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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 UK Observer: Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before st
2 Guardian Unlimited: Blix: I was a target too
3 US: Cato: Intelligence Failures Now and Then
4 Guardian Unlimited: We must have the truth on Iraq war
5 BBC: UN shrugs off bugging furore 
6 Sunday Herald: US told UK Attorney General to alter legal advice on 
7 US: SF Chronicle: Is Daniel Ellsberg Right ... Again?
8 UK Independent: 'Britain and US shared transcripts after bugging Bli
9 UK Independent: case for Iraq war
10 UK Independent: Clare Short: Was Attorney General leant on to sancti
11 Guardian Unlimited: Disputed advice helped
12 Hi Pakistan: Paris seeks talks on N-safeguards: Islamabad pledges co
13 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Iran dismisses US claims on Al-Qaeda 
14 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Nuke fuel import a lucrative project 
15 [Fwd: [NukeNet] U.S. and North Korea Agree to More Talks]
16 Las Vegas SUN: N. Korea Nuke Talks May Continue in April
17 Las Vegas SUN: N. Korea Nuke Talks End Without a Deal
18 Las Vegas SUN: Nuke Negotiators Try to Avoid '94 Repeat
19 JoongAng Daily: The opening of the nuclear Pandora's box
20 Korea Herald: Nuclear foes still far apart   
21 Korea Herald: EDITORIAL Early nuclear solution   
22 BBC: No breakthrough in N Korea talks 
23 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: North Must Settle 'Peaceful Nuclear Activ
24 Hi Pakistan: No N-deals with Pakistan: North Korea     --> 
25 50 Years of Nuclear Testing Fallibility.  Bravo?
26 Perfect Example Of Need For Nunn/Lugar Security Over USSR Nuke Mater
27 [NukeNet] Perfect Example Of Need For Nunn/Lugar Security Over
28 Guardian Unlimited: Short wars and long legacies 
29 Hi Pakistan: KRL displayed N-wares at arms fair     --> 
30 Hi Pakistan: IAEA satisfied with Pakistan cooperation     --> 
31 Hi Pakistan: 'Musharraf kept US abreast of N-issue'     --> 
32 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear trails and trials 
33 Hi Pakistan: Beg denies involvement in N-tech transfer     --> 
34 Hi Pakistan: US senator for admitting Pakistan, India to N-club
35 Indian Express: Khan's N-network a 'criminal enterprise' - US 
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
36 India Express: Risk of nuclear reactors to be balanced against utili
37 US: PCNews Herald: D-B execs eager to start plant - 
38 US: Beacon Journal: Davis-Besse looking up
39 US: Beacon Journal: Events at Davis-Besse plant
40 US: Toledo Blade: Davis-Besse is geared up for restart, FirstEnergy 
41 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Plan to ease VY shutdown impact is subject
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
42 [du-list] GOVERNMENT DU-PLICITY
43 [du-list] health snapshot of returning soldiers: 11,000 have
44 Sunday Herald: MoD lied over depleted uranium 
45 The Herald: Radiation Protection Bill published                     
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
46 NEWS.com.au: Locals fear radioactive Alcoa mud 
47 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Never out of mind 
48 Las Vegas RJ: Criticism of dump mounts 
49 US: Centre Daily Times: Robot helps to clean up contaminated researc
50 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Iran-Russia delay deal on spent fuel 
51 UK Independent: Nirex says DTI and nuclear giants are blocking clean
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
52 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Faces Anniversary of U.S. Nuke Test
53 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Marks U.S. Nuke Test in Pacific
54 US: ON THIS DAY 1954: US tests massive hydrogen bomb in Bikini
55 Japan Times: Events to mark Bikini Atoll bomb test start in Shizuoka
56 Japan Times: Mock trial held on H-bomb test at Bikini
57 NTamar.net: Bikini History
58 NAPF Take Action: Urgent Actions: 50 Years of Nuclear Testing Fallib
59 AVHP: 50th Anniversary of Operation Castle
60 ITAR-TASS: Losyukov: NKorea agrees to freeze nuclear programme
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
61 [Fwd: More Bomb Building at Livermore-Urgent]
62 [du-list] UK MoD warns troops DU may harm health
63 Rocky Mountain News: Union Carbide and Uravan through the years
64 Rocky Mountain News: Suing over Uravan
65 WorldNetDaily: Iran can produce nuke warhead in days
66 Rocky Mountain News: Uravan's nuclear history
67 Rocky Mountain News: Uranium fallout
68 Amarillo Globe News: Experts plan to tweak Pantex safety
69 lamonitor.com: Domenici says DOE must fund superconductivity 
70 Oakland Tribune: Livermore lab settles Discrimination Suit
 
                          OTHER NUCLEAR
 
71 Google News Alert - nuclear
72 Google News Alert - nuclear
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 UK Observer: Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start
 		
[Guardian Unlimited] 
    		 		 
[UP] 

· Attorney-General forced to rewrite legal advice 
· Specialist unit dedicated to spying on UN revealed 		
 		
Martin Bright, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer 		
 		
Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears 
over its legality just days before the British and American 
bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal. 

The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality 
of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in 
the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically 
freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, 
dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act. 

The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced 
hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 
'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict 
would not be illegal. 

Refusing to commit troops already stationed in Kuwait, senior 
military leaders were adamant that war could not begin until they 
were satisfied that neither they nor their men could be tried. 
Some 10 days later, Britain and America began the campaign. 

Goldsmith also wrote to Blair at the end of January voicing 
concerns that the war might be illegal without a second 
resolution from the United Nations. Opposition MPs seized on The 
Observer's revelations last night, accusing Goldsmith of caving 
in to political pressure from the Prime Minister to change his 
legal advice on the eve of war. 

Senior Whitehall sources involved in putting together critical 
legal advice on the war told The Observer that Goldsmith was 
originally 'sitting on the fence' and that his initial advice was 
'prevaricating'. This was 'tightened' up only days before the 
conflict began after concerns were raised by Sir Michael Boyce, 
the then Chief of Defence Staff, who told senior ministers of his 
worries. It is believed that Boyce demanded an unequivocal 
statement that the invasion of Iraq was lawful. It is understood 
that it was only after seeing Goldsmith's final legal advice, 
given days before the outbreak of war, that Boyce gave his 
approval. 

Without this legal reassurace, military leaders and their troops 
could have laid themselves open to charges of war crimes. At the 
time, UK troops were already in Kuwait poised for an invasion. 

Last week, Goldsmith controversially agreed to drop the 
Government's prosecution of the former GCHQ whistleblower 
Katharine Gun. Her defence had demanded documents relating to his 
legal advice, including communications with the Prime Minister. 

Although Goldsmith denied his decision to drop the case was 
political, critics of the war believe the Government was 
desperate to prevent these details from being revealed in open 
court. 

Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman, 
said: 'These allegations go to the very heart of the Government's 
case for war, and inevitably its credibility. I have no doubt 
whatever that if Parliament had been told these things, the 
Government would not have achieved its majority and been unable 
to go to war. Public opinion, already deeply divided, would have 
swung overwhelmingly against the Government.' 

Opposition MPs have demanded a statement in the Commons from the 
Prime Minister and will redouble the pressure for an explanation. 
The revelations will also increase pressure for the Butler 
inquiry, set up by the Prime Minister into intelli gence in the 
run-up to the war, to study the Gun case and subsequent 
revelations. It will take evidence in private. 

Last night former Cabinet Minister Clare Short told The Observer 
that she knew of military doubts over the legality the war: 'I 
was told at the highest level in the department that the military 
were saying they wouldn't go, whatever the PM said, with out the 
Attorney-General's advice. The question is: was the AG lent on? 

'This was a very personal operation by Tony Blair. The 
Attorney-General is a friend of Tony's, put in the Lords by Tony 
and made Attorney-General by Tony.' 

The Observer has also established that GCHQ, the Government's 
top-secret surveillance centre, has a specialist unit dedicated 
to spying on the UN. The revelation will strengthen claims that 
the bugging of Britain's diplomatic allies at the UN was routine 
and is likely to trigger a fresh international furore over the 
legality of Britain's spying operations abroad. 

The former Chilean ambassador to the UN, Juan Gabriel Valdes, 
said last night: 'All I can say is what I said at the time when 
asked if I had information about spying on Chile and I said yes, 
it has been proved. 

'It [eavesdropping] was one more element of tension during some 
very tense weeks. Nobody was very surprised. But it is one thing 
not to be surprised and another to do clearly illegal things.' 

Gun leaked a top-secret email published in The Observer last 
March revealing a joint British-American operation to spy on the 
UN in the run-up to war. She claimed she acted to prevent the 
loss of human life in an illegal war. 

The political furore continued as Short's political future 
remains in the balance, with the Prime Minister reserving a final 
decision until he has seen the round of interviews she has 
planned for this weekend. 'Everyone has talked about the fact 
that they don't want her to be a martyr, but of course the only 
difficulty is that we are in her hands - what will she say 
tomorrow?' said one senior party figure. 

However, it remains highly unlikely that she will face an 
organised attempt to unseat her, because of the months of 
upheaval it would cause in the Labour party. 'The pain of 
extraction might finish off the patient,' said one backbencher 
far from loyal to Short. 

Downing Street last night refused to comment on the allegations. 
Blair's spokesman also refused to say whether the White House had 
been consulted over the dropping of the Gun case, despite growing 
conviction at Westminster that it would have been inconceivable 
for the Foreign Office not to have taken its closest ally's views 
into consideration. 

Despite Blair's refusal to give a statement to the Commons, the 
Government is unlikely to escape further questioning. Both Jack 
Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Geoff Hoon, the Defence 
Secretary, are already due to answer questions next week while 
the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, will be grilled by a joint 
Commons inquiry into homeland security. Labour and Opposition MPs 
have also tabled a string of written questions. 
	
outrage'

[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 2 Guardian Unlimited: Blix: I was a target too
		 	
Chief UN weapons inspector believes he was bugged              
		
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor 
Saturday February 28, 2004
The Guardian 		
		
The United Nations spying row widened yesterday when its former 
weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the Guardian he suspected both 
his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up 
to the Iraq war. 

In an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said he expected to be bugged 
by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the US was a different 
matter. He described such behaviour as "disgusting", adding: "It 
feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when 
you are actually on the same side." 

He said he went to extraordinary lengths to protect his office 
and home, having a UN counter-surveillance team sweep both for 
bugs. 

"If you had something sensitive to talk about you would go out 
into the restaurant or out into the streets," he said. 

Mr Blix's darkest fears were reinforced when he was shown a set 
of photographs by a senior member of the Bush administration 
which he insists could only have been obtained through underhand 
means. 

His accusations came after the former cabinet minster, Clare 
Short, claimed that US-British intelligence bugged the office of 
the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. 

Speaking from his home in Stockholm, Mr Blix said that what 
galled him most was the possibility of being bugged by a country, 
the US, that he had assumed was on the same side. He said that 
surveillance was only to be expected between enemies or in cases 
where serious criminal activity is being monitored. 

"But here it is between people who cooperate and it is an 
unpleasant feeling," he said. 

Mr Blix, a Swedish diplomat who was head of the UN arms 
inspectors for Iraq between 2000 and 2003, said he had no 
conclusive evidence that the US bugged him. But his suspicions 
were raised when he had repeated trouble with his phone 
connections at his New York home. 

"It might have been something trivial or it might have been 
something installed somewhere. I don't know," he said. 

More worrying was a confrontation with a senior member of the US 
adminstration. Mr Blix said John Wolf, the US assistant secretary 
of state for non-proliferation, visited him a fortnight before 
the war broke out at a time when debate was raging over whether 
there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and whether Mr 
Blix should be given more time to find them. 

Mr Wolf presented him with two pictures of an Iraq drone and a 
cluster bomb, photos Mr Blix believed could only have been 
secured from within the UN weapons office. Mr Blix said: "He 
should not have had them. I asked him how he got them and he 
would not tell me and I said I resented that. 

"It could have been some staff belonging to us that handed them 
to the Americans. I don't think it is very likely but it could 
have happened - I don't have 100% control of everybody. It could 
also be that they managed to break into the secure fax and got it 
that way." 

Tony Blair, still feeling the aftershocks of Ms Short's 
allegations, made little reference to the bugging issue in a 
speech to the Labour party in Scotland. He did, however, condemn 
Ms Short for the second day running, accusing her of being in 
alliance with the Tories. 

As well as the claim that Mr Annan was bugged, another former 
secretary general, Boutros-Boutros Gali, also expressed 
suspicions yesterday. Richard Butler, a predecessor of Mr Blix as 
chief UN weapons inspector, joined in too, saying it was "plainly 
silly" to think his phone calls were not being monitored during 
his tenure. 

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported an intelligence 
official who said Mr Blix's mobile phone calls were routinely 
monitored from Iraq and the transcripts shared between the 
British, American and Australian intelligence services. 

Mr Blix was inundated with calls from journalists worldwide 
yesterday. Speaking only to the Guardian, he said he thought it 
was unlikely it happened in Iraq "because I did not use my mobile 
phone there. In any case, we were totally aware that Iraqis would 
have microphones in the walls". 

Instead, he expressed his conviction that the UN headquarters in 
New York was much more likely to have been targeted. "The 
suspicions have been directed at the Americans for bugging and I 
think that is more likely in New York in the run-up to the votes 
in the security council." 

Mr Blix was given the job by the UN security council of 
determining whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. His 
reports to the security council were eagerly awaited for any 
evidence of a "smoking gun" that would have triggered war. As 
such, both the US and British governments were keen to know what 
he had found and was thinking, and what the Iraqis were saying to 
him. 

An international lawyer as well as having been a career diplomat, 
Mr Blix said legal and moral questions were raised by bugging. 
The Vienna convention prohibiting such behaviour "should be 
applicable to the UN headquarters". 

Mr Blix, whose book giving an inside account of the run-up to the 
war with Iraq will be serialised in the Guardian next week, said 
it was unlikely that the US would have gained any advantage from 
bugging him: "They might have heard things in a more naked manner 
than in the diplomatic tones I would use publicly." 

But the only information he regarded as ultra-sensitive was the 
location and timing of surprise inspections of potential Iraqi 
weapons sites. This would have been of use only to the Iraqis. 

Such information was never delivered electronically, he said. "We 
would never talk about such matters on telephones, never use 
electronic devices at all. Instructions to inspectors were 
hand-carried." 

Mr Blix, who came out of retirement to lead the UN team, said he 
had been given the authority by the security council to carry out 
the job and assumed he had the trust of its members. He was 
disappointed to find later that the Pentagon was briefing against 
him. He said the Pentagon had a low opinion of the inspectors as 
a whole or possibly himself. 

He described the suspected bugging as hypocritical: "You are 
cooperating with the people who sit across the desk one day and 
if the next they are listening to you, it is an unpleasant 
feeling." 

Asked if it was morally questionable, he replied: "Well, I don't 
know what morals they have. Questionable, yes." 

He challenged the British government's legal basis for going to 
war in Iraq, in the light of the collapse of the case against 
Katharine Gun, the former British intelligence officer. When he 
worked at the UN he was not able to speak out but now he said 
that the decision to go to war should have been a matter for the 
whole of the security council, not a minority of it. 

Mr Blix is sceptical about whether Iraq had weapons of mass 
destruction in the period immediately before the war. He now 
believes that both Mr Blair and President George Bush should have 
been more open to the evidence emerging from Iraq. "I think we 
should have had more critical thinking on the part of the 
political leadership. They should have heard the evidence. They 
should have heard the dissenting opinions. 

"It is one thing to advocate the building of a railroad and you 
go ahead a little carelessly with the argumentation. But if it is 
a question of starting a war, one would like to have a more solid 
basis."

Hans Blix: my story

Hans Blix's explosive book about the events leading up to the 
Iraq war, Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass 
Destruction, is serialised on Guardian Unlimited next Saturday. 
In his account, published by Bloomsbury, he reveals the 
extraordinary pressure put on him and his fellow arms inspectors 
to justify the war by producing evidence of banned weapons. And 
he discloses the lengths to which the British and American 
governments were prepared to go in their unsuccessful attempt to 
bend him to their will.
	
Guardian Newspapers Limited
*****************************************************************
 3 Cato: Intelligence Failures Now and Then
 
  [The Cato Institute]

February 28, 2004

by Christopher Preble 

Christopher Preble is the director of foreign policy studies at
the Cato Institute and the author of John F. Kennedy and the
Missile Gap, to be published later this year. 

The special commission investigating U.S. intelligence failures
prior to the Iraq war is expected to focus on the erroneous
belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
But the president's candid hour-long interview with NBC's Tim
Russert pointed to another serious intelligence failure: The
president's decision to take the country to war in Iraq was
based not on the observations of area experts and seasoned
professionals, but rather on the advice of a handful of
partisans with a political axe to grind. In fact, Ahmed Chalabi,
head of the Iraqi National Congress, has admitted that his
reports on WMD were faulty but that it doesn't matter now. "We
are heroes in error," he says. "Our objective has been achieved.
... What was said before is not important." 

All presidents receive information about potential threats from
many sources. Much of this information is speculative, some of
it is contradictory. Even the best leaders make decisions based
on incomplete information, and on intuition. 

Often their hunches are correct. Following the dramatic launch
of the Soviet Sputnik satellite in October 1957, many Americans
feared that the United States had become vulnerable to nuclear
attack from Soviet missiles, and they called upon President
Dwight Eisenhower to close the so-called missile gap. 

But Eisenhower doubted that Soviet successes in the space race
constituted a threat to the United States. A key factor in
Eisenhower's belief that there was no missile gap were
conversations that he had had with Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev. At one point, for example, Khrushchev confided to
Eisenhower that the United States possessed an overwhelming
strategic advantage over the Soviets. It was for this reason,
Khrushchev explained, that the Soviets would not agree to an
arms control pact that would freeze American superiority into
place. 

There was always the possibility that Khrushchev was lying.
Eisenhower weighed that possibility. But he noted that the U-2
spy plane program had failed to locate even a single operational
Soviet missile site. Eisenhower correctly deduced that
Khrushchev was telling the truth. There was no missile gap. 

Compare this episode with the approach taken by President Bush
in the lead up to war with Iraq. The president received numerous
recommendations about what to do with Iraq. Very few people
disputed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. But some
warned that Iraq would disintegrate into a cycle of violence
following his removal from power. Others worried that a new
government would be hostile toward the United States. A
classified State Department report released to the media prior
to the start of the war warned that, throughout the Middle East,
"anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that elections in the
short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled
governments hostile to the United States." 

Given these pre-war predictions, journalists asked senior Bush
administration officials how they would deal with such a
government. Russert asked: "If the Iraqis choose...an Islamic
extremist regime, would you accept that, and would that be
better for the United States than Saddam Hussein?" The president
replied: "They're not going to develop that." 

He then revealed that his confidence stemmed from some special
intelligence he received in a private conversation. "Right here
in the Oval Office," the president explained, "I sat down with
Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people . . . that have
made the firm commitment" to "minority rights and freedom of
religion." "These people are committed to a pluralistic
society." 

The three people in question -- Adnan Pachachi, Ahmed Chalabi,
and Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim -- are members of the Iraqi Governing
Council appointed by the United States immediately after the
collapse of Saddam's regime. Pachachi was thrown out of the
Iraqi government following the Baathist coup of 1968 and spent
many of the intervening years in the United Arab Emirates.
Chalabi left Iraq in 1956, and is best known for his role as a
leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an organization that had
long advocated Saddam's removal from power. Finally, Al Hakim,
is a leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution and
is also a leader in the Shiite paramilitary Badr corps. 

These people, the president says, are committed to creating a
liberal democracy. And, in fairness, "these people" -- two who
have not lived in Iraq for decades and a third the leader of an
Iranian-based Shiite revolutionary group -- may be. But, given
that American administrators appointed them to the Governing
Council, should we have expected any less? 

Before taking the country to war, the president argued that the
costs of inaction outweighed the costs of action. His
calculations assumed a smooth transition in post-Saddam Iraq to
a liberal democratic government that harbored no ill will toward
the United States. He based this presumption not on the opinions
of area experts, but rather on the promise of three individuals
whose credibility was open to challenge, and whose understanding
of the situation on the ground in Iraq was based not on facts,
but rather on conjecture, speculation, and wishful thinking. 

That is an intelligence failure. 

1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C. 20001-5403
 Phone (202) 842-0200 Fax (202) 842-3490
 All Rights Reserved © 2003 Cato Institute                      
                                                                
  1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C. 20001-5403
 Phone (202) 842-0200 Fax (202) 842-3490
 All Rights Reserved © 2002 Cato Institute -->
*****************************************************************
 4 Guardian Unlimited: We must have the truth on Iraq war
 		
We must have the truth on Iraq war 
		 	
Secrecy is poisoning the body politic          
 		
Leader
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer 		
 		
Exactly a year ago, The Observer published a story that the 
United States, whose plans for war were in full swing, had 
requested British assistance to bug the United Nations as it 
deliberated about the crisis in Iraq. Our report was followed up 
across the world, in countries whose ambassadors had suffered the 
indignity of learning that their phones and emails had been 
bugged and their private conversations passed on to the US 
Administration. 

In London, the report was officially ignored, meeting the routine 
government response that the authorities never comment on 
intelligence matters. Large sections of the British media also 
remained uninterested, driven partly by a widespread cynicism 
that such operations are to be expected, particularly given the 
tensions of that pre-war time. However, the dramatic collapse of 
the case brought under the Official Secrets Act against Katharine 
Gun, the GCHG translator, raises concerns that that cynicism 
cannot easily dispel. 

It now seems incontrovertible that, in the period running up to 
the invasion of Iraq, the US spied on the UN Secretary-General, 
on key members of the Security Council, and on Hans Blix, head of 
the Iraq Weapons Inspection team, all in apparent contravention 
of the 1946 Vienna Convention that designates the UN a 
spying-free zone. Moreover, it seems likely that Britain colluded 
in this effort. The email we published a year ago detailing the 
US request for British assistance is powerful evidence; the 
insistence of former Minister Clare Short last week that she saw 
transcripts of Kofi Annan's conversations, though compromised by 
her enmity towards the Prime Minister, adds weight to the claims. 

Last week, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, withdrew the 
threat hanging over Ms Gun because, he said, there was no 
realistic chance of conviction. As she celebrates her freedom, 
she deserves our thanks and congratulations for her bravery and 
powerful commitment to the public interest. 

Not only did she risk imprisonment to put critically important 
information into the public domain, she established the 
breakthrough precedent that defendants in Official Secrets Act 
trials can argue that the contested action was necessary in order 
for the defendant to avoid being forced into an illegal act. As a 
result the draconian machinery protecting official secrets is now 
looking increasingly unworkable; a review has been set up and 
reform seems inevitable. Ms Gun has been an important agent for 
change. 

But though the case will now not go ahead, the questions raised 
by her actions and her strong belief that Britain was being 
dragged into an illegal war, still require answers. 

A trial, though personally harrowing, would have flushed out more 
crucial detail about the circumstances surrounding the Iraq war. 
In order to press home the 'necessity' case, Ms Gun's lawyers 
would have forced the Government to release Lord Goldsmith's 
advice to the Prime Minister about the legality of the Iraq war 
in the absence of a second, supportive UN Resolution. 

We now know, following a statement last week from Elizabeth 
Wilmshurst, the former deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office 
who resigned on the eve of war, that the legal team believed that 
the war was illegal. Her statement adds weight to the growing 
evidence that the Government may have been advised that it was 
launching an illegal war and that the Attorney General was 
reluctant to continue with the prosecution of Ms Gun because a 
trial would have revealed evidence of this advice. 

Many were implacably opposed to war with Iraq on any grounds. But 
many who supported war were reassured that it was within the 
envelope of legality, even in the absence of a second UN 
Resolution. It is vital to the health of political life in this 
country that the air is now cleared over this question. Lord 
Butler, charged with investigating intelligence in the wake of 
the Hutton inquiry, must follow the trail of intelligence 
documents into the Attorney General's office if his investigation 
is not to be seen as a whitewash. 

Few would dispute the necessity of spies or of bugging in the war 
against terrorism. Even spying on allies may sometimes be deemed 
necessary though those who sanction it must be prepared to defend 
their disregard for treaty commitments. But the real poison in 
the body politic, undermining the authority of government, is a 
growing belief that the Government has not been telling the 
truth. As a nation we need to move on from the war that divided 
us. That can only happen following full disclosure of the 
circumstances surrounding Britain's decision to go to war. 
	
[UP] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
*****************************************************************
 5 BBC: UN shrugs off bugging furore 
 
  Last Updated: Saturday, 28 February, 2004
 
By Susannah Price
	BBC UN correspondent   

Officials and diplomats at the United Nations headquarters in New 
York do not appear to be too surprised by the allegations, made 
by the former British government minister Clare Short, that the 
British spied on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. 

[Kofi Annan's office]                           
Those speaking to Kofi Annan will be uncomfortable if they 
thought someone was listening in                                                            

"Sounds like business as usual" muttered one diplomat. Few were 
prepared to go on the record about their experiences. 

However the general feeling is that it is impossible to guarantee 
privacy in UN offices or the missions to the UN. 

"We are aware of this, it's always in the back of our minds," 
said one UN official. "We do go outside our offices down to the 
canteen or outside if we want to have a private conversation." 

A former UN chief weapons inspector Richard Butler has said he is 
certain he was bugged while at the UN. 

His concern is that heads state or any political actors who deal 
with him over the telephone might be a little less forthcoming if 
they think someone might be listening in Fred Eckhard, UN 
Secretary General's spokesman          

And former Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali said he was 
told on the first day in the post that his office and residence 
were bugged. 

Last year it was alleged that the United States had been carrying 
out a surveillance operation on delegations from six missions, 
all Security Council members, during the lead up to the Iraq war. 

And a recent book on the founding of the UN by American academic 
Stephen Schlesinger has revealed how at that time the United 
States spied on the countries signing up to the UN charter. 

Security stepped up 

The offices at the UN, including that of the secretary general, 
are routinely swept for listening devices. 

The staff say this means they are not so concerned about the 
possibility of bugging devices listening into face to face 
conversations, but more worried about phone calls. 

Those around the Secretary General say he does not take extra 
precautions to ensure his privacy apart from using secure 
telephone or fax lines when appropriate. 

This kind of security is being stepped up. 

The UN secretary general's spokesman Fred Eckhard stressed that 
Mr Annan has nothing to hide but added there were concerns that 
his sensitive diplomatic work could be hampered if those he spoke 
to believed the phones were bugged. 

"His concern is the heads of state or any political actors who 
deal with him over the telephone might be a little less 
forthcoming if they think someone might be listening in," said Mr 
Eckhard. 

The secretary general is still waiting for a fuller explanation 
from the British authorities. He spoke to the British Ambassador 
to the United Nations on Thursday morning but has not had any 
further contact. 

[Clare Short]                           
Ms Short sparked off the bugging debate by comments that the UK 
spied on the UN                                                          

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the government acted 
within domestic and international law. 

The UN now appears to be trying to play down the issue which many 
here believe is chiefly concerned with British domestic politics. 

The secretary general slipped out of the UN Secretariat building 
on Friday without commenting and his office has stopped giving 
interviews about the allegations. 
*****************************************************************
 6 Sunday Herald: US told UK Attorney General to alter legal advice on Iraq war -
 
  By James Cusick, Westminster Editor 
 
 The attorney general initially told Tony Blair that an invasion 
of Iraq would be illegal without a new resolution from the United 
Nations and only overturned his advice when Washington ordered 
Downing Street to find legal advice which would justify the war.

The devastating claim will be made by eminent QC and Labour peer 
Baroness Helena Kennedy in a television interview today.

It is one of a series of attacks which put Blair under renewed 
and increasing pressure to reveal full details of the legal 
backing for the war against Iraq.

 Lawyers, including one from Cherie Blairs legal chambers, 
Matrix, will demand improved compensation and an inquiry into the 
deaths of Iraqi civilians killed by British troops, which could 
raise the spectre of the government being forced to disclose its 
advice on the legality of the war.

It is widely believed that the governments reluctance to do this 
was behind its decision to drop all charges against GCHQ 
whistleblower Katherine Gun last week. 

The environmental group, Greenpeace is also demanding access to 
Lord Goldsmiths advice in order to defend 14 activists due to 
appear in court in connection with anti-war protests carried out 
last year. 

Former cabinet minister Clare Short continued her relentless 
attack on Blair when she described the way attorney general Lord 
Goldsmiths truncated opinion authorising war appeared at the very 
last minute as very odd.

Together, the new developments signal that the legal case for the 
allied invasion of Iraq without a specific UN instruction 
authorising them to do so has become the most dangerous threat to 
the Prime Minister and is unlikely to go away.

Kennedys claims, which will be made this morning in an interview 
on GMTV, are arguably the most damaging. Her position as a member 
of the highest echelons of the legal community will add credence 
to her claims that the British government could find only two 
senior lawyers in the UK prepared to back the case for the 
invasion.

Baroness Kennedy points out that Lord Goldsmith was a commercial 
lawyer with no experience of international law and initially 
relied heavily on the advice of lawyers within the Foreign Office 
in the months before the war. It is widely believed that advice 
overwhelmingly warned against invading without a UN resolution.

She claims that when Washington was told of this advice their 
response was succinct: find a new lawyer.

