
the paper said.

Gulf War syndrome has been attributed to stress, smoke from burning
oil wells, injections, depleted uranium ammunition and other causes,
although many believe the

condition could be psychosomatic.

The US and Britain have refused to accept a direct link betweenthe
war and the syndrome, even though they have spent hundreds of
millions of dollars researching possible causes.

--

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*****************************************************************
 54 [du-list] As The Danger of Depleted Uranium is Confirmed
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:21:56 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
10th February 2004

                         FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

            As The Danger of Depleted Uranium is Confirmed
        Inaccurate Government Testing Disguises True Amount of
                        Contamination In Troops

An ex-soldier has become the first veteran to win a pension
appeal for depleted uranium (DU) poisoning. Yet the UK
Government has tried to scupper potential future cases by
releasing misleading figures claiming fewer than 10 soldiers in
the current Iraq war have been contaminated by DU.

The figures, released the day after the pensions victory, are
based only on 275 samples which may indicate a much higher
overall contamination rate among the 70 000 UK soldiers who
have been involved in operations in Iraq over the last year.
Moreover these positive tests were found using a technique the
MoD knows to be inaccurate and capable of indicating
negative exposure when a positive exposure has taken place. A
more accurate test developed by a University of Leicester
laboratory is not being offered to these veterans but only to
veterans of the 1991 Gulf War.

The importance of accurate testing is underscored by the case
of veteran Kenny Duncan who won his pension appeal last
week (04/02/04) on the basis that his illness was caused by his
service in Iraq in 1991 cleaning tanks hit by DU weapons. Mr
Duncan suffers from breathlessness and aching joints. His
children also suffer from symptoms similar to those seen in
Iraqi children such as deformed toes and low immune systems.
Mr Duncan’s case was formed on the basis on blood tests by
German biochemist, Dr Albrecht Schott, that revealed
chromosome aberrations caused by ionising radiation.

The MoD has always consistently denied that DU exposure
can cause harm in the face of increasing strong scientific
evidence to the contrary. As Rae Street from CADU argues
"This is a landmark case, it justifies CADU and many other
groups and individual’s struggle for a ban on 'Depleted'
Uranium munitions"

For more information please contact Camille Warren on
0161 273 8293.




******************************************************************************
***************
The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, Bridge 5 Mill, 22a
Beswick Street,
Ancoats, Manchester, M4 7HR Tel./Fax.: +44 (0)161 273 8293
E-Mail info@cadu.org.uk     Website: http://www.cadu.org.uk

Affiliation costs to CADU are £8 a year unwaged/student and £10 a
year waged. For this you will receive campaigning materials and
CADU's quarterly newsletter. Our newsletter is also available free
of charge by E-Mail (send us a message with 'Subscribe CADU
News' as the subject). Please send your cheque draft or postal
order in £ sterling to the address above.
******************************************************************************
***************


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*****************************************************************
 55 [du-list] More info on Kenny Duncan
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:21:59 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
The Herald
First award for depleted uranium poisoning claim

MARTIN WILLIAMS February 04 2004
A SCOTS ex-soldier has become the first veteran to win a pension
appeal after being diagnosed with depleted uranium (DU) poisoning
during the 1991 Gulf war.
A Pension Appeal Tribunal Service hearing in Edinburgh accepted
medical evidence provided by Kenny Duncan, of Clackmannan,
previously dismissed by the MoD, which revealed he had become
ill after service in the Middle East.
Mr Duncan, 35, a driver with 7 Tank Transporter Regiment, helped
move tanks destroyed by shells containing the poisonous dust.
He says he has evidence that his children's health problems are
linked to his service. Kenneth, 10, Andrew, eight, and six-year-old
Heather, have symptoms similar to those suffered by some Iraqi
children, including deformed toes, and low immune systems
making them susceptible to asthma, hay fever and eczema.
Mr Duncan has suffered increasing breathlessness and aching
joints which he has linked to DU.
During the conflict, US and British troops fired an estimated 350
tonnes of DU weapons at Iraqi tanks.
Doctors in southern Iraq have reported a marked increase in
cancers and birth defects, and suspicion has grown that they were
caused by DU contamination from tank battles.
DU has been linked to a leukaemia cluster around the MoD range
at Dundrennan, near the Solway Firth. Communities close to the
range show the highest rate of childhood leukaemia in the UK.
Mr Duncan's appeal was launched after he was awarded only about
£40 a week, half the full pension, when he retired from the Army
through ill health in 1993 after nine years' service. His pension will
now be reassessed.
The National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA) said
the tribunal decision added weight to its call for a full independent
inquiry into Gulf war illnesses and supported its view that the
government should do more financially to help the victims.
Mr Duncan's case relied on blood tests carried out by Dr Albrecht
Schott, a German biochemist, which revealed chromosome
aberrations caused by ionising radiation.
Dr Schott's research formed part of a study of 16 British veterans of
conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia, and Kosovo, which found that they had
14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their
genes, raising fears that they will pass cancers and genetic
illnesses to their offspring.
The test results were dismissed by the MoD as "neither well thought
out nor scientifically sound".
Mr Duncan said yesterday: "It is just a huge relief to have someone
in authority say that you have been poisoned by this stuff and that
you are not telling lies. It is now time for the MoD to tell us what
went wrong.
"For all those veterans who have been going to the doctor with
these ailments and are being told there is nothing wrong with them,
this is for them, and I hope it will help them.
"I doubt that I will benefit much financially from this, but it wasn't
about the money, it was about the principle of the thing."
The ministry said yesterday: "Once we have seen the decision, we
will consider the implications it might have on the MoD."


******************************************************************************
***************
The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, Bridge 5 Mill, 22a
Beswick Street,
Ancoats, Manchester, M4 7HR Tel./Fax.: +44 (0)161 273 8293
E-Mail info@cadu.org.uk     Website: http://www.cadu.org.uk

Affiliation costs to CADU are £8 a year unwaged/student and £10 a
year waged. For this you will receive campaigning materials and
CADU's quarterly newsletter. Our newsletter is also available free
of charge by E-Mail (send us a message with 'Subscribe CADU
News' as the subject). Please send your cheque draft or postal
order in £ sterling to the address above.
******************************************************************************
***************


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 56 [du-list] nothing depleted about Depleted Uranium--this is
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:22:01 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
  yes, their now obvious plan was to lull humanity back across the nuclear 
threshold to accept mimi tactical nukes and nuke weaponization of space, 
all space:


URL http://www.sickofdoctors.addr.com/articles/depleted_uranium.htm



THIS PAGE WILL BE UPDATED SOON - CHECK BACK
Nothing Depleted, About Depleted Uranium

by 
<http://www.sickofdoctors.addr.com/articles/mail@sickofdoctors.com>Fintan 
Dunne, Updated 22 Jan '03
Editor <http://www.sickofdoctors.com/>www.SickofDoctors.com


<http://www.konscious.com/site/live/films/clip5/MOD_56k.ram>298538.jpgWhat 
if they
started a nuclear war
and never told you?

When they said that
depleted uranium was
the US empire's weapon
of choice, they lied. That word 'depleted' is a public relations spin. It 
makes it sound like the nuclear material is worn out.

It's not. It's Uranium.
Let's just call it Uranium.

It's a nuclear warhead of solid uranium 238 in a bullet or a shell. It 
minimizes casualties among US forces. Casualties that would be hard to sell 
to domestic opinion. Instead, the casualties are transferred to the future.

The Uranium babies of toxic Kosovo, or Iraq will die from it -whatever the 
name. In 
<http://imprint.uwaterloo.ca/issues/111999/4Features/Features4.shtml>Yugoslavia, 
as in Iraq, uranium dioxide dust contaminates the environment. The future 
casualties of modern US warfare are unborn babies. Which makes the US 
abortion debates look rather hypocritical.

What if they announced future babies deaths in time of war?

298569.jpg Nightly News might go like this:
"Coalition forces today captured a key
enemy stronghold. Thirty terrorists were killed and 150 babies horribly 
malformed. President Bush says it proves that US strategy is working. In a 
statement, Mr. Bush said that only 75,000 more 
<http://www.ngwrc.org/Dulink/children_and_war.htm>deformed babies could 
secure the capital for the US. Ed Carnage reports from Washington..."

The Uranium Babies will be with us for a verylong time. For billions of 
years to come, Iraq, Kosovo and uranium test firing ranges in the USA, will 
be lands with a poison harvest. So will all theaters of this slow, hidden 
nuclear holocaust.

Uranium nuclear war is a crime against humanity. Stop it.


Depleted uranium:
war hazard?

by Travis Dunn, 28 Dec '02
<http://www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=1687>DisasterNews.net
298580.jpg
<http://www.radio4all.net/stream.php/stream.m3u?sf=http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/12.21.02/112802dr.mp3&data=>2985c7.jpgMP3 

Audio 56k

Dr. Doug Rokke, former
head of the Pentagon's
Depleted Uranium Project
Recorded At: Seattle, WA
Producer: Mike McCormick

"Gulf War Casualties
& Depleted Uranium".

[Dr. Rokke]
"Depleted uranium rounds destroy everything and anything they hit.
It's a most effective weapon.
A completely and extremely
effective weapon."

"Each individual tank round is
ten pounds of solid uranium 238,
contaminated with with plutonium,
and other material."

"They should never use depleted uranium munitions again. The use
of depleted uranium munitions is
a crime against God, it's a crime
against humanity."
<http://www.radio4all.net/stream.php/stream.m3u?sf=http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/12.21.02/112802dr.mp3&data=>2985cd.jpg 


Dr. Doug Rokke has a
disturbing habit of laughing
when he should probably be
crying. He laughs when he talks
about battlefields contaminated
with radioactive waste. He can't
stop laughing when he talks
about what he claims is a
massive government cover-up.
And he keeps laughing when he
talks about his health problems,
which he attributes to deliberate
Army negligence, and which will
likely kill him.

Talking to Rokke on the telephone is disturbing enough without him laughing 
about such horrors. A strange echo accompanies every utterance. When this 
bizarre sound is pointed out to him, Rokke says he isn't surprised: he 
claims his phone has been tapped for years.

It may be tempting to dismiss Rokke as a crank or a conspiracy theorist, 
but Rokke is 35-year-veteran of the U.S. Army, and he isn't just a 
disgruntled grunt. Rokke ran the US Army's depleted uranium project in the 
mid-90s, and he was in charge of the Army's effort to clean up depleted 
uranium after the Persian Gulf War. And he directed the Edwin R. Bradley 
Radiological Laboratories at Fort McClellan, Ala.

Yet if you type Rokke's name into a search engine on any military website, 
you will draw a blank, as if he doesn't exist.