Goldsmith then turned to Professor Christopher Greenwood of the 
London School of Economics, who was known to support the 
invasion. Greenwood was already on record as stating: It would be 
highly desirable to have a second UN resolution because that puts 
the matter beyond serious question. But if thats not possible, I 
would support the use of force without the resolution.

After consulting Greenwood, Goldsmith told the cabinet an 
invasion could take place within international law without the 
new UN resolution. 

However, sacked Labour MP George Galloway insisted yesterday that 
Goldsmith warned ministers that his advice relied on the accuracy 
of intelligence information that Saddam posed a serious threat to 
British interest  information which has since been discredited. 

Baroness Kennedy says Blair is being haunted by the fallout of a 
war that will just not go away. 

Clare Short yesterday said Foreign Office lawyers disagreed on 
the legality of war and that senior officials in Whitehall were 
worried that they were being asked to prepare for illegal action. 

After her disclosure that she had seen transcripts of material 
taken in bugging operations conducted inside the office of the 
secretary general of the UN, Kofi Annan, it remained a 
possibility she would either be prosecuted under the Official 
Secrets Act or even be thrown out of the Labour Party. 

Yesterday the chairman of the Labour party, Ian McCartney, 
appeared to rule out any party censure. Im not going to make her 
a martyr, he told BBC Scotland. 

Lord Alexander of Weedon QC, a leading peer and lawyer, yesterday 
described the content of Lord Goldsmith advice as the most 
important legal opinion of the last 50 years. He said without it 
the war would not have gone ahead and 20,000 Iraqis would not 
have been killed. 29 February 2004 

  © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 7 SF Chronicle: Is Daniel Ellsberg Right ... Again?
 
Bob Cooper        Sunday, February 29, 2004

The Pentagon insider-turned-Bay Area activist says the parallels 
between Vietnam and Iraq are tragic and inescapable. Why, he 
asks, have our leaders failed to learn from the mistakes of 40 
years ago?. 

Daniel Ellsberg, 72, is hoarse after speaking for two hours last 
December about the similarities between the Vietnam and Iraq wars 
to an overflow Berkeley bookstore crowd. He knows he's drained 
the air out of the room with his somber monologue, so he 
concludes the evening by tugging scarves out of his pocket to 
perform some magic. A lifetime ago, his magic tricks brought 
smiles to the faces of Vietnamese orphans in bombed-out villages 
he passed through as a State Department observer from 1965 to 
1967. His audiences these days are different, but they, too, 
appreciate the diversion. 

When he wonders aloud which trick to perform, someone wisecracks, 
"Make Bush disappear." Laughter ripples through the store and 
Ellsberg grins. He wishes it were that easy. His release of the 
Pentagon Papers in 1971 may have shortened the Nixon presidency 
and the Vietnam War, but making Bush and the Iraq War disappear 
would be a challenge even for Houdini. Ellsberg no longer has 
access to the sort of secret documents that made him a '60s icon 
and the pre-eminent government whistle-blower in U.S. history. 
Now the longtime Bay Area political activist can only educate the 
public, one bookstore talk at a time, on why he thinks the war in 
Iraq is Vietnam revisited. 

Ellsberg's Berkeley appearance was his 55th nationwide since 
publication of his American Book Award-winning "Secrets: A Memoir 
of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." The book tour is entering 
its 18th month as audience interest in Ellsberg's Vietnam-Iraq 
comparisons remains high, fueled by gloomy news from the 
occupation. For the middle-aged crowd, especially those who are 
Vietnam veterans, it's a reopening of old wounds, while for 
college students it's a history lesson tying their parents' war 
to their own. Says Ellsberg, "Sometimes I feel I'm waking up to 
the world I left 40 years ago." 

In that world, public support for the Vietnam War was substantial 
until Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the Senate and 19 
newspapers. The 47 volumes of mostly classified documents 
revealed a pattern of government errors and lies about the war 
considered to be so inflammatory that the Supreme Court 
temporarily ordered the New York Times to stop publishing 
excerpts. Henry Kissinger, who had previously sought out Ellsberg 
for his expertise on Vietnam, called him "the most dangerous man 
in America." 

Ellsberg was charged with 12 felony counts under the Espionage 
Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 115 years. The charges 
against Ellsberg and Anthony Russo (who helped him photocopy the 
papers) were dismissed in the fifth month of the trial, however, 
on grounds of governmental misconduct due to illegal wiretapping 
and evidence tampering. He was free to resume criticizing the 
government, which he's done assiduously and passionately ever 
since. 



Duped by Our Leaders? 

"We were lied into both wars in every aspect - the reasons for 
going in, the prospects, the length, the scale and the probable 
costs in lives and dollars," he tells the crowd as rain puddles 
the sidewalk on Shattuck Avenue. "With Iraq, the big lie is that 
it represented the No. 1 security threat to the U.S. That's not 
just questionable, it's absurd. We live in a dangerous world with 
al Qaeda terrorism, more than 20,000 poorly guarded Russian 
nuclear weapons and the unstable, nuclear-armed state of 
Pakistan, where Osama and other al Qaeda leaders are probably 
hiding. Saddam was a tyrant, but he was never linked to 9/11, and 
the talk of weapons of mass destruction was at least exaggerated. 
He wasn't even a threat to his neighbors." 

Ellsberg speaks in a gravelly baritone. A swirl of white hair 
frames a slender, kindly face. He is formal and professorial in 
dress and speech, remnants of his straight-arrow days as a 
Harvard man (doctorate in economics), U.S. Marine commander, Rand 
Corporation think-tank analyst and Pentagon insider. He has 
studied war for most of his life, but came to a visceral 
understanding of it while "walking point" (leading foot patrols 
to draw fire) with troops in Vietnam. That was when he realized 
the Vietnam War was unwinnable, largely because of what he calls 
"revolutionary judo" - a guerrilla tactic used against U.S. 
troops by the Viet Cong and now by Iraqis. 

"In judo, you can turn the strength of a stronger opponent 
against himself, " he explains. "Revolutionary judo in Vietnam 
often took the form of a single Viet Cong firing a shot at a U.S. 
chopper from a village, which prompted us to bomb the village. We 
thought, 'That will teach them a lesson.' But the villagers who 
saw relatives killed and wounded joined the other side. So our 
superior firepower was used against us to create support for the 
enemy. It's how the Viet Cong, with their handmade weapons, 
prevailed against massive U.S. bombing, and it's also why the 
Iraqi resistance is not going away." 

The Vietnam War killed 58,235 Americans and an estimated 1.5 
million Vietnamese, and Ellsberg fears Iraq could be just as 
catastrophic. Besides "revolutionary judo," he says that U.S. war 
planners have forgotten other lessons of Vietnam, like the need 
for an exit strategy and the futility of "pacification." 
Pacification means that locals can gradually take over for 
occupying troops, but Ellsberg says hired locals are always seen 
by fellow citizens as traitorous collaborators. Pacification 
attempts have consistently failed - in Afghanistan by the 
Russians; in Vietnam by the French and the Americans; and so far 
by British and American forces in Iraq. 

"We perceive ourselves as liberators opposing the forces of 
evil," he says, "but the resistance fighters are not seen as evil 
by most Iraqis, nor were they in Vietnam. Iraqis think we want to 
occupy the country indefinitely with U.S. troops and a 
pro-American government, and as long as that perception exists, 
pacification is impossible." 

At the heart of his argument is this: "The fundamental similarity 
shared by the Vietnam and Iraq wars is that a U.S. occupying 
force is facing primarily nationalist resistance fighters - 
locals who feel they are defending their country. These fighters 
can hide without being found because they have the general 
support of the population. This happened in our own country when 
the British were occupiers, but now we're the redcoats." 



All the President's Men 

How did we get into this mess? Ellsberg blames the president's 
men - notably Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle - for 
channeling the outrage over Sept. 11 into an attack on a Muslim 
country. 

Deception was the means, he says, and world oil dominance the 
end. "It's a lie that this war is part of the war on terror, 
because every day we occupy Iraq is a good recruiting day for 
Osama. The occupation of an Arab country increases al Qaeda's 
support and reduces the cooperation from Muslim countries to stop 
terrorism, so it actually increases the likelihood of another 
9/11." 

In most of the world, he adds, the Iraq invasion was seen as an 
act of naked aggression, comparable to Saddam's invasion of 
Kuwait or even Hitler's blitzkriegs of Poland and France. "Like 
Vietnam, this war was started as a result of distortions fed to 
Congress and the public by the executive branch," Ellsberg says. 
He witnessed the distortion game firsthand at the dawn of the 
Vietnam War. While working for Assistant Secretary of Defense 
John McNaughton in 1964, he received an urgent cable from the 
captain of a naval destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf describing a 
torpedo attack. Hours later, however, another cable from Capt. 
John Herrick stated that "overeager sonarmen" had probably 
misinterpreted the ship's own propeller beat for torpedo hits. 

"Herrick's new cable didn't slow for a moment the preparations in 
Washington and the Pacific for a retaliatory air strike," 
Ellsberg wrote in "Secrets." U.S. bombing commenced the next day, 
after President Johnson told the nation he had "unequivocal" 
evidence of an attack. Long after the war ended, Herrick and 
then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara acknowledged the ship 
was almost certainly never hit. 

Congress also deserves some blame for both wars, says Ellsberg. 
The 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed overwhelmingly three days 
after the purported attack, handing war-making powers to Johnson. 
The 2002 Congress conceded war powers to Bush by passing the Iraq 
Military Authorization bill. "In both instances, it was 
unconstitutional and irresponsible for Congress to write an 
undated blank check to the president to start a war. Even worse, 
they did it on the basis of brief testimony in the case of 
Vietnam and no hearings at all in the case of Iraq. Although both 
resolutions were based on false information from the White House, 
that doesn't excuse Congress for abdicating its constitutional 
role." 

Iraq War opponents do seem to have a head start on their 
Vietnam-era counterparts. First, he notes: "Government lying 
about Vietnam didn't become widely known for four years, while in 
Iraq the lack of weapons of mass destruction became apparent 
within weeks." Second, it took five years for anti- Vietnam War 
street protests to become as large as those that preceded the 
Iraq invasion. Third, the anti-war candidacy of Howard Dean that 
made him the early Democratic frontrunner is reminiscent of the 
Gene McCarthy and George McGovern presidential runs in 1968 and 
1972. Richard Nixon won those two elections, however, and the 
troops didn't come home until Congress finally cut off funds in 
1973. 

"A major factor that kept us in Vietnam and that's keeping us in 
Iraq," says Ellsberg, "is the unwillingness by those in power to 
admit they made a mistake. This would be admitting that lives 
were wasted and it would look like they're accepting defeat. That 
thinking was enough to keep Vietnam going year after year. In 
Iraq, we would be giving up if we withdraw troops . . . but we 
should give up. It's not for President Bush or any other American 
to determine the internal policies of Iraq, and prolonging the 
occupation does nothing to solve Iraq's problems." 



Patriot or Traitor? 

Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers was like kicking over a 
beehive. His trial made headlines for months, highlighted by the 
revelation that the so- called "plumbers" (assigned to plug 
government leaks) broke into his psychiatrist's office in an 
attempt to discredit him. They bungled that assignment as badly 
as their more famous caper, the Watergate burglary, and Ellsberg 
had the last laugh when they ended up behind bars instead of him. 
The trial's disclosures also figured in Nixon's resignation, and 
as an indirect result, hastened the end of the war. 

Ellsberg now encourages those with access to similar documents 
concerning Iraq to turn them over to Congress and the press. 
"They can omit the portions that in any way involve national 
security," he says. "I have no doubt there are numerous people 
who have access to such documents," he says. "[Leaking them] may 
cost them their careers or even jail time, but it could save many 
lives." 

His role as an unapologetic whistle-blower has caused some to 
call him a traitor and others a patriot, but he rejects both 
labels. Nor is he a strict pacifist, although he opposes military 
aggression. "As a boy during World War II, I believed we were on 
the right side because we were fighting aggression and I felt the 
same way about Korea when I joined the Marines. But now I am in 
the horrifying position of seeing my country being the 
aggressor." 

He has been a political activist since Vietnam. He still feels 
guilt for not exposing government duplicity in 1964, when he 
first knew of it, instead of waiting several years. This guilt 
and haunting memories of Vietnam bloodshed drives his current 
anti-war work, which takes the form of writing, lecturing and 
nonviolent protest. He has been arrested for civil disobedience 
70 times in protests against nuclear weapons, Central American 
interventions, the Gulf War and the Iraq War, including once last 
winter with his 26-year-old son, Michael, at an Iraq protest in 
front of U.N. Headquarters. 

"I felt that Bush was leading America off a cliff with this war," 
says Michael of his first arrest. "The message my father is 
trying to get out is important, so I do what I can to help. I'm 
proud of what he's done in his life. " Michael edits his father's 
books and manages his Web site (Ellsberg.net). His father is 
devoting this year to finishing his most ambitious book yet, on 
nuclear war planning, an area of expertise going back to his 
Pentagon days. "I will address current dangers in light of the 
past, which was more dangerous than even people in the 
anti-nuclear movement realized," he says. 

It will be grim, but not lonely, work. He shares a home with a 
sweeping view of the bay in Kensington, near Berkeley, with his 
wife of 33 years, Patricia. She insisted that their first date in 
1965 was an anti-war demonstration at the Washington Monument, 
where he worried the whole time that his face would be spotted on 
the evening news by Pentagon colleagues. The ultimate odd couple, 
a war planner and an anti-war public radio host, argued through a 
five-year courtship until his opinions finally yielded to hers. 
The year they married in 1970, he spoke against the Vietnam War 
at a college teach- in, a complete turnaround from when he was 
sent to teach-ins by the Pentagon to defend war policy. 



Puzzling Support 

Three weeks after his recent bookstore appearance, he is at home, 
drinking tea from a heavy mug in the living room. Ceiling-high 
bookcases line the walls. Patricia has left for a hike with 
friends, while Michael, a Brown University graduate who has 
returned to the family home for the year, gives a salsa dancing 
lesson in the next room. On the table beside Ellsberg's mug is a 
copy of the New York Times, which reports three more U.S. deaths 
in Iraq. 

"I suspect that troop morale is dropping quickly," he says, 
noticing the headline. "The military didn't want this war, it's 
the civilians in the White House, the Pentagon and the oil 
companies. Like the troops in Vietnam, these troops will begin to 
hate the occupation duty because they aren't safe anywhere and 
see no purpose in being there. I am guessing that we will soon 
see widespread drug abuse, with cheap heroin flooding into Iraq 
from Afghanistan, so we'll have drug-addicted soldiers coming 
home like we did during Vietnam. What's amazing to me about this 
war is the amount of public support that still remains." 

This support puzzles him, he says, largely because government 
misbehavior regarding Iraq has been well established, and not 
only by journalists and liberals. Among the examples he raises: 

-- CIA director George Tenet indicated before the war that there 
was no Saddam-al Qaeda link, which President Bush and Colin 
Powell have since admitted. 

-- Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed the alleged 
Niger-Iraq enriched uranium sale to be a hoax. 

-- The CIA's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, resigned 
last month and said there is almost no evidence in Iraq of WMD, 
which contradicts White House pre-invasion claims of WMD 
stockpiles. 

-- British government translator Katherine Gun is on trial for 
releasing a classified document showing U.S. and British 
complicity in bugging the phones of U.N. Security Council members 
in an attempt to influence their votes on Iraq. 

-- A U.S. Army War College report published last month called the 
Iraq War "unnecessary" and a "war-of-choice distraction" from the 
war on terrorism. 

Meanwhile, the war drags on. March 20 is the one-year anniversary 
of the invasion, and major protests are planned in San Francisco 
and worldwide. The anniversary would have passed unnoticed if the 
war had ended within weeks or months, as expected. Instead, 
Coalition Forces commander Ricardo Sanchez now says U.S. troops 
may be in Iraq for two or more additional years. 

"We stayed in Vietnam for nine years," notes Ellsberg, "even 
though it was clear to many people in the first year that it was 
unwinnable. This is also the case in Iraq, and as we're seeing, 
the capture of Saddam made no difference because he wasn't 
coordinating the resistance fighters. But we'll probably be there 
as long as Americans are willing to accept the casualties." 

He sees a dark road ahead. "Unless our leaders learn from 
Vietnam, this will likely be a long, bloody, escalating 
stalemate, with casualties on both sides going steadily higher 
until we leave. Historians will regard this war as a disastrous 
error." 



What Next? 

Ellsberg urges Americans to support politicians who favor 
immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq; oppose Bush and members of 
Congress who don't; demand Congressional hearings to investigate 
improprieties during the White House push for war; and 
participate in all forms of protest against the war. He believes 
the huge Vietnam War protests saved hundreds of thousands of 
lives. "The war would have gone on even longer and nuclear 
weapons would have probably been used against China. Likewise, 
opposition to the Iraq invasion probably delayed it and slowed 
plans for other wars in the Middle East." 

Protest while you can, he adds, because it may not be as easy in 
the future. "I will be happily surprised if there isn't a major 
terrorist attack in the U. S. in the next four years, and if Bush 
is in office, I think this country will shift to something very 
close to fascism. Ashcroft and Cheney will use an attack as an 
excuse to implement police controls far beyond any we've seen. 
That's why we need to demand a return to the Constitution and 
Bill of Rights now, before it's too late. Guantanamo is a 
concentration camp by every historic standard, but in the future 
there may be scores of them, and not only for Middle Easterners. 
Someone like myself, for simply exercising free speech like I am 
now, may be put in these camps without charges." 

If all this sounds alarmist, it's not because Ellsberg is some 
wild-eyed anarchist. His analysis of foreign policy is more 
rational than radical, and mirrors the thinking of many respected 
political scientists. But he fears what kind of world he will 
leave to his three children and five grandchildren. 

"Ours is a dangerous time with two relatively new threats, both 
of them exacerbated by the Iraq invasion and this 
administration's policies. One is the threat of future terrorism 
by Osama and al Qaeda. The other is the threat to our freedoms 
and our constitutional republic. These," he says, worry creasing 
his face, "are dangers that were never faced before in my 
lifetime." 

----------------------------------------------------------------- 
Thoughts From Bay Area War Resisters 



Many Bay Area residents besides Daniel Ellsberg have actively 
protested both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Here are observations 
from a few of the best- known. 

David Harris 

Author; jailed draft resister during Vietnam and war critic 
during Iraq. Lives in Mill Valley. 

"The circumstances may be different, but the arrogance and the 
idiocy are very familiar. Once again, we are engaged in a 
collective blindness that damages everyone." 

Rep. Pete Stark 

Leader of efforts in Congress to end both wars. Lives in Fremont. 

"In both Vietnam and Iraq, we had presidents with little foreign 
policy experience led by advisers who pushed rigid ideological 
agendas." 

Rev. Cecil Williams 

Pastor of Glide Memorial Ministries; marched against both wars. 
Lives in San Francisco. 

"I've joined the anti-war voices heard around the world to show 
my grave dissatisfaction with these wars. As Americans, we have 
no business going into other countries and telling them how to 
live." 

Rep. Lynn Woolsey 

Vietnam War opponent; co-sponsor of anti-Iraq War resolutions. 
Lives in Petaluma. 

"Most Americans felt helpless in preventing the Iraq War and 
stopping the Vietnam War. But I do find it remarkable that 
hundreds of thousands of Americans protested this war before a 
single shot was fired, a level of sentiment that didn't coalesce 
against the Vietnam War for years." 

- B.C. 

Marin freelance writer Bob Cooper's last piece for the Magazine 
was on snowshoe racer Peter Fain. 

©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
*****************************************************************
 8 UK Independent: 'Britain and US shared transcripts after bugging Blix's mobile
phone'
 
By Kim Sengupta and Kathy Marks in Sydney
 
28 February 2004

The controversy over alleged British and American "dirty tricks" 
at the United Nations deepened yesterday with claims that two 
chiefs of Iraq arms inspection missions had been victims of 
spying. 

Hans Blix and Richard Butler were said to have been subjected to 
routine bugging while they led teams searching for Saddam 
Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction. 

In an interview published today, Dr Blix said he suspected his UN 
office and New York home had been bugged by the United States in 
the run-up to war. He said bugging was to be expected between 
enemies, but "here it is between people who co-operate and it is 
an unpleasant feeling". 

The new charges came within 24 hours of the former cabinet 
minister Clare Short stating British intelligence had taped the 
telephone calls of the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. 

As demands grew at home and abroad for Tony Blair to confirm or 
deny Ms Short's allegations, the British ambassador to the UN, 
Emyr Jones-Parry, telephoned Mr Annan on Thursday evening. The UN 
said Mr Jones-Parry's call has not shed any fresh light on the 
matter. Edward Mortimer, Mr Annan's director of communications, 
said: "There was a telephone call which was apologetic in tone 
but did not really amount to an admission of substance. 
Basically, the answer we got was the same as the Prime Minister 
gave at his press conference [on Thursday]. We are not complete 
innocents, we do realise these things happen but it was rather a 
shock to hear that the British government had been spying on the 
secretary general." 

Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said Mr 
Blair should make a statement to MPs on the affair.He will table 
a Commons motion next week demanding to know if there was an 
"eavesdropping operation", and if so, how extensive it was. Mr 
Kennedy said: "We need to know whether British intelligence took 
part in spying on the United Nations secretary general. This is a 
serious allegation, made by a member of Mr Blair's Cabinet, which 
cannot go unanswered. The United Kingdom was one of the founding 
members of the UN ... the suggestion that our security services 
were involved in some kind of illegal operation damages our 
national standing." 

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Mr Annan's predecessor as secretary 
general, said: "This is a violation of the United Nations 
charter. It complicates the work of the secretary general, of the 
diplomats, because they need a minimum of secrecy to reach a 
solution." Mr Butler, who led the UN disarmament team in Iraq in 
the 1990s, Unscom, said he was "well aware" that he was being 
bugged. But he said spying on the UN was illegal and harmed the 
peace-making process. "What if Kofi Annan had been bringing 
people together last February in a genuine attempt to prevent the 
invasion of Iraq, and the people bugging him did not want that to 
happen, what do you think they would do with that information?" 
he said. 

The alleged bugging of Dr Blix, in charge of the last UN mission 
before the war, seen as the last chance to avoid war, is being 
viewed in diplomatic circles as part of a concerted effort to 
sabotage attempts at a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis. Dr 
Blix, who retired in June, is highly critical of George Bush and 
Tony Blair for the claims they made about Iraq's supposed weapons 
of mass destruction. Washington and London, he said, had aborted 
the search for weapons to pave the way for an invasion. 

In an interview that appears in The Guardian today, he said he 
had expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but the possibility that 
he was spied on by someone "on the same side" was "disgusting". 
Dr Blix said his suspicions were aroused by repeated trouble with 
his telephone at his New York home. His fears worsened when a 
member of the US administration showed him photographs that could 
only have come from the UN weapons office. He met John Wolf, the 
US assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, two weeks 
before war started and was shown two pictures of Iraqi weapons. 
"He should not have had them. I asked him how he got them and he 
would not tell me and I said I resented that," he said. 

Dr Blix said it was unlikely one of his staff had handed over the 
pictures and thought it might be that spies broke into a secure 
fax. In his reports to the UN, Dr Blix, and his fellow inspection 
team leader, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International 
Atomic Energy Agency, had asked for more time to investigate 
Iraq's arsenal, a plea rejected by Washington and London. 

The claims of espionage against Dr Blix emerged in the Australian 
media, sourced to a member of the country's intelligence service. 
Yesterday a senior UN source confirmed to The Independent that 
the Iraq mission, Unmovic, were convinced they were victims of 
spying operations. Reports say Dr Blix's mobile telephone was 
monitored every time he went to Iraq, and the transcripts shared 
between the US, Britain and their allies, Australia, Canada and 
New Zealand. 

Yesterday, a UN official said: "While in the Canal Hotel in 
Baghdad [the Unmovic headquarters at the time], we never used to 
talk about anything sensitive in our rooms because we thought the 
Iraqis might be bugging us. We used to go outside to the garden. 

"It is one of the ironies of life that back in New York we would 
sometimes take similar measures, discuss things we thought should 
be confidential, out of the office, in public places, sometimes 
the sidewalk. 

"The only saving grace is that neither Dr Blix or anyone else 
among us would speak about sensitive matters on mobile 
telephones, so they would not have heard anything 
earth-shattering just by that. But I suspect there were other, 
more widespread interceptions. There were plenty of attempts to 
undermine us." 

Dr Blix's predecessor, Mr Butler, now the governor of Tasmania, 
said he was shown transcripts of bugged conversations. "Those who 
did it would come to me and show me the recordings that they made 
on others. 'To try to help me to do my job in disarming Iraq', 
they would say. 'We're just here to help you'," Mr Butler said. 
But the former UN chief inspector maintained that it was not only 
Britain which was spying. He said: "I was utterly confident that 
in my attempts to have private conversations, trying to solve the 
problem of disarmament of Iraq, I was being listened to by the 
Americans, British, the French and the Russians. They also had 
people on my staff reporting what I was trying to do privately. 
Do you think that was paranoia? Absolutely not. There was 
abundant evidence that we were being constantly monitored." 

Mr Butler said that he too had to hold sensitive conversations in 
the noisy cafeteria in the basement of the UN building in New 
York or in Central Park. 

"We were brought to a situation where it was plain silly to think 
we could have any serious conversation in our office. No one was 
being paranoid, everyone had a black sense of humour about it. 

"I would take a walk with the person in the park and speak in a 
low voice and keep moving so we could avoid directional 
microphones and maybe just have a private conversation." 

Mr Boutros-Ghali also described the vulnerability of the 
organisation to espionage. "From the first day I entered my 
office they said, 'Beware, your office is bugged, your residence 
is bugged, and it is a tradition that the member states who have 
the technical capacity to bug will do it without any hesitation.' 
That would involve members of the Security Council," he said. 
"The perception is that you must know in advance that your 
office, your residence, your car, your phone is bugged." 

The targets 

Richard Butler Former UN chief weapons inspector/p> 

He said he was "well aware" that he was being bugged at the UN. 
"How did I know? Because those who did it would come to me and 
show me the recordings that they had made on others to help me do 
my job disarming Iraq." He asked: "What if Kofi Annan had been 
bringing people together last February in a genuine attempt to 
prevent the invasion of Iraq, and the people bugging him did not 
want that to happen, what do you think they would do with that 
information?" 

Boutros Boutros-Ghali Former UN secretary general 

He said he was warned that he was likely to be bugged as soon as 
he started the job. "From the first day I entered my office, they 
said: 'Beware; your office is bugged, your residence is bugged, 
and it is a tradition that the member states who have the 
technical capacity to bug will do it without any hesitation.' 
That would involve members of the Security Council. The 
perception is that you must know in advance that your office, 
your residence, your car, your phone is bugged."              
    

UK Independent Ltd.

*****************************************************************
 9 UK Independent: case for Iraq war
 
By Raymond Whitaker and Robert Verkaik
 
29 February 2004

 	 

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, changed his advice in the
run-up to war in Iraq to declare that the conflict was legal,
The Independent on Sunday has learnt. 

Lord Goldsmith's full opinion on the legality of the war has
never been made public. The desire to keep it secret is believed
to be the main reason why the Official Secrets Act prosecution
of Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old former employee of GCHQ, the
Government's monitoring centre, was abandoned at the Old Bailey
last week. 

The case could have revealed that in November 2002 the Attorney
General believed Britain required specific authorisation for war
from the UN Security Council, but that he later changed his
stance. 

Ms Gun admitted leaking an email from the National Security
Agency, the US equivalent of GCHQ, which called for British help
in spying on diplomats at the United Nations in January last
year. At the time, the US and Britain were seeking a Security
Council resolution, later abandoned, specifically authorising
the use of force against Iraq. 

Although Ms Gun acknowledged she had broken the Official Secrets
Act, her lawyers were preparing to argue that she had acted to
prevent British casualties in an illegal war, and to demand that
the Attorney General's full opinion be made public. An "advance
notice of defence statement" filed in court highlighted
differences in the Government over the legality of committing
British troops without a UN resolution. 

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a deputy legal adviser to the Foreign
Office, resigned on the eve of war in protest at Lord
Goldsmith's opinion that the resolution was unnecessary. "Some
agreed with the legal advice of the Attorney General," she said
later. "I did not." 

But the IoS has learnt from sources connected to the Gun case
that in November 2002, when the Security Council passed
resolution 1441, threatening "serious consequences" if Iraq did
not "comply with its disarmament obligations", Lord Goldsmith
agreed with the Foreign Office view that a further resolution
would be needed to make war legal. As the possibility of war
without such a resolution loomed, Britain's military chiefs of
staff argued that they needed a clearer legal basis on which to
proceed. 

Between November and the end of January 2003, the IoS was told,
the Attorney General's staff produced a paper dealing with the
issues raised by the military chiefs, but it fell short of the
legal authorisation the chiefs of staff wanted. "The military
said they needed something harder if they were to commit
troops," a legal source said. Lord Goldsmith's advice argued
that a UN resolution from 13 years ago remained in force. 

Clare Short, the former International Development Secretary
whose UN spying claims caused a sensation last week, said even
the Cabinet had not been allowed to see the full advice, but it
is believed that Ms Gun's defence team was aware of its
contents. Lord Goldsmith later said the decision to drop the
case had been taken before the document was filed. 

The Government continued to insist yesterday that it would not
publish the Attorney General's full advice. But further court
cases are pending in which lawyers are expected to mount a
similar defence to Ms Gun's, and prosecution may be hampered if
the advice remains secret. 

Fourteen Greenpeace supporters face trial for a demonstration at
a Southampton military base in February 2003, and five peace
activists are charged with criminal damage at RAF Fairford. In
all cases, the defence is expected to argue that, like Ms Gun,
they were acting out of "necessity", to prevent an illegal war. 

* A Labour peer today raised questions about the way in which
the Attorney General came up with the advice he gave on the
legality of war following reports it changed in the run-up to
the conflict. 

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC said the "vast majority" of lawyers
thought the conflict without a second UN resolution would be
unlawful. 

She said in a GMTV interview: "The vast majority of lawyers were
of one view. 

"It was interesting that out of probably only two lawyers who
would have argued for the legality of going to war, one of those
was the person to whom the Attorney General turned." 

She added: "I think the lesson from this is that actually law
matters. Before you make those commitments to your friend or
ally you have to talk about law because it is not some side
issue. It is the way we have tried to civilise the world and we
must not forget that." 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 10 UK Independent: Clare Short: Was Attorney General leant on to sanction war? 
In her own words, the former cabinet minister questions the
legality of conflict
 
28 February 2004

This week the charges against Katharine Gun, a former employee
of GCHQ, were dropped in a way that posed once again big
questions about the legitimacy of the rush to war in Iraq. She
was accused of passing a document to The Observer which showed
the US asking the UK for help to spy on non-permanent members of
the Security Council: the purpose was to strengthen the ability
of the US and UK to "persuade" them to vote for war. 

Her lawyers made clear that her defence would rest on the
argument that her action was justified because the war was
illegal. They therefore intended to call for evidence on how the
Attorney General came to the conclusion that there was legal
authority for war. The lawyers concluded that the case was
dropped because he did not want his advice to be subject to
scrutiny. 

I was asked to comment by the Today programme. I made two
points. The first was that if it was illegitimate to contemplate
bugging the offices of fellow members of the Security Council,
then our security services should stop distributing transcripts
of Kofi Annan's private telephone calls. My second comment was
that the claims of Ms Gun's lawyers should be considered
alongside the claim that one of the reasons for the exaggeration
of the threat from WMD in Iraq was to manufacture legal
authority for war. 

The response of the establishment has been extraordinary. They
are faced with two allegations: one that the Attorney General's
legal advice authorising war in Iraq was manipulated in dubious
ways, the other that Britain is intruding on the privacy of Mr
Annan's phone calls. 

There were howls of outrage that the British people should be
informed that the powers of their state were being misused to
dishonour the secretary general of the United Nations. There was
very limited comment on the claim that the Attorney General may
have misused his powers to authorise a war that has led to the
death of 20,000 people and to an increase in bitterness and
instability in the Middle East and to a strengthening of
al-Qa'ida. 

The Prime Minister says that I am being deeply irresponsible and
endangering the British security services. Journalists ask if I
should be ejected from the Labour Party and/or the Privy
Council. And some - who are not in a position to know - suggest
that there are no transcripts of Mr Annan's phone calls. I'm
afraid that there is no question that such transcripts were
regularly circulated. 

It is likely that the Prime Minister was unaware of this. He's
not a man for detail but he is in a position to stop the
practice. But the suggestion that there is any threat to our
national security or intelligence services from the exposure of
the fact that such transcripts are circulated is laughable. 

The suggestion, however, that the Attorney General's opinion may
have been manipulated is very serious. There is no doubt that
the way in which a truncated opinion authorising war appeared at
the very last minute was very odd. Foreign Office lawyers
disagreed on the legality of war. Senior officials in Whitehall
worried that they were being asked to prepare for illegal
action. I was informed that the military would not move without
the Attorney General's authorisation. Then on the day Robin Cook
resigned, the Attorney General came to the Cabinet, sat in
Robin's seat and circulated two sides of A4 which said that
successive UN resolutions provided legal authority for war. I
tried to ask why he was so late and if there was any doubt but
was told in no uncertain terms there was to be no discussion. No
other advice was made available across Whitehall. 

As I go over and over events leading up to the rush to war, I
cannot help but conclude that the way in which the Attorney
General's opinion was produced and handled was very strange. It
is hard not to suspect that he had doubts and was leant upon. 

And, for the record, I am not at all bitter. I am not even
angry. I am still astonished and sad and disappointed. I believe
that our country and my party have been deeply dishonoured,
large numbers of people have lost their lives and the world made
more bitterly divided and dangerous. I committed myself to the
Labour Party very many years ago because I believed it to be an
instrument of moral advance and justice at home and abroad. 

I believe the best way to correct the mistakes is to persuade
Tony Blair to stand down. I have made no secret of this view. I
have not enjoyed reaching these conclusions but they are my
serious opinions. I do not support my party right or wrong. I
want to preserve my party as an instrument of justice. I also
think we should stop invading the privacy of the secretary
general of the United Nations. 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 11 Guardian Unlimited: Disputed advice helped
		 	
Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday February 28, 2004
The Guardian 		
		
The attorney general Lord Goldsmith's claim that the Iraq war was 
legal without a fresh UN resolution was used by the government to 
quash opposition from within the intelligence agencies, it has 
emerged. 

Secrets charges against Katharine Gun, the former GCHQ employee, 
were dropped this week after she told government lawyers she 
"honestly and reasonably believed that the United Kingdom shared 
the view that a military invasion of Iraq would be contrary to 
international law in the absence of a second UN resolution". 

Her claim is contained in a defence document passed to the 
prosecution just before it abandoned the case. The Guardian has 
seen a copy of the document with passages said to be damaging to 
the government's case for war blacked out. 

It says Ms Gun "had been informed by her employers", that Britain 
would not commit troops to Iraq without a second resolution "if 
to do so would be contrary to international law". The document 
said she believed the government would not send forces to Iraq 
without a new UN resolution "since it would be politically 
unacceptable to do so". 

The Guardian understands there were heated arguments about the 
legality of the war in the security and intelligence agencies and 
among senior military advisers, as well as in parliament and the 
country at large. 

Blacked-out passages in the defence document in the Gun case 
refer to the Foreign Office's legal advice, which conflicted with 
that of Lord Goldsmith. 

But it also refers to Lord Goldsmith's own advice casting doubt 
on his later conclusion - reached just before the outbreak of war 
- that a second UN resolution was unnecessary. These passages 
were not blacked out in the document passed to the Crown 
Prosecution Service. 

Lord Goldsmith is under increasing pressure to reveal in full his 
advice on the legality of the war and explain why he apparently 
changed his view as a military conflict became more and more 
likely. 

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs 
spokesman, has asked the solicitor general, Harriet Harman, to 
disclose how many occasions Lord Goldsmith gave ministers legal 
advice on the war. 

If she declines he is expected to take the case to the 
independent parliamentary ombudsman. 

Such a move is likely to cause the government further 
embarrassment on an issue it wants to go away. 
	
        Political Alerts Get daily headlines straight to your 
mobile

Sign up for the Backbencher Our free weekly insider's guide to 
Westminster

What do you think? politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk

Guardian Newspapers Limited
*****************************************************************
 12 Hi Pakistan: Paris seeks talks on N-safeguards: Islamabad pledges cooperation
but no question of rollback     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: France on Saturday proposed greater 
transparency for Pakistan's nuclear programme and tightening of 
export controls while the Pakistani leadership assured France of 
full cooperation on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. 

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin put forth his 
proposals during meetings with President Gen Pervez Musharraf, 
Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali and Foreign Minister 
Khurshid Kasuri. 

At a joint news conference with Mr Kasuri, Mr Villepin said 
France and its partners were ready to open a concrete dialogue 
with Pakistan on strengthening its nuclear export controls, 
greater transparency of nuclear activities with a close 
cooperation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and 
Islamabad's participation in global non-proliferation efforts, 
particularly within the framework of a UN Security Council 
resolution now being prepared. 

He said Pakistan should attend a meeting of heads of state on the 
proliferation issue to be held in the next few months. 

"A positive move by Pakistan will reinforce its position within 
the international community and I must say that we had a very 
positive and constructive dialogue today," Mr Villepin said. 

He said France was anxious to find solutions to the problems 
arising from nuclear proliferation. "I think our discussions with 
President Musharraf and Foreign Minister Kasuri today have been 
very fruitful," he added. 

President Musharraf met the French foreign minister earlier in 
the day in Rawalpindi and reiterated Pakistan's abiding 
commitment to non-proliferation. 

Mr Kasuri said the president and he himself assured the French 
minister that non-proliferation was as much in Pakistan's 
interest as in the interest of France or any other country. "I 
explained to Dominique in great detail about the A.Q. Khan affair 
and how it was an act of an individual and some of his 
collaborators," Mr Kasuri said. 

Reaffirming Pakistan's status as a declared nuclear power, Mr 
Kasuri said there was no question of rollback or any compromise 
on the nuclear programme. He reiterated that Pakistan's nuclear 
programme was for defensive purposes and was in reaction to 
Indian detonations dating back to 1974. 

He said Pakistan would go "all out" to support the international 
community efforts for non-proliferation. 

Asked about recognition of Pakistan as a nuclear power and 
holding of dialogue as a member of the nuclear club, Mr Villepin 
said it was an important problem to try to stick to principles 
and face the reality at the same time. "Facing reality means 
Pakistan has nuclear capability. That's a fact. Principles mean 
that we look for the best order possible...," he said. Mr Kasuri 
said the world would be better served if the reality of Pakistan, 
India and Israel were accepted as nuclear powers. 

Paying tribute to President Musharraf's determination to open a 
new phase in Pakistan's history, Mr Villepin said he visited 
Islamabad to express France's commitment to work with the 
Pakistani authorities to develop a political dialogue and 
strengthen cooperation between the two countries. 

He said his talks with President Musharraf and Foreign Minister 
Kasuri confirmed what he called excellent relations between the 
two countries in political, economic, cultural, education and 
defence fields. 

He said France supported President Musharraf's stance about 
stopping any kind of proliferation activity coming from Pakistan. 

He said Pakistan deserved a strong support for taking important 
and courageous decisions to show its sense of international 
responsibilities, especially in dismantling terrorist networks on 
its own territory. 

About relations between Pakistan and the European Union, the 
French foreign minister said the EU was closely following steps 
taken by Islamabad to fight proliferation, terrorism, dialogue 
with India and the situation in Afghanistan. 

INDIA-PAKISTAN TALKS: He welcomed the resumption of 
Pakistan-India dialogues, which he said, was the only way to 
remove misunderstandings and mistrust between the two countries. 

Asked about fears that increased French military sales to India 
would disturb the regional balance of power, Mr Villepin said 
India was a strategic partner of France, while at the same time, 
Paris wanted to increase its cooperation with Pakistan in all 
fields. 

"I don't think there is any incompatibility between the two, may 
be less today than ever because we see we are all heading in the 
same direction," he said. 

Replying to a question about India's quest to become a permanent 
member of the UN Security Council, Mr Villepin said the decision 
to expand and make the Council more representative rested with 
the international community. 

He said in the search for more Security Council members, 
important countries like Brazil, and some countries in Africa and 
Asia, including Japan and India, were mentioned as the most 
likely future permanent members. 

"So what I am saying is just a fact," he said, adding: "Having 
more countries is more beneficial for all of us." 

BAN ON SCARF: Mr Villepin said France did not at all forbid the 
use of scarf by Muslims in France. He said the recent law was 
applicable only to public schools and not directed against Islam 
or any other religion. 

Mr Kasuri said the issue of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay was 
also raised with Mr Villepin. 

He said 20 Pakistanis had been released from Guantanamo Bay while 
38 or 40 were still there. 

Mr Villepin said seven French nationals were also in Guantanamo 
Bay for which the French government was holding talks with the US 
to find a legal solution to the problem. 

UN ROLE IN IRAQ: About the role of the United Nations in Iraq, Mr 
Villepin said the international community should stick to the 
decision to restore full sovereignty of Iraq by the end of June. 

Earlier, reading from a written statement, Mr Kasuri said 
Pakistan's engagement with France was on three important planes - 
bilateral relations, the European Union and the United Nations. 

He said he and his French counterpart had exchanged views on 
recent developments in Pakistan-India relations, nuclear 
non-proliferation, Afghanistan, Iraq and UN-related issues. 
					     							 				 				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 13 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Iran dismisses US claims on Al-Qaeda 

IranNews Tehran Times Iran Daily   

  2004/02/29   

Islamabad, Feb 29 - Iran on Sunday categorically rejected claims 
by a US state department official alleging that fugitive members 
of Al-Qaeda have taken refuge in the Islamic Republic.

 "The claims are baseless since the stand of the government of 
Iran regarding sectarianism and terrorism is both transparent and 
a principle one," Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian told reporters.

 J Cofer Black introduced by a local TV network in Pakistan as US 
state department's ambassador-at-large said Sunday that Tehran 
was in contact with Al-Qaeda.

 "These Al-Qaeda operators are not only a threat to the US but 
they are also a threat to Pakistan," he went on claiming.

 In response to his allegations, the Iranian envoy stated: "In 
our bilateral relations, Pakistan and Iran do not need a 
spokesman."

 Taherian also remarked that Black's designation as presented by 
the GEO TV was not known to the diplomatic circles.

 Reliable sources here told IRNA that Black was a department of 
state official as a coordinator of counter-terrorism and 
suggested that GEO producers might have made a mistake with the 
title.

 They also said that Black served for 28 years in the CIA. In 
part of the TV interview, the US official was reluctant to answer 
some questions related to intelligence. He neither confirmed nor 
contradicted news on a recent secret visit of the US spy chi ef 
George Tenet to Pakistan.

 He was neither ready to comment on a reported meeting between 
Tenet and Pakistan's senior nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan in 
Islamabad, but said that Dr Khan was definitely providing vital 
information about proliferation.

 v.m   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: <font color="#ff0000" face>Webmaster@IRIBNEWS.ir</font> 
*****************************************************************
 14 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Nuke fuel import a lucrative project 

IranNews Tehran Times Iran Daily   
  
  2004/02/29   

Moscow, Feb 29 - Acting Atomic Energy Minister Alexander 
Rumyantsev said the import of spent nuclear fuel from other 
countries was "a very lucrative project."

 He believes "the experience of trade in enriched uranium" could 
be used in the implementation of the project.

 The minister told Itar-Tass on Saturday " the amendments to the 
law allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel have been in effect 
for two-and-a-half years but Russia has not been able so far to 
enter this very promising market." 

He said the market is currently being "monopolized by the United 
States and Western Europe."

 "The USA keeps up to 80 percent of spent nuclear fuel within its 
jurisdiction," he said.

 In his view, Russia could avail of "the experience of trade in 
enriched uranium" to get into the market.

 "We are competing with major countries of the world in this 
field on equal terms," Rumyantsev said.

 Europe uses 25 percent of Russian uranium for its nuclear 
program while the US uses 50 percent.

 "In addition, we have entered the markets of such countries as 
Japan, South Korea, South Africa, and Mexico," he added.

KH   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
*****************************************************************
 15 [Fwd: [NukeNet] U.S. and North Korea Agree to More Talks]
 
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North Korea's new insistence on retaining a
civilian nuclear power program

  http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/international/asia/29SEOU.html

U.S. and North Korea Agree to More Talks
By JOSEPH KAHN

Published: February 29, 2004


EIJING, Feb. 28 - The United States and North
Korea said Saturday that they were committed to
deepening negotiations over the North's nuclear
weapons program, ending four days of inconclusive
discussions with an unusual show of conciliation.

Senior Bush administration officials and Kim Kye
Kwan, North Korea's top negotiator at the
six-nation talks here, said that while their main
differences remained unresolved, the talks had
proved useful. They pledged to meet in smaller
working groups soon and hold another formal
session before the end of June.

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"We had substantive discussions about the nuclear
issue with the goal being the denuclearization of
the Korean peninsula," Mr. Kim said, in a rare
news conference at the North Korean Embassy here.
"My delegation has adopted a businesslike attitude
with the intention of resolving the issue
peacefully through dialogue and negotiations."

He accused the United States of maintaining a
"hostile policy" and blamed it for the lack of a
breakthrough. Still, his criticism was not as
sharp as the message North Korea sent after
sessions in April and August, when its negotiators
said they planned to abandon talks and expand the
nuclear program.

No understanding was reached on how to end North
Korea's nuclear program. In some areas, including
North Korea's new insistence on retaining a
civilian nuclear power program and its firm
denials that it has been developing fuel from
enriched uranium, the gap appeared wider now than
before the talks began.

But representatives of all six nations said the
tone of the talks had changed, with many saying
that the risk of a rapid deployment of nuclear
arms by North Korea, or a pre-emptive attack by
the United States, had receded, at least for now.

Also significant, American officials said, is that
North Korea committed itself publicly to
eventually dismantling its nuclear program, though
under terms the American side has rejected.

"The D.P.R.K. did say that they will dismantle
their nuclear program, though the devil is in the
details," said a senior Bush administration
official involved with the talks, using the
initials of North Korea's formal name, the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Echoing the generally positive assessment by
American officials here, Richard A. Boucher, the
State Department spokesman, issued a statement in
Washington welcoming the talks as "serious
discussions on the comprehensive denuclearization
of the Korean Peninsula."

But another senior administration official in
Washington, taking a tougher view, said, "It's
wrong to say there was much progress at all." He
asserted that the Chinese were themselves upset
that North Korea had not been more forthcoming.

This official said he doubted that the working
group or groups mentioned at the end of the
Beijing talks would ever get started in the
absence of a broader and more explicit commitment
by North Korea to end its nuclear program in a
"complete, irreversible, verifiable" way.

Those mixed assessments reflected many obstacles,
including last-minute demands by North Korea that
upset China's plans for the six nations to issue a
communiqué on goals for future talks. Those
participants included South Korea, Japan and
Russia.

Intensive discussions between officials from
China, the host of the talks, and those from North
Korea delayed the closing ceremony for several
hours on Saturday. In the end, the parties
downgraded their communiqué to a "chairman's
statement." All parties said the statement
represented their views.

The Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, closed
the session saying all sides had agreed to work
for a settlement. "Differences, even serious
differences, still exist," he said. "The road is
long and bumpy. But time is on the side of peace."

The major advance in the talks came in the form of
proposals by both North and South Korea to address
what China referred to as the first stage of
ending North Korea's nuclear program. The North
offered to freeze its program in exchange for aid.
South Korea offered to provide energy aid as long
as the freeze was a steppingstone to
dismantlement. China and Russia agreed to join
South Korea in providing aid.



The United States and Japan said they would not
give aid at that stage. But the United States said
it "understood and supported" plans by others to
offer energy assistance before the weapons program
was completely ended. That represented a softening
of the Bush administration's insistence that no
aid should be offered before actual dismantlement.

The senior Bush administration official also said
North Korea had shown flexibility early in the
talks, leading some negotiators to think the North
might be persuaded to accept the American formula
of "complete, verifiable, irreversible
dismantlement" of its nuclear program.

     Advertisement



In the end, North Korea rejected the formula and
declined to discuss details of its offer to
dismantle its weapons program. But the
administration officials said other parties had
adopted the formula.

Complete, verifiable dismantlement "is firmly on
the agenda," the official said. "It has been
accepted by everyone except the D.P.R.K."

On two other major issues, however, the United
States and North Korea remained far apart.

The first involved American assertions that North
Korea had pursued fissile material by enriching
uranium, in addition to its better-known effort to
use plutonium.

The United States says its assertions of a uranium
program are based on solid intelligence and were
bolstered by the confessions of a Pakistani
scientist who admitted providing uranium
enrichment-related technology to North Korea.

But the administration official said American
negotiators did not present any evidence about an
enriched uranium program at the talks, implying
that it was not complete enough. "Some of this is
still unfolding, and going through analysis," the
official said. "Our own work is far from finished
on this one."

Mr. Kim steadfastly denied the North had any such
program. He said North Korea has had a long
history of cooperation with Pakistan, but that the
relationship did not involve the transfer of
uranium enrichment technology.

"We have had mutual dealings with Pakistan and
earned hard currency by selling missiles to
Pakistan," he said. "However, we have no
relationship with Pakistan regarding highly
enriched uranium."






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*****************************************************************
 16 Las Vegas SUN: N. Korea Nuke Talks May Continue in April

February 27, 2004 

 By AUDRA ANG ASSOCIATED PRESS 

BEIJING (AP) - 

After "difficulties and contradictions," delegates to a
six-nation meeting on North Korea's nuclear program reached
tentative agreement Friday to try again within two months and
create lower-level working groups to help, news reports and
Chinese officials said. 

The nations also agreed to create lower-level working groups
that would begin meeting within two weeks to discuss energy aid
for the impoverished North in return for a "comprehensive
nuclear abandonment" by Pyongyang, South Korea's Yonhap News
Agency said in a report from Beijing. 

It cited a joint draft document fashioned by delegates from the
United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas but not
yet officially endorsed by their governments. 

Yonhap's bulletins were issued minutes after Shin Bong-kil,
Seoul's chief spokesman, held a briefing exclusively for South
Korean reporters. Shin would not confirm the Yonhap report,
saying it was "way too ahead." 

On Saturday morning, the Japanese news agency Kyodo News said
the six countries would call for "the coordinated
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" - a long-stated and
expected goal. It cited "negotiation sources." 

The ceremony closing the talks was postponed Saturday because of
"technical reasons," the Chinese government said amid reports
that the North was demanding last-minute revisions to a joint
statement. It wasn't known when the ceremony would take place. 

On Friday, the third day of negotiations, outward optimism was
tempered by fissures that for 16 months have undermined chances
at an agreement. North Korea stuck by its statement that the
Americans' "hostile policy" was to blame, and Friday's talks
produced no specific claims of progress toward the meeting's
goal. 

The United States repeatedly has demanded the "complete,
verifiable and irreversible" dismantling of the North's nuclear
program, and refuses to grant concessions if Pyongyang freezes
the program but does not abolish it entirely. 

North Korea and the United States have been at odds over
Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions for years and especially since
October 2002, when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly
said the North told him it had a secret weapons program based on
enriched uranium - thus violating a 1994 agreement. 

North Korea publicly denies having a uranium program in addition
to its known plutonium-based program, but it brandishes the
threat of what it vaguely describes as its "nuclear deterrent"
in an effort to extract concessions. 

U.S. officials believe North Korea already has one or two
nuclear bombs and could make several more within months. The
North's five negotiating partners all say they want the Korean
Peninsula to be nuclear-free. 

The last negotiations between the six nations were held in
August and concluded after three days with little progress. 

Earlier Friday, Wang Yi, China's chief negotiator and a vice
foreign minister, acknowledged "differences, difficulties and
contradictions" during the current talks even as a Chinese
government spokesman said the divide was gradually narrowing. 

Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea's head delegate, said the countries
were still trying to find "a common denominator" but offered no
details. 

"You can call it rough sailing, but we are spending a lot of
time on working it out," Lee said. 

Friday's talks followed a tumultuous second day of attempts at
dealmaking, with South Korea, China and Russia offering the
impoverished North crucial energy aid if it agreed to disarm. 

Pyongyang also took the striking step of offering formally, at
the negotiating table, to eliminate its nuclear program, but
lashed out hours later at what it called Washington's "hostile
policy." 

The conflicting signals are a hallmark of North Korean
diplomacy. 

Still, the United States promised Friday to see the negotiations
through even though there were no concrete signs Pyongyang would
meet Washington's demands to completely dismantle its program. 

Liu Jianchao, a Chinese government spokesman, sounded an upbeat
note Friday, saying "common ground is growing" among
participants. 

"Gaps between the various parties are gradually narrowing, but
it is still an objective fact that there are differences," Liu
said. 

Even before talks started Wednesday, participants - particularly
China - mentioned a "regular framework" for continuing six-party
negotiations at a lower official level. That would enable work
to be done beyond high-profile, high-security gatherings like
this week's. 

"It's China's hope that the process of the six-party talks can
go on and on," Liu said. 

In Tokyo, Japan's top diplomat said it had no plans to offer aid
to North Korea and expressed skepticism about any partial
dismantlement of its nuclear program. 

Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi said while Japan would
"understand and support" other countries offering such aid, "we
are currently not in a situation to do so ourselves." 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 17 Las Vegas SUN: N. Korea Nuke Talks End Without a Deal

February 28, 2004 

 By JOE McDONALD ASSOCIATED PRESS 

BEIJING (AP) - 

Six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program ended Saturday
without any major breakthrough, but a U.S. official declared
them "very successful" and the governments involved promised to
push ahead with diplomatic efforts. 

The United States, North Korea and other governments agreed to
hold more senior-level talks before July and form a lower-level
working group to handle details involved in solving the
16-month-old dispute, officials announced. 

The governments failed to agree on the U.S. demand that
Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons program, said the chief
Chinese delegate, Wang Yi, who cited an "extreme lack of trust." 

But the North said it was ready to do so once Washington gives
up what Pyongyang calls a "hostile policy" toward the isolated
regime, according to Wang. 

The four-day meeting, which began Wednesday, was the second
round of six-nation talks organized by China on the 16-month
standoff. In exchange for giving up its nuclear program, the
hunger-stricken North wants aid and security guarantees. 

The senior U.S. official said the atmosphere of two one-on-one
meetings between the American and North Korean delegations was
"much better" than during the previous round of talks in August. 

"The event has exceeded my expectations," the official told
reporters on condition of anonymity. However, he added: "The
devil is in the details." 

The talks were "very successful in moving our agenda toward our
goal of complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of the
DPRK's nuclear programs," the official said, referring to the
North by the initials of its full name. 

The United States repeatedly has demanded the comprehensive
dismantling of the North's nuclear program, and refuses to grant
concessions if Pyongyang freezes the program but does not
abolish it entirely. 

Other participants in the talks were South Korea, Japan and
Russia. 

Wang, a vice foreign minister, said the governments failed to
agree on the American demand for the North to give up its
nuclear weapons program. 

"The parties did not have consensus on this proposal or the
scope of North Korea's giving up nuclear weapons," he said.
However, he said, North Korea "made clear its readiness" to give
up its weapons program "once the United States gives up its
so-called `hostile policy' toward North Korea." 

The United States affirmed that it had "no hostile intent"
against the North, Wang said. "It has no intention to invade or
attack North Korea," he said. "It has no intention to seek
regime change against North Korea." 

The governments established what they called a framework to
continue diplomatic work and agreed to hold the third round of
the six-party talks in Beijing no later than July, Wang said. 

Even before the talks started Wednesday, China warned that the
dispute couldn't be solved in a single round of meetings. 

"Some people think that not enough progress was made," Chinese
Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said, thanking delegates at a
closing ceremony. "But the speed of these negotiations is not
very fast. ... The will of the participants is the most
important thing, and the will of these participants is to seek
peace." 

He added: "We must use a constructive attitude to narrow
differences and expand common ground through dialogue, to
resolve the issue." 

There are still "some various serious differences," Li said. He
said the disagreements "cannot be fundamentally resolved through
one or two rounds of talks." 

The closing ceremony was delayed more than three hours after
North Korea requested changes in a joint statement to refer to
"differences" among the governments, according to diplomats. 

At the start of the ceremony, diplomats from five nations -
South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan - sat
for several minutes live on Chinese television, waiting and
appearing nervous before the North Korean delegation strode in.
Its chief delegate, Kim Kye Gwan, was smiling broadly. 

The statement was later issued by China under the title
"chairman's statement," which was read by Wang at a news
conference. 

North Korea and the United States have been at odds over
Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions for years and especially since
October 2002, when U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly
said the North told him it had a secret program based on
enriched uranium - thus, Washington said, violating a 1994
agreement. 

Kelly led the U.S. delegation to the Beijing talks this week. 

North Korea publicly denies having a uranium program in addition
to its known plutonium-based program, but it brandishes the
threat of what it describes as its "nuclear deterrent" in an
effort to extract concessions. 

U.S. officials believe North Korea already has one or two
nuclear bombs and could make several more within months. The
North's five negotiating partners all say they want the Korean
Peninsula to be nuclear-free. 

South Korea, China and Russia offered the North crucial energy
aid if it agreed to disarm. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 18 Las Vegas SUN: Nuke Negotiators Try to Avoid '94 Repeat

February 28, 2004 

 By ELAINE KURTENBACH ASSOCIATED PRESS 

BEIJING (AP) - 

A decade ago, fuel-starved North Korea won energy assistance
from the United States in exchange for giving up its nuclear
program. The North took the aid but kept the program. 

In recent days, a chance for more energy aid was on the table as
six governments tried to end the standoff over American demands
that the North scrap its nuclear development for good. 

The talks involving the Koreas, the United States, China, Japan
and Russia ended Saturday without any breakthroughs, although
negotiators agreed to meet again by July and to have lower-level
officials work on the complex details of the dispute. 

A key issue will be how to make the North stick to any agreement
after it was accused of reneging on its 1994 pledge, which
brought it oil and help in building two civilian nuclear power
plants - aid that is now suspended. 

Despite the North's uneven track record, analysts say that this
time, a carefully structured deal could work. The
famine-stricken North is more desperate than ever - and an
eventual agreement would be signed with all of its neighbors,
including allies China and Russia, leaving the isolated regime
with nowhere to turn if it reneges. 

"This time, it's multilateral. It has a bit more binding power,"
says Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongkuk University in
Seoul. 