The Nuclear Nightmare Starts
Two scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 
conflict in 2001-02. The first arrived in June 2002, concentrating on the 
Jalalabad region. The second arrived four months later, broadening the 
study to include the capital Kabul, which has a population of nearly 3.5 
million people. The city itself contains the highest recorded number of 
fixed targets during Operation Enduring Freedom.For the study's purposes, 
the vicinity of three major bomb sites were examined.

It was predicted that signatures of depleted or enriched uranium would be 
found in the urine and soil samples taken during the research. The team was 
unprepared for the shock of its findings, which indicated in both Jalalabad 
and Kabul, DU was possibly causing the high levels of illness but also high 
concentrations of non-depleted uranium. Tests taken from a number of 
Jalalabad subjects showed concentrations 400% to 2000% above that for 
normal populations, amounts which have not been recorded in civilian 
studies before.

Those in Kabul who were directly exposed to US-British precision bombing 
showed extreme signs of contamination, consistent with uranium exposure and 
with some types of chemical or biological weaponry. These included pains in 
joints, back/kidney pain, muscle weakness, memory problems and confusion 
and disorientation. Many of these symptoms are found in Gulf War and 
Balkans veterans and civilians.Those exposed to the bombing report symptoms 
of flu-type illnesses, bleeding, runny noses and blood-stained mucous.

The study team itself complained of similar symptoms during their stay. 
Most of these symptoms last for days or months. The team also conducted a 
preliminary sample examination of new-born infants, discovering that at 
least 25% may be suffering from congenital and post-natal health problems 
that could be associated with uranium contamination. These include 
undeveloped muscles, large head in comparison to body size, skin rashes and 
infant lethargy. Considering that the children had access to sufficient 
levels of nutrition, the symptoms could not be due to 
malnourishment.<http://www.coastalpost.com/03/01/03.htm>2985d6.jpg


<http://traprockpeace.org/rokkemiller111302.ram>2985e7.jpg
Dr. Doug Rokke Major,
Medical Service Corps, USAR
WMFO FM Nov 13, 2002

[Sunny Miller]
"What kinds of retaliation have you experienced?

Wasn't there a firing range [in Aniston, Alabama] that included many kinds 
of exposures -including depleted uranium. And you recommended that the Army 
be responsible for environmental cleanup, and healthcare of exposed 
civilians. What happened after that recommendation?"

[Dr. Rokke]"I lost my job as Director at the US Army Chemical School."

"You made your recommendation on a Friday."

"And I was gone on the Monday."

"I've had senior officers[...] come up to me and say" 'Stop. You're 
supposed to stop.'" "When you don't stop, [...] they go back to your house 
and they shoot at you. Then they file IRS things against you..."

"When have you been shot at?"

"Back when I was working on depleted uranium and Monsanto PCB 
contamination... I'm on the phone with individuals working on Monsanto PCB 
issues, literally at my house, and all of a sudden bullets come right 
through my window."

"There are three kinds of files that have been disappearing?"

"That's correct. ...The chemical and biological logs. The medical records. 
Individual medical records that I personally wrote have been destroyed. We 
also know that the detail work in person files have disappeared. Including 
my own personnel file."
<http://traprockpeace.org/rokkemiller111302.ram>298621.jpg

If you read through hundreds of pages of government documents and 
transcriptions of countless government hearings regarding the military use 
of depleted uranium, not once will you come across his name.

That is more than a little unusual, since Rokke and his team were at the 
forefront of trying to understand the potential health and environmental 
hazards posed by the use of depleted uranium, or DU, on the battlefield.

"We were the best they ever had," Rokke claims. He's not bragging. He's 
laughing again.

The use of DU in combat is a fairly new innovation. It was used for the 
first time in the Persian Gulf War as the crucial component of 
armor-piercing, tank-busting munitions.

These munitions are tipped with DU darts that ignite after being fired. The 
shells are so heavy and hot that they easily rip through steel.

"It's like taking a pencil and pushing it through paper," Rokke said.

This uranium "pencil" then explodes inside its target, creating a deadly 
"firestorm."

As an anti-tank weapon, "these things are great," Rokke said. They enable 
U.S. troops to quickly take out enemy tanks at long-range.

According to the Web site of the Deployment Health Support Directorate, DU 
is "a by-product of the process by which uranium is enriched to produce 
reactor fuel and nuclear weapons components."

In other words, DU is low-level nuclear waste. According to the same Web 
site, DU can also contain trace amounts of "neptunium, plutonium, 
americium, technitium-99 and uranium-236."

A total of 320 tons of DU munitions were fired during the Gulf War. Rokke's 
job was to figure out how to clean up US tanks, the unfortunate victims of 
"friendly fire," which had been blown apart by DU rounds.

After years of this kind of this work in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and on 
practice ranges in the US Rokke reached a conclusion in 1996.

He told the Army brass that DU was so dangerous that it had to be banned 
from combat immediately.

That conclusion, Rokke said, cost him his career.

'Contamination was all over'

Burning tanks, burning oil fields, charred bodies.

This was Kuwait after the Gulf War. Rokke had a mission clean up US tanks 
contaminated with DU.

What Rokke found terrified him.

"Oh my God is the only way to describe it," Rokke said. "Contamination was 
all over."

Rokke and his crew were measuring significant levels of radiation up to 50 
meters away from affected tanks: up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and 
gamma radiation, and alpha radiation from the thousands to the millions in 
counts per minute (CPM) on a Geiger counter.

"That whole area is still trashed," he said. "It's hotter than heck over 
there still. This stuff doesn't go away."

His team took three months to clean up 24 tanks for transport back to the US

The Army, Rokke said, took another three years to fully decontaminate the 
same 24 tanks.

But the contaminated tanks weren't the only problem.

Within 72 hours of their inspections, Rokke and his crew started getting sick.

But they continued with their work. They went back to the US to perform 
tests on Army bases. They deliberately blew up tanks with DU rounds, then 
ran over and jumped on the tanks while they were still burning. They 
videotaped the uranium-oxide clouds pouring out, and they measured the 
radiation being thrown off.

In the past decade, Rokke said 30 men out of 100 who were closely involved 
in these operations dropped dead.

Rokke's lungs and kidneys are damaged. He believes that uranium oxide dust 
is permanently trapped inside his lungs. He has lesions on his brain, 
pustules on his skin. He suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. He has 
reactive airway disease, which means he can't stop wheezing and coughing, 
and experiences a loss of breath when he exercises. He also has 
fibromyalgia, a condition that causes chronic pain in his muscles, 
ligaments and tendons.

The VA tested Rokke for uranium levels in his body in 1994. He got the 
results back two and a half years later. His urine had 5000 times the 
amount of permissible uranium.

After years of fighting with the VA, Rokke said he managed to get a 40 
percent disability, but there is no official acknowledgment that his 
illnesses were caused by his work with DU.

The Army and the Pentagon continue to insist that DU is safe. Rokke says 
they know better, because he gave them the proof. He said they can't find 
evidence of DU's dangers because "they're looking for the wrong stuff, and 
they're using the wrong procedures."

The problem with DU, he said, is the stuff that's given off when a round is 
fired. The projectile begins burning immediately, and up to 70 percent of 
it oxidizes. This aerosolized power uranium oxide is the really dangerous 
stuff, Rokke said, particularly when it is inhaled.

Rokke insists that he and his men were wearing protective equipment or 
equipment they thought would protect them. But their face masks were 
capable of straining out particles of 10 microns or larger. That's as big 
as the DU particles get, according to the Army and the Pentagon.

Rokke, however, insists that he has measured particles as small as .3 
microns, and that scientists at the Livermore laboratories have measured 
them as small as .1 micron.

Thus these safety precautions, which are still in place now, are utterly 
useless, he said.

'I'm a warrior and a patriot'

About one quarter of the 700,000 troops sent to the Persian Gulf War have 
reported some sort of Gulf War-related illness, and Rokke is convinced that 
DU has something to do with it, along with the host of other chemicals to 
which troops were exposed, including low levels of sarin gas, smoke from 
oil fires, countless pesticides as well as anti-nerve gas tablets which 
troops were required to ingest.

If Rokke is right about the dangers of DU, why does the Department of 
Defense continue to use it and insist that it is safe?

"When you go to war, your purpose is to kill," Rokke said, "and DU is the 
best killing thing we got."

Rokke believes that the US military is putting more emphasis on firepower 
than on the health and safety of its own troops.

He received a memo in the early 90s he says proves his theory.

Dated March 1, 1991, the memo was written by Lt. Col. M.V. Ziehmn at the 
Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico.

"There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of dU 
[sic] on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the 
effectiveness of du on the battlefield, du rounds may become politically 
unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal," the memo reads. "If du 
penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities, then we 
should assure their future existence (until something better is developed) 
through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency is not garnered, it is 
possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability. I believe we 
should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after action reports [sic] 
are written."

The meaning of this memo is quite clear, Rokke said. Since DU munitions are 
so effective, they must continue to be used in combat, regardless of the 
environmental or health consequences.

The other issue is financial, he said. If the true effects of DU were 
known, cleanup costs would be absolutely staggering.

DU contaminated areas extend much farther than the Persian Gulf 
battlefields. Rokke said DU is regularly used in practice maneuvers in the 
US, namely in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and 
Puerto Rico. Then there's Kosovo, where DU rounds were used to take out 
Serbian tanks.

As the US stands on the brink of another war with Iraq, Rokke said he wants 
to make sure the American public fully understands that this war will be 
far worse that the last one, and that numbers of troops sickened by DU is 
likely to be much higher.

Rokke insists he is no pacifist.

"I'm a warrior and a patriot," he said. Given a verifiable threat against 
the US, I would go to war in a heartbeat."

But he said that he is speaking out for the good of American troops, and 
for anyone, including Iraqi troops and civilians, who could be exposed to DU.

"Am I pushing for peace today? Yes, I am," he said.

Before a war with Iraq can even be contemplated, Rokke said, DU has to be 
removed from every arsenal in the world.

In order for that to happen, however, the Pentagon would have to admit that 
Doug Rokke is right, and that would come at a price that no one has even 
imagined. But money can t restore the lives of those that Rokke says have 
died from DU, and money isn't going to get the uranium oxide out of his 
lungs. There are people at the Pentagon who understand all this, Rokke 
claims, and that he deems unconscionable.

"I hope God slam-dunks their butts, because this is absolutely criminal," 
he said.