The United States is demanding the complete, verifiable
dismantling of the North's nuclear program. That would require
intrusive inspections of its declared and suspected nuclear
facilities - something that Pyongyang has been reluctant to
allow with in the past. 

The 1994 deal with the United States collapsed two years ago
after American officials said North Korea was working on a
uranium-based nuclear program in violation of the agreement. 

South Korea's delegate to the talks, Lee Soo-hyuck, said Russia
and China offered to contribute to its energy offer, although
Beijing says its aid isn't linked to the nuclear talks. 

By some estimates, China also provides about three-quarters of
the North's fuel and almost half its food. 

Beijing reportedly offered the North aid worth $50 million to
$100 million to take part in the latest talks. 

That gives China and South Korea leverage, said Ralph Cossa, of
the Pacific Forum CSIS, a think tank in Honolulu. 

"South Korea and China can say, `Look, if you want the next
payment, you have to deliver,'" Cossa said. But still, he noted,
"the leverage works only if you're willing to use it." 

Pyongyang says it was forced to restart work on its own nuclear
power plant due to desperate energy shortages. 

The North is trying to get South Korean electricity and gas from
the Kovykta gas field in Russia's Far East - a resource coveted
also by China, Japan and South Korea. 

The North's energy crisis began with the end of Soviet oil
imports and subsidies. Drought in following years cut power
output from hydroelectric plants. 

North Korea imports all of its oil, but its struggling economy
has little money to pay for it, while coal production has
dropped due to lack of electricity to light mines. 

U.S. officials point to Libya as a possible role model for the
North. 

The government of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is scrapping its
programs for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In
exchange, it won support from the U.N. atomic agency for
peaceful nuclear programs in agriculture and industry - and
pledges from Washington to lift crippling economic sanctions. 

The shift is likely to bring oil-rich Libya a flood of foreign
investment. 

While the North lacks Libya's commercial appeal, Pyongyang also
wants to break out of its isolation, Cossa said. 

"What Libya says is, 'Look, there's another option,'" he said. 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 19 JoongAng Daily: The opening of the nuclear Pandora's box

by Oh Byung-sang obsang@joongang.co.kr>
 
2004.02.29 
                

"Sir, some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard leads me to 
expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and 
important source of energy in the immediate future. It is 
conceivable that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus 
be constructed. I would suggest the government respond quickly to 
the new research."
 
In 1939, when Albert Einstein wrote this letter to President 
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a very small number of physicists were the 
only ones who believed that nuclear bombs could actually be 
constructed. In fact, Mr. Einstein himself, who provided the 
theoretical foundation for nuclear development, did not realize 
the fearful might of nuclear weapons when he wrote the letter. He 
compared the possibility of the successful production of a 
nuclear bomb to "shooting into the air in the darkness and 
hitting a bird."
 
But the skeptical physicist wrote the letter to the president 
when a fellow physicist and Jewish refugee, Leo Szilard, 
persuaded him to do so. To those who sought refuge in the United 
States to escape the Nazi government, it was the ultimate 
nightmare that Adolf Hitler would win World War II with nuclear 
weapons.
 
German scientist Otto Hahn had already completed the nuclear 
fission chain reaction of uranium 235 in 1938. As the uranium 
nucleus is split during fission, some of its mass would be 
converted to energy, and according to Einstein's formula, the 
resultant energy would be enormous. But scientists were skeptical 
because, in general, over 99 percent of uranium is the uranium 
238 isotope, which does not produce a chain reaction. Only 0.7 
percent of the element is uranium 235, whose fission produces 
energy. In the 1930s, producing weapons-grade highly enriched 
uranium seemed like an impossible task.
 
But the United States successfully produced nuclear weapons with 
highly enriched uranium in the summer of 1945, right after the 
Nazi regime surrendered. Since the war was already won, American 
scientists opposed using the catastrophic weapon. But nuclear 
weapons had already left the hands of the scientists. They 
predicted that the world would be divided into those who had 
nuclear weapons and those who didn't. North Korea might prove the 
prediction of the fathers of nuclear weapons yet again.
 
The writer is the London correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.
 
  
*****************************************************************
 20 Korea Herald: Nuclear foes still far apart   

(shj@heraldm.com)

By Seo Hyun-jin / Korea Herald correspondent 

2004.03.01
        
But six nations agree on third round of talks by June

 BEIJING - Crucial talks here last week on Pyongyang's nuclear 
ambitions made modest progress but failed to bridge the big 
divide on major issues concerning the 16-month tension. 

Wrapping up their four-day negotiations Saturday, the two Koreas, 
the United States, China, Japan and Russia adopted a chairman's 
statement in which they agreed to set up a working group for 
detailed discussions and hold the next talks before the end of 
June. 

The countries also expressed their commitment to a 
nuclear-weapons-free Korean Peninsula and willingness to coexist 
peacefully. 

Experts and officials said the second round of six-party talks 
resulted in a meaningful step - adoption of the first document on 
the issue - but predicted a long and bumpy road, with Pyongyang 
and Washington showing few signs of compromise. The first round 
in August ended with a chairman's verbal summary. 

Critics say the document provides no blueprint for settling key 
disputes, including North Korea's nuclear dismantlement and 
corresponding measures by the United States as well as 
Pyongyang's secret uranium-based nuclear weapons program. 

"The document does not contain any substantial clue for solving 
the nuclear issue, but it gained some achievement on the part of 
the dialogue mechanism," said Prof. Kim Keun-sik at Kyungnam 
University. 

"Differences, even serious differences, still exist," Chinese 
Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said as he closed the multilateral 
talks. 

The main reason for divisions is the extreme lack of trust 
between North Korea and the United States, said Chinese chief 
negotiator Wang Yi. 

Pyongyang proposed abandoning nuclear weapons here last week but 
wanted to retain its nuclear capability for nonmilitary uses. 

Washington refused, concerned that the isolationist country would 
use the technology covertly for military purposes. It insisted on 
complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of all North 
Korean nuclear programs. 

The divide kept the six parties from issuing a joint statement, 
which they had originally pushed for. The closing ceremony was 
delayed for three hours as Pyongyang insisted on including a 
phrase indicating differences among the parties remained. 

They settled on, "Through the talks, while differences remained, 
the parties enhanced their understanding of each other's 
positions."

 As their positions on the nuclear resolution differed during the 
talks, so did their assessments of the negotiations. 

A senior U.S. official said the talks were "very successful."

 "The event has exceeded my expectations in a very important 
respect," the official said. "It's been very successful in moving 
the agenda toward our goal of complete, verifiable and 
irreversible dismantlement of DPRK nuclear programs."

 But North Korea said there was no "substantive positive result."

 "We were denied the joy of a corresponding attitude by the U.S. 
side," North Korean representative Kim Kye-gwan said in a rare 
press conference after the talks. "The United States is not 
willing to resolve this issue fundamentally."

 Six-party talks will not resolve the nuclear problem if 
Washington is not ready to change its hostile policy toward 
Pyongyang, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said Sunday.

 Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, the South Korean head 
negotiator, said he was satisfied with the outcome as it laid the 
foundation for future progress. 

*****************************************************************
 21 Korea Herald: EDITORIAL Early nuclear solution   

2004.03.01
      
Few would call it a major breakthrough, but the six-party
nuclear talks in Beijing last week may well be considered a
modest success. The road ahead, leading to the ultimate goal of
completely eliminating North Korean nuclear arms and achieving a
nuclear-weapons-free peninsula, still remains long and arduous.
Yet, the four-day session has brightened, to a notable extent,
prospects for seeking a peaceful resolution to the knotty
diplomatic issue through dialogue. 

There is no doubt that many people sighed in relief over the
weekend. The most remarkable outcome of the second round of the
multilateral conference is that the six nations involved - the
two Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia - agreed
to continue the process of dialogue. They agreed, in principle,
to meet again before July and to set up a lower-level working
group in preparation for the plenary. They also reached an
accord to take "coordinated steps" to address the nuclear issue
and related concerns. 

This is certainly encouraging progress, considering the
reputation of the North Koreans as tough and unpredictable
negotiators and the diverse interests of the participating
nations. The "chairman's statement" indicates, though in
somewhat too comprehensive terms, that both the United States
and North Korea more expressly intend to move closer to
accepting each other's positions: Washington demanding the
"complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of the
North's nuclear arms program and Pyongyang asking for a
guarantee of its security and economic aid. 

The devil may hide in the details shelved for later talks, as
one U.S. official put it. Indeed, the issue of highly enriched
uranium remains a major stumbling block. The North Koreans
repeated their denials such a program existed, while the United
States insisted that it had its own intelligence showing the
North possessed such an arms development in addition to its
known plutonium-based program. 

The North also made a fresh request that it be allowed to engage
in nuclear activities for "peaceful purposes," which is expected
to emerge as another contentious issue in future negotiations. 
With the dialogue framework now taking better shape, we urge the
governments involved in the talks to maintain the dawning
optimism and work harder to forge a negotiated solution at an
early date. In coordination with Washington and Tokyo, the South
Korean negotiators have already put forward a three-stage road
map: offering multilateral security guarantees for North Korea
in exchange for its freeze of all nuclear programs as the first
step toward a comprehensive dismantling, which will be verified
by international inspectors. 

Once North Korea rejoins the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
this will guarantee it pursues nuclear activities only for
peaceful purposes. South Korea, as well as China and Russia, has
also offered to provide the North with energy aid in return for
its early concessions. In this regard, the inter-Korean
conference on economic cooperation, scheduled for this week in
Seoul, will be an important occasion for Pyongyang to prove its
genuine intention of discarding its nuclear ambitions and
receive desperately needed economic and humanitarian aid. 

The international community is well aware that the North's
weakness rests in its dire economic situation. The isolated
communist state is faced with severe food shortages, according
to recent reports by humanitarian organizations. 

Time is running out for the North. The ball has long been in the
North's court, though Washington also has to shed misgivings
that it is pursuing a "hostile policy." There is no point in
extending the standoff and thereby giving the North more time to
strengthen its "nuclear deterrent" and exacerbate the crisis. An
early solution is in the best interests of all parties. 

*****************************************************************
 22 BBC: No breakthrough in N Korea talks 
 
  Last Updated: Saturday, 28 February, 2004
 
[Satellite photo of Yongbyon nuclear reactor] 
Talks are focused on programmes at the Yongbyon nuclear site
			 			   		
Six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programme have ended in 
Beijing without a major breakthrough. 

The United States hailed the meeting as "very successful", but 
North Korea said there had been "no substantive and positive 
result". 

China cited a "complete lack of trust" between the US and North 
Korea, and said serious differences remained. 

The parties agreed to hold more talks before the middle of the 
year and set up working parties to examine issues. 

'Expectations exceeded' 

An unnamed US official told reporters the talks had placed 
America's demand for the complete dismantling of North Korea's 
nuclear programme "more on the table than ever". 

STUMBLING BLOCKS                        

N Korea wants compensatio for freezing nuclear programme  But US 
says freeze not enough US wants N Korean uranium programme 
dismantled  N Korea denies programme exists        Japan wants 
abductees discussed         N Korea says subject not relevant to 
nuclear talks Key quotes post-talks           

"The event has exceeded my expectations in a very important 
respect," the official was quoted by Reuters as saying. 

"It's been very successful in moving the agenda towards our goal 
of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling [CVID] of 
DPRK [North Korea] nuclear programmes." 

North Korea has traditionally offered only to freeze its nuclear 
programme in return for economic and energy aid and security 
guarantees from Washington. 

The BBC's Charles Scanlon in Beijing says analysts noted signs of 
flexibility in the American position - it acquiesced in a 
regional offer to provide energy aid to the North in return for a 
nuclear freeze and made it clear that security guarantees and 
diplomatic relations were on the table if an agreement could be 
reached. 

'Serious differences' 

North Korea was far more negative, blaming the US for a lack of 
significant progress. 

The DPRK [North Kore denials are there, but seem only to result 
in a self-isolation
		
US official     

"We were denied the joy of a corresponding attitude by the US 
side," North Korea's chief delegate Kim Kye Gwan said after the 
talks. 

"The United States is not willing to resolve this issue 
fundamentally." 

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said some progress had been 
made but urged caution. 

"Differences, even serious differences, still exist," he said. 

China's chief delegate, Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said more 
discussion was needed on the scope of North Korea's offer to 
freeze its nuclear activities and America's demand for an 
complete end to Pyongyang's nuclear programmes. 

Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign 
Minister Alexander Lossyukov as saying "progress, modest but a 
step forward" had been achieved at the talks. 

The talks, involving the US, Russia, China, Japan and North and 
South Korea, were the first since a round last August ended 
without substantial progress. 

Uranium row 

One of the main stumbling blocks has been America's insistence 
that North Korea scrap an alleged uranium-enrichment programme to 
build nuclear weapons. 

The current crisis erupted in October, 2002, after a senior US 
envoy said North Korean officials admitted to having such a 
programme, but North Korea has denied the assertion. 

"The DPRK denials are there, but seem only to result in a 
self-isolation," Reuters quoted the US official as saying. 

North Korea says, however, it has reprocessed thousands of spent 
nuclear fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, from which 
extracted plutonium can be used to manufacture nuclear bombs. 

The reclusive Stalinist state claims to have nuclear weapons, 
which the US believes might number "one or two". 
*****************************************************************
 23 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: North Must Settle 'Peaceful Nuclear Activities'   
 
      Updated Mar.1,2004 08:38 KST   
  
The second round of six-way talks on the North Korean nuclear 
issue, held for three days in Beijing, ended with a "chairmen's 
statement" instead of a communiqué agreed on by all six 
participating nations. It was a disappointing as expected, with 
no concrete agreement, but at least did not lose any last hope 
for a peaceful solution through dialogue. 

One prominent point of disagreement was the so-called "nuclear 
activity for peaceful purposes," which the North wanted excluded 
from a freeze on activities but held suspect by the United 
States. The doubt is whether what the North calls "peaceful 
nuclear activity" will be accepted as peaceful, especially since 
it called the 5-megawatt reactor at Yeongbyeon "peaceful 
activity" but then used it for weapons development. If the North 
really wants to see the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons, 
then it has to guarantee the kind of transparency that would 
clearly put that past to rest. 

A major area of interest for Korea was weather it would restart 
energy aid for the North should the North agree to freeze all 
nuclear activity with the premise that it would eventually 
forfeit all nuclear programs, and then whether China and Russia 
would participate in the giving of that aid. This would mean 
Korea would be almost exclusively responsible for the 
construction of the light water rector and heavy oil supply (at 
500,000 tons and tens of millions of dollars yearly), halted by 
the U.S. If that's how it happens, Korea would be less able to 
keep up with its other forms of aid for the North. 

"The road ahead is long and steep," said Chinese foreign minister 
Li Zhaoxing. "But time is on the side of peace." Unfortunately, 
there's no telling how much longer international realities will 
permit such rhetorical optimism. 

*****************************************************************
 24 Hi Pakistan: No N-deals with Pakistan: North Korea     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
BEIJING (AFP) - North Korea on Saturday again denied it
had an enriched uranium-based nuclear programme and dismissed
suspicions that it had dealings on enriched uranium with
Pakistan. 

‘I stress that we don’t have either related facilities, nor
scientists, nor technicians,’ said Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s
chief delegate to the just-completed six-party talks, at a press
conference. 

He dismissed suggestions that uranium had been traded between
North Korea and Pakistan. 

‘We and Pakistan have had various political and economic
relations and feelings. There was a missile trade. We earned
hard currency by selling missiles to Pakistan but there were no
dealings over enriched uranium we don’t need.’ 

Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in early
February admitted leaking nuclear secrets and begged for
forgiveness following a lengthy investigation into the alleged
transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. 

Washington claims North Korea has a covert uranium-based
programme, as well as its well-documented plutonium-producing
enterprise. 

North Korea has repeatedly said the uranium program exists only
in the imagination of the United States. 					     							 				
				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 25 50 Years of Nuclear Testing Fallibility.  Bravo?
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 13:02:30 -0600 (CST)

 
March 1 st , 2004 marks the 50 th anniversary of the 1954 US "Bravo"
hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands that
unexpectedly turned out to be the largest US nuclear test ever exploded.
"Bravo" gouged a crater about a mile wide in the reef of Bikini Atoll.
Within seconds of the blast, the fireball was nearly three miles in
diameter. On Rongerik, an island 135 miles east of the blast, the
illumination from "Bravo" was visible for almost one minute. Physicist
Marshall Rosenbluth, located on a ship about 30 miles away, stated that
the fireball "just kept rising and rising, and spreading.it looked to me
like what you might imagine a diseased brain, or a brain of some mad man
would look like on the surface.and the air started getting filled with
this gray stuff, which I guess was somewhat radioactive coral." 

Human Fallibility

"Bravo" brought to light the consequences of human fallibility with
regards to nuclear weapons. In preparing for the test, Los Alamos
scientists missed an important fusion reaction and grossly
underestimated the size of the explosion. The scientists expected that
the test would yield the equivalent of five million tons of TNT, but
instead "Bravo" yielded 15 megatons - making the destructive force three
times larger than expected and more than 1,000 times greater than the
bomb dropped on Hiroshima that caused a total of some 135,000
casualties. 

Human Consequences 

Some 80 miles east of Bikini , a snow-like substance began raining down
on 23 fishermen onboard a Japanese tuna fishing vessel called the Lucky
Dragon. The fishermen had no idea that the ash was fallout from the
hydrogen bomb test. When they returned to their home port of Yaizu in
Shizuoka prefecture on 14 March, all of the fisherman were suffering
from severe radiation sickness. In September 1954, the radio telegraph
operator on the Lucky Dragon died. The incident raised interest and
concern both in Japan and around the world. Following extended
negotiations, the US made a payment of $2 million to the Japanese
government in January 1955, without legal liability, to compensate for
all injuries and damages caused as a result of the five nuclear tests it
had conducted in the Marshall Islands .   Marshall Islanders on Rongelap
and Utirik atolls (about 100 miles east of Bikini ) were also exposed to
the fallout. An Islander on Rongelap recalls, "[There was] a loud
explosion and within minutes the ground began to shake. A few hours
later, the radioactive fallout began to drop on the people, into the
drinking water, and on the food. The children played in the colorful
ash-like powder. They did not know what it was."   While 28 US Service
Personnel located on Rongerik (about 135 east of Bikini ) were evacuated
within 34 hours of the test, Rongelap and Utirik islanders exposed to
the fallout were not evacuated for another day. By this time, many of
the Rongelap islanders had severe burns, lesions and were beginning to
lose their hair.   The Marshall Islands became a United Nations Trust
Territory of the US after World War II. While "Bravo" is a well-known
test, the US conducted a total of 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall
Islands alone from 1946 to 1958. The total yield of the 67 tests was 108
megatons, equivalent to the destructive force of more than 7,000
Hiroshima bombs. In 1988, the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal
was established to grant compensation to Marshall Islanders for personal
injury deemed to have been caused by nuclear testing. 

Although some $270 million was provided to victims between 1986 and
2001, half a century later, islanders are still waiting on a stalled bid
for compensation. During a visit to the Marshall Islands in January
2004, Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA), who chairs the House Resources
Committee which oversees funding to the Marshall Islands , admitted that
Washington 's obligations have not ended. Pombo stated, "Obviously, the
United States has an ongoing liability (for the nuclear test legacy).
This issue is 50 years old. At some point we need to find closure." 

Historical Lesson Lost? 

Despite fallibility in the history of US nuclear testing, Congress
authorized the US Department of Energy (DoE) $34 million in its Fiscal
Year 2004 budget to improve the Nevada Test Site. In addition, the FY
2004 budget authorized $25 million for enhanced test site readiness,
which decreased the preparation time to resume nuclear testing from
24-36 months to 24 months. 

The DoE's FY 2005 budget recommendation submitted to Congress includes a
funding request to ensure that the Nevada Test Site could execute an
underground nuclear weapons test within 18 months of receiving orders by
the President. According to the DoE's budget documents, the Nevada Test
Site would receive a 14% increase in its "science campaign," with some
of the money improving test readiness by "maintaining critical
personnel, equipment and infrastructure." 

While the present US administration insists that it will not end the
worldwide test moratorium that has been in place since 1992, increased
funding for enhanced readiness of the Nevada Test Site appears to be
part of a well-coordinated effort to resume production of nuclear
weapons, including new and untested weapons. Resumption of US full-scale
underground nuclear testing would undoubtedly lead other countries to
resume testing, essentially defeating any chance for near or long-term
US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Neither the US nor
the rest of the world can afford the nuclear arms race that would be
caused by resuming nuclear testing.

Take Action

	1. Voice your concerns to your elected officials. Call, email,
fax or write the President and your Congressional representatives,
asking them to maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and
reject any funding for nuclear weapons testing or enhanced readiness of
the Nevada Test Site. 

	*	Here is a sample letter that you can modify and email
<http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/bravo/letter.htm>
or print and fax
<http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/bravo/bravo.doc>
to the President. 

	*	To find contact information for your Congressional
Representatives, visit www.congress.org <http://www.congress.org/>   and
simply enter your zip code. Click here
<http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/bravo/bravo.doc>
to download a sample letter that you can modify and send.

	2. Find out more about "Bravo." For more information on those
affected by US nuclear testing and to take further action, please visit:
http://www.bikiniatoll.com/home.html  
*****************************************************************
 26 Perfect Example Of Need For Nunn/Lugar Security Over USSR Nuke Materials
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 00:42:27 -0500

 

  Congressional switchboard for Senators & Reps:
877-762-8762 & 202-224-3121.

He added that it was highly unlikely that the
Russian government sold Iran the uranium because
its scientists could have easily concealed the
telltale signature.

Rather, he argued, thieves probably stole the
material either from Russia proper or elsewhere in
the former Soviet Union and sold it on the black
market.

Poor security over such materials has been the
rule rather than the exception since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Mr. Levi said. For instance,
in 1993, two Russian naval servicemen stole nearly
four pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium from a
naval base at Andreyeva Guba, Russia. They were
caught and the material recovered.


  http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/international/middleeast/28NUKE.html

Uranium Traveled to Iran Via Russia, Inspectors
Find
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: February 28, 2004



                 ARTICLE TOOLS


                 E-Mail This Article
                 Printer-Friendly Format
                 Most E-Mailed Articles
                 Reprints & Permissions






                 TIMES NEWS TRACKER



                    Topics
                  Alerts

                 Iran




                 Russia




                 Atomic Weapons








nspectors have found evidence that some of the
highly enriched uranium found on nuclear machinery
in Iran came from Russia, European diplomats and
American experts said Friday. The nuclear fuel
appears to have come through the global black
market, the experts added, and not with the
blessings of Moscow.

With the findings, Russia emerges as a new and
unexpected foreign source of supply to Iran's
nuclear efforts. Recent revelations had shown that
the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had
provided Iran with some sophisticated centrifuge
technology that could be used to refine
weapons-grade uranium through his hidden nuclear
trading network, according to international
nuclear officials and Dr. Khan's own testimony.

The Bush administration has long accused Iran of
harboring a secret bomb project, which Tehran
denies, saying its nuclear program is only for
peacetime purposes.

In that light, last year's discovery in Iran of
highly enriched uranium -a potential bomb fuel -
set off an international crisis about the
country's nuclear intentions and raised questions
about where it had originated. Iran claimed it was
contamination that came in on imported equipment,
which Iranian officials said they acquired to
concentrate uranium for reactors to generate
electricity. The centrifuges spin rapidly to
enrich uranium for both nuclear reactors and
nuclear arms. High concentrations of uranium's
rare 235 isotope can fuel warheads.

In a report on Tuesday, the International Atomic
Energy Agency said that its inspections had found
that centrifuge equipment made indigenously in
Iran - but not imported gear - showed many traces
of the concentrated fuel, leading experts to doubt
the Iranian explanation and suggest that Iran had
enriched the uranium itself. Its purity was 36
percent U-235 - short of the 90 percent needed for
most nuclear bomb designs but greater than that
needed for most nuclear reactors.

On Friday, however, European diplomats said the
agency's laboratory at Seibersdorf, Austria, had
discovered a likely match between the atomic
signatures of Russian uranium and samples agency
inspectors had gathered from Iranian centrifuges.

In its sleuthing, the lab studies such things as a
sample's isotopes - atoms of the same element that
have different numbers of neutrons. A distinctive
mix of such isotopes can amount to a fingerprint
that experts check against atomic databanks.

The agency, a diplomat cautioned, was being
extremely careful in its interpretation of the
Seibersdorf data and other evidence and was still
actively looking at alternative explanations.

Michael A. Levi, a science fellow at The Brookings
Institution in Washington who has studied the
recent I.A.E.A. report, said yesterday that he had
independently deduced that the Iranian uranium
originated in Russia. The strong clue, he said,
was its 36 percent enrichment, a level that
matches a kind of fuel used in certain Russian
submarines and research reactors. Globally, he
added, he knew of no other nuclear technology that
used 36 percent enrichment.

"There's no reason for Iran to enrich to 36
percent," he said. `The only place that does that
is Russia."

He added that it was highly unlikely that the
Russian government sold Iran the uranium because
its scientists could have easily concealed the
telltale signature.

Rather, he argued, thieves probably stole the
material either from Russia proper or elsewhere in
the former Soviet Union and sold it on the black
market.

Nations that use Russian reactors fueled with 36
percent enriched uranium, Mr. Levi said, include
not only Russia but also the Czech Republic,
Germany (in the former East sector), Hungary,
Kazakhstan, North Korea, Poland, Ukraine,
Uzbekistan and Vietnam. None of the similarly
enriched Russian submarine fuel is exported
through legal channels.

Poor security over such materials has been the
rule rather than the exception since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Mr. Levi said. For instance,
in 1993, two Russian naval servicemen stole nearly
four pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium from a
naval base at Andreyeva Guba, Russia. They were
caught and the material recovered.

Mr. Levi said Iran might have wanted a supply of
36 percent uranium because it could ease the
production of bomb-grade uranium, making the
process much faster and easier.

He estimated, for instance, that enriching one
bomb's worth of material would take one year of
running 66 pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium
through just 25 centrifuges. A set of such
centrifuges, known as a cascade, incrementally
concentrates the U-235 isotope.

In contrast, if Iran started with natural,
unenriched uranium, Mr. Levi said, the same
production run would require 13,200 pounds of raw
material running through 750 centrifuges. Such a
cascade, he noted, "would be far harder to hide
than the 15 centrifuge arrangement."





*****************************************************************
 27 [NukeNet] Perfect Example Of Need For Nunn/Lugar Security Over
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:36:40 -0800

 
<x-flowed>

   Congressional switchboard for Senators & Reps:
877-762-8762 & 202-224-3121.

He added that it was highly unlikely that the
Russian government sold Iran the uranium because
its scientists could have easily concealed the
telltale signature.

Rather, he argued, thieves probably stole the
material either from Russia proper or elsewhere in
the former Soviet Union and sold it on the black
market.

Poor security over such materials has been the
rule rather than the exception since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Mr. Levi said. For instance,
in 1993, two Russian naval servicemen stole nearly
four pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium from a
naval base at Andreyeva Guba, Russia. They were
caught and the material recovered.


   http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/international/middleeast/28NUKE.html

Uranium Traveled to Iran Via Russia, Inspectors
Find
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: February 28, 2004



                  ARTICLE TOOLS


                  E-Mail This Article
                  Printer-Friendly Format
                  Most E-Mailed Articles
                  Reprints & Permissions






                  TIMES NEWS TRACKER



                     Topics
                   Alerts

                  Iran




                  Russia




                  Atomic Weapons








nspectors have found evidence that some of the
highly enriched uranium found on nuclear machinery
in Iran came from Russia, European diplomats and
American experts said Friday. The nuclear fuel
appears to have come through the global black
market, the experts added, and not with the
blessings of Moscow.

With the findings, Russia emerges as a new and
unexpected foreign source of supply to Iran's
nuclear efforts. Recent revelations had shown that
the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan had
provided Iran with some sophisticated centrifuge
technology that could be used to refine
weapons-grade uranium through his hidden nuclear
trading network, according to international
nuclear officials and Dr. Khan's own testimony.

The Bush administration has long accused Iran of
harboring a secret bomb project, which Tehran
denies, saying its nuclear program is only for
peacetime purposes.

In that light, last year's discovery in Iran of
highly enriched uranium -a potential bomb fuel -
set off an international crisis about the
country's nuclear intentions and raised questions
about where it had originated. Iran claimed it was
contamination that came in on imported equipment,
which Iranian officials said they acquired to
concentrate uranium for reactors to generate
electricity. The centrifuges spin rapidly to
enrich uranium for both nuclear reactors and
nuclear arms. High concentrations of uranium's
rare 235 isotope can fuel warheads.

In a report on Tuesday, the International Atomic
Energy Agency said that its inspections had found
that centrifuge equipment made indigenously in
Iran - but not imported gear - showed many traces
of the concentrated fuel, leading experts to doubt
the Iranian explanation and suggest that Iran had
enriched the uranium itself. Its purity was 36
percent U-235 - short of the 90 percent needed for
most nuclear bomb designs but greater than that
needed for most nuclear reactors.

On Friday, however, European diplomats said the
agency's laboratory at Seibersdorf, Austria, had
discovered a likely match between the atomic
signatures of Russian uranium and samples agency
inspectors had gathered from Iranian centrifuges.

In its sleuthing, the lab studies such things as a
sample's isotopes - atoms of the same element that
have different numbers of neutrons. A distinctive
mix of such isotopes can amount to a fingerprint
that experts check against atomic databanks.

The agency, a diplomat cautioned, was being
extremely careful in its interpretation of the
Seibersdorf data and other evidence and was still
actively looking at alternative explanations.

Michael A. Levi, a science fellow at The Brookings
Institution in Washington who has studied the
recent I.A.E.A. report, said yesterday that he had
independently deduced that the Iranian uranium
originated in Russia. The strong clue, he said,
was its 36 percent enrichment, a level that
matches a kind of fuel used in certain Russian
submarines and research reactors. Globally, he
added, he knew of no other nuclear technology that
used 36 percent enrichment.

"There's no reason for Iran to enrich to 36
percent," he said. `The only place that does that
is Russia."

He added that it was highly unlikely that the
Russian government sold Iran the uranium because
its scientists could have easily concealed the
telltale signature.

Rather, he argued, thieves probably stole the
material either from Russia proper or elsewhere in
the former Soviet Union and sold it on the black
market.

Nations that use Russian reactors fueled with 36
percent enriched uranium, Mr. Levi said, include
not only Russia but also the Czech Republic,
Germany (in the former East sector), Hungary,
Kazakhstan, North Korea, Poland, Ukraine,
Uzbekistan and Vietnam. None of the similarly
enriched Russian submarine fuel is exported
through legal channels.

Poor security over such materials has been the
rule rather than the exception since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Mr. Levi said. For instance,
in 1993, two Russian naval servicemen stole nearly
four pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium from a
naval base at Andreyeva Guba, Russia. They were
caught and the material recovered.

Mr. Levi said Iran might have wanted a supply of
36 percent uranium because it could ease the
production of bomb-grade uranium, making the
process much faster and easier.

He estimated, for instance, that enriching one
bomb's worth of material would take one year of
running 66 pounds of 36 percent enriched uranium
through just 25 centrifuges. A set of such
centrifuges, known as a cascade, incrementally
concentrates the U-235 isotope.

In contrast, if Iran started with natural,
unenriched uranium, Mr. Levi said, the same
production run would require 13,200 pounds of raw
material running through 750 centrifuges. Such a
cascade, he noted, "would be far harder to hide
than the 15 centrifuge arrangement."






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*****************************************************************
 28 Guardian Unlimited: Short wars and long legacies 

[UP] 

Comment 
		
Every time Tony Blair thinks he may be about to escape the 
fall-out from the invasion of Iraq, the conflict comes back to 
torment him          
		
Andrew Rawnsley
Sunday February 29, 2004
The Observer 		
		
This time last year, with less than a month to go before the 
invasion, Tony Blair was devoting every waking minute to 
persuading his country to follow him into Iraq. This time this 
year, with less than 18 months to go before the likely date of 
the general election, the Prime Minister is desperate to persuade 
the nation to leave Iraq alone. Like Basil in the Germans episode 
of Fawlty Towers, 'don't mention the war' has been the 
instruction from Number 10. 

For a few days, the Prime Minister was hopeful that most of the 
country was as tired as him with a subject that he did not even 
mention in his big speech on Friday. He believed that the 
capacity to damage him of Iraq generally and of Clare Short in 
particular was declining. Battle-fatigue seemed to be setting in 
among much of the media and the public. As for Ms Short, having 
called the Prime Minister a deceiver with a messiah-complex, and 
done so with such shrill and sour regularity, what further harm 
could this diminished figure do? She seemed to be matching the 
description applied to her by Blair aides after her hokey-cokey 
resignation from the Cabinet. The former International 
Development Secretary had become, they joked, 'depleted 
Claranium'. 

Depleted maybe, but still highly toxic. Her radioactive claim 
that British intelligence bugged the Secretary-General of the 
United Nations has ricocheted around the world, prompting further 
claims from UN weapons inspectors about surveillance operations 
against them and a renewed furore about Iraq. 

To the deep dismay of Downing Street, yet another week has been 
dominated by an acrid fug of questions about the legality of both 
the war and the build up to the invasion. The former 
International Development Secretary invited upon herself a dumper 
truck of fury and scorn, which Ministers and Labour MPs have duly 
disgorged over her head. If she regarded the bugging of Kofi 
Annan as such an outrage, why did she not protest about it to 
Jack Straw, the Minister responsible for GCHQ and MI6? Her 
erstwhile colleagues in Cabinet report that Ms Short was never 
timid about ventilating her opinions. So why did she not express 
her horror to Mr Blair himself? If she had so much respect for Mr 
Annan, why did she not alert the Secretary-General that his phone 
conversations were being tapped? Not that Mr Annan, a man wise to 
the wiles of the world, would really need telling that the UN 
building in New York is a nest of spying. 

Is her allegation anyway true? Even Robin Cook, her 
comrade-in-anti-arms, has raised a ginger eyebrow of scepticism 
about the claims. Gordon Brown, her patron when she was in 
government, has let it be known that he disowns her, sending Ms 
Short into the cold as a spymaster might dispatch an agent who 
has gone rogue. 

Trying to explain the contradictions of her behaviour, she says 
she has been travelling a 'journey of conscience'. The conscience 
of Clare Short must be highly tricky terrain to navigate when it 
has taken her nine months since her resignation to make this 
allegation. 

Why delay until now to lob such a stink bomb at Tony Blair? Some 
think she chose last Thursday because it was the morning that the 
Prime Minister had scheduled to unveil his chairmanship of a 
grand new international commission to help Africa. She simply 
could not stomach the prospect of her foe in Number 10 winning 
any plaudits for Blair Aid. 

If her intention was to ruin his day - indeed, wreck his week - 
she succeeded. He called it a 'very dangerous situation' if 
people thought they could simply 'spill out secrets or details of 
security operations, whether false or true' and 'get away with 
it'. Yet get away with it Ms Short will because Number 10 fears 
to turn her into a martyr. 

In answer to her claims, the Prime Minister fell back on the 
blocking formula of refusing to confirm or deny claims about 
intelligence operations because that would draw him into 'a game' 
which would compromise their effectiveness. He insisted that the 
security services had to 'remain entirely secret and not open to 
public discussion or debate'. He could hear voices, the voices of 
members of the public wondering 'what on earth are we doing 
having a situation where people are talking openly about the work 
of our security services... when this country is under the threat 
of terrorism?' 

The trouble for Mr Blair is that the person who has most exposed 
the operations of the intelligence services to 'this type of 
public questioning and scrutiny' stares him in the face each time 
he looks in a mirror. The Prime Minister 'put them in the firing 
line', to borrow one of his phrases at his news conference, when 
he used intelligence material to sell the case that Saddam was a 
threat. They have been 'dragged through the mud over the past few 
months' - to borrow another of his phrases - because of the 
publication of the dossiers in the run-up to the conflict. It was 
the unprecedented public use of intelligence material, followed 
by the growing evidence that crucial elements of it were wrong, 
that has opened up the intelligence services to debate and 
demands for more accountability. Which is precisely what the 
intelligence services feared would happen. 

Little truly astonishing has been learnt from Clare Short, even 
supposing her allegations to be accurate. Much more that was 
unknown and quite sensational about the intelligence services and 
how they interact with the politicians was exposed by the Hutton 
inquiry which the Prime Minister himself set up. 

The partial disclosure of traditionally secret information to 
make the case for war has got the Prime Minister into a similar 
predicament over the Attorney-General's advice. By long 
convention, the advice of the Government law officers is kept 
confidential. As is his Third Way habit, Mr Blair half-broke with 
that convention when he published a summary of the 
Attorney-General's counsel about the legality of invading Iraq on 
the eve of the Commons vote on the war. 

This issue has re-erupted under Mr Blair because of the 
abandonment of the prosecution of Katharine Gun, the GCHQ 
linguist who revealed through The Observer that American 
intelligence was targetting swing voters on the Security Council. 
Ms Gun's lawyers were seeking full disclosure of the 
Attorney-General's ruling on the legality of the war. I put it 
mildly when I say it would be acutely embarrassing to the 
Government if the Attorney's original advice proved to be more 
qualified and less unequivocal than the summary that was 
published. 

Abandoning the prosecution of Ms Gun has not got the Government 
out of this thicket, now that defence lawyers for some peace 
activists are seeking the disclosure of the Attorney-General's 
original advice. 

The Gun case and the Short allegation will be footnotes in the 
accounts of future historians when they make the big judgments 
about the invasion of Iraq. They will ask whether it was, on 
balance, in the British national interest? Did it, in the main, 
make the world a safer place? Did it establish a more free and 
democratic Iraq, and help spread liberty and democracy to the 
rest of the Middle East? 

The Prime Minister remains supremely confident of eventual 
vindication from the court of history. His more immediate problem 
is the judgment of voters about the integrity and character of 
himself and his Government at the next election. 

All these Iraq controversies - who knew what about the 45-minute 
claim; who may have bugged whom at the UN; what the Attorney says 
in the document they won't let us see - all feed into what 
Alastair Campbell lamented to his diary was 'this huge stuff 
about trust'. 

The collapse of trust in Mr Blair expressed in the opinion polls 
bleeds across into everything else, from his assertions about 
improvements in public services to his wrecked ambition to make 
this the parliament in which Britain would enter the euro. 

Tony Blair has been anxious to move on from the war because he 
knows that every controversy about Iraq brings with it another 
cluster of question marks about trust. The operation to topple 
Saddam was one of the swiftest military campaigns in the history 
of combat. Not so the politics. For a Tony Blair tormented by the 
unquiet ghosts of the conflict, this threatens to be a war 
without end. 

a.rawnsley@observer.co.uk
	
politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk

Guardian Newspapers Limited
*****************************************************************
 29 Hi Pakistan: KRL displayed N-wares at arms fair     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
VIENNA: Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan was able to display sensitive 
equipment and brochures for atom bomb technology at an arms fair 
in the country, Jane’s Defence Weekly has reported.

Jane’s said in its recent edition that the Khan Research 
Laboratories (KRL) had run a stall at the international arms 
trade fair in Karachi in November, 2000, and displayed components 
used in the production of weapons-grade uranium.

"Jane’s readily obtained the brochures for weapons-related 
technology on the spot and inquired whether all of the listed 
items were available for sale," said the report. "Several KRL 
officials provided positive assurances that all had government 
approval for export," it said.

Jane’s said that in 2002 it confronted the Pakistani Army’s 
Strategic Plans Division (SPD) with the brochures, two of which 
have been seen by Reuters, but the SPD denied everything. 
"Neither were any such distributed ... nor were any such 
components displayed," the report quoted the SPD as saying.

Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 30 Hi Pakistan: IAEA satisfied with Pakistan cooperation     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has
expressed satisfaction over the cooperation being extended by
Pakistan in efforts to check the proliferation of nuclear
technology.

In an interview with VOA on Friday, IAEA spokeswoman Malica
Fleming maintained Pakistan was cooperating in an effective
manner in the efforts to stop illegal proliferation of nuclear
technology.

Responding to a question regarding Pakistan’s investigation into
the selling of nuclear secrets abroad, Malica Fleming said “We
are not really commenting on Pakistan’s internal investigation.
I just can say that we have been getting good cooperation from
Islamabad.”

She said that the roots of the black market involved in the
proliferation of the nuclear technology have spread to Europe,
Asia and Africa. “It is well known that A.Q. Khan was a sort of
mastermind of this network. He also has the designs and the
blueprints that were necessary to get the uranium enrichment
technology,” she added.

The IAEA spokeswoman said the Agency is trying to learn that how
many countries besides Iran, Libya and North Korea have
benefited from this black market. 					     							 				 				  
				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 31 Hi Pakistan: 'Musharraf kept US abreast of N-issue'     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
WASHINGTON, Feb 27: President Pervez Musharraf has received "full 
acknowledgement" of Dr A.Q. Khan's activities and has conveyed 
them to the United States, says Secretary of State Colin Powell. 

Mr Powell, who was briefing the Senate Budget Committee on 
Thursday on the Bush administration's budget proposals for 
foreign affairs, said he has held many conversations with 
President Musharraf on this issue and was satisfied with what he 
learned from him. 

Explaining why Gen Musharraf had to pardon Dr Khan, Mr Powell 
said: "A.Q. Khan was seen as a national hero in Pakistan, and he 
occupies a special place in the life of the Pakistani people." 

"President Musharraf is well aware of what Mr Khan has been 
doing. I've had many conversations with President Musharraf about 
this. I think he took a bold step, the right step, to uncover it 
all, and not hide from the reality of what A.Q. Khan had done," 
he added. 

The US Secretary of State said that Gen Musharraf had received 
from Mr Khan "full acknowledgement of what he had done, and a lot 
of information." Mr Powell also defended President Musharraf's 
decision to give "a conditional pardon" to Dr Khan and said it 
was in the best interest of his country and of what the United 
States and Pakistan could do about Dr Khan's network. 

"And then President Musharraf felt it was in the best interests 
of his country and of his government and of the process of 
uncovering everything we could about this network, for him to 
give a conditional amnesty to Mr Khan," said Mr Powell. 

When Senator Don Nickles, a Republican from Oklahoma who chaired 
the hearing asked if Dr Khan had cooperated with the 
investigators, Mr Powell said: "He was cooperating." "Did Mr Khan 
cooperate with Gen Musharraf as far as saying, here's what I 
did," the senator asked again. 

"Dr Khan cooperated with President Musharraf and with the 
Pakistani investigators who were pulling all this up - with 
assistance from us, because we had quite a bit of information we 
could provide to them," said Mr Powell. 

"So we're getting a lot of information out of Mr Khan's openness 
now, and I expect we'll get a lot more as well. And it's 
important to note that the amnesty he was given was a conditional 
one, meaning he has to meet the conditions of the amnesty, which 
means full and open disclosure. And we are learning a lot from 
that," he added. 

Sen Pete V. Domenici, a Republican from New Mexico, however, was 
not satisfied with Mr Powell's answers and said he was not sure 
if the Bush administration was doing enough to stop nuclear 
proliferation. 

Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 32 Hi Pakistan: Nuclear trails and trials 

By IKRAM SEHGAL     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
It is becoming increasingly difficult for Pakistan to
distinguish between friend and foe, with even former PM Ms
Benazir Bhutto who one would hope would be a friend and as a
former PM more propriety, choosing to hunt with the hounds
rather than helping us run like hares. Because of his “nuclear
moonlighting”, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan (AQK), our hero cum villain
combined, is an albatross around Pakistan’s neck that has
brought us to ground zero of world public opinion. While the
internal lapses must be investigated thoroughly so that more
skeletons do not appear on an already hot tin roof, those
wishing Pakistan ill are targeting Pakistan (and the Army) on
all sorts of counts, giving lip service only to AQK’s illegal
activity but ignoring the foreign network of companies and the
personalities involved.

BSA (Bashir?) Tahir, a trusted Sri Lankan businessman confidante
of AQK, was actively involved in supplying centrifuge components
for Libya’s uranium-enrichment programme. Tahir used SCOPE, a
Malaysian subsidiary of SCOMI GROUP BHD, a Malaysian company
involved in the petroleum services industry. Tahir, whose
Malaysian wife was one of three of SCOPE’s sponsor directors
(she subsequently sold the shares to one of the other sponsors,
PM Badawi’s son), told the Malaysian Police that his involvement
with AQK started sometime in 1994/1995 during Ms Benazir’s
government when AQK used Tahir’s services to transship two
containers with used centrifuge units through Dubai to Iran. 

US$ 3 million was paid in UAE Dirham by the Iranians, two 
briefcases of cash being kept in an apartment used as a 
guesthouse by AQK whenever he visited Dubai. Libya contacted AQK 
in 1997 (again during Ms Benazir regime), to obtain help and 
expertise in the field of uranium-enrichment centrifuge as well 
as supply centrifuge units for Libya’s nuclear programme. Several 
meetings between AQK (accompanied by Tahir) and representatives 
from Libya represented by Mohamad Matuq Mohamad and another 
person known as Karim took place in early 1997 in Istanbul, 
subsequently in Casablanca and in Dubai. Project Machine Shop 
1001 was meant to set up a workshop in Libya to make centrifuge 
components which could not be obtained from outside Libya. 

The machines for the workshop were obtained from Spain and Italy, 
the middleman involved in this project was Peter Griffin, a 
British citizen, owner of Dubai-based Gulf Technical Industries 
(GTI). Earlier Griffin arranged to send 7 to 8 Libyan technicians 
to Spain to learn how to operate the machines, he also supplied 
an Italian-made furnace to Libya for the workshop.

Late Heinz Mebus, a Swiss engineer, was involved in discussions 
between AQK and Iran to supply centrifuge designs. Gotthard 
Lerch, a German citizen residing in Switzerland, once worked for 
Leybold Heraeus, a German company that is alleged to have 
produced vacuum technology equipment. Gotthard Lerch is alleged 
to have tried to obtain supplies of pipes for the Project Machine 
Shop 1001 by sourcing from South Africa but failed to obtain it 
even though payment had been made by Libya earlier.

Selim Alguadis, an engineer from Turkey, known to AQK since the 
80s, supplied electrical cabinets and power supplier-voltage 
regulator to Libya. After the police action against the ship BBC 
China in Taranto, Italy on 4 Oct 2003, a consignment sent by 
Gunas Jireh, a Turkish national who supplied ‘aluminum casting 
and dynamo’ to Libya for its ‘Project Machine Shop 1001’. Tahir 
is alleged to have arranged the transshipment of electrical 
cabinets and power supplier-voltage regulator to Libya through 
Dubai on behalf of Selim Alguadis. Swiss citizen Friedrich Tinner 
the President of CETEC and mechanical engineer, had dealings with 
AQK since 1980s and is reported to have prepared certain 
centrifuge components, including safety valves, sourcing many of 
the materials from several companies in Europe, arranging for the 
supply to reach Dubai and then on to Libya.

Urs Friedrich Tinner, the son of Friedrich Tinner, was the
consultant arranged by Tahir to set up the SCOPE factory in
Malaysia, and was actively involved in manufacturing operations
of the factory. 

Nearly all the personalities/corporate entities in the nuclear
smuggling/procurement racket were foreign nationals with various
expertise. A vast majority of domestic critics are blissfully
ignorant of not only the facts but also the horrible
consequences for Pakistan if there really was an official
“smoking gun”. Not entirely blameless in failing to exercise
stricter security controls, the government of the day is
certainly far less culpable than the earlier civilian regimes
when AQK first started to run amok. Remaining under very strict
official controls during the regimes of late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
and Gen Ziaul Haq, AQK cleverly exploited the ambiguity and used
his absolute authority to do what he pleased for the subsequent
illegal “export” activities. When the executive controls and
security safeguards became somewhat of a grey area between the
military with advent of civilian regimes since 1989.

Unconfirmed reports had appeared in the media in the early 70s 
about Col Qadafi’s cheque for US$ 5 million in late Zulfikar Ali 
Bhutto’s name for our proposed nuclear program. This cheque being 
deposited with UBS in Switzerland and the purchase of gold 
thereof became a matter of subsequent in-family contention in the 
90s as to the legal heirs. The recent nuclear contact with the 
Libyans is recorded between 1994 and 1997 during the period of Ms 
Benazir’s regime, therefore her present diatribe against Gen 
Musharraf and the military could be a pre-emptive strike to ward 
off the charges of nuclear proliferation against her. 

Even without any direct “smoking gun”, she is street-smart enough 
to be apprehensive that any such “nuclear taint” in the present 
post 9/11 environment would well be a “kiss of death” as far as 
her relations with western nations are concerned. Ms Benazir has 
made the astounding claim that during her first regime she set 
forth the BENAZIR DOCTRINE, officially disallowing exports of 
nuclear knowledge and material from Pakistan. What was the 
necessity for such a “doctrinaire” unless there were specific 
requests (and by whom?) for nuclear exports, indeed why has no 
one ever heard about the BENAZIR DOCTRINE for the last 15 years 
given that there was no apparent reason to keep this a secret and 
in fact every reason to make such a pledge public? 

During
recent TV interviews Ms Benazir alleged that “Gen Pervez
Musharraf is responsible for the nuclear exports to Libya”, does
she really believe this outrageous canard? With the President
already treading a fail-safe line for Pakistan, it was extremely
disappointing to see our former PM pursuing crass political
objectives well knowing she was causing immense damage to the
country. As an admirer of Ms Benazir’s political talents and
charisma, one expected her to uphold the national interest “even
to the peril of her life”.

Ms Benazir has a “crying wolf” history of going in for 
pre-emptive strikes to ward off corruption (and other) 
allegations, etc. Even her father went on and on about his making 
public the “Tashkent secret”, four decades later we still do not 
know what it was! Wonderfully eloquent and media-wise, she has an 
inherent ability to state things straight-faced she knows to be 
patently wrong e.g. the Swiss money-laundering case which she 
denies ad nauseam even exists. Comparing herself to her late 
illustrious father “Zulfikar Ali Bhutto”, the acknowledged 
“father of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear program”, she claims 
the title of being the “mother of Pakistan’s missile program”. 
The best one can acclaim her is as the “mid-wife of the Taliban”, 
they came into being under her regime’s initiative in 1994 when 
the respected Maj Gen NK Babar was Interior Minister and Lt Gen 
Javed Ashraf Qazi, the then DG ISI. The government should trot 
out Qazi to detail on primetime TV as to the nexus between Ms 
Benazir and the Taliban. She may have more charisma than her 
father had, Ms Benazir does not display the same vision. While 
one does not question her patriotism, it is certainly sad that 
she did not exercise better judgment in leaving the Army alone, 
particularly at this critical time.

Regretfully she is not the only one taking pot shots at us while
we are staggering along on the nuclear trail while facing trial
thereof in the kangaroo court of international public opinion.
 					     							 				 				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 33 Hi Pakistan: Beg denies involvement in N-tech transfer     --> 
 
February 29 2004     
    
ISLAMABAD, Feb 28: Former chief of the army staff Gen Mirza Aslam 
Beg (retired) has refuted the contents of a report appearing in 
New York Times alleging that he was involved in transfer of 
nuclear technology to Iran in 1990.

In a statement here on Saturday, the former chief said the then 
deputy secretary of defence Henry Rowen had made the revelation 
that he (Mr Beg) had told him that in the event the US stopped 
giving arms to Pakistan, Islamabad would be compelled to transfer 
nuclear technology to Iran. 

Mr Beg termed this claim a "blatant lie and a figment of 
imagination". 

He said similar allegation was made by former US ambassador to 
Pakistan Robert Oakley, a reverberation of which was in the 
statement made by PML-N Senator Ishaq Dar in the Senate session 
on Friday. In the Senate session, he said, Mr Dar had once again 
reiterated Mr Rowen's statement, which indeed was surprising as 
to "what precisely was the complicity between the US 
establishment and Mr Dar?" 

Mr Beg said: "The allegations made against me are a part of 
conspiracy to create a dent into Pakistan-Iran relationship." It 
was no secret as to what was the nature of defence cooperation 
between Iran and Pakistan, and in the light of this to contend 
that there was exchange of nuclear secrets, was "concocted and 
baseless story." 

He said: "To make allegations based on hearsay is nothing but a 
crude attempt at character assassination. My own 'self' is not 
important but I certainly view the country's interests very 
vital, which are under threat through an orchestrated propaganda 
of this kind." 
					     							 				 				   				 				
Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 34 Hi Pakistan: US senator for admitting Pakistan, India to N-club
 
February 29 2004     
    
NEW YORK: US Democrat Senator Tom Harkin has said Pakistan and 
India should be admitted to the nuclear countries club.

Senator Harkin, talking to The News, advocated a resolution of 
the nuclear proliferation by including Pakistan and India in the 
exclusive club of five nuclear countries - USA, UK, China, France 
and Russia - and asked to sign the NPT.

Responding to a question to resolve the issue of nuclear 
proliferation, he said: "Pakistan and India should be asked to 
sign the NPT."

When asked if he suggested that Pakistan and India should sign 
the NPT to denuclearise themselves and only five countries be 
recognised as nuclear powers, he said: "No. Pakistan and India 
should be recognised as nuclear powers and then asked to sign the 
NPT to meet the obligations of non-proliferation."

Welcoming the India-Pakistan dialogue, Harkin proposed that the 
US should strongly support the assignment of ‘Blue Helmets (UN 
Peacekeepers) in the Indian occupied Kashmir to implement the 50 
year old pledge of the United Nations—holding of the plebiscite 
in Kashmir. "In the presence of the foreign military in Kashmir, 
people of Kashmir cannot freely decide about their future. Blue 
Helmets can ensure a free atmosphere and decision by Kashmiris in 
a free manner," said Harkin

He also strongly supported full and functional democracy in 
Pakistan. He reminded that he was against the overthrow of 
democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif. However, he 
praised President Musharraf for his role as the US ally against 
terrorism.

Harkin referred to history of Pak-US relations over 50 years and 
said that Pakistan had repeatedly proven itself as an ally of the 
US in all crucial times and it had been ‘almost one way street’ 
where Pakistan had been supportive of the US, India was more 
actively voting against the US interests at the United Nations. 
"Even more than Soviet Union, India was voting at the UN against 
the US," he added.

He also urged that Pakistanis should be granted more US visas as 
Pakistan is US friendly country since its independence. He 
reminded that Pakistani’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan 
chose to visit Washington over Moscow, when he was invited to 
visit both countries. He also recognised Pakistan’s cooperation 
with the US in the Korean war, Vietnam, against Communist block 
during cold War days, Somalia and even in the distant and small 
country of Haiti.

The US senator also said that Pakistan faced the Soviet Union’s 
threat when it allowed a U-2 plane surveillance flight over 
Russia from its territory.

Copyright 1996-2002 . Hi Pakistan. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 35 Indian Express: Khan's N-network a 'criminal enterprise' - US 

February 29, 2004   

 Press Trust of India

 Washington, February 29: Dubbing as "criminal enterprise" the
nuclear proliferation network of top Pakistani scientist A Q
Khan, the US has insisted that those who indulge in trafficking
of deadly weapons will be brought to justice.

Khan's network which sold nuclear equipment and materials to 
North Korea, Libya and Iran was a "criminal enterprise" motivated 
by "greed or fanaticism or perhaps both," National Security 
Advisor Condoleeza Rice said at the Ronald Reagan Presidential 
Library and Museum in Sun Valley, California.

"We must strengthen the world's ability to keep dangerous weapons 
out of the hands of the world's most dangerous regimes," she 
emphasised.

Rice said the world "recently learned of the network headed by A 
Q Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme. For 
years, Khan and his associates sold nuclear technology and 
know-how to some of the world's most dangerous regimes, including 
North Korea and Iran".

Although President Pervez Musharraf has pardoned Khan, Rice 
insisted that those who traffic in deadly weapons will be brought 
to justice.

"Working with intelligence officials from the United Kingdom and 
other nations," she said, "we unravelled the Khan network and we 
are putting an end to its criminal enterprise.

Its key leaders -- including Khan -- are no longer in business, 
and we are working to dismantle the entire network.

"Together, the nations of the civilized world will bring to 
justice those who traffic in deadly weapons, shut down their 
labs, seize their materials, and freeze their assets." 

More World HeadlinesTies with India good, Pak constructive: US
Saddam extracted billions in kickbacksUS denies report of
Osama's captureBlood flows as Shi'ites mourn martyr's deathOsama
captured, claims Iranian radioOlder women too need sex: Study   
  
© 2004: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 36 India Express: Risk of nuclear reactors to be balanced against utility

: SC : National News : IndiaExpress.Com
 
12.06 IST   29th Feb 2004 

By IndiaExpress Bureau 

In a major judgement, the Supreme Court has ruled that risk
factors associated with setting up of sensitive plants like
nuclear reactors could not be the sole ground for their closure
or relocation and the Courts should keep in mind their utility
to the public.

The judgement was given by a Bench comprising Chief Justice V N
Khare and Justice S H Kapadia while setting aside a Kerala High
Court judgement asking the Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore
LTD (FACT) to shut its 10,000 tonne ammonia plant in Wellington
Islands near Cochin.

The High Court had felt that major leak could be caused by an
air crash in the vicinity of the tank as there was an airport
nearby or by an act of sabotage or by an earthquake which could
lead to loss of human life on tragic scale. This order came on a
PIL filed by Law Society of India.

When the FACT Employees Association challenged the High Court
order before the Supreme Court, the latter appointed Engineers
India LTD (EIL) to examine all issues specially the location of
the tank and its structural integrity.

Based on the results of various studies carried out at the site,
the EIL opined that the ammonia tank could continue in its
present condition subject to certain measures for the upkeep of
the plant. 

*****************************************************************
 37 PCNews Herald: D-B execs eager to start plant - 

portclintonnewsherald.com
 
Saturday, February 28, 2004   

By RICK NEALE Staff writer 
  
Secondary reactor operator Ron Purk (right) and an unidentified
operator monitor equipment inside the Davis-Besse control room. 
  
CARROLL TOWNSHIP -- Deep within the metallic bowels of 
Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station sit a pair of huge 
high-pressure pumps. If a nuclear accident would have happened 
years ago, the machines would have pumped up to half a million 
gallons of water into the containment building, flooding the 
reactor vessel. 

Well -- probably, that is. 

"I want to go home at night knowing my system will work," said 
Robert Smith, a Davis-Besse engineer. "We did not know they would 
work. No one could put their name on it and say, 'This would 
work.'" 