First Posted to the Internet on December 30, 2002

********************************************************************************

LEUREN MORET'S TESTIMONY REGARDING DEPLETED URANIUM IN TOKYO


Testimony of Leuren Moret for the
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan




Dec. 13-14, 2003, Tokyo, JAPAN ?Leuren Moret

<http://mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-ICT13dec03.htm>http://mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-ICT13dec03.htm 





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</x-flowed>


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 57 OECD: Revised Nuclear Third Party Liability Conventions Improve 
Victims' Rights to Compensation
 
Press Communiqué 6 June 2003 - 

  [OECD Nuclear Energy Agency / L'Agence pour l'&eacute;nergie
nucl&eacute;aire]       

PRESS COMMUNIQUÉ 
Paris, 10 February 2004
 
Revised Nuclear Third Party Liability Conventions improve
victims' rights to compensation

The signing of the Protocols to amend the Paris Convention on 
Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy and the 
Brussels Convention Supplementary to the Paris Convention will 
take place on 12 February, at OECD headquarters. 

The revised Conventions will allow for a considerable increase in 
the amount of compensation available to victims of a nuclear 
accident and for the expansion of the scope of application of the 
Paris Convention. 

The most important features of the revised Paris Convention 
include an increase in the nuclear operator's liability amount to 
a new minimum of 700 million. In addition, the minimum liability 
amount applicable to low-risk installations and transport 
activities will climb to 70 million and 80 million respectively. 

The Convention will contain a detailed definition of "nuclear 
damage", allowing for a broader range of damage to be compensated 
than the existing personal injury and damage to property. The 
definition refers specifically to economic loss, the cost of 
measures to reinstate a significantly impaired environment, loss 
of income resulting from that impaired environment and the cost 
of preventive measures, all of which are likely to be 
considerable in the event of a serious nuclear accident. In 
addition, the geographical scope of the Paris Convention is being 
extensively expanded. 

The most important feature of the revised Brussels Supplementary 
Convention is a substantial increase in the three tiers of 
compensation under the Convention. The first tier, corresponding 
to the minimum liability requirement under the Paris Convention, 
will jump to 700 million and continue to be provided by the 
operator's financial security, failing which it must be provided 
by the installation State from public funds. The second tier will 
climb to a new high of 500 million and continue to be provided 
from public funds made available by the installation State. The 
third tier (international) will rise to 300 million and continue 
to come from public funds provided by all Contracting Parties. 
Total compensation available under the revised Paris-Brussels 
regime will be 1.5 billion, compared to the current amount of 300 
million IMF Special Drawing Rights (approximately 350 million). 

Before the revised Conventions will come into force, they will 
need to be ratified by their respective Contracting Parties.
 
News Media Contacts: 
Karen Daifuku 
Head, Central Secretariat, External Relations and Public Affairs
 Tel. 33 (0)1 45 24 10 10 
Fax 33 (0)1 45 24 11 10
 	E-mail: 

Patrick Reyners Head,
 Legal Affairs 
Tel.: 33 (0)1 45 24 10 30 
Fax: 33 (0)1 45 24 11 10 
E-mail: patrick.reyners@oecd.org 
*****************************************************************
 58 ic NorthWales: Nuclear link to child leukaemia 'cluster'?
               
Feb 10 2004
  
By Hywel Trewyn Daily Post     
  
THE nuclear industry last night rejected claims of a cluster of
children's cancer in North Wales 

Radiation expert Chris Busby says the Menai Strait area has a
28-fold rate of child leukaemia compared to the UK average and
blames the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria in
an HTV programme tonight. 

Dr Busby, of Aberystwyth, who sits on government committees,
said: "There is a 28-fold excess of child leukaemia in
Caernarfon over the period 2000-03, three cases, whereas only
0.1 should be expected in comparison with the national average." 

There have also been at least five cases of brain and spinal
tumours in Caernarfon since 1996 in children aged up to 14,
which is 18 times the national average, says Dr Busby of the
environ-mental group Green Audit. 

One of the children in the programme, Katie Bohana, of
Caernarfon, was diagnosed with a rare eye cancer,
retinablastoma, eight months ago. 

And David and Lyn Williams' son, Aled, five, was diagnosed with
leukaemia last year and has been receiving treatment at Alder
Hey children's hospital, Liverpool. 

Mr Williams, of Caernarfon, said: "Since we started going to the
hospital we have seen a lot of people from our part of North
Wales - it makes me wonder why there are so many of us from the
same area. 

"It would be nice to have more information about the illness. 
Sellafield BNFL spokesman Mark Longbottom said: "This report is
the latest in a long line of attempts by Green Audit to attack
the nuclear industry. 

"It is based on information which is acknowledged to be
incomplete - interviews and various (unnamed) sources - which
cannot be regarded as reliable data upon which to base a study
examining an issue as serious as childhood leukaemia." 

Dr John Steward, director of the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and
Surveillance Unit in Cardiff, said: "The questions raised by
this report are not new and our investigations to date have not
yet found any significant support for Dr Busby's claims." 
* Y Byd Ar Bedwar, S4C at 8.25 tonight.   	
      	
icNorthWalesTM is a trade mark of Trinity Mirror Plc.
*****************************************************************
 59 Portsmouth Daily Times: USEC workers facing beryllium disease   
 
February 10, 2004         

  Piketon
 Jeff Barron, PDT Staff Writer

 PIKETON — Russ Sexton began working at the Portsmouth Gaseous
Diffusion Plant in 1974, before stricter methods of preventing
beryllium exposure were instituted. 

Today he suffers from chronic beryllium disease — one of eight
plant workers who tested positive for the disease. 

U.S. Energy Department officials said Thursday that aluminum
blades used to produce enriched uranium at the plant contain the
toxic material. The discovery was made last month.

“I wouldn’t say I’m bitter,” said Sexton, who was diagnosed in
May. “I just wish we had controls in place that would have
protected workers from beryllium disease.”

Chronic beryllium disease causes lung scarring and breathing
problems and can be fatal. A federal compensation program gives
workers who get the disease $150,000 and free medical benefits
for life.

The DOE owns the plant and has leased it to the United States
Enrichment Corporation since 1993.

Sexton is the safety representative for the Paper,
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union. He and
Union President Dan Minter said the issue is not USEC’s fault.
However, Minter and Sexton said USEC is taking steps to prevent
further contamination. One step is to cordon off the machine
room.

“This is after the fact,” Minter said. “We will make sure no
future acts might propose a risk. We will continue to test
workers as we have in the past and make sure they are
compensated.”

Sexton said he does not suffer from any effects of the disease
yet. He was diagnosed at the National Jewish Medical Center in
Denver, Colo., after a blood test indicated he may have the
beryllium disease. 

“I really hate that I have chronic beryllium disease,” Sexton
said. “I wish I didn’t. Some people can live a normal life with
it and some regress and need treatment. About the only way to
treat it is with steroids.”

The DOE also owns the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and said
it will continue to test workers at both plants for the disease. 
The disease is not unique to the nuclear industry. Beryllium is
present any time aluminum is present. But, the aluminum must be
cut or melted to produce vapors or particles before it becomes
dangerous.   
    
  Story created Tuesday, February 10, 2004 at 7:07 AM.   
    
©2004 - The Portsmouth Daily Times 

*****************************************************************
 60 Las Vegas SUN: Senators quiz Energy Department on Yucca Mountain budget
 
ASSOCIATED PRESS 

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Energy Department's $880 million request
for a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada came under scrutiny
Tuesday from senators reviewing the department's budget for the
next fiscal year. 

Plans to reclassify some nuclear waste in Washington state and
Idaho, as well as slow process completing claims for sick former
employees also came up during a Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. 

Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow restated the department's
determination to begin accepting the nation's highest-level
radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las
Vegas, in 2010. 

"There is still much work to be done - at the site, at the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and throughout the country,"
McSlarrow said. "But at the end of the day, America will finally
have a long-promised, safe repository for nuclear waste." 

McSlarrow called the Yucca Mountain project key to ensuring the
future use of nuclear power in the U.S., to helping complete the
cleanup of weapons facilities and to consolidate high-level
nuclear waste in one secure location. 

The Bush administration and Congress in 2002 picked Yucca
Mountain as the site to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive
waste now stored at commercial and military sites in 39 states. 

Project scientists plan to bury casks containing the waste in
tunnels 1,000 feet beneath Yucca Mountain, which would remain
radioactive for tens of thousands of years. 

Nevada is fighting the plan in federal court. 

Several senators expressed concern Tuesday that the Energy
Department wants to draw $749 million from the Nuclear Waste
Fund for the Yucca Mountain project. The fund, set up in 1982 to
pay for nuclear waste disposal, has accumulated about $13
billion from nuclear power ratepayers. 

Tapping the money would remove it from congressional oversight. 

The $880 million sought for Yucca Mountain includes $186 million
for transportation research and nearly $48 million to complete
and apply for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license by
December. 

McSlarrow said transportation planning will determine routes to
move the waste cross-country and build a rail system within
Nevada. He said the department intends to decide very soon on a
method of transportation. 

He noted that the department's preferred rail route in Nevada,
dubbed the "Caliente Corridor," does not go through Las Vegas. 

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., had concerns on the department's
plans to change the title of some waste, so some may remain at a
site in Hanford, Wash. 

McSlarrow said the department was not trying to change how it
will take care of the waste, but trying to resolve a problem
posed by a court decision last year. 

Information from: Las Vegas Sun 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 61 NRC: IAEA transportation safety regulations 
                         FR Doc 04-2774 

[Federal Register: February 10, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 27)]
[Rules and Regulations]               
[Page 6139]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access
[wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr10fe04-1]                         

Rules and Regulations Federal Register This section of the 
FEDERAL REGISTER contains regulatory documents having general 
applicability and legal effect, most of which are keyed to and 
codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, which is published 
under 50 titles pursuant to 44 U.S.C. 1510. The Code of Federal 
Regulations is sold by the Superintendent of Documents. Prices of 
new books are listed in the first FEDERAL REGISTER issue of each 
week.

[[Page 6139]]

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
10 CFR Part 71
RIN 3150-AG71
 
Compatibility With IAEA Transportation Safety Standards and
Other 
Transportation Safety Amendments; Correction
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Final rule: correction.

SUMMARY: This document corrects a final rule appearing in the 
Federal Register on January 26, 2004 (69 FR 3698) amending the 
regulations governing the packaging and transportation of 
radioactive materials. This action is necessary to precisely 
identify provisions that will expire four years after the final 
rule becomes effective and the date on which that will occur.