Smith's comments typified the before-and-after message 
FirstEnergy is trying to convey to the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, skeptics and the community at large. Davis-Besse 
opened its doors Friday to media outlets from across northern 
Ohio, showing off its plant improvements. 

Among the points of interest: The high-pressure injection pumps. 
Smith and John O'Neill, the project manager who oversaw their 
upgrades, said the French-made pumps had never been used in the 
plant's history, dating to 1977. 

But during the NRC-ordered shutdown, O'Neill said the pumps were 
removed, refurbished and modified to increase their reliability. 
Merely moving the 600-horsepower pumps was a major feat -- it 
took workers a dozen days, working around the clock, just to 
create a route through a surrounding 

pipework maze to remove one pump. 

O'Neill said the revamped pumps are vastly improved. "Nuclear 
power's not about thinking. It's about knowing," he said. 

Davis-Besse has been off-line since February 2002 -- the NRC 
pulled the plug after boric acid gobbled an shocking, 
football-sized hole on the reactor vessel head. After spending 
hundreds of millions of dollars on repairs and upgrades, 
FirstEnergy is waiting for NRC approval to restart the Carroll 
Township facility. 

Engineers built Davis-Besse in the 1970s "with slide rules," said 
Lew Myers, chief operating officer for FirstEnergy's nuclear 
division. During the shutdown, he said testing and technology 
have been added that those engineers would have never dreamed 
possible. 

To date, FirstEnergy boasts its has completed more than 8,000 
work orders and 120 to 140 design modifications across the 
facility. The reactor is now heated to about 535 degrees, 
generating steam pressure of about 2,000 pounds per square inch 
in "hot stand-by mode." 

Myers said Davis-Besse is ready for action. 

"Basically, we're in an operating mode right now," he said, 
standing next to an elevator. 

Earlier this week, FirstEnergy agreed to finance independent 
safety inspections at Davis-Besse over the next five years. Those 
inspections will scrutinize engineering, operations, safety 
culture, corrective actions and other details. 

That requirement was mandated by the NRC, which has yet to 
indicate when -- or if -- it will issue the green light for 
restart. 

However, some watchdog groups remain unimpressed by FirstEnergy's 
efforts. Ohio Citizen Action program director Shari Weir 
criticized this week's Davis-Besse developments. 

"The NRC apparently hasn't learned anything if they think added 
inspections will deal with the fundamental safety culture 
problems at Davis-Besse," Weir said. "No nuclear plant has been 
allowed to restart while a grand jury investigation of potential 
criminal wrongdoing is going on." 

In November, a Cleveland federal court grand jury subpoenaed 
documents regarding Davis-Besse's reactor vessel head, 
particularly maintenance records. 

"(FirstEnergy) said the plant was ready to restart back in 
November. Clearly, they don't know what it takes to safely 
restart a nuclear power plant," Weir said. 

According to the Ohio Citizen Action Web site, 16,135 letters and 
petition signatures have been submitted to the NRC protesting the 
Davis-Besse restart. 

Other large-scale, massive-metal repair items highlighted during 
Friday's tour: 


+ The reactor vessel head, which was shipped in from Midland, 
Mich. 


+ Reactor coolant pumps. 


+ Emergency diesel generators. 


+ Containment air coolers. 


+ Containment sump filters. 

If the NRC allows, Myers said Davis-Besse will restart in slow, 
methodical fashion. He said he expects some equipment to 
malfunction because it hasn't been used under operating 
conditions in two years. 

Contact staff writer Rick Neale at 419-734-7506 or 
rneale@fremont.gannett.com

Originally published Saturday, February 28, 2004
 
 Copyright ©2004 News Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 38 Beacon Journal: Davis-Besse looking up

| 02/28/2004 | 

Workers feel plant ready to steam ahead

 By Jim Mackinnon

 Beacon Journal business writer

Patrick McCloskey wants to see the steam plume over Oak Harbor 
again. 

That's the Davis-Besse plume, something not seen spewing out of 
the nuclear power plant's massive cooling tower since February 
2002. No steam is bad -- it means the reactor is shut down. And 
for two years it has been very, very bad at Davis- Besse. 

But McCloskey and about 800 others who make their living at 
Davis-Besse are convinced they will see steam again in the near 
future. 

``That's an affirmation the plant is back online,'' said 
McCloskey, manager of environment and chemistry at the 
FirstEnergy Corp.-owned facility. 

In a sign that plant managers believe a restart may be close, 
Davis-Besse opened itself up to a press tour on Friday, the first 
such tour allowed because of security concerns following the 
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

FirstEnergy says the plant is ready to restart, and is now 
waiting for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether 
it may be restarted. 

Getting Davis-Besse running is a huge priority for FirstEnergy, 
which over the last two years has pumped about $600 million into 
the plant for repairs and to buy replacement power. 

The plant shutdown has siphoned away profits at a time when the 
Akron utility has struggled elsewhere financially and 
operationally. 

Its troubles in 2003 include getting hit with an unfavorable rate 
case in New Jersey, higher pension costs, being largely blamed 
for the Aug. 14 blackout and needing to restate earnings. 

So a lot is riding on Davis- Besse, which represents 7 percent of 
FirstEnergy's electricity capacity. 

What's been done 

On Friday, Davis-Besse employees wanted to show they're ready to 
make power again. 

And they wanted to show off the work they've done, which has 
included making 120 design modifications, more than 8,000 work 
orders and more. 

Among the work: 

• The damaged reactor vessel head that started the shutdown has 
been replaced. 

• A state-of-the-art monitoring system will check for coolant 
leaks. 

• Pumps have been strengthened to circulate coolant in the event 
the reactor fails. 

• The 285-foot-high, reinforced concrete containment chamber that 
houses the reactor and associated equipment has been cleaned and 
repainted, including an American flag painted high on the 
interior wall. 

Lots of preparation 

Getting the work done wasn't easy, employees on the tour said. 

Case in point is the work headed by John O'Neill, manager in 
charge of removing and revamping two, 3-ton high-pressure 
injection pumps used for backup safety. There was concern that 
the pumps, which circulate coolant back to the reactor core in 
the event of an accident, could clog with debris. 

The first pump took a week to remove, O'Neill said. The second 
pump, located in a different part of a building, was a different 
story, he said. 

The pump sits among a Rube Goldberg-like conglomeration of metal 
beams, posts, pipes and equipment. 

``Essentially, we made this a big rigging project,'' O'Neill 
said. ``It took us almost two weeks to get this room set up. We 
didn't damage any equipment or hurt anyone, which was the goal.'' 

In the plant's control room, operators studied analog gauges, 
high-tech monitors, and responded to alarms, all part of normal 
operating procedures, employees said. 

The utility is training more and more employees to become control 
room operators, plant Manager Barry Allen said. 

Control room operations were a sticking point in an NRC 
inspection, which said it found inadequate performance last year. 
A follow-up inspection found improvements. 

Larry Myers, a shift manager who has worked at Davis-Besse for 23 
years, said he sees employees now are much more willing to bring 
up issues than in the time before the reactor vessel head damage 
was found. 

``People are lowering their tolerance for problems,'' he said. 
``Now the threshold is much lower. Now we go after it.'' 

Gary Leidich, president of FirstEnergy's nuclear operating 
company, said getting Davis- Besse running again is important to 
the employees and to the surrounding community, not just to 
FirstEnergy. 

``We put the plant in a position to where it will be a long-term 
success,'' he said. ``We've removed uncertainty.'' 

A year and a half ago, employee morale was down, Leidich said. 
That has changed for the better, he said. ``It's fun. It's fun 
again.'' 

But FirstEnergy and Davis- Besse employees cannot become 
complacent, Leidich said. 

``The technology is complicated. You can't take anything for 
granted,'' he said. ``There is no autopilot.'' 

Good for company 

Getting the plant performing again isn't just important to 
Davis-Besse employees. 

The plant's woes helped take money out of the paychecks of all 
14,000 FirstEnergy employees. 

The utility's overall financial struggles meant no employees, 
including top executives, received short-term bonuses for 2003, 
which would have been paid out this year. 

While a couple hundred managers received long-term bonuses in 
2003, the amounts in most cases were down significantly from 
previous years. 

While most employees received pay raises in 2003, total 
compensation for FirstEnergy's top five executives was down. 

Getting Davis-Besse running this year can only help the company's 
finances. 

And McCloskey and the others will be happy to see the plume 
again, too. 

Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or 
jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com  
*****************************************************************
 39 Beacon Journal: Events at Davis-Besse plant

| 02/28/2004 | 

February 

• Plant closes for refueling and a safety inspection, with a 
planned restart by March 31. 

March 

• FirstEnergy Corp. says it has found a large acid-created cavity 
on top of the reactor vessel head and the plant won't be able to 
restart until it is fixed. 

• A second, much smaller cavity is found. 

July 

• The Union of Concerned Scientists says the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission needs to become much more critical of the nuclear 
power industry in light of unresolved problems dating back 
decades at FirstEnergy's damaged Davis-Besse plant. 

• With the arrival of the never-used, nonradioactive replacement 
vessel head from Midland, Mich., FirstEnergy completes a crucial 
phase in its quest to repair Davis-Besse by year's end. 

August 

• Electricity production, not safety, became the top priority at 
the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in the 1990s, FirstEnergy 
Corp. owner admits. 

• Workers remove the damaged reactor head at the Davis-Besse 
nuclear plant and begin installing the replacement part. 

2003 

February 

• FirstEnergy begins loading fuel into the reactor at the Davis- 
Besse nuclear plant -- a milestone in the company's efforts to 
get the facility ready for restart. 

July 

• A report shows that equipment designed to prevent a hydrogen 
gas explosion similar to what happened during the Three Mile 
Island partial nuclear meltdown has been inoperable at 
FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse plant since it opened in 1977. 

October 

• A new report investigating the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
shows a government inspector knew in 2000 about serious boric 
acid leaks at FirstEnergy's Davis- Besse nuclear power plant, 
about two years before the problems became public, but did not 
call for repairs. 

November 

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes it has found 
evidence of criminal wrongdoing at FirstEnergy Corp.'s 
Davis-Besse nuclear plant, and as a result, a federal grand jury 
wants plant documents and records from the Akron utility. 

2004 

February 

• NRC concludes that two critical inspections find no significant 
obstacles to restarting the power plant. FirstEnergy formally 
asks the NRC for permission to restart, saying the plant is safe.   
*****************************************************************
 40 Toledo Blade: Davis-Besse is geared up for restart, FirstEnergy says
 Utility puts upgrades on display for media

toledoblade.com
 
  Article published Saturday, February 28, 2004
 
  [Photo] 
The reactor head and vessel of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power
Station contain nuclear fuel. 
( THE BLADE/LORI KING ) 

By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER

OAK HARBOR, Ohio - Now holding steady at a blistering 535 degrees 
and an impressive 2,155 pounds per square inch of pressure, 
Davis-Besse’s reactor is back at the upper limits of where it’s 
allowed to be just prior to going nuclear again.

All that FirstEnergy Corp. is waiting for is approval from the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which company officials hope is 
imminent.

Think of an automobile that’s running, warm, ready to go, but 
engaged in park. FirstEnergy’s request to start pulling 
boron-filled control rods out of Davis-Besse’s reactor is akin to 
waiting for the OK to put the idling vehicle in drive. Once those 
rods are pulled, Davis-Besse’s nuclear fission process begins 
again for the first time since Feb. 16, 2002.

"It’s up to the NRC, but we know we’re very close," Gary Leidich, 
FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. president, beamed yesterday as 
he told a roomful of reporters how proud he is of employee 
efforts to overcome Davis-Besse’s stigma as one of the nation’s 
most troubled plants.

Both FirstEnergy and the NRC have been the subject of numerous 
investigations since a series of admittedly poor management 
decisions and oversight lapses allowed Davis-Besse’s old reactor 
head to become the most degraded in U.S. nuclear history, putting 
northern Ohio on the brink of a potentially unprecedented nuclear 
accident.

  [Photo] Davis-Besse official John O'Neill discusses the 
function of one of two high-pressure injection pumps. ( THE 
BLADE/LORI KING ) 

A pineapple-shaped cavity was found on March 6, 2002 in the
six-inch-thick lid, where acid that had leaked from the reactor
had burned through all metal except a liner as thin as a pencil
eraser.

A federal grand jury inquiry into possible criminal activity is
still in progress.

The utility yesterday showed off the reactor’s new head and
other improvements.

It was the first time the media were allowed behind secured
areas since Aug. 27, 2001, when reporters were invited to join
U.S. Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio) on the former Ohio
governor’s first-ever tour of Davis-Besse.

Mr. Voinovich had requested the tour to announce that he would
cosponsor congressional legislation designed to help jump-start
the sluggish nuclear industry. Unbeknownst to him, Davis-Besse
was six months away from dealing the industry one of its
greatest embarrassments.

In the two years since the shutdown, Davis-Besse’s materials,
design, and workplace atmosphere have raised questions
throughout the nation and even abroad. As NRC Chairman Nils Diaz
said Thursday, "Davis-Besse was not an accident, but it was
close enough to an accident that it needed our focused
attention."

More than 20 journalists were on site for six hours yesterday.
It was by far the largest and most comprehensive tour for the
media since FirstEnergy - the nation’s fourth-largest
investor-owned utility - was created in the fall of 1997 as a
result of the merger between Toledo Edison Co.’s former parent,
Centerior Energy Corp., and Ohio Edison Co. Toledo Edison, the
plant’s original owner, is now a FirstEnergy subsidiary.

Davis-Besse has been here before: It sat idle 564 consecutive
days between June 9, 1985, and Christmas Day, 1986, after a
series of pumps and valves failed, causing a loss of coolant
water to the plant’s reactor core.

At the time, the NRC described that event as the nation’s worst
since the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979. No new
applications for nuclear plants have been submitted since the
Three Mile Island accident, despite exponential growth in
America’s energy demands.

While FirstEnergy remains eager for restart, NRC officials said
they are seeking "reasonable assurance" that the company never
lets its guard down again. FirstEnergy on Thursday agreed to two
conditions for restart, one of which compels it to keep bringing
in outside experts to assess the plant’s safety for at least
five years. The company also vows to have Davis-Besse’s reactor
head inspected more thoroughly.

"Davis-Besse was a significant event - not for public health and
safety but certainly for our regulatory process," the NRC’s Jim
Dyer said. Just before shutdown, he was the agency’s Midwest
regional administrator in charge of overseeing Davis-Besse. Mr.
Dyer has since been promoted to headquarters as the agency’s
reactor regulation director.

For earlier stories on Davis-Besse, go to
www.toledoblade.com/davisbesse

© 2004 The Blade.The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., 
Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 
*****************************************************************
 41 Brattleboro Reformer: Plan to ease VY shutdown impact is subject of referendum

February 29, 2004 Brattleboro, VT                                                                                 
 			 								 					
By CAROLYN LORIÉ 
Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- On Tuesday, Brattleboro voters will decided 
whether to direct elected officials to begin preparing for the 
possible shutdown of Vermont Yankee in 2012, when the plant's 
license expires.

 Article Six is a non-binding referendum on the ballot that 
recommends town officials begin "developing strategies for the 
reemployment of displaced workers and replacement sources of 
electricity."

 Ed Anthes, of Dummerston and a member of Nuclear-Free Vermont, 
was instrumental in getting the article on the ballot. "We feel 
that if we focus on planning, we can get over the fear that there 
will be nothing there when the plant closes," he said.

 Of particular concern for many is the potential loss of jobs. 
Vermont Yankee employs about 500 people, with an additional 120 
who work as contractors.

 Anthes said it is important to look into how many workers could 
stay employed through the decommissioning process and how many 
would require retraining. 

According to Kelley Smith, spokesperson for the Yankee Rowe 
nuclear power plant in Massachusetts, when that facility closed 
in February 1992 it employed 250 people. By the end of that year, 
there were only 50 full-time employees left. There are now fewer 
than 30.

 While most elected officials worry about the economic impact 
that the closing of the plant would have on the region, not 
everyone thinks that it is the town of Brattleboro's 
responsibility to specifically plan for the loss of Vermont 
Yankee jobs.

 Among those is selectboard member Pat DeAngelo. "It isn't as 
though all those workers live in Brattleboro," she said. Instead 
of focusing on the possible closing of the plant in eight years, 
DeAngelo thinks officials should concentrate on encouraging other 
business to come to this area.

 That sentiment is echoed by selectboard chairman Greg Worden. "I 
think it's good to have people aware of the possibility that the 
plant might close," he said. But, he added, "We're all trying to 
get our community better prepared all the time."

 The impact of job loss would be felt in many towns, but none 
more so than Vernon, where the plant is located. According to 
Michael Ball, chairman of the Vernon Selectboard, the town has 
been preparing for the potential loss of tax revenues since the 
late 1980s, but has not directly addressed the issue of displaced 
workers.

 Like DeAngelo, Ball said he does not consider the issue to be 
within the purview of the town -- Vernon or Brattleboro. "This 
isn't the responsibility of the town of Brattleboro. In reality 
the article is moot," said Ball, who is also an employee of 
Vermont Yankee.

 Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams said the company is not 
concerned about the article. "There's nothing in that question 
that seeks a shutdown or suggests any action against Vermont 
Yankee, so we are focused on the tasks at hand, running the plant 
safely, preparing for our springtime refueling outage and uprate 
approval," he said.

 Williams said discussion about whether to apply for relicensing 
in 2012 will begin only after the Public Service Board makes a 
decision on the proposed 20 percent power uprate. A decision is 
expected in mid-March.

 In the meantime, backers of Article Six want Brattleboro voters 
to think about the potential impact on Vermont Yankee workers.

 "We want people who live here and are part of the community to 
be able to stay," said Anthes.                          
 		   			 		   	 	
*****************************************************************
 42 [du-list] GOVERNMENT DU-PLICITY
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:38:15 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
look at the website,  some great graphics on it!!!




http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1487&blz=1


GOVERNMENT DU-PLICITY
By Susan Riordon & Davey Garland

Great liars are also great magicians" - Adolf Hitler.

IT IS appropriate to quote from someone so despicable,
about those who have created a despicable act, and
have lied and covered up their crimes for over 12
years. The wall of silence or dis-information over
Depleted Uranium held by the US and UK government has
been near impregnable. But cracks have now emerged, be
it from veterans, or scientists, over a decade of
collating, researching and painstaking “digging” by
activists and academics which may rock or even ruin
some government Ministers and officials. The last
months have seen a number of incidents which has seen
the tight DU ship of lies spring a number of leaks.

It hit choppy waters first at the World Uranium
Weapons Conference held in Hamburg in October, 2003,
at which the global DU movement came together
pro-actively for the first time, with activists,
veterans, scientists and lawyers agreeing on solid,
cohesive means of action. The Conference called for
the abolition of all uranium weapons and confirmed
acceptance of the United Nations Sub-commission on the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights finding, that
Depleted Uranium weapons are illegal. Accordingly, the
Hamburg officially called for the abolition of the use
of and halt to the proliferation of these weapons.

The Hamburg Conference concluded: “The evidence from
scientists, medical professionals and legal experts at
this conference is clear: DU is causing significant
health effects worldwide... is illegal under existing
International Law and Conventions” The Conference also
called for the cessation of the manufacture testing,
or use of these weapons. This was the final and
unanimous agreement of Conference.


“Rubbing in the Salt”
A recent DU milestone was that of Kenny Duncan, who
brought the U.K. Ministry of Defence to an Edinburgh
based Pension Appeal Tribunal in January, claiming DU
contamination from active service during Gulf war 1.
The Tribunal ruled for DU contamination from dust from
burnt out tanks. However, showing its own confusion
and duplicity in the affair, the MoD and Government
managed to turn down an appeal by over 2000 Gulf
veterans, over Gulf War Syndrome, while at the same
time, agreeing to commission an independent
investigation into the causes of GWS, based at the
Cambridge Centre. Many involved with the DU question
regard this as another empty gesture. This particular
unit, is infamous for its research on ME, which it
opined mainly a psychological problem and may well
conclude the same regarding GWS, given the track
record of previous government investigation into the
debilitating health problems.

The Ministry of Defence, however has opened itself to
attack should it deny DU is a threat, since soldiers
in Iraq have been issued with Medical card “F Med
1018” in which the MoD states:

“You have been deployed to a theatre where Depleted
Uranium (DU) Munitions have been used. DU is weakly
radioactive heavy metal, which has the potential to
cause ill health. You may have been exposed to dust
containing DU during you deployment.”

The card continues to advise soldiers to check with
their medical officer on return to their home base.
They even gave out a Website:
http://www.mod.uk/issuesdepleted_uranium/index.htm

The British government and its military forces,
however, largely continue to reinforce an
international policy which has continued since the
dawn of the nuclear age, in concert with pro-nuclear
institutions such as the International Atomic Energy
Authority (IAEA) actively suppressing reports and
documents which link DU/Uranium weapons and
ill-health.

A recent example is a Report commissioned by the World
Health Organisation (WHO) on the effects of DU amongst
the civilian populations of Iraq. Professor Keith
Braverstock who completed the study in 2001 believes
that the WHO purposely suppressed the findings, and
that if the Report had been published it would have
seriously affected public support for any new war in
Iraq. Braverstock and two other radiation experts Mike
Thorne AND Carmel McMaster, reinforced the already
accepted view by authorative opponents of DU, that the
chemically toxic and radioactive dust emanating from
such weapons can cause cancer and other severe
ailments. This might also explain why the United
Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has been
refused permission by the US authorities to enter Iraq
and make environmental impact assessments and monitor
DU related health effects since the latest US/UK
attack. No doubt anyway, its mandate would be as
woefully and duplicitously restricted as it was in
Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan!

We are dealing with a war on information, a
determination there be a lack of it. “Information
warfare” is term that has been increasingly used by
the military to undermine its opponents. However,
historically, it has been more often used against it
own people, particularly in the United States and
Britain, through the FBI’s Cointelpro and the MI5
respectively, which on numerous occasions have
targeted informed progressive movements. This murky
world of censorship, hyped paranoia and attack on free
speech has been recently updated in the US (and
Britain also) with the introduction of the Patriot
Act.

When they are not successful through smear campaigns
and infiltration, then they resort to intimidation and
even assassination. The anti-nuclear (including the
anti-DU groups) movement being a prime witness to
these tactics with threats, arrests, murders, offices
broken into, records, computers and data removed. But
determined opposition will not crumble and in recent
years, many committed activists have brought about a
global alert and awareness. Much of the general public
now knows of the dangers of DU and other uranium
weapons, but has realised that terrifyingly, five
“radioactive” wars have been fought since 1991.

To highlight just a few of the now numerous campaigns:

US Gulf Veteran and radiation expert, former Pentagon
advisor, Dr Doug Rokke ­ himself severely sick from DU
- ex-Major, turned whistle-blower after being sent to
Iraq following the first Gulf War, to estimate the
dangers of DU for the US Department of Defence (DoD),
He, and other gravely ill soldiers and civilian
victims travel the world relentlessly alerting
audiences to the justice and health care that
sufferers so vitally need. Rokke's unique expertise
and recommendations on the clean-up possibilities and
unique dangers of DU have been scrupulously ignored,
because of combat needs on the ground and the fact
that this lethal weapon has another unique property ­
it is radioactive redundancy from the nuclear fuel
cycle, so the military gets it free of charge, since
no one wants it in their back yard, - and it costs a
fortune to keep in a safe and stable environment.
Thus, dropping it on a hospital, mosque, kindergarten,
or government building is a cheap method of disposal
and ensures maximum destruction. It also remains
polluting, poisoning and radiating for four and a half
billion years.

The tireless work of Dr. Asaf Durakovic and his
independent team of scientists from the Uranium
Medical Research Centre have tested and found positive
many DU contaminated veterans. Im addition to this -
at great health risk to themselves - the team has
visited the world's radiological battle zones, testing
the local population and environment. Their work has
proven the direct link between uranium weapons and
radioactive contamination of these countries. The
UMRC'S findings contradict starkly the official
governments' “scientific evaluation”, both of the
countries and the amount of uranium weapons used. They
remain unwavering in their determination to expose the
toxicity of uranium weapons and present and future
damage to the populations of Iraq, the Balkans and
Afghanistan, despite all efforts to demean their
expertise and threats to their very existence.

The Afghan DU Relief Fund is operated and privately
financed by an Afghan exile, US based, Dr Mohammed
Miraki. Like the country that has disappeared from our
view, so has the continued suffering and hardship of
the people. But Dr Miraki travels on his own finances
to raise further funds and to not alone relate the
suffering, but to attempt to ensure sufficient relief
and health care to treat the terrible illnesses that
the population is now encountering. "They have turned
my sweet Afghanistan into a poisoned burial ground”
comments Miraki.

It is not alone the veterans, but also their families
or remaining partners who crave and fight for justice.
Susan Riordon is the widow of Captain Terry Riordon,
late of the Canadian army, who was the world’s first
veteran to be officially diagnosed as dieing with Gulf
War Syndrome. Terry had served his country for 23
years and convinced that he was contaminated with DU,
asked his wife to use his body to prove that DU was
the cause. He donated his body to research for his
fellow veterans. His death certificate records: "Cause
of death: Gulf War Syndrome”.

DU was the proven “Killer”. It had invaded virtually
every tissue and organ of his body. Dead five years,
Terry speaks to Science. A dead man standing for the
veterans, for DU's “Dead and Dying”. His wife now
relentlessly challenges the Canadian government to
accept her husband’s diagnosis and to support those
other veterans who are going down with GWS.

Richard “Nibby” David, in the UK, illustrates how
DU/uranium reaches not only military but civilian
levels. David is taking one of the world’s biggest
multi-nationals to court, to prove his contamination
from uranium metal while working in the aerospace
industry - and to prove its proliferation into a whole
variety of civilian products. This is a modern “David
&Goliath” battle, with a DU victim prepared to
sacrifice everything to prove both the cause of his
own illness and to more widely expose how these metals
are seeping into our environment, our workplaces and
our homes.

Terry Riordon, Doug Rokke, Richard David, one dead,
two dying, all victims of the emotional and financial
rape of their families. They are the few. Countless
others struggle financially and physically to raise
their voices in the political wilderness. DU is
banned; it kills - and one microscopic particle is
enough. As in Iraq and other “testing” grounds, it
leads to omnicide, poisoning humanity, the new born,
the unborn, fauna, flora and water supply leaving
nothing unscathed or unpolluted - for all time

Never has this dynamic movement’s grass-roots
expertise, commitment and resilience been more needed.
With every small victory, such as Kenny Duncan’s and
the courage of Professor Braverstock to speak out over
the WHO’s partisanship, the movement will be that much
closer to eliminating this uniquely shameful and
lethal scourge on humanity and everything living
thing.

But more of those with power and influence must also
speak out. In the US, it is election year, and so far,
in the Democratic Party primaries, only Dennis
Kucinich has spoken for the need to abolish DU. Will
Kerry, one wonder, have the guts to address DU as he
did Agent Orange and the health of Vietnam veterans?

The Hamburg Conference demonstrated the empowerment of
unity, with world experts and committed activists from
all corners of the globe sharing knowledge, strategies
and ideas. That unity is now needed in the wider
public arena to reinforce the illegality of these
weapons and to force their abolition on governments.

Karen Parker, the lawyer responsible for determining
the UN rule on Depleted Uranium Weapons being illegal,
asked if she sees DU as a nuclear weapon, responded:
“I think so. The UN has condemned the use of them.
They are illegal weapons, and they are illegal for
more reasons than the depleted uranium. They’re just
indiscriminate weapons”.

Susan Riordan is the widow of Captain Terry Riordon,
and Atlantic Director, Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans
Association and Davey Garland is organiser for the
Pandora DU Research Project and a Tutor in Radical
Media Studies. Both are part of the International
grass-roots initiative to abolish DU and all
radioactive weapons.

Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association:
http://members.shaw.ca/cpva/

Pandora DU Research Project:
http://www.pandoraproject.org

Suggested Sites to look at in regard some of the real
shakers and movers in publicising the case over
DU/uranium weapons/products

Beatrice Boctor and her environmental work for Iraq:
http://www.desertconcerns.org

Dai Williams: http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm

Doug Rokke:
http://traprockpeace.org/RokkePressConf23July03.html

Karen Parker:
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/speakers/parker_illegality.pdf


Low Level Radiation Campaign: http://www.llrc.org/

Dr Miraki Afghan DU Recovery Fund:
http://www.afghandufund.org/

Dr Leuren Moret: What does the US government know
about DU:
http://traprockpeace.org/moret_25nov03.pdf

“Nibby David” Campaign article:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/westcountry/2003/11/282063.html


Uranium Medical Research Centre: http://www.umrc.net/

& for Spanish readers:
Coalición Internacional para la Abolición de las Armas
Radiactivas and the work of Alfredo Embid:
http://www.amcmh.org/

All information from the Uranium Weapons Conference
can be found at:
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de



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 43 [du-list] health snapshot of returning soldiers: 11,000 have
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:38:16 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
Health snapshot of returning soldiers: 11,000 have
sought
treatment

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
Saturday, February 28, 2004 - Page updated at 01:24
A.M.
	
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001867435_vetills28m.html

A new federal report offers a statistical snapshot of
the
health of U.S. veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq
wars,
indicating more than 11,000 have sought treatment for
conditions that range from hypertension to deafness to

mental disorders.

Overall among the veterans, 11 percent have had health

concerns, with veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars
reporting roughly the same types of health problems at
close
to the same rates.

The report is part of an early-warning-detection
system
created by the Department of Veterans Affairs to help
identify any mysterious syndromes or spikes in
illnesses
such as post-traumatic stress syndrome. The report
also is
intended to help the VA prepare for the tens of
thousands of
veterans who will be using clinics and hospitals in
the
months and years ahead.

The biggest numbers of health problems have involved
muscle,
skeletal or digestive problems.

But 1.6 percent of those who have sought treatment —
1,598
veterans — have been treated for mental disorders that

included substance abuse, post-traumatic stress
syndrome and
psychoses.

A larger group of veterans, some 2,024, have health
issues
that fall into a category of "symptoms, signs and
ill-defined conditions."

Most of these veterans are from Iraq, a first flush of
early
discharges that does not include the thousands of
active-duty soldiers who have endured long, stressful
months
fighting insurgents. VA officials say that, so far,
they
have found nothing considered to be a mystery disease
or
unusually high rates of any health problems.

"This is just an initial snapshot and over time may
change,"
said Dr. Craig Hymans, the VA's chief consultant on
environmental and occupational health. "But we now
have the
health records computerized — and will be able to
follow
what happens. We didn't have this after the Gulf War."

Some veterans returning from the 1991 war reported
joint
pain, fatigue, memory and sleep symptoms that
collectively
came to be known as Gulf War syndrome.

Concerns about the fate of these veterans heightened
after
the Pentagon disclosed that 145,000 troops were
inadvertently exposed to low levels of sarin nerve gas

released by the detonation of an Iraq ammunition dump.
And
the U.S. government has spent more than $200 million
studying the syndrome.

Upon their return, many of the Gulf War veterans went
to
private physicians rather than VA facilities, so early
on it
was hard to track what was happening. Today's veterans
are
entitled to two years of free health care at
facilities such
as the VA Puget Sound and other VA facilities around
the
country, according to VA officials. Veterans' visits
to
these facilities were used to compile the new report.

During the post-Sept. 11, 2001, Afghanistan and Iraq
wars,
there have been no documented releases of nerve gases.
So
there appears to be less risk from exposure to toxic
chemicals, as well as the smoke clouds emitted by the
1991
fires in Kuwait's oil fields.

But during these new conflicts, physicians say there
could
be more incidents of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The
first Gulf War ended after less than a week of major
ground
fighting, while the present Iraq occupation has
involved
long, stressful months of battling insurgents.

"This is a whole different situation. Really, almost
everywhere is a combat zone, and there are so many
improvised explosive devices," said Dr. Stephen Hunt,
medical director for the VA's Deployment Health Clinic
in
Seattle and at American Lake in Pierce County. Hunt
says
rates of post-traumatic stress syndrome will likely be

higher than in the Gulf War.

Moreover, the incidence of post-traumatic stress
syndrome in
Iraq may be underrepresented in the new report because
many
early discharged veterans who sought treatment were
from the
Air Force or Navy, which had a short combat role in
the war.
Many Army soldiers who have suffered the greatest
combat
stress have yet to be discharged or have moved through
the
VA system.

Steve Robinson, executive director of the National
Gulf War
Resource Center, said the soldiers now in Iraq also
may face
risks from depleted uranium shells from U.S.
munitions, as
well as vaccines they received to ward off disease and

anthrax attacks. Another problem has been sand flies,
which
can spread disease.

Department of Defense officials, in recent days, have
been
reviewing the VA report. They say they have yet to do
a
similar survey of the health problems of active-duty
troops.
But the types of complaints appear similar to those of

active-duty soldiers, said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick,
deputy
director of deployment health in the Department of
Defense.

Overall, about 4 percent of the active-duty troops in
Iraq
report some type of medical concern each week,
Kilpatrick
said. That's the lowest of any war fought by the
United
States in recent decades, he said.

With sandstorms and dust inhalation, respiratory
problems
have been a concern. But most of the problems appear
to be
short-term. "We're not seeing a lot of acute stuff,"
Kilpatrick said.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

Where vets can call

Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans with health concerns
in
the Puget Sound region may call the Department of
Veterans


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 44 Sunday Herald: MoD lied over depleted uranium 

Army advises troops in Iraq of health risk but insists Scottish 
firing range is safe, despite growing international concern By 
Neil Mackay and Amy Wilson 
 
 CLAIMS by the Ministry of Defence that depleted uranium (DU) is 
not a risk to life have been undermined by a Sunday Herald 
investigation that found the British army is telling soldiers in 
Iraq that it can cause ill-health.

 The revelation has outraged the military, scientists and 
politicians. Studies have shown DU leads to cancers, birth 
defects, memory loss, damage to the immune system and 
neuro-psychotic disorders. But the MoD has claimed since the 
first Gulf war that DU does not pose a risk to health or the 
environment.

However, military sources have passed an MoD card to the Sunday 
Herald which is being handed to troops on active service in Iraq. 
It reads: You have been deployed to a theatre where depleted 
uranium (DU) munitions have been used. DU is a weakly radioactive 
heavy metal which has the potential to cause ill-health. You may 
have been exposed to dust containing DU during your deployment.

You are eligible for a urine test to measure uranium. If you wish 
to know more about having this test, you should consult your unit 
medical officer on return to your home base. Your medical officer 
can provide information about the health effects of DU.

The MoD had fired more than 6350 DU rounds into the Solway Firth 
from its testing range at Dundrennan by 1999. In the first Gulf 
war 320 tonnes of DU were used, in the second more than 1000 
tonnes were used . 

Locals in the Dundrennan area and their political leaders are 
angry that British troops are being warned about the risk of DU, 
while they are not.

A UN sub-commission has ruled that the use of DU breaches the 
Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention. DU has also been 
blamed for the effects of Gulf war syndrome among some 200,000 US 
troops. 

It has led to birth defects in the children of veterans and 
Iraqis and is believed to be the cause of the worrying number of 
anophthalmos cases  babies born without eyes  in Iraq. A study of 
veterans showed 67% had children with severe illnesses, missing 
eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems and fused fingers.

Professor Doug Rokke, the ex-director of the Pentagons DU project 
and a former US Army colonel who was tasked by the US defence 
department to deal with DU after the first Gulf war, said: The 
MoD card acknowledges the risks. It contradicts the position it 
has taken publicly  that there was no risk  in order to sustain 
the use of DU rounds and avoid liability.

Rokke attacked the US and UK for contaminating the world with DU 
munitions and said the issuing of the card meant that they had a 
moral obligation to provide care for all those affected and to 
clean up the environment in Iraq.

DU is in residential areas in Iraq, troops are going by sites 
contaminated with it with no protective clothing or respiratory 
protection, and kids are playing in the same areas. 

He added: What right does anyone have to throw radioactive poison 
around and then not clean it up or offer people medical care? 
Rokke said that the use of DU in Iraq should be deemed a war 
crime.

 This war was about weapons of mass destruction, but the US and 
UK were the only people using WMD  in the form of DU shells.

Ray Bristow, trustee of the UKs National Gulf Veterans and 
Families Association, said the MoD card confirms what independent 
scientists have said for years. Bristow, 45, suffers from 
chromosomal abnormalities and conditions similar to those who 
survived the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima.

A former warrant officer in the medical corps in the first Gulf 
war, he is now only able to walk short distances with a walking 
frame and often has to use a wheelchair.

While the card may have been issued to British troops we have to 
ask, what about the Iraqi people? They are living among DU 
contamination. And what about the people in Dundrennan?

The MoD line has always been that DU is safe  it has been caught 
out in a lie.

Bristow says some 29,000 British troops could be contaminated. He 
was found to have uranium in his system more than 100 times the 
safety limit. I put on a uniform because I believe in democracy 
and freedom, he said. Now I cant believe a word my government 
says. 

He also believes the discovery of the DU card will help affected 
troops sue for compensation. Globally, this discovery is of huge 
significance. 

Alasdair Morgan, the SNP MSP for the Dundrennan area, called for 
a ban on DU. He added: This find vindicates those who have said 
DU should never have been used or tested. T esting should stop in 
this area completely.

Chris Ballance, the Green list MSP for the area, added: DU is a 
weapon of mass destruction that must be banned.

He said the MoD must remove the shells that had been fired into 
the Solway Firth and tell the people of Dundrennan about the 
risks. 

Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at 
Sunderland University and an expert on DU, said it was 
administrative deception for the MoD to claim DU was not a risk 
to health while issuing warnings to troops.

Hooper, who is a government adviser on DU, described the 
governments behaviour as a dreadful experiment  an obscenity and 
a war crime against our own troops. 

He said that the issuing of the card was a confession of failure 
by the government .

Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, said:  I can 
remember similar denials about Agent Orange, but invariably we 
discover these substances do have long-term consequences.

Despite claims on its own website saying DU does not lead to 
health risks, an MoD spokesman said, when confronted with the 
card issued to troops: We never said it was a safe substance. It 
is radioactive, but there is no evidence to link it to 
ill-health.

He said the cards had been issued to reassure troops, adding that 
the take-up of testing had been low as most soldiers understand 
the risks are minimal. 

The MoD insisted it had not changed its policy. 29 February 2004 

  © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 45 The Herald: Radiation Protection Bill published                                                              Herald Reporter

Zimbabwe News Online

Monday, 1 March 2004                                       
  
The Radiation Protection Bill that seeks to establish an 
authority that is responsible for regulating and controlling the 
use of separating radiation safety from chemical safety has been 
published.

The Bill, which will be presented to Parliament for debate and 
approval, was published in the Government Gazette released last 
Friday.

The proposed radiation protection authority would have authority 
to protect the public and workers from dangers resulting from the 
use or abuse of equipment, devices or materials capable of 
producing ionising radiation.

The proposed legislation seeks to restructure the Hazardous 
Substance and Articles Department that is responsible for 
radiation and chemical safety to make it more effective.

Under the Bill, the authority would be financed, mainly by the 
State with money appropriated from the Consolidated Revenue Fund 
and it will have power to invest money it does not immediately 
require.

It will stipulate practices that have to be done in accordance 
with prescribed requirements.

The use of ionising radiation, for the purposes of diagnosing or 
treating a disease except in accordance with a prescription by a 
registered medical or dental practitioner, would be prohibited if 
the proposed law passes in Parliament.

Article 1V of the International Atomic Energy Agency code of 
conduct on the safety and security of radioactive sources 
provides that every country should establish legislation and 
regulations that prescribe and assign governmental 
responsibilities for the safety and security of radioactive 
sources and effective control of these.

The legislation and regulations should include security measures 
to prevent, protect against and ensure the timely detection of, 
the unauthorised access to, or theft, loss or unauthorised use or 
removal of radioactive sources during all stages of management.              
  
  © Copyright of Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited 2001. Terms 
Policy . Information About  http://www.herald..co.zw/   
*****************************************************************
 46 NEWS.com.au: Locals fear radioactive Alcoa mud 

(February 29, 2004)
 	 	 	 
By FIONA ADOLPH
 				 				 
A GROWING pile of radioactive red mud at the Pinjarra alumina 
refinery has residents worried.

They are concerned that a plan by Alcoa to expand the facility 
and add to the waste pile will pose an increased health risk.

 The plan was given environmental approval earlier this month.

 The mud, bauxite residue, is a by-product of the refining 
process. 

University of WA soil science expert Katherine Snars said bauxite 
residue was inherently radioactive.

 "Also investigated have been the possible detrimental effects 
that red mud may have on human health as a result of the inherent 
radioactivity and heavy-metal content of the materials," she told 
the World Congress of Soil Science in 2002.

 When the mud was applied at low rates to agricultural land the 
increase in radioactivity and heavy metal content of the soil was 
"negligible".

 Alcoa claims the mud's radioactivity is low and poses no health 
risk.

 "You are talking about naturally occurring background radiation 
levels that occur in soils in the Darling Range," spokesman Brian 
Doy said.

 "We take soils from the Darling Scarp, reserve the alumina, and 
what's left over is bauxite residue which we store on the coastal 
plain."

 Phil Snow, who worked with the residue at Alcoa's Pinjarra 
refinery for 25 years, said he suffered health problems, 
including an irregular heartbeat and high blood-pressure, until 
he moved away.

 "I am worried about friends still living in Pinjarra," he said.

 Mr Snow said he and his colleagues used to grow vegetables on 
the mud lakes but were advised by a supervisor to stop the 
practice because there was a risk of the vegetables absorbing 
heavy metals.

 Mr Doy said Alcoa had monitored the residue for radioactivity 
and sampled workers for exposure to radiation for 20 years but 
the levels were always within safe limits.

 According to Mr Snow, dried mud carried by wind is seen as red 
dust in roof gutters and window ledges several kilometres from 
the pile.

 In the early 1990s more than 23,000 tonnes of the mud was 
provided as topsoil to farmers in the area in a move by the 
Department of Agriculture to reduce phosphorous runoff in the 
Peel-Harvey estuary.

 In 1999, the department applied to the Environmental Protection 
Authority to apply 360,000 tonnes of the mud to the Swan coastal 
plain.

 

Tony Hall, who lived 3km from Alcoa's Wagerup refinery for 14 
years before moving to Coolup, between Wagerup and Pinjarra, is 
concerned that the Pinjarra expansion will see a further 1.2 
million tonnes of the mud produced each year.

 "The expansion should be put on hold until all the reports on 
Wagerup are evaluated, including the Standing Committee on 
Environment and Public Affairs and studies by Health Wise and the 
CSIRO," he said.

 But Mr Doy said the expansion had undergone an extensive 
environmental assessment, including community consultation, and 
had been approved by the minister and the department.

 The waste mud was kept in a secure compound in accordance with 
EPA rules, and a comprehensive dust- management program was in 
place.

 Dust targets had been breached only in extreme weather 
conditions.                             

The Sunday Times
 				 							 				 					 	 						
Copyright 2003 News Limited. All times AEDT (GMT+11).                            
*****************************************************************
 47 Salt Lake Tribune: Never out of mind 
 
February 28, 2004   
 
    If the radioactive garbage Utah is being asked to store is,
by human standards, never going to go away, then the debate over
 
    To make sure that the details do not fade from public view,
decisions about adding to the size, nature or radioactivity of
the wastes stored in the state should reside not only with the
professional regulators, expert though they may be. Such choices
rightly belong to our elected representatives, the Legislature
and the governor, not because they are necessarily smarter or
less corruptible, but because they are more likely to do their
work in public. 
 
    A bill to tighten the regulation of such waste, mostly
affecting the Envirocare of Utah facility in the west desert of
Tooele County, was left for dead in the House only two weeks
ago. But it has been born again, passed by the House Feb. 20
and, reportedly, has been improved in the Senate. 
 
    House Bill 145 was introduced by Rep. Stephan Urquhart,
R-St. George. After it was brought to lawmakers' attention that
a crucial classification of radioactive waste was not covered,
the bill was rewritten by Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo. 
 
    The first draft of the bill to require legislative and chief
executive approval for any radioactive wastes hotter than are
now approved forgot to specify some things, particularly
uranium-235. That's more than a minor oversight, because that's
the stuff that nuclear bombs are made of. 
 
    Bramble's rewrite would take care of that, by listing U-235
as a "special nuclear material" requiring the extra levels of
approval for storage in Utah. That's good. 
 
    But, apparently, someone's fingers didn't get off the
keyboard quickly enough, because the new version goes on to
apply the legislative and governor's power to accept or reject
U-235 only to material above a certain level of radioactivity, a
level double the current limit. That's bad. 
 
    At radioactivity below the higher level of 4,000 picocuries
per gram, Bramble argues, requiring the highest levels of
government review would be "micromanaging." 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
    Maybe. But, don't forget, this classification was almost
left out of the rules entirely. It was only because of all the
hoops that all legislation has to go through that everybody had
the time and the opportunity to fix the problem. 
 
    The more hoops Envirocare has to jump through to get more or
more dangerous wastes, the better it is for everyone. Even
Envirocare could benefit from a detailed public review process
that could very well save it from what would otherwise be its
own horrible mistakes. 
 
    Mistakes because they are only human. Horrible because of
the kind of garbage they, and thus we, are handling. 
 
    
 
   
 
   
 
              
 
  
Copyright Salt Lake City Tribune
*****************************************************************
 48 Las Vegas RJ: Criticism of dump mounts 
 
Saturday, February 28, 2004

Yucca Mountain foe surge defeat of budget 

STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
 
WASHINGTON -- Environmental organizations launched new criticism
Friday at the Yucca Mountain Project, urging Congress to
investigate safety practices at the nuclear waste repository
site and reject a budget increase sought by the Energy
Department. 

The groups urged lawmakers to decline an $880 million spending
request for 2005, a 51 percent increase. They argued the
investment was premature until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
determines whether the Nevada site should be licensed. 

They also called for investigations into worker health at the
Yucca site following reports that workers may have developed
silicosis from inhaling fibrous dust during tunneling in the
mid-1990s. 

"Congress should call for a federal investigation into the
safety practices at Yucca Mountain and request that the tunnel
and other portions of the work area be sealed off until it can
be determined that it is safe for workers," the groups said. 

A letter was sent to members of Congress and was signed by
representatives of 11 environmental groups in Nevada and
Washington, including Citizen Alert, the Nevada Desert
Experience and the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force. 

Michele Boyd, a representative of the Public Citizen watchdog
group, said the organizations plan new lobbying efforts this
spring against the Yucca project. 

In their letter, the groups urged lawmakers to block a proposal
by President Bush to change accounting practices for the Yucca
program. Supporters of the change say it would make it easier
for Energy Department officials to access funding from the
nuclear waste account that pays for most of the repository.
 
 Environmentalists also urged Congress to play a more active
role in overseeing design of the proposed repository in light of
a report by an expert review board last fall. 

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board questioned whether a
design being pursued by the Energy Department would lead to
faster corrosion of canisters that are supposed to contain
highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel within the repository.
 
 
Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal
*****************************************************************
 49 Centre Daily Times: Robot helps to clean up contaminated research site

 | 02/28/2004 | 

By Anne Danahy

 adanahy@centredaily.com

Cleanup of a contaminated section of a former research site in 
Karthaus Township, Clearfield County, couldn't be done by human 
hands -- the concentration of radiation poisoning in the "hot 
cell" was too high. 

So, the state called on a unique robot for help. 

The state Department of Environmental Protection announced Friday 
that the $1 million robot had removed the radioactive material 
from what's known as Hot Cell 4 in the Reactor Road Building in 
the Quehanna Wild Area in Black Moshannon State Forest. 

"This removes the most serious contamination that was there," 
said DEP spokesman Ron Ruman. The rest of the facility is safe to 
walk around in, he said. 

In 1955, 50,000 acres of state forest land in northwest 
Clearfield County were sold to Curtis Wright Corp., which 
developed nuclear jet engines and conducted other research. A 
number of industries that used radiation in their manufacturing 
processes have occupied the site over the years. 

Hot Cell 4 became contaminated with radioactive strontium-90 in 
the 1960s when Martin-Marietta Corp. was doing work under 
contract to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, according to the 
DEP. 

The land was returned to the state in 1966. The state's ultimate 
goal is to destroy the building and return Quehanna Wild Area to 
its natural state, Ruman said. 

The robot's work is one part of site cleanup that could have a 
total price tag of $45 million. The state contends that the 
federal government is responsible for the cleanup, but so far, 
the federal government has contributed only $7 million to the 
job. 

"Our contention has been that it was work done under contract 
with the federal government, so the federal government should pay 
for this clean-up," said Ruman. 

It has taken about 40 years for cleanup of the sealed-off Hot 
Cell 4 mostly because of a lack of funding, but also because 
another business was operating in the facility, according to the 
DEP. 

Wood floor manufacturer PermaGrain operated in another section of 
the building, using a radioactive process to harden wood, until 
it closed in 2002. The radioactive cobalt-60 left when that 
business closed has already been removed, Ruman said. 

Scientech Inc. was hired by the state to handle the cleanup 
project. RedZone Robotics, of Homestead, Allegheny County, made 
the robot, which was designed to withstand high exposure from the 
radioactive fields. 

Cleanup began in October, after about a year of planning and 
putting together the robot. 

"This specially designed robot did an amazing job removing 
sections of walls, piping, tanks and other material contaminated 
with strontium-90," said Nicholas DiPasquale, DEP deputy 
secretary. 

He said if all goes well, the radioactive material will be 
shipped out by early spring to a low-level waste disposal site. 

"It's a very positive thing to see the government step in and do 
what's necessary to clean that area up," said Stan LaFuria, 
executive director of the Moshannon Valley Economic Development 
Partnership. 

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources owns the 
site, and it will have the primary role in getting funding to 
destroy the now-unoccupied building and return the area to its 
natural state, Ruman said. 

Ruman said boring tests have not found contamination in the 
grounds, but additional tests will be done once the building is 
razed. 

For now, the approximately five acres in the middle of a wooded 
area remains fenced off. 

Returning the site to its natural state is both an environmental 
and an economic issue, Ruman said. "We want to make sure this is 
available so when an economic development corporation or anyone 
else out there tries to pitch a company, (the scenic wild area) 
is something they can use to try to attract them." 

Anne Danahy can be reached at 231-4648.   
*****************************************************************
 50 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Iran-Russia delay deal on spent fuel 

IranNews Tehran Times Iran Daily   

  2004/02/29   
  
Moscow, Feb 29 - Moscow and Tehran have so far not signed an 
agreement on the return of spent nuclear fuel from Iran to Russia 
'only for technical reasons', Atomic Energy Minister Alexander 
Rumyantsev said.
 
He said, "There are no problems of a political nature here."
 
In his words, "Iran has already initialled the relevant 
document."
 
At the same time, Rumyantsev admitted that 'there is 
misunderstanding' with regard to the return of spent nuclear fuel 
from the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is being built with 
the help of Russian specialists, to Russia.
 
"For the Iranian side, which does not have its own nuclear power 
generating capacities yet, it was news that countries that supply 
their spent nuclear fuel for storage and processing to other 
countries have to pay for that," the Minister said.
 
According to Rumyantsev, Iran, is analyzing the appropriate 
documents and 'adjusting financial resources'.
 
It was planned earlier that an additional protocol on the return 
of spent nuclear fuel from Iran to Russia would be signed during 
Rumyantsev's trip to Tehran in February. However the trip has 
been postponed till the end of March because the documents are 
not ready.
 
m/k   

  Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran 
Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. 
E-Mail: <font color="#ff0000" face>Webmaster@IRIBNEWS.ir</font> 
*****************************************************************
 51 UK Independent: Nirex says DTI and nuclear giants are blocking clean-up
 
By Jason Nissé
 
29 February 2004

The nuclear industry and the Department of Trade and Industry
have been accused of trying to sabotage a government policy
aimed at improving the treatment of radioactive waste. 

A plan to make the nuclear waste body, Nirex, independent of the
nuclear industry was announced last July by the Secretary of
State for the Environment, Margaret Beckett, who said details
would be released by the autumn. However, they failed to appear.
The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt,
told Parliament last week that she would produce them soon. 

A spokesman for Mrs Beckett said civil servants had "found
Nirex's legal structures and accounts meant that this would,
unfortunately, take longer than expected". 

They claimed the problem was partly caused by a £500m loan Nirex
was said to owe the nuclear industry, along with £300m of unpaid
interest. Both sums had, in fact, been written off. 

Nirex, which has been lobbying to end its link with the nuclear
industry, blames state-owned BNFL, the government supported
British Energy and the DTI for the delay. 

Chris Murray, the chief executive of Nirex, said "Certain
individuals in the industry and DTIhave been fighting a
rearguard action against Margaret Beckett's stated policy." 

A DTI spokesman denied any delaying tactics. 	           


UK Independent Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 52 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Faces Anniversary of U.S. Nuke Test

February 28, 2004 

 By MARI YAMAGUCHI ASSOCIATED PRESS 

TOKYO (AP) - On the night of March 1, 1954, the No. 5
Fukuryu-maru was trolling for tuna off the Bikini atoll in the
Pacific. 

Suddenly, fisherman Matashichi Oishi saw the midnight sky flash
orange and a rumbling shook the trawler. As he and 22 other crew
members rushed to the deck, tiny white flakes began to fall on
them like snow. 

An underwater volcano, they thought. But it was something far
more destructive: an American hydrogen bomb. 

The No. 5 Fukuryu-maru, or Lucky Dragon, was about 100 miles off
Bikini island in the central Pacific when the United States
tested its bomb there, engulfing the fishermen in heavy
radiation. 

The bombing 50 years ago Monday provoked huge protests in Japan
and reinforced the image of the Japanese - the target of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks - as unique witnesses to the
atomic age. 

"We were the victims of the nuclear arms race," said Oishi, 70,
who runs a laundry in Tokyo and recently published a book on the
bombing. "The Bikini incident is not a problem of the past. It's
an issue of nuclear weapons that affects all of us today." 

For the fishermen exposed, the effects were devastating. 

By the time the trawler returned home two weeks later, some crew
members had lost hair, developed skin burns or had discolored
faces. They suffered from diarrhea and jaundice, and their white
blood counts dropped dangerously low. The boat's radio telegraph
operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died in September 1954, aged 40. 

Survivors have suffered from liver and blood disorders,
including Oishi, who was operated on for liver cancer. In
addition to Kuboyama, 11 crew members have died in the
half-century since the exposure, at least six of them from liver
cancer. 

Fears at the time were high that such exposure was much more
widespread. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted
66 nuclear tests at Bikini as part of "Operation Crossroads."
The atoll is part of the Marshall Islands, almost midway between
Hawaii and Tokyo. 

A Japanese government survey estimated about 850 other Japanese
fishing boats were exposed to radiation, and some 160 fishermen
eventually came forward to collect U.S.-paid compensation.
Oishi's boat, however, was the only boat confirmed to have been
there at the time of the explosion. 

Most of the other boats are thought to have entered the affected
area soon after the explosion. The survey did not measure any
potential impact on foreign trawlers. 

Officials knew of the testing program, but Oishi says fishermen
were not well informed about where and when bombs would explode.
No follow-up studies have been conducted on those other boats
and nobody knows the total number of fishermen who might have
been affected, says Kazuya Yasuda, curator of Tokyo's No. 5
Fukuryu-maru Exhibition Hall, where the boat is now on display. 

The exhibit includes a crew diary and artifacts like a glass
bottle of the "ash of death" - radioactive flakes of coral
vaporized in the blast - that fell on Oishi and the rest of the
crew. The exhibit was renovated ahead of the 50th anniversary of
the Bikini bombing. 

"We are here to let people think about the risk of nuclear
weapons today and think about peace," said Yasuda as he walked
past visiting elementary school children on a field trip. 

The Japanese government sought $6 million in compensation and
got $2 million in 1955. In 1983 the Marshall Islands, then
U.S.-administrated, got $183.7 million. 

The package for Japan included condolence money for Kuboyama,
about $5,600 each plus medical costs for 160 surviving crew
members and other exposed fishermen, and damages to Japan's
fishing industry, according to Foreign Ministry documents. 

The payments settled the issue between the governments, but the
victims' suffering endured. 

The crew faced a stigma common in Japan for victims and the
physically ill. Oishi fled the prying eyes of his neighbors in
his hometown of Yaizu, 100 miles southwest of Tokyo. 

He returned to the capital but the effects of the bombing kept
coming back. Oishi's first baby was born with birth defects in
1960 and died. His daughter suffered three broken marriage
engagements after prospective husbands learned Oishi had been
exposed to radiation. 

"For years, I only wanted to hide my past. But after seeing my
colleagues die like social outcasts, I felt it wasn't right. I
thought it was so unfair," Oishi said. "So I came out of the
closet. I couldn't let our past forgotten like nothing
happened." 

Since he broke his silence in the early 1980s, Oishi has spoken
at schools, town halls and museums. 

"As a survivor of the nuclear test, I have to let people know
the threat of nuclear weapons," he said. "I'll keep telling my
story as long as I live." 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 53 Las Vegas SUN: Japan Marks U.S. Nuke Test in Pacific

Today: February 29, 2004 at 12:20:30 PST 

 By MARI YAMAGUCHI ASSOCIATED PRESS 

TOKYO (AP) - 

On the night of March 1, 1954, the No. 5 Fukuryu-maru was
trolling for tuna off the Bikini atoll in the Pacific. 

Suddenly, fisherman Matashichi Oishi saw the sky flash orange
and felt a rumbling shake the trawler. As he and 22 other crew
members rushed to the deck, tiny white flakes began to fall on
them like snow. 

The crew thought an underwater volcano had erupted. But what
they saw that night was something far more destructive: an
American hydrogen bomb. 

The No. 5 Fukuryu-maru, or Lucky Dragon, was about 100 miles off
Bikini island in the central Pacific when the United States
tested a bomb there, engulfing the fishermen with high levels of
radiation. 

The bombing 50 years ago Monday inspired outraged protest in
Japan, gave impetus to the country's anti-nuclear movement and
strongly reinforced the image of Japan - the site of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks - as a unique witness to the
atomic age. 

"We were the victims of the nuclear arms race," said Oishi, 70,
who runs a laundry in Tokyo and recently published a book on the
bombing. "The Bikini incident is not a problem of the past. It's
an issue of nuclear weapons that affects all of us today." 

For the fishermen exposed, the effects of the bomb were
devastating. 