EFFECTIVE DATE: The final rule is effective on October 1, 2004. 
Sections 71.19(a) and 71.20 expire on October 1, 2008.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Naiem S. Tanious, Office of 
Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone (301) 415-6103, 
e-mail nst@nrc.gov. 0 1. On page 3698, the effective date is 
corrected to read as follows: 

EFFECTIVE DATE: The final rule is effective on October 1, 2004. 
Sections 71.19(a) and 71.20 expire on October 1, 2008. 2. In Sec. 
71.19 paragraph (a)(3) is corrected to read as follows: Sec. 
71.19  Previously approved package. (a) * * * (3) Paragraph (a) 
of this section expires October 1, 2008. * * * * * Dated at 
Rockville, Maryland, this 4th day of February, 2004. For the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Michael T. Lesar, Federal Register 
Liaison Officer. [FR Doc. 04-2774 Filed 2-9-04; 8:45 am] BILLING 
CODE 7590-01-P
 
*****************************************************************
 62 Salt Lake Tribune: Hold firm on waste 
 
February 10, 2004   
 
    Kudos to Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, co-chair of the
legislative Task Force on Hazardous and Radioactive Waste. He,
Bill 145, requiring our elected Legislature and governor to
approve the level of radioactivity in waste that may be accepted
for disposal in Utah. 
 
    Envirocare wanted to accept higher level (equivalent to
Class B) waste from the Fernald, Ohio, nuclear weapons plant.
This venture, first reported in The Tribune last fall, was
repudiated by the public, causing Envirocare to withdraw its
application. There remain two other disposal packages that
Envirocare would like to accept, free from the oversight
required by Rep. Urquhart's bill. However innocuous these
packages may be made to appear, I urge that the Legislature hold
a firm line for the public health and safety of Utah. 
 
    
 
   Naomi Franklin 
 
   Salt Lake City 
 
Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune
*****************************************************************
 63 Salt Lake Tribune: New battle heats up over hot waste 
 
February 10, 2004   
 
[PHOTO]   
 
 By Judy Fahys 
 
    Community activists say Utah lawmakers may be unwittingly 
poised to open the door for hotter radioactive waste to come to 
Utah in two types of plutonium with concentrations dramatically 
more hazardous than normally permitted under state and federal
 
    Envirocare of Utah says the activists are misinterpreting the 
company's plans. 
 
    L egislators are set today to review Rep. Stephen Urquhart's 
House Bill 145, which would require legislators and the governor 
to have the final say on any hotter waste coming to Utah. But the 
St. George Republican's bill would make an exception for the new 
plutonium waste, leaving state regulators to decide whether it is 
permitted at Envirocare's Tooele County landfill. 
 
    "This is probably one of the most important decisions the 
state makes," said Claire Geddes of Utah Legislative Watch. "It 
ought to be decided by legislators." 
 
    Jason Groenewold of Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah 
(HEAL) points to Envirocare's request to amend its state license 
for "Special Nuclear Material" as evidence that the company wants 
approval to accept waste thousands of times hotter than currently 
allowed. 
 
    "There's certainly enough information in Envirocare's 
amendment request to raise a red flag the size of Utah," he said. 
"If that's not enough to get the Legislature's attention, then I 
don't know what is." 
 
    Envirocare spokesman Tim Barney accuses HEAL and its allies 
of grandstanding because the state regulators intend to write 
into the final license concentration limits that are no higher 
than allowed for "Class A" waste, the maximum currently allowed 
in Utah. "Just because it wasn't put in writing, doesn't mean it 
wasn't clearly understood," said Barney. 
 
    Lawmakers will be asked to sort out the conflicting positions 
when the Public Utilities and Technology Committee considers 
Urquhart's bill today. The bill is set for hearing at 4 p.m. in 
Room 303 of the State Capitol. 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
    The federal government, which has lots of Special Nuclear 
Material from its nuclear bomb-making days, gives the waste its 
own category because it contains forms of plutonium and uranium 
that can, if concentrated in large enough quantities, reach 
"criticality," or launch into uncontrolled chain reactions that 
give off potentially lethal levels of heat and energy. 
 
    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission originally gave Envirocare 
a license to accept small quantities of Special Nuclear Material 
in 1999 and amended it about a year ago. 
 
    The pending amendment, now part of the debate over Urquhart's 
bill, allows slightly higher levels. But the concentrations of 
plutonium-239 and plutonium-241 would be small enough that the 
public, Envirocare workers and the environment are safe from 
criticality, said the commission's Tim Harris, a senior project 
manager for Special Nuclear Material. 
 
    Even though the Special Nuclear Material concentrations are a 
bit higher than previously allowed at Envirocare, they are still 
considered "safe and protective," he said. "It's a robust safety 
system we have implemented." 
 
    Before these new limits are allowed, they must be 
incorporated by the state into Envirocare's Special Nuclear 
Material license. It is now up to state regulators to set the bar 
lower, to specifically prohibit Envirocare from taking anything 
as hot as the upper limits might permit. 
 
    It is clear that those upper-limit concentrations of 
plutonium are "off the charts" under the A-B-C classification 
used by states and the federal government to regulate low-level 
waste. 
 
    Under Envirocare's Oct. 21 license change request to the 
state and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission amendment approved 
Dec. 17, Envirocare would be able to accept up to 17,600 
nanocuries of plutonium-236 per gram of waste, while just 100 
nanocuries per gram are allowed under the federal low-level waste 
law for Class C. Nanocuries of plutonium per gram of waste is a 
common measure of nuclear material concentrations. 
 
    And, while federal law permits no more than 3,500 nanocuries 
of plutonium-241 per gram of waste, the pending state license 
would allow concentrations 6,000 times higher. 
 
    Arjun Makhijani, president of the nuclear think tank, the 
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said "this 
proposal should be rejected" and added that the concentrations 
allowed for both forms of plutonium exceed the federal standards 
for shallow disposal at landfills like Envirocare. 
 
    Dane Finerfrock, director of the state Division of Radiation 
Control, said work on the license came to a halt recently at 
Envirocare's request until the Legislature decides on HB145. 
 
    fahys@sltrib.com
 
Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune
*****************************************************************
 64 Star Trib: House shoots down fee hike for nuke waste trucking
 
Casper, Wyoming - Tuesday, February 10, 2004    
  
By TOM MORTON
Star-Tribune capital bureau Tuesday, February 10, 2004 

CHEYENNE -- The only bill the House killed among the 25 
introduced on the first day of the 2004 session was a proposal by 
a Casper legislator to tax nuclear waste moving through the state 
in order to better fund emergency response crews charged clean up 
nuclear and hazardous waste accidents.

House Bill 14 , the brainchild of Rep. Mary Gilmore, D-Casper, 
would have boosted the fees collected by the Wyoming Department 
of Transportation on nuclear waste shipments to $1,500 per 
shipment from $200. Those fees would have been deposited in a 
fund for training and assisting emergency responders.

"It was to build up that fund," a disappointed Gilmore said 
later. "It didn't have any money in it."

The bill anticipates the day when the federal government approves 
a permanent nuclear waste storage site, increasing shipments 
through Wyoming along Interstate 80 and exposing small town 
firefighters and other emergency responders to a bigger chance of 
having to cope with a hazardous spill, she said. "This is the 
stuff coming from back East." 

House Transportation and Highways Committee Chairman Rep. Wayne 
Johnson, R-Cheyenne, took the allotted two minutes to introduce 
the bill, but apparently was not able to get the message across 
about nuclear and hazardous waste response because two 
legislators asked what the bill would do to the uranium industry.

"Do we need higher fees which make it harder to do business?" 
asked Rep. Jack Landon, R-Sheridan.

Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, said uranium prices were going up 
and wondered if the bill would affect the transportation of ore, 
or "yellowcake."

Johnson was unable to offer a response in the allotted 30-second 
rebuttal, and the bill failed on a vote of 23-35 and two 
abstentions. Nonbudget bills in this budget session require a 
two-thirds majority in the house of introduction to be 
considered.

None of the other 24 bills introduced met the same fate. None was 
even close.

A bill to establish a pilot project to compensate ranchers and 
farmers for wildlife damages passed on a 44-13-2 vote. It would 
add $300,000 to the Game and Fish Commission budget.

Most passed by unanimous votes.

House Speaker Fred Parady, R-Rock Springs, told fellow House 
members when they convened at 2 p.m. that would hear 133 
"jacketed" -- ready for introduction -- bills, with about 200 
others in various stages of preparation.

In his introductory remarks, he also told the House that Gov. 
Dave Freudenthal had oversimplified the tort reform issue by 
promoting a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the 
Legislature to impose limits on noneconomic damages in medical 
malpractice lawsuits.

He plans to introduce a bill that would explain the consequences 
if voters choose to abandon a century-old constitutional 
protection, he said.

Parady, joining other government leaders, highlighted the 
importance of acting responsibly with the proposed $1.2 billion 
budget surplus. "Our collective wisdom will define this session 
for posterity," he said.

Parady also cautioned fellow legislators to guard their tongues 
and avoid heated rhetoric as they debated the budget and the 
nonbudget bills, he said. "Remember the lift and lilt" of speech, 
he said.

Some of the bills that were received for introduction included a 
repeal of the coal transport tax on the trucking industry; 
amendments allowing Medicaid to pay for transplants; minor 
changes to the Workers' Compensation system; insurance 
regulation; giving park rangers protections afforded other peace 
officers; National Guard issues; a large "revisions bill" that 
cleaned up language in existing statutes; and allowing weight 
increases for tow trucks that assist semi-tractor trailers. 

  Copyright © 2004 by the Casper Star-Tribune
*****************************************************************
 65 Tri-Valley Herald: Lab chief leaving post after 15 years
 
  2/10/2004   
 
Shank helped facility through considerable change
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

The longest-serving chief of a national lab is stepping down at 
the end of 2004, after seeing the University of California 
through a competition to hold on to its seminal laboratory. 

Charles V. Shank, 60, said Monday he would resign as director of 
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory next December to resume 
research and teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. 

In the last 15 years, Shank led the Berkeley lab to stretch 
beyond its heydey in nuclear and atomic physics, into decoding of 
the human genome, nanotechnology and a top rank in unclassified 
U.S. supercomputing. 

The U.S. Department of Energy last week renewed the UC contract 
to run the lab for one year, while the federal government 
conducts a bidding competition the Congress mandated for Berkeley 
and all labs run by the same contractor for more than 50 years. 

"It's a very good time for me, after 15 years," Shank said. "It's 
a very long time to be lab director. I've maintained my 
enthusiasm and drive, but I feel ready to hand the baton off." 

UC president Bob Dynes plans to name a committee to find Shank's 
successor. Shank's salary is $336,000. 

Shank promised Dynes that he will work through the competition 
over the Berkeley lab, although no prospective challengers have 
stepped forward. 

"I think it's important we present our best case," Shank said. 

E.O. Lawrence founded what was then known as the UC Radiation 
Laboratory on the University of California, Berkeley campus, then 
moved it uphill for more space and security. The lab's 4,000 
employees are scattered in dozens of offices and experimental 
facilities crammed on the hillside over Berkeley, performing 
unclassified research. 

Shank expects to round out his career on the Berkeley campus, 
teaching in one or more of the three departments where he's on 
faculty -- physics, chemistry and electrical engineering/computer 
science. 



"It's just the idea I'm really vital right now and want to do 
this" before the end of his scientific career, said Shank. He is 
considered an expert in ultra-short, powerful laser pulses. 

"This has just been an incredibly positive experience for me. The 
scientists and the science at this lab are just unlike anything 
anywhere in the country," he said. "I think this laboratory is in 
good shape right now." 

The university returns its fee for running the lab to its 
scientists in the form of research grants. A nonprofit lab 
contractor, Battelle Memorial Institute, has declined any 
interest in the lab, and one of its executives has said it makes 
no sense for any entity other than UC to run it. 

"I simply can't imagine competitors," Shank agreed. "That's not 
to say there won't be one. But I don't see one. The laboratory is 
highly integrated into the University of California and that's a 
good portion of its strength and the management of its science." 

Tri-Valley Herald All Rights Reserved
*****************************************************************
 66 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Fernald
 
                         FR Doc 04-2804 
[Federal Register: February 10, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 27)] 
[Notices] [Page 6273-6274] From the Federal Register Online via 
GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr10fe04-81]                         
 
AGENCY: Department of Energy.
 
ACTION: Notice of open meeting.
 
SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental 
Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Fernald. The 
Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) 
requires that public notice of these meetings be announced in the 
Federal Register.
 
 
DATES: Wednesday, February 18, 2004; 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
 
ADDRESSES: Fernald Closure Project Site, 7400 Willey Road, 
Trailer 214, Hamilton, OH 45013-9402.
 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Doug Sarno, The Perspectives 
Group, Inc., 1055 North Fairfax Street, Suite 204, Alexandria, VA 
22314, at (703) 837-1197, or e-mail; 
djsarno@theperspectivesgroup.com.
 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of 
the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of 
environmental restoration, waste management, and related 
activities.
 
Tentative Agenda 6 p.m.--Call to Order 6-6:30 p.m.--Chair's 
Remarks, Ex Officio Announcements and Updates 6:30-8:15 
p.m.--Discuss Groundwater Treatment Alternatives --Review Options 
Presented in January --Evaluate and Compare Options --Discuss 
Other Potential Alternatives 8:15-8:45 p.m.--Update on 
Stewardship Issues --Request for Recommendation on Artifacts and 
Photographic Resources --Use of Existing Buildings for Education 
Facility --8:45-9 p.m.--Public Comment --9 p.m. Adjourn Public 
Participation: The meeting is open to the public.
 
Written statements may be filed with the Board chair either
 
[[Page 6274]] before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish 
to make oral statements pertaining to agenda items should contact 
the Board chair at the address or telephone number listed below. 
Requests must be received five days prior to the meeting and 
reasonable provision will be made to include the presentation in 
the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer, Gary Stegner, 
Public Affairs Office, Ohio Field Office, U.S. Department of 
Energy, is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that 
will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Each individual 
wishing to make public comment will be provided a maximum of five 
minutes to present their comments. This Federal Register notice 
is being published less than 15 days prior to the meeting date 
due to programmatic issues that had to be resolved prior to the 
meeting date.
 
Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public 
review and copying at the Freedom of Information Public Reading 
Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., 
Washington, DC, 20585, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday-Friday, 
except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by 
writing to the Fernald Citizens' Advisory Board, Phoenix 
Environmental Corporation, MS-76, Post Office Box 538704, 
Cincinnati, OH 43253-8704, or by calling the Advisory Board at 
(513) 648-6478.
 
Issued at Washington, DC on February 5, 2004.
 
Rachel Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer.
 
[FR Doc. 04-2804 Filed 2-9-04; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

 
*****************************************************************
 67 Las Vegas RJ: LETTERS: Nanny staters seek more and more sin taxes 
 
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
 
To the editor:
 
 First, let me state: I don't smoke. But the article in
Wednesday's paper, "Anti-smoking plan unveiled," shows how
government, once again, has established itself as our moral
leader.
 
 The story states that a group wants to impose a tax of $2 on
each pack of cigarettes, the proceeds of which will go to
further the government's desire to stop people from smoking.
 
 The politicians' statements in the article didn't mention that
a previous multibillion-dollar legal settlement against the
tobacco industry was supposed to do just that. And that our
federal and state governments have already budgeted that money
for various pet projects unrelated to smoking cessation. Any
money raised by the additional tax will be in addition to that.
 
 The very folks who forced government medical care on us -- in
the form of Medicare, for instance -- insist it's their fiscal
duty to force behavior that they think healthful on others. For
this reason they've justified "sin" taxes on alcohol and
tobacco. With the government now bemoaning the population's
"obesity epidemic," how much more justification will it need to
add sin taxes to the various foods they believe are undesirable?
 
 It is not the government's place to decide what is moral or
what isn't. Nor is it its job to legislate citizens' consumption
habits.
JERRY STURDIVANT
LAS VEGAS

Hazardous waste
To the editor:
 
 In response to the Feb. 2 story, "Report details benefits of
Yucca":
 
 Not only does the article point out the obvious economic
benefits of the nuclear repository to Nevada, it also shows that
there is some realistic analysis being conducted.
 
 Still, some have very real misconceptions. One writer states
that, "It's the transportation of the waste rather that the
storage that's risky." I agree completely with that statement.
But I'm more concerned about the thousands of gallons and pounds
of hazardous -- some very deadly -- chemicals and materials that
pass through Las Vegas daily on Interstate 15 or by rail. Both
of these routes parallel the Strip and downtown. These shipments
are literally "in our back yards," not 100 miles away at Yucca
Mountain.
 
 These shipments have been passing through our valley for
decades, and pose a very real threat to our safety. They are not
radioactive, but many can be just as deadly, or more so. Yet
there are no doomsday cries from our politicians. I wonder why?
RICHARD DAVIS
LAS VEGAS

Do something
To the editor:
 
 I am absolutely aghast at what went on at Manch Elementary
School as reported in Sunday's editorial section. A "teacher" (I
use the term loosely) wanted to teach her kids what segregation
was like so she allowed all the black students to engage in
racial taunting of white students. How absolutely deplorable.
Why this "teacher" even has a job right now is beyond my
comprehension.
 
 Suppose this had happened in Summerlin and the roles were
reversed? Think that "teacher" would be working educating our
kids? No way. The uproar would have been deafening. 
As a parent with kids in the school district, I expect
Superintendent Carlos Garcia to do something about this, other
than cover his ears and pretend it did not happen.
DAVID T. LANCASTER
NORTH LAS VEGAS

Hate crime
To the editor:
 
 This so-called race lesson at Manch Elementary was outrageous.
If this had been aimed at black children, the NAACP and Nation
of Islam would be surrounding the school demanding the teacher
be drawn and quartered. The school district would have fired the
teacher on the spot and the feds would have arrested her for a
hate crime.
 
 But since she directed it at white children, she's only
"misguided."
 
 The school district is lucky the powerful national white
organization did not threaten lawsuits and mobilize and march on
the seats of power demanding action be taken. Oh, I forgot. The
white people can't have a lobbying group. That would be racist.
WILLIAM COLEMAN
LAS VEGAS

Drug benefit
To the editor:
 
 In response to the Feb. 2 editorial, "Medicare money":
 
 The recent passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug,
Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 represents a
significant achievement for America's seniors and disabled. For
the first time, Medicare's beneficiaries will have new choices
in care and enhanced benefits designed to improve the quality of
their life. 
While you raise some questions about the budget estimates of
this new law, it's important to note that it is not uncommon for
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and administration estimates
to differ. Ultimately, the CBO, which serves as the financial
adviser to Congress, is responsible for estimating costs of
legislation.
 
 During the deliberations by the Medicare conference committee,
the administration informed the conferees and the CBO of our
assumptions and budget implications on various provisions in the
bill. However, a final cost estimate by the administration could
not be done until the bill was completed. The process was
complicated even further as the bill changed substantially in
the final days before passage. 
Most important to remember is that this new Medicare law makes a
significant investment in improving the health care of seniors
and the disabled. With the addition of a drug benefit, better
preventive health services and increased access to doctors and
hospitals, the Medicare program will be strengthened long into
the 21st century.
DENNIS SMITH
WASHINGTON, D.C.

The writer, with the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, is acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare
&Medicaid Services.

Ban it
To the editor:
 
 I was absolutely horrified that you would print such an
unconscionable commentary as "California, cigarettes and
prisons: Ban smoking, not tobacco" (Feb. 5). Maybe we should
also provide prisoners with crack cocaine and marijuana.
 
 Tobacco is not a legal drug: It is not legal to poison people,
no matter how slowly you do it. Banning tobacco, a drug that
kills 5 million users around the world every year, is the only
sensible solution to prevent further genocide by this weapon of
mass destruction.
DAVE JOHNSON
ARLINGTON, TEXAS
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 68 Tri-City Herald: Dirty job nears end 

This story was published Monday, February 9th, 2004 

By Annette Cary Herald staff writer 

Hanford workers are close to having the nuclear reservation's 
first piece of heavily contaminated land clean enough to be 
redeveloped for industrial use. 

Whether any business will be interested in building on the land 
is an unanswered question. 

The land on a scenic stretch of the Columbia River a mile north 
of Richland is still too contaminated to be used for homes or a 
park, and the 300 Area is still plagued with an underground plume 
of uranium that's not dissipating as expected. 

But completion of cleanup on the first section of the 300 Area 
still shows significant progress in the effort to halt continued 
contamination of groundwater near the Columbia River and to 
convert back to community use some of the land taken by the 
government during World War II. 

"This is the way the cleanup process is supposed to work," said 
Nick Ceto, Hanford program manager for the Environmental 
Protection Agency, in a prepared statement. 

Other Hanford land has been released or is close to being 
released for recreation or industrial use. 

But none of it had the heavy contamination of Hanford's 300 Area. 

From 1943 to 1994 waste generated at Hanford's 300 Area just 
north of Richland was dumped, untreated, at the northern end of 
the 1.5-square-mile area along the Columbia River. 

As Hanford developed the science and processes of making 
plutonium for weapons, starting during World War II, the 300 Area 
was used for research. 

The liquid waste produced was pumped untreated into nearby ponds 
and trenches along the banks of the Columbia. In later years, up 
to 1.5 million gallons a day of liquid contaminated with uranium, 
cobalt, arsenic and polychlorinated biphyenals, or PCBs, were 
sent to the trenches. 

Two percolation ponds dug along the river were intended to allow 
liquids to travel through the soil and into the river. 

"Then it would plug up and have to be scraped out," said Mike 
Goldstein of the EPA. "There were blowouts in the '40s to the 
river." 