By the time the trawler returned home two weeks later, some crew
members had lost hair, developed skin burns or had discolored
faces. They suffered from diarrhea and jaundice. Their white
blood counts dropped dangerously low. The boat's radio telegraph
operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, died in September 1954. 

Survivors have suffered from liver and blood disorders. In
addition to Kuboyama, 11 crew members have died in the
half-century since the exposure, at least six of them from liver
cancer. Oishi has had surgery for liver cancer. 

Fears at the time were high that such exposure was much more
widespread. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted
66 nuclear tests at Bikini as part of "Operation Crossroads."
The atoll is part of the Marshall Islands, 2,400 miles southwest
of Hawaii. 

Experts say nearly 900 other Japanese fishing boats were also
believed to have been in the affected area. Japanese officials
were aware of the testing program, but Oishi says fishermen were
not well-informed about the timing of the tests or what areas
were dangerous. 

No follow up studies have been conducted on those other boats
and nobody knows how many fishermen might have been affected,
says Kazuya Yasuda, curator of Tokyo's No. 5 Fukuryu-maru
Exhibition Hall, where the boat is now on display. 

The exhibit, which includes a crew diary and artifacts such as
the "ash of death" in a glass bottle, was renovated ahead of the
50th anniversary of the Bikini bombing. A film about the bombing
is being shown. 

"We are here to let people think about the risk of nuclear
weapons today and think about peace," Yasuda said, walking past
elementary school children on a field trip studying the
displays. 

In 1955, the U.S. government paid $2 million in compensation to
Japan, one-third of what the Japanese government had requested. 

The package included condolence money for Kuboyama, medical
costs for the rest of the crew and damages to Japan's fishing
industry, according to Foreign Ministry documents. In 1983, the
U.S. government paid the Marshall Islands $183.7 million in
compensation. 

The payments settled the issue between the governments, but not
for the victims. 

Oishi, like the other crew members, received about $5,600 in
compensation. But the Japanese government has not recognized the
23 as victims of a nuclear bomb, excluding them from relief
funds set up for survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The crew also faced a stigma common in Japan for victims and the
physically ill. Oishi fled the prying eyes of his neighbors in
his hometown of Yaizu, 100 miles southwest of Tokyo, and went to
the capital after his initial symptoms subsided. 

But the effects of the bombing kept coming back. Oishi's first
baby had birth defects and died. His daughter suffered three
broken marriage engagements after prospective husbands learned
Oishi had been exposed to radiation. 

"For years, I only wanted to hide my past. But after seeing my
colleagues die like social outcasts, I felt it wasn't right. I
thought it was so unfair," Oishi said. "So I came out of the
closet. I couldn't let our past be forgotten like nothing
happened." 

Since he broke his silence on the bombing in the early 1980s,
Oishi has been speaking about his experience at schools, town
halls and museums. 

"As a survivor of the nuclear test, I have to let people know
the threat of nuclear weapons," he said. "I'll keep telling my
story as long as I live." 

-- 


 
*****************************************************************
 54 ON THIS DAY 1954: US tests massive hydrogen bomb in Bikini
            
bbc.co.uk

1954: US tests massive hydrogen bomb in Bikini  The US has 
produced the biggest ever man-made explosion so far in the 
Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. 

The hydrogen bomb was 600 times as powerful as the atomic bomb 
that destroyed Hiroshima. 

It was so violent that it overwhelmed the measuring instruments, 
indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists 
had anticipated. 

The bomb was the equivalent of 20m tons of TNT. 

One of the atolls has been totally vaporised, disappearing into a 
gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide and 
dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fall-out. 

The Atomic Energy Commission announced this was the first in a 
series of tests to be carried out in the area. 

Natives resettled

 Tests first began in Bikini in 1946 after the natives were moved 
to the island of Rongerik, then to Ujelan a year later and to 
Kili on 1949. 

This is the second H-bomb test in the area. 

A 10.4 megaton bomb was exploded on 1 November 1952 at Enewatak, 
west of Bikini. 

It destroyed one island and left a crater 175 feet deep. 

It was hundreds of times more powerful than that used over 
Hiroshima. 

Unlike that device which tapped energy by splitting atomic 
nuclei, the Enewetak weapon forced together nuclei of hydrogen to 
unleash an even greater destructive force.           

  In Context   		 		 		 			
   			 				 				 	 Three weeks later it emerged that a Japanese
fishing boat, called Lucky Dragon, was within 80 miles of the
test zone at the time. Its 23 crew were severely affected by
radiation sickness.

They were among 264 people accidentally exposed to radiation
because the explosion and fall-out had been far greater than
expected. 

The original natives were granted $325,000 in compensation and
returned to Bikini in 1974. But they were evacuated four years
later when new tests showed high levels of residual
radioactivity in the region. 

There were altogether 23 nuclear tests carried out at Bikini
from 1946 . They continued until 1958, the same year that saw
the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK. 

Britain exploded its own H-bomb in 1957, China in 1967 and
France in 1968. 

As recently as 1995, France was still testing its bombs in the
Pacific, to international and local protest. 
*****************************************************************
 55 Japan Times: Events to mark Bikini Atoll bomb test start in Shizuoka

Sunday, February 29, 2004   

 SHIZUOKA (Kyodo) Survivors of the 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test 
at Bikini Atoll joined forces with peace activists on Saturday to 
repeat demands for the elimination of nuclear arms ahead of the 
50th anniversary of the deadly experiment.

 On March 1, 1954, the blast from the U.S. hydrogen bomb "Bravo" 
irradiated residents of Rongelap Island, near Bikini Atoll, as 
well as the 23-strong crew of the 140-ton trawler Fukuryu Maru 
No. 5, also known as the Lucky Dragon, from Yaizu, Shizuoka 
Prefecture, as they were fishing for tuna some 160 km east of the 
test site.

 Surviving crew members of the Lucky Dragon and the peace 
campaigners are conducting a series of anniversary events, 
including symposiums and a civil tribunal to determine who is 
responsible for the irradiation incident, in the cities of 
Shizuoka and Yaizu, with the aim of ensuring that people do not 
forget the tragedy of a half-century ago.

 In Shizuoka on Saturday, former fishermen, scientists and 
journalists took part in a symposium on current nuclear issues 
worldwide.

 As well as the Lucky Dragon, some 850 Japanese fishing boats 
were confirmed to have been irradiated following the bomb test, 
and health authorities ordered that 457 tons of contaminated fish 
be dumped.

 The Bravo hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful than the 
atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

 But unlike atomic-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 
Japanese government has not recognized the fishermen of the Lucky 
Dragon as victims of a nuclear bomb and has continued to exclude 
them from relief measures under Japanese law.

 'Bravo' photo exhibit WAKAYAMA (Kyodo) The town of Koza, 
Wakayama Prefecture, said Saturday that it will hold a two-week 
exhibition of photos beginning Monday to mark the 50th 
anniversary of the irradiation of a Japanese fishing ship by a 
U.S. hydrogen bomb test near Bikini Atoll in 1954.

 The Fukuryu Maru No. 5, also known as the Lucky Dragon, was 
built in 1947 at a Koza shipyard as the Kotoshiro Maru No. 7 to 
catch bonito. It was transformed into a tuna-fishing vessel four 
years later.

 The exhibition will include pictures of the ship under 
construction and the tools used to build it.

 The Japan Times: Feb. 29, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 56 Japan Times: Mock trial held on H-bomb test at Bikini

Monday, March 1, 2004   

 SHIZUOKA (Kyodo) The 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini 
Atoll in the South Pacific that showered fallout on the crew of a 
Japanese trawler had far-reaching effects, a former teacher said 
Sunday.

  [News photo]   

  Elementary school students on a field trip to the Fukuryu Maru 
No. 5 Exhibition Hall in Koto Ward, Tokyo, take a close look at 
the actual vessel.   

The incident severely damaged the fisheries industry in the city 
of Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, the home port of the Fukuryu Maru 
No. 5, and caused the 23 crew members and their families to 
become victims of discrimination, Toshihiro Iizuka, 73, said.

 "Fish from Yaizu were shunned after the irradiation of the 
Fukuryu Maru was reported, causing a plunge in marine product 
prices, while the crew members of the vessel and their families 
faced prejudice and discrimination as people believed radiation 
was contagious," Iizuka said.

 He made the remarks during a mock trial in the city of Shizuoka 
held to look into who was responsible for the Bikini radiation 
disaster ahead of its 50th anniversary Monday.

 "The Fukuryu Maru was considered an 'angel of death' by Yaizu 
residents. Fishermen's families in the city had to pawn their 
clothes to live," said Iizuka, who had just started teaching 
social science in the city at the time of the disaster.

 The crew members of the 140-ton vessel, better known overseas as 
the Lucky Dragon, were fishing for tuna some 160 km east of the 
test site when they were showered with radioactive ash from the 
bomb, code-named Bravo, on March 1, 1954.

 After negotiations with the Japanese side, the United States 
paid each surviving crew member an average of 2 million yen as 
"sympathy money" in a political settlement.

 Because of the political settlement, the Japanese government has 
not recognized the crew members as nuclear-bomb survivors, or 
"hibakusha," unlike people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and has 
continued to exclude them from relief measures.

 The tribunal concluded that the government should request that 
the U.S. issue an apology to the former crew members and that 
legislation be enacted providing the survivors with medical 
treatment through governmental support.

 The Japan Times: March 1, 2004 (C) All rights reserved 
*****************************************************************
 57 NTamar.net: Bikini History
 		 	 	 		
A Short History of the People of Bikini Atoll 		 			

By Jack Niedenthal bikini@ntamar.net
Updated January, 2003
 			 			
Taken from the book, For the Good of Mankind: A History of the 
People of Bikini and their Islands, Second Edition. Order from 
The Bikini Atoll Online Store or from this direct ordering link 
at Amazon.com.
 			
MARCH 1, 2004, marks the 50th anniversary of the 1954 BRAVO 
HYDROGEN BOMB TEST, the largest weapon ever tested by the United 
States, which occured on Bikini Atoll.                                                          

Bikini Atoll is one of the 29 atolls and five islands that 
compose the Marshall Islands. These atolls of the Marshalls are 
scattered over 357,000 square miles of a lonely part of the world 
located north of the equator in the Pacific Ocean. They help 
define a geographic area referred to as Micronesia.                        

Once the Marshalls were discovered by the outside world, first by 
the Spanish in the 1600's and then later by the Germans, they 
were used primarily as a source for producing copra oil from 
coconuts. The Bikini islanders maintained no substantial contacts 
with these early visitors because of Bikini Atoll's remote 
location in the very dry, northern Marshalls. The fertile atolls 
in the southern Marshalls were attractive to the traders because 
they could produce a much larger quantity of copra. This 
isolation created for the Bikinians a tightly integrated society 
bound together by close extended family association and 
tradition, where the amount of land you owned was a measure of 
your wealth.                    

In the early 1900's the Japanese began to administer the Marshall 
Islands. This domination later resulted in a military build up 
throughout the islands in anticipation of World War II. Bikini 
and the rest of these peaceful, low lying coral atolls in the 
Marshalls suddenly became strategic. The Bikini islanders' life 
of harmony drew to an abrupt close when the Japanese decided to 
build and maintain a watchtower on their island to guard against 
an American invasion of the Marshalls. Throughout the conflict 
the Bikini station served as an outpost for the Japanese military 
headquarters in the Marshall Islands, Kwajalein Atoll.
 				
In February of 1944, toward the end of the war, in a gruesome and 
terrifying bloody battle, the American forces captured Kwajalein 
Atoll and thereby effectively crushed the Japanese hold on the 
Marshall Islands. The five Japanese men left on Bikini, while 
hiding in a covered foxhole, killed themselves with a grenade 
before the American military forces could capture them.
 				
After the war, in December of 1945, President Harry S. Truman 
issued a directive to Army and Navy officials that joint testing 
of nuclear weapons would be necessary "to determine the effect of 
atomic bombs on American warships." Bikini, because of its 
location away from regular air and sea routes, was chosen to be 
the new nuclear proving ground for the United States government.
 				
In February of 1946 Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, the military governor 
of the Marshalls, traveled to Bikini. On a Sunday after church, 
he assembled the Bikinians to ask if they would be willing to 
leave their atoll temporarily so that the United States could 
begin testing atomic bombs for "the good of mankind and to end 
all world wars." King Juda, then the leader of the Bikinian 
people, stood up after much confused and sorrowful deliberation 
among his people, and announced, "We will go believing that 
everything is in the hands of God."
 				
While the 167 Bikinians were getting ready for their exodus, 
preparations for the U.S. nuclear testing program advanced 
rapidly. Some 242 naval ships, 156 aircraft, 25,000 radiation 
recording devices and the Navy's 5,400 experimental rats, goats 
and pigs soon began to arrive for the tests. Over 42,000 U.S. 
military and civilian personnel were involved in the testing 
program at Bikini.
 				
The nuclear legacy of the Bikinians began in March of 1946 when 
they were first removed from their islands in preparation for 
Operation Crossroads. The history of the Bikinian people from 
that day has been a story of their struggle to understand 
scientific concepts as they relate to their islands, as well as 
the day-to-day problems of finding food, raising families and 
maintaining their culture amidst the progression of events set in 
motion by the Cold War that have been for the most part out of 
their control.
 				
In preparation for Operation Crossroads, the Bikinians were sent 
125 miles eastward across the ocean on a U.S. Navy LST landing 
craft to Rongerik Atoll. The islands of Rongerik Atoll were 
uninhabited because, traditionally, the Marshallese people 
considered them to be unlivable due to their size (Rongerik is 
1/6 the size of Bikini Atoll) and because they had an inadequate 
water and food supply. There was also a deep-rooted traditional 
belief that the atoll was inhabited by evil spirits. The 
Administration left the Bikinians food stores sufficient only for 
several weeks. The islanders soon discovered that the coconut 
trees and other local food crops produced very few fruits when 
compared to the yield of the trees on Bikini. As the food supply 
on Rongerik quickly ran out, the Bikinians began to suffer from 
starvation and fish poisoning due to the lack of edible fish in 
the lagoon. Within two months after their arrival they began to 
beg U.S. officials to move them back to Bikini.
 				
In July, the Bikinian leader, Juda, traveled with a U.S. 
government delegation back to Bikini to view the results of the 
second atom bomb test of Operation Crossroads, code named Baker. 
Juda returned to Rongerik and told his people that the island was 
still intact, that the trees were still there, that Bikini looked 
the same.                        

The two atomic bomb blasts of Operation Crossroads were both 
about the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. 
Eighteen tons of cinematography equipment and more than half of 
the world's supply of motion picture film were on hand to record 
the Able and Baker detonations, and also the movement of the 
Bikinians from their atoll.
 				
From December of 1946 through January of 1947, the food shortages 
worsened on Rongerik; the small population of Bikinians was 
confronted with near starvation. During the same period of time, 
the area of Micronesia was designated as a United Nations 
Strategic Trust Territory (TT) to be administered by the United 
States. Indeed, it was the only strategic trust ever created by 
the United Nations. In this agreement, the U.S. committed itself 
to the United Nations directive to "promote the economic 
advancement and self-sufficiency of the inhabitants, and to this 
end shall...protect the inhabitants against the loss of their 
lands and resources..." The people of Bikini have long seen the 
irony in the conduct of the TT agreement that allowed the bombing 
of their homeland and that forced them into starvation on 
Rongerik Atoll.
 				
In May of 1947, to make the Bikinians situation on Rongerik even 
more serious, a huge fire damaged many of the coconut trees. By 
July, when a medical officer from the U.S. visited the island, 
the Bikinian people were found to be suffering severely from 
malnutrition. A team of U.S. investigators determined in the 
fall, after a visit to Rongerik, that the island had inadequate 
supplies of food and water and that the Bikini people should be 
moved from Rongerik without delay. The U.S. Navy was harshly 
criticized in the world press for neglecting the Bikini people on 
Rongerik. Harold Ickes, a reporter, stated in his 1947 syndicated 
column "Man to Man" that, "The natives are actually and literally 
starving to death."
 				
Immediate preparations began for the transfer of the Bikinians to 
Ujelang Atoll in the western Marshalls. In November a handful of 
young Bikinian men traveled to Ujelang, and with the help of Navy 
Seabees, they began to arrange a community area and to construct 
housing. At the end of the year, however, the U.S. selected 
Enewetak Atoll as a second nuclear weapons test site. The Navy 
then decided that it would be easier to move the Enewetak people 
to Ujelang despite the fact that the Bikinians had built all the 
housing and held high hopes that they would be relocated there.
 				
In January of 1948, University of Hawaii anthropologist, Dr. 
Leonard Mason, traveled to Rongerik at the request of the Trust 
Territory High Commissioner to report on the status of the 
Bikinians living there. Horrified at the sight of the withering 
islanders, Mason immediately requested a medical officer along 
with food supplies to be flown in to Rongerik.                  

In March of 1948, after two unpleasant years on Rongerik, the 
Bikinians were transported to Kwajalein Atoll where they were 
housed in tents on a strip of grass beside the massive cement 
airstrip used by the U.S. military. The Bikinians fell into yet 
another debate among themselves about alternative locations soon 
after they settled on Kwajalein.
 				
It was in June of 1948 that the Bikinians chose Kili Island in 
the southern Marshalls because the island was not ruled by a 
paramount king, or iroij, and was uninhabited. This choice 
ultimately doomed their traditional diet and lifestyle, which 
were both based on lagoon fishing.
 				
In September of 1948, two dozen Bikinian men were chosen from 
among themselves to accompany 8 Seabees to Kili to begin the 
clearing of land and the construction of a housing area for the 
rest of the people who remained on Kwajalein.
 				
In November of 1948, after six months on Kwajalein Atoll, the 184 
Bikinians set sail once again. This time the destination was Kili 
Island, their third community relocation in two years. Starvation 
also troubled the Bikinians on Kili; this situation led the Trust 
Territory administration to donate a 40-foot ship to be used for 
copra transportation between Kili and Jaluit Atoll. Later, in 
1951, the boat was washed into the Kili reef by heavy surf and 
sunk while carrying a full-load of copra. In the following years 
rough seas and infrequent visits by the field trip ships caused 
food supplies to run critically low many times on the island and 
once even required an airdrop of emergency food rations.
 				
While the islanders struggled to set up their new community on 
Kili, the beautiful atoll of Bikini was in the process of being 
irradiated. In the northern Marshalls in January of 1954, the Air 
Force and Army men arrived on the Bikinians' former, temporary 
home of Rongerik Atoll, and jointly set up a weather station to 
monitor conditions in preparation for Operation Castle. This was 
a series of tests that would include the first air-deliverable, 
and the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the United 
States. The U.S. government was operating with the fear that the 
Russians had already detonated their own hydrogen bomb in 1952. 
Now, decisions concerning the U.S. testing program were being 
made at the highest levels of the government. The cold war burned 
with vigor in the minds of paranoid politicians the world over.
 				
The weather station on Rongerik began regular observations to 
determine barometric conditions, temperature, and the velocity of 
the wind up to 100,000 feet above sea level. As the test date for 
the Bravo shot grew near, the men at the weather station 
performed many observations per day. They were checking surface 
wind direction and barometric conditions hourly and upper-level 
conditions every two hours. As the test date neared, late in the 
month of February, documented proof exists that Joint Task 
Force-7 knew that the winds were blowing east from Bikini toward 
Rongerik Atoll and other inhabited islands because of the 
continuous reports coming in from their weather station.
 				
Indeed, according to a Defense Nuclear Agency report on the Bravo 
blast, the weather briefing the day before the detonation stated 
that there would be "no significant fallout...for the populated 
Marshalls." The briefing at 6 p.m., however, stated that "the 
predicted winds were less favorable; nevertheless, the decision 
to shoot was reaffirmed, but with another review of the winds 
scheduled for midnight." The midnight briefing "indicated less 
favorable winds at 10,000 to 25,000-foot levels." Winds at 20,000 
feet "were headed for Rongelap to the east," and "it was 
recognized that both Bikini and Eneman islands would probably be 
contaminated."                  

[Martin and Rowland, Castle Series, 1954, supra note 28, at 22. 
U.S. Nuclear Tests on Bikini & Enewetak Atolls in the Marshall 
Islands, U.S. Department of Energy. United States Nuclear Tests: 
July 1945 through September 1992. Document No. DOE/NV-209 (Rev. 
14), December 1994].
 				
The decision to go forward with the test, knowing that the winds 
were blowing in the direction of inhabited atolls, was 
essentially a decision to irradiate the northern Marshall 
Islands, and moreover, to irradiate the people who were still 
living on them.
 				
Early in the morning on March 1, 1954, the hydrogen bomb, code 
named Bravo, was detonated on the surface of the reef in the 
northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. The area was illuminated by 
a huge and expanding flash of blinding light. A raging fireball 
of intense heat that measured into the millions of degrees shot 
skyward at a rate of 300 miles an hour. Within minutes the 
monstrous cloud, filled with nuclear debris, shot up more than 20 
miles and generated winds hundreds of miles per hour. These fiery 
gusts blasted the surrounding islands and stripped the branches 
and coconuts from the trees. Joint Task Force ships, which were 
stationed about 40 miles east and south of Bikini in positions 
enabling them to monitor the test, detected the eastward movement 
of the radioactive cloud from the 15 megaton blast. They recorded 
a steady increase in radiation levels that became so high that 
all men were ordered below decks and all hatches and watertight 
doors were sealed.
 				
Millions of tons of sand, coral, plant and sea life from Bikini's 
reef, from three islands [Bokonijien, Aerokojlol, Nam] and the 
surrounding lagoon waters were sent high into the air by the 
blast. One-and-a-half hours after the explosion, 23 fishermen 
aboard the Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon, watched in 
awe as a "gritty white ash" began to fall on them. The men aboard 
the ship were oblivious to the fact that the ash was the fallout 
from a hydrogen bomb test. Shortly after being exposed to the 
fallout their skin began to itch and they experienced nausea and 
vomiting. One man died.
 				
Meanwhile, on Rongelap Atoll (located about 125 miles east of 
Bikini), three to four hours after the blast, the same white, 
snow-like ash began to fall from the sky onto the 64 people 
living there and also onto the 18 people residing on Ailinginae 
Atoll. Bravo was a thousand times more powerful than the Fat Man 
and Little Boy atomic bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and 
Hiroshima during the end of World War II. Its "success" was 
beyond the wildest dreams of the American scientists who were 
involved in the detonation--they thought that the blast would 
only carry a payload of approximately 3 megatons.
 				
The Rongelapese, not understanding what was happening, watched as 
two suns rose that morning, observed with amazement as the 
radioactive dust soon formed a layer on their island two inches 
deep turning the drinking water a brackish yellow. Children 
played in the fallout; their mothers watched in horror as night 
came and they began to show the physical signs of exposure. The 
people experienced severe vomiting and diarrhea, their hair began 
to fall out, the island fell into a state of terrified panic. The 
people had received no explanations or warnings whatsoever from 
the United States government. Two days after the test the people 
of Rongelap were finally taken to Kwajalein for medical 
treatment.
 				
On Bikini Atoll the radiation levels increased dramatically. And, 
in late March following the Bravo test, the off-limit zones were 
expanded to include the inhabited atolls of Rongerik, Utirik, 
Ujelang and Likiep. It is startling to note that none of these 
islanders were evacuated prior to this blast or even before the 
subsequent nuclear weapons tests. In the spring of 1954, Bikar, 
Ailinginae, Rongelap, Rongerik, were all contaminated by the 
Yankee and Union weapons tests which were detonated on Bikini 
Atoll. They yielded the equivalent of 6.9 and 13.5 megatons of 
TNT respectively.
 				
Back on Kili, in January of 1955, the Trust Territory ships 
continued to have problems unloading food in the rough seas 
around Kili and the people once again suffered from starvation. 
The following year the food shortage problems grew even worse. 
Consequently, the United States decided to give the Bikinians a 
satellite community located on public land on Jaluit Atoll, 
thirty miles to the north. Three families moved to Jaluit. During 
1957 other families rotated to Jaluit to take over the 
responsibilities of producing copra for sale.
 				
During this period the Bikinians signed an agreement with the 
U.S. government turning over full use rights to Bikini Atoll. 
According to the agreement, any future claims by the Bikinians 
based on the use of Bikini by the government of the United 
States, or on the moving of the Bikinian people from Bikini Atoll 
to Kili Island, would have to be made against the Bikinian 
leaders and not against the U.S government. In return for this 
agreement, the Bikinians were given full use rights to Kili and 
several islands in Jaluit Atoll which were Trust Territory public 
lands. In addition, the agreement included $25,000 in cash and an 
additional $300,000 trust fund that yielded a semi-annual 
interest payment of approximately $5,000 (about $15 per person 
per year). This agreement was made by the Bikinians without the 
benefit of legal representation.
 				
Typhoon Lola struck Kili late in 1957 causing extensive damage to 
crops and sinking the Bikinians' supply ship. Shortly afterwards 
in 1958, Typhoon Ophelia caused widespread destruction on Jaluit 
and all the other southern atolls. The Bikinians living on Jaluit 
moved back to Kili because the satellite community became 
uninhabitable due to the typhoon damage. The Bikinians continued 
to fight the problems associated with inadequate food supplies 
throughout 1960.
 				
The difficulty of inhabiting Kili is due in part to the small 
amount of food which can be grown there, but more so because it 
has no lagoon. Kili differs substantially from Bikini because it 
is only a single island of one-third of a square mile in land 
area with no lagoon--compared to the Bikinians' homeland of 23 
islands that form a calm lagoon and have a land area of 3.4 
square miles. Most of the year Kili is surrounded by 10 to 20 
foot waves that deny the islanders of the opportunity to fish and 
sail their canoes. After a short time on Kili--a place that the 
islanders believe was once an ancient burial ground for kings and 
therefore overwrought with spiritual influence--they began to 
refer to it as a "prison" island. Because the island does not 
produce enough local food for the Bikinians to eat, the 
importation of USDA rice and canned goods, and also food bought 
with their supplemental income, has become an absolute necessity 
for their survival.
 				
In 1967, U.S. government agencies began considering the 
possibility of returning the Bikinian people to their homelands 
based on data on radiation levels on Bikini Atoll from the U.S. 
scientific community. This scientific optimism stemmed directly 
from an Atomic Energy Commission study that stated, "Well water 
could be used safely by the natives upon their return to Bikini. 
It appears that radioactivity in the drinking water may be 
ignored from a radiological safety standpoint...The exposures of 
radiation that would result from the repatriation of the Bikini 
people do not offer a significant threat to their health and 
safety."
 				
Accordingly, in June of 1968 [the story appeared on the front 
page of the New York Times], President Lyndon B. Johnson promised 
the 540 Bikinians living on Kili and other islands that they 
would now be able to return to their homeland. The President also 
stated that, "It is our goal to assist the people of Bikini to 
build, on these once desolated islands, a new and model 
community." He then ordered Bikini to be resettled "with all 
possible dispatch."
 				
In August of 1969 an eight-year plan was prepared for the 
resettlement of Bikini Atoll in order to give the crops planted 
on the islands a chance to mature. The first section of the plan 
involved the clearing of the radioactive debris on Bikini Island. 
This segment of the work was designed by the AEC and the U.S. 
Department of Defense. Responsibility for the second phase of the 
reclamation, which included the replanting of the atoll, 
construction of a housing development and the relocation of the 
community, was assumed by the U.S. Trust Territory government.
 				
By late in the year of 1969 the first cleanup phase was 
completed. The AEC, in an effort to assure the islanders that 
their cleanup efforts were successful, issued a statement that 
said: "There's virtually no radiation left and we can find no 
discernible effect on either plant or animal life."
 				
All that was theoretically left now in order for the people to 
return was for the atoll to be rehabilitated, but during the year 
of 1971 this effort proceeded slowly. The second phase of the 
rehabilitation encountered serious problems because the U.S. 
government withdrew their military personnel and equipment. They 
also brought to an end the weekly air service that had been 
operating between Kwajalein Atoll and Bikini Atoll. The 
construction and agricultural projects suffered because of the 
sporadic shipping schedules and the lack of air service.
 				
In late 1972 the planting of the coconut trees was finally 
completed. During this period it was discovered that as the 
coconut crabs grew older on Bikini Island they ate their 
sloughed-off shells. Those shells contained high levels of 
radioactivity, hence, the AEC announced that the crabs were still 
radioactive and could be eaten only in limited numbers. The 
conflicting information on the radiological contamination of 
Bikini supplied by the AEC caused the Bikini Council to vote not 
to return to Bikini at the time previously scheduled by American 
officials. The Council, however, stated that it would not prevent 
individuals from making independent decisions to return.
 				
Three extended Bikinian families, their desire to return to 
Bikini being great enough to outweigh the alleged radiological 
dangers, moved back to Bikini Island and into the newly 
constructed cement houses. They were accompanied by approximately 
50 Marshallese workers who were involved in the construction and 
maintenance of the buildings.
 				
The population of islanders on Bikini slowly increased over the 
years until in June of 1975, during regular monitoring of Bikini, 
radiological tests discovered "higher levels of radioactivity 
than originally thought." U.S. Department of Interior officials 
stated that "Bikini appears to be hotter or questionable as to 
safety" and an additional report pointed out that some water 
wells on Bikini Island were also too contaminated with 
radioactivity for drinking. A couple of months later the AEC, on 
review of the scientists' data, decided that the local foods 
grown on Bikini Island, i.e., pandanus