In addition, solid waste generated in the 300 Area was buried in 
its northern sections over 27 years. 

Cleaning up the mess began a little more than six years ago. 

So much dirt has been hauled away from the 117-acre parcel that 
it now accounts for about 15 percent of the waste at the 
landfill. 

As the job progressed, workers had one particularly nasty 
surprise. 

In one waste burial site, workers turned up 786 barrels filled 
with uranium chips and depleted uranium oxide powder. The uranium 
chips had been packed in oil to keep them from spontaneously 
bursting into flames. 

The drums have all been removed and are being treated for 
disposal at central Hanford. 

The last few months of the project have been marked by a parade 
of trucks carrying clean soil from a borrow area across Stevens 
Boulevard from the 300 Area. 

On Friday, workers were fighting sleet and mud to regrade the 
largest of the former waste percolation ponds. Including its 
berms, it stretched about 30 acres and was up to 23 feet deep. 

The goal is to get the land and former ponds not only cleaned to 
EPA industrial standards, but also looking good enough to market, 
Goldstein said. 

Removing more contaminated dirt could bring the site up to 
standards required for residences along the river, but cleanup 
started with a plan that the area would be used for industrial 
use. That meant children would not play there, nor would people 
be digging in gardens. 

But other plans have changed since 1997. 

"When we characterized it as industrial, we thought a fair number 
of buildings would still be there" in the southern portion of the 
300 Area, said Pamela Brown Larsen, Richland's Hanford analyst. 

But city officials learned a year ago that DOE has an accelerated 
plan to dismantle most, if not all, of the developed portion of 
the 300 Area by 2012. Even though not all buildings are 
contaminated, much of the soil is. 

City officials are concerned now that the area could be a tough 
sell for industrial use. 

They've studied other areas in the nation that have converted 
formerly contaminated land to industrial use. Those had little 
industrial land available to develop, unlike the Tri-City area, 
Larsen said. 

Those areas also had millions in federal money available to 
develop infrastructure, which Richland does not expect to 
receive. 

The land does have one major asset -- access to a $17 million 
plant for treating water contaminated with liquid metal waste. 

"Maybe that will be the silver lining," she said. 

There may also be questions about groundwater issues in the 300 
Area. 

Removal of the contaminated dirt will reduce the risk of more 
contaminants reaching groundwater or the river. But a plume of 
uranium still remains beneath the 300 Area. 

Cleanup plans originally called for nature to break down and 
disperse the uranium. But that's not happening as quickly as 
expected. An upcoming evaluation at the problem could require 
more remediation work in the 300 Area. 

© 2004 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press &Other Wire Services
*****************************************************************
 69 Las Vegas SUN: Editorial: Budget is great -- for some states

Today: February 10, 2004 at 9:11:46 PST 

 A president's election-year budget proposal usually contains
something extra for swing states that could decide the
campaign's outcome. Many political observers believe Nevada
could be a pivotal swing state in this year's presidential
election, so last Friday we read with much interest the
"Washington Wire" feature in The Wall Street Journal that looked
at what swing states stood to benefit under President Bush's
budget.

 Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
were mentioned as states that will be pleased that Bush is
tripling the funding for the Great Lakes cleanup program.
Residents in Pennsylvania and West Virginia also were happy to
learn that new funds are being proposed for mine reclamation.
Cleanup of some federal nuclear facilities, such as those at
Washington state's Hanford facility, also will see their biggest
increases ever.

 We didn't see Nevada's name mentioned in The Wall Street
Journal report, however, which made us pause. So we turned to
the White House itself for more information, looking at its
state-by-state analysis of the budget, but we didn't find
anything for Nevada other than budget increases for basic
programs that all states benefit from. Granted, Nevada has just
five electoral votes, but given that every state was critical
last election, how could the president possibly have forgotten
our state?

 But then we remembered that the president didn't forget us at
all. Bush is recommending that $880 million be spent on the
Yucca Mountain project next year, a remarkable $303 million
increase over what Congress approved this year for the proposed
dump, which would store 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste
in Southern Nevada. We're positive that Nevadans, in November,
won't forget President Bush's election-year "gift." 
 
*****************************************************************
 70 Daily Californian: Berkeley Lab Director To Step Down
 
By KIM-MAI CUTLER Daily Cal Staff Writer Tuesday, February 10, 
2004
 
        Longtime Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Director 
Charles Shank, who oversaw the lab’s transition away from nuclear 
research and into supercomputing and X-ray science, announced 
yesterday he will step down by the end of this year. 

        “I think that I have had this in mind for some time, and 
after 15 years, I’ve completed what I’ve felt I could 
accomplish,” Shank said. 

        The longest-serving director of any national laboratory 
in the country, Shank saw the lab become a leader in 
supercomputing, make inroads into nanoscience and more than 
double its budget. 

        “Chuck Shank is looked up to as a leader by his peers at 
the Department of Energy’s 16 other labs, and respected by all 
those who have collaborated with him at the Department of 
Energy,” said Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham in a statement. 

        His resignation comes less than a year before the lab 
will undergo its first-ever competitive bidding process, a result 
of a federal bill signed last December. 

        Other universities and private corporations may compete 
with UC for a $500 million contract to run the laboratory, which 
UC has held sole stewardship of for more than 70 years. 

        The close ties with the university will make the Berkeley 
lab the least at risk to outside competition, if the UC Board of 
Regents decides to bid to keep control of the lab. 

        “There’s nothing like our laboratory. It is unique in the 
world. It’s a major laboratory next to a major university with a 
very strong partnership,” Shank said. 

        Shank will return to teaching and research at UC 
Berkeley, where he is appointed in three different 
departments—physics, chemistry, and electrical engineering and 
computer sciences. 

        More than 250 UC faculty members have joint appointments 
at the lab. 

        UC President Robert Dynes will begin an immediate search 
to find Shank’s successor by the end of this year.  

   
*****************************************************************
 71 KGW: Federal government agrees to pay $6.8 million 

kgw.com | News for Oregon and SW Washington | AP Wire
 
02/10/2004 

Associated Press 

The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to pay the state of 
Washington $6.8 million in a tax-related debt for work done at 
the Hanford nuclear reservation more than 10 years ago, the state 
Department of Revenue announced Monday. 

State Attorney General Christine Gregoire had sued the federal 
agency last month for payment. 

"Everyone who owes taxes should pay them, and the federal 
government is no exception," Department of Revenue Director Will 
Rice said in a news release. 

The state had been seeking payment since 1993, after Hanford was 
considered as a potential site for a nuclear waste repository. 
Nevada's Yucca Mountain was instead chosen as the site for the 
repository. 

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, however, the state 
was allowed to collect payments in lieu of certain taxes for 
activities such as surveying, sampling and testing that took 
place after Hanford was identified as a potential site in 1986. 

The Energy Department's own appeals board ruled in July 2003 that 
it had to pay the debt. The state filed suit in January when the 
debt remained unpaid. 

The $6.8 million will go into the state's general fund, said Cam 
Comfort, senior assistant attorney general with the division of 
revenue, bankruptcy and collections. 

"It's been a long haul. It's taken a long time, but to finally 
come to the end of the road with a significant payment that was 
due under the statute, we're very pleased at that," Comfort said. 

This text is invisible on the page, but this text is affected by 
the invisible item's flow. This text is invisible on the page, 
but this text is affected by the invisible item's flow.     

*****************************************************************
 72 EurekAlert: Sandia helps DOE take first steps in control, tracking of
potential 'dirty bomb' sources

 Public release date: 10-Feb-2004
 
Contact: Will Keener
 rwkeene@sandia.gov
505-844-1690
 DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia helps DOE take first steps in control, tracking of
potential 'dirty bomb' sources
 
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Small radioactive sealed sources, designed to 
provide useful tools for measurement and analysis in a variety of 
industry and laboratory settings, have moved from the beneficial 
category to the threatening category in the post 9/11 world. The 
Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories is working to 
get a better handle on where these sources are located and how 
they can be controlled. 

The recurring loss, theft, or misplacement of radioactive 
sources, worldwide in scope, has long been an issue for public 
health and law enforcement officials. 

Now, with the added potential for their use in radioactive 
dispersal devices (RDDs), or so-called "dirty bombs," officials 
view them as much more of a threat. Such a bomb detonates 
conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material across a 
target area. Dirty bombs, experts acknowledge, are likely to 
cause as much or more damage from fear and reaction to fear as 
from the dangers of the explosives or the radioactive materials 
themselves. 

Clipping Collection 

Joe Schelling, of Sandia's Program Development and Environmental 
Decisions Department, keeps a collection of news items that 
suggest the problem. One tells of a small, yttrium-90 sealed 
source was left in a New York taxicab. It was later recovered. 
Others tell how radioactive cesium chloride, removed from a 
sealed source, found its way into the hands of children in 
Brazil. At least four deaths and the destruction of part of a 
town, including businesses and 85 homes, resulted. Others detail 
a regular pattern of losses or misplacement of sealed sources. 

"After 9/11, people in government started asking 'where is this 
stuff (sealed sources) in the country?' and nobody had a good 
answer," says Schelling. "We definitely started paying attention 
to missing radioactive sources because of the RDD potential," 
says Lori Dotson, who is managing Sandia's project to better 
control the more than two million government and commercial 
sealed radioactive sources in the US. 

Enter RSRT 

The project, called the Radioactive Source Registry Tracking 
System (RSRT), will first track all DOE sealed radioactive 
sources and provide decision makers with some estimation of the 
potential threat they may pose. The system is being coordinated 
with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the 
International Atomic Energy Agency to be consistent with national 
and international source tracking needs. 

Following reports from an International Conference on Security of 
Radioactive Sources in Vienna, Austria, in March 2003 and from 
the DOE/NRC Interagency Working Group on Radiological Dispersal 
Devices in May 2003, the Secretary of Energy chartered DOE's 
Office of Plutonium, Uranium, and Special Materials Inventory (SO 
62) to create a database for tracking sealed sources. 

The Sandia team's effort has resulted in an initial RSRT system 
well ahead of schedule, notes Gary "G.D." Roberson, DOE project 
manager. With anticipated increases in funding over the next few 
years, he expects the system to make a significant contribution. 
"It is already significant in the sense that the DOE has a 
database that is a direct commitment to the charter and is up and 
running." 

Responding to the May charter from Secretary Spencer Abraham, 
Sandia team members built the RSRT system by using existing data 
and databases and adding other sealed source data from throughout 
the DOE complex. "Sandia had an operational database with some 
55,000 entries called the National Inventory of Sealed Sources, 
which contained select nuclear materials, actinide isotopes, and 
sealed sources," explains Schelling. 

Aggressive Milestones 

The Sandia team set aggressive milestones to demonstrate that it 
could deliver an online system to meet the immediate needs of the 
new charter. The team met the first milestone late last year, six 
weeks ahead of schedule, by placing the interim RSRT online. 

Federal regulations set limits on the types of radioactive 
material that must be controlled. The Sandia system uses those 
limits as a baseline. Now, acquiring data becomes critical to the 
ultimate success of the RSRT program. Idaho National Engineering 
and Environment Laboratory is supporting the team by leading the 
data acquisition effort. 

The team's goal is to track all DOE sealed sources by March 31. 

Currently, DOE is the primary user of the system, but DOE has 
also offered it to the Department of Homeland Security, the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Environmental Protection 
Agency for use as a tool to support tracking, assessment, and 
recovery of sealed sources. 

### 

Sandia National Laboratories A Department of Energy National 
Laboratory Managed and Operated by Sandia Corporation 
ALBUQUERQUE, NM LIVERMORE, CA MEDIA RELATIONS DEPARTMENT MS 0165 
ALBUQUERQUE, NM 87185-0165 PHONE: (505) 844-8066 FAX: (505) 
844-0645
 

Story available at: 
http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2004/def-nonproli 
f-sec/nrrsrt.html

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia 
Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department 
of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main 
facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia 
has major R responsibilities in national security, energy and 
environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness. 

Sandia Media Contact: Will Keener, rwkeene@sandia.gov, (505) 
844-1690 

Sandia Technical Contact: Lori Dotson, ljdotoso@sandia.gov, (505) 
284-9205 

Sandia National Laboratories' World Wide Web home page is located 
at http://www.sandia.gov. Sandia news releases, news tips, 
science photo gallery, and periodicals can be found at the News 
Center button.

 
EurekAlert! ]] 
*****************************************************************
 73 Newswise: Sandia Helps DOE in Control, Tracking of Potential 'Dirty Bomb'
Sources
 		 		
  Source: Sandia National Laboratories           Released: Tue
10-Feb-2004, 17:00 ET 
  
DIRTY BOMB TRACKING DATABASE RADIOACTIVE SOURCE REGISTRY
TRACKING SYSTEM   
  
Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only  
  
DescriptionSmall radioactive sealed sources have moved from the 
beneficial category to the threatening category in the post 9/11 
world. Sandia National Laboratories is working to get a better 
handle on where these sources are located and how they can be 
controlled.             

Newswise  Small radioactive sealed sources, designed to provide
useful tools for measurement and analysis in a variety of
industry and laboratory settings, have moved from the beneficial
category to the threatening category in the post 9/11 world. The
Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories is working
to get a better handle on where these sources are located and
how they can be controlled.

The recurring loss, theft, or misplacement of radioactive
sources, worldwide in scope, has long been an issue for public
health and law enforcement officials.

Now, with the added potential for their use in radioactive
dispersal devices (RDDs), or so-called "dirty bombs," officials
view them as much more of a threat. Such a bomb detonates
conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material across a
target area. Dirty bombs, experts acknowledge, are likely to
cause as much or more damage from fear and reaction to fear as
from the dangers of the explosives or the radioactive materials
themselves. 

Clipping Collection

Joe Schelling, of Sandia's Program Development and Environmental
Decisions Department, keeps a collection of news items that
suggest the problem. One tells of a small, yttrium-90 sealed
source was left in a New York taxicab. It was later recovered.
Others tell how radioactive cesium chloride, removed from a
sealed source, found its way into the hands of children in
Brazil. At least four deaths and the destruction of part of a
town, including businesses and 85 homes, resulted. Others detail
a regular pattern of losses or misplacement of sealed sources.

"After 9/11, people in government started asking 'where is this
stuff (sealed sources) in the country?' and nobody had a good
answer," says Schelling. "We definitely started paying attention
to missing radioactive sources because of the RDD potential,"
says Lori Dotson, who is managing Sandia's project to better
control the more than two million government and commercial
sealed radioactive sources in the US.

Enter RSRT

The project, called the Radioactive Source Registry Tracking
System (RSRT), will first track all DOE sealed radioactive
sources and provide decision makers with some estimation of the
potential threat they may pose. The system is being coordinated
with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the
International Atomic Energy Agency to be consistent with
national and international source tracking needs.

Following reports from an International Conference on Security
of Radioactive Sources in Vienna, Austria, in March 2003 and
from the DOE/NRC Interagency Working Group on Radiological
Dispersal Devices in May 2003, the Secretary of Energy chartered
DOE's Office of Plutonium, Uranium, and Special Materials
Inventory (SO 62) to create a database for tracking sealed
sources.

The Sandia team's effort has resulted in an initial RSRT system
well ahead of schedule, notes Gary "G.D." Roberson, DOE project
manager. With anticipated increases in funding over the next few
years, he expects the system to make a significant contribution.
"It is already significant in the sense that the DOE has a
database that is a direct commitment to the charter and is up
and running."

Responding to the May charter from Secretary Spencer Abraham,
Sandia team members built the RSRT system by using existing data
and databases and adding other sealed source data from
throughout the DOE complex. "Sandia had an operational database
with some 55,000 entries called the National Inventory of Sealed
Sources, which contained select nuclear materials, actinide
isotopes, and sealed sources," explains Schelling.

Aggressive Milestones

The Sandia team set aggressive milestones to demonstrate that it
could deliver an online system to meet the immediate needs of
the new charter. The team met the first milestone late last
year, six weeks ahead of schedule, by placing the interim RSRT
online. 

Federal regulations set limits on the types of radioactive
material that must be controlled. The Sandia system uses those
limits as a baseline. Now, acquiring data becomes critical to
the ultimate success of the RSRT program. Idaho National
Engineering and Environment Laboratory is supporting the team by
leading the data acquisition effort.

The team's goal is to track all DOE sealed sources by March 31.

Currently, DOE is the primary user of the system, but DOE has
also offered it to the Department of Homeland Security, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Environmental
Protection Agency for use as a tool to support tracking,
assessment, and recovery of sealed sources.

Story available at: 
http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2004/def-nonproli
f-sec/nrrsrt.html

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia
Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department
of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main
facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia
has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and
environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

© 2004 Newswise.  All Rights Reserved.					
*****************************************************************
 74 Oak Ridger: ORNL gets new division director; two get National Academies
 
Story last updated at 11:57 a.m. on February 10, 2004
recognition 							 							 							

from staff reports

Gary Jacobs has been named director of the Environmental Sciences 
Division at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National 
Laboratory while two corporate fellows from the federal faciltiy 
have been designated lifetime national associates of the National 
Academies of Science.

Jacobs                                                                                          
Jacobs most recently was the division's deputy director. He 
replaces Steve Hildebrand, who retired as director of the 
Environmental Sciences Division.

As division director, Jacobs said he plans to continue his 
involvement with DOE's programs in ecosystems and research in 
ecosystem and global change science, remediation science and 
genomics.

Elsewhere at ORNL, two corporate fellows - Tom Wilbanks and David 
Greene - have been designated lifetime national associates of the 
National Academies of Science. The designation of national 
associate is in recognition of extraordinary service to the 
National Academies and advising the nation in matters of science, 
engineering and health.

Wilbanks                                                                                                

Wilbanks is considered an authority on applying geographic, 
social science and technological knowledge and perspectives on 
sustainable development issues - particularly in the areas of 
solving energy challenges in developing countries and 
understanding responses to climate change concerns.

He has managed ORNL's programs in developing countries since 1982 
and is a former president of the Association of American 
Geographers. Wilbanks earned the 1993 National Geographic 
Society's Distinguished Geography Educator Award and the 1995 
James R. Anderson Medal of Honor in applied geography - the only 
individual to have received both of these honors.

Greene also joined ORNL in 1977. Before being named a corporate 
fellow, he was a senior research staff member and manager of 
energy policy research programs in the ORNL Center for 
Transportation Analysis. He has earned a number of significant 
achievement awards over the years and belong to numerous 
transportation-related professional organizations.

Greene                                                                                          

Greene is a former editor-in-chief of The Journal of 
Transportation and Statistics and remains an editorial board 
member of the publication.
*****************************************************************
 75 PRN:  Two Whistleblowers File Retaliation and Wrongful Termination 
Lawsuit Against The Lawrence Livermore Lab Alleging Safety 
Concerns and Financial Waste at the Nuclear Facility

[PR Newswire]   

  Press Release    Source: Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli &
Brewer  

 Two Whistleblowers File Retaliation and Wrongful Termination 
Lawsuit Against The Lawrence Livermore Lab Alleging Safety 
Concerns and Financial Waste at the Nuclear Facility Tuesday 
February 10, 3:22 pm ET 

OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- On February 10, 2004, 
Les Miklosy and Luciana Messina filed a complaint in the Alameda 
County Superior Court alleging that they were retaliated against 
and wrongfully terminated for expressing safety concerns 
regarding Lawrence Livermore National Lab's National Ignition 
Facility (NIF) project. The NIF project is a multi-billion dollar 
project where the Lab is attempting to fire 192 laser beams in a 
large target chamber at a pellet of nuclear material. It is the 
largest project at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The 
project has been plagued with numerous delays and overcharges as 
demonstrated by the federal government announcing a massive delay 
to the NIF ignition -- pushing the date until 2014.


Further the filing of this complaint comes on the heels of the 
Lawrence Livermore Lab and University of California agreeing to a 
3.9 million dollar settlement for mischarges on energy research 
projects.

Les Miklosy was hired as a computer scientist to work on the 
National Ignition Facility project's target chamber software. As 
a result of working there for approximately a year he became 
concerned that there were serious potential safety problems in 
the target chamber and that the entire project was being run in a 
non-scientific manner. He was also critical of the lack of 
accountability of his managers working on the project. When he 
tried to meet with his manager to discuss his concerns he was 
abruptly terminated without warning on February 28, 2003.

Luciana Messina joined the Lawrence Livermore Lab in November 
2001 and worked with Les Miklosy on identifying problems in the 
NIF target chamber. After Les Miklosy was suddenly terminated and 
escorted from the Lab without notice, she became concerned about 
her ability to retain her engineering integrity in such 
circumstances. She thereafter learned that the managers also 
intended to fire her. She took a constructive discharge by 
resigning from the Lab before they had an opportunity to fire 
her. She also alleges that there were serious problems within the 
NIF project. Les Miklosy has issued the following statement: The 
NIF project is a death march.  It is poorly managed, does not 
practice good engineering procedure, is a waste of taxpayer 
money. There are serious potential safety risks and real 
operational control issues in the nuclear facility that are not 
being addressed.  The engineering process followed under NIF ICCS 
management fails to meet quality standards and the organization 
expected of a development program under UC control.  My protected 
disclosures about accounting and engineering procedural issues 
were never addressed, in fact the issues I raised were ignored 
and covered up.


The complaint is being filed by J. Gary Gwilliam and his 
associate, Jan Nielsen at Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli & 
Brewer. Mr. Gwilliam issued the following statement: Once again 
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has fired employees 
who complained about safety issues and financial waste at the 
Lab.  This is the fourth lawsuit that our firm has been involved 
in for retaliation and wrongful termination.  There have also 
been allegations of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, 
disability and sexual discrimination at the Lab.  It is high time 
that someone took a close look at how the Lab treats their 
employees.


Mr. Gwilliam and Mr. Nielsen are available for further comment at 
510-832-5411. 

Source: Gwilliam, Ivary, Chiosso, Cavalli & Brewer

Copyright © 2004 PR Newswire. All rights reserved. Republication
*****************************************************************
 76 Daily Californian: Livermore Lab Fined Millions for Accounting Errors
 
By MEGAN REITER Contributing Writer Tuesday, February 10, 2004
 
        UC will hand over $3.89 million in fines to the U.S. 
Department of Justice for accounting errors at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory during the mid-1990s. 

        Officials from the lab, along with the UC Board of 
Regents, signed an agreement Thursday guaranteeing that the lab 
will pay for nearly $2.2 million in improper charges. 

        The rest of the funds compensate the Justice Department 
for time spent investigating the situation. 

        “Nobody at the lab gained personally,” said Lynda Seaver, 
a spokesperson for the lab. “We’ve reached a settlement and now 
it’s time to move on.” 

        Internal audit investigations within the lab revealed two 
accounting problems between 1994 and 1998. 

        Managers incorrectly charging research projects for 
administrative tasks accounts for about $1 million. Also, 
ineffective contracts given to two lab contractors, ICON 
Industrial Controls and an individual at Texas A University, were 
completed inadequately or not at all. 

         The problem occurred in the 1990s but the program is now 
under a different secretary of energy and administration, said 
Bryan Wilkes, spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security 
Administration. 

	“We do not expect to see this again,” Wilkes said. 

        The fine will be paid from the lab’s management fee, 
which is approximately $16 million a year, Seaver said. 

        No individuals directly benefited from the money 
mismanagement and no disciplinary actions have been taken for any 
employee of the lab, she said. 

        The lab has since implemented training for its managers 
on how to correctly charge accounts under the new billing system.  

 (c) 2004 Berkeley, California dailycal@dailycal.org  
*****************************************************************
 77 [du-list] DU in the news 10th Feb. 04
 
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 19:21:57 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
Dissident Voice - Santa Rosa,CA,United States
... However, "depleted uranium" radioactivity causes a host of deleterious
side effects including: depression of the immune system, male sterility,
leukemia ...
<<http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Sabri0209.htm>http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb04/Sabri0209.htm>

DIRTY job nears end
Mid Columbia Tri City Herald - Mid-Columbia,WA,USA
... In one waste burial site, workers turned up 786 barrels filled with
uranium chips and depleted uranium oxide powder. The uranium ...
<<http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4723614p-4672704c.html>http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4723614p-4672704c.html>


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*****************************************************************
 78 BBC: Wind turbines divide
 
  Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 February, 2004
 
[Wind turbine ]                                 

The turbine company wants more information before going ahead                                                          

A plan to build wind turbines on hills near a west Wales village 
has divided opinion in the community. 

One the world's biggest wind energy companies applied to 
Carmarthenshire Council on Tuesday for permission to erect a 40m 
test mast at Llanfynydd, near Carmarthen, to establish if the 
area is suitable. 

About 80 people packed into the village pub on Monday for a 
meeting called by opponents. 

But speakers were heckled and tempers occasionally flared as it 
became apparent there was also support for the development. 

Things have not been ve good for us as farmers - we should listen 
to both sides                 [ src=] Alan Hemmings           

	 	 

Cliff Freeman, who has championed wind power by establishing the 
Cothi Renewable Energy Group, told the meeting the UK needed more 
renewable energy. 

"There is a different side to this argument that we need to think 
about," he said. 

"They are not the perfect solution but they are better than what 
we have now." 

Landowners would be able to boost their income by allowing 
turbines on their property, and some are already known to have 
spoken to the applicant, Gamesa Energy UK, a division of the 
Spanish company Gamesa Energia. 

[Alan Hemmings]                                 Farmer Alan 
Hemmings said there should be a balanced debate                                                             

Farmer Alan Hemmings said after the meeting: "Things have not 
been very good for us as farmers but we don't know what the 
payments would be at the moment. We should listen to both sides." 

Some of those opposed to wind turbines said they did not generate 
enough electricity to be a serious alternative to nuclear or 
fossil fuel. 

Anti-turbine campaigner Tim Shaw told the meeting: "This is 
tokenism to what is a very serious problem. 

"These are not a realistic solution to climate change and we've 
got to think a lot better than this. 

"As you can see here tonight it's leading to divisions within 
communities." 

[Public meeting]                                About 80 people 
attended a public meeting in the village pub                                                               

Claims that turbines would devalue properties, cause noise and 
vibrations, as well as concerns over their visual impact were 
raised. 

Representatives from Gamesa, which operates across Europe and 
North America, were not invited to the meeting, but they were due 
to address Llanfynydd Community Council on Tuesday night. 

Gamesa spokesman Matt Partridge told BBC Wales News Online that 
until it had data from the test mast it was impossible to say the 
size of or how many turbines the company would apply for or 
whether it would proceed at all. 

"It's very early days as we have not put up the test mast yet," 
he said. 

"The government is acutely aware we need a lot more wind energy. 

"Wind turbines generate a lot of money for Welsh farmers and for 
Welsh contractors while they are built." 

He said Gamesa was committed to public consultation and would 
involve the whole community if it decided it was worth proceeding 
with the development. 



*****************************************************************
 79 Capital Times: Higher rates boost earnings for MGE 

(captimes.com)
 	 	 	 	 	 
Tuesday, February 10, 2004  9:17 PM                   
 		     	 
MGE Energy Inc. credited higher electric rates for boosting its 
earnings for the quarter and year ended Dec. 31.

MGE said it earned $5.3 million, or 29 cents per share, on 
revenues of $102.5 million for the quarter ended Dec. 31, up from 
year-earlier earnings of $3.3 million, or 19 cents per share, on 
revenues of $95.4 million.

For all of 2003, MGE earned $30.6 million, or $1.71 per share, on 
revenues of $401.5 million, up from 2002 earnings of $29.2 
million, or $1.69 per share, on revenues of $347.1 million.

MGE said electric revenues were up $2.5 million in the fourth 
quarter, with higher electric base rates partially offset by a 
fuel credit to customers. Natural gas deliveries were down 8.9 
percent for the quarter, as the average temperature of 38.4 
degrees was about 7 percent warmer than the prior year.

Operations and maintenance expenses in total were up $4.5 
million. Key factors contributing to the higher operations costs 
included: rising health care, pension, and other employee 
benefits ($0.9 million); increased transmission wheeling costs 
($0.5 million); distribution expense ($0.3 million); 
uncollectible accounts ($0.3 million); and other ($0.5 million). 
Electric and gas maintenance expenses rose more than $2.0 
million.

Depreciation expense decreased $1.8 million. Starting in 2003, 
MGE was no longer required to contribute $0.7 million per month 
to the qualified decommissioning fund for the Kewaunee Nuclear 
Power Plant. That fund was transferred to Wisconsin Public 
Service Corporation, which bought MGE's interest in Kewaunee in 
September 2001. 

Copyright 2003 The Capital Times
*****************************************************************
 80 Renewable Energy News: White House Maintains Wind Energy Research
 	 	 	 
Washington D.C. - February 10, 2004 [SolarAccess.com] Although 
the White House's fiscal year 2005 budget proposal, released last 
week, calls for a 2.3% reduction in spending for the U.S. 
Department of Energy's (DOE) energy efficiency and renewable 
energy (EERE) programs, spending for research for wind power 
would increase slightly, according to analysis by the American 
Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Proposed funding for wind power 
research rose 0.7% from last year's budget to $41.6 million. 

The overall budget for the Department of Energy tallied up to 
$24.3 billion, up 4.5% from the current year's spending. The 
biggest increase went to develop a nuclear waste repository at 
Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

In other budgets, funding for some other renewable energy 
programs were cut. For example, in the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture budget, the White House is proposing $10.8 million 
for the Renewable Energy &Energy Efficiency Grant &Loan Program, 
although the mandatory funding level is $23 million, and is 
proposing to provide only $15.5 million of the mandatory $40 
million for the "Value-Added" grants program which provides 
funding for new uses-including renewable energy-for agricultural 
products.

The Bush Administration's budget proposal calls for the following 
programs that would benefit wind power:

Tribal Energy Activities - $5.5 million is proposed to provide 
technical and financial assistance in energy efficiency and 
renewable energy development to Native American governments.

Renewable Energy Production Incentive - $4 million is proposed to 
make payments to municipal utilities that employ renewable energy 
technologies.

Wind Research and Development

Technology Viability 

$12 million proposed for the Low Wind Speed Technology program to 
achieve the goal of 3 cents/per kWh for on-land systems or 5 
cents/kWh for offshore systems in Class 4 wind regimes by 2012. 
This program is restricted to wind turbines over 100 kW in 
capacity size. 

$2 million proposed for the Distributed Wind Technology program 
to achieve the goal of 10-15 cents/kWh in Class 3 wind regimes by 
2007. This program is restricted to wind turbines under 100 kW in 
capacity size.

$17 million proposed for Supporting Research and Testing to 
provide technical support to the Low Wind Speed Technology and 
the Distributed Wind Technology programs by funding research from 
national laboratories, universities, and other research 
institutions. 

Technology Application

$3.2 million proposed for Systems Integration to enhance the 
compatibility of wind energy technologies with the electric power 
system and develop information to ensure fair treatment of wind 
energy by power system operators, transmission owners, and 
regulators. 

No funds were requested for state-by-state wind energy resource 
assessment since core resource assessment and mapping efforts are 
expected to be completed in fiscal year 2004. 

$4 million proposed for Technology Acceptance, working with 
stakeholders to move wind energy technology into the power 
generation market. This figure includes $3.1 million in funding 
for the Wind Powering America program. 

$3.4 million proposed for Supporting Engineering and Analysis. 
This provides for a number of crosscutting functions for 
supporting the other programs' goals, such as analysis to track 
improvements in wind technology, market analyses, participation 
in design standards for wind turbine design and testing, design 
review and testing support for the Underwriters Laboratories wind 
turbine certification program, and operation and management of 
the National Wind Technology Center. 

Analysis courtesy of AWEA's Wind Energy Weekly

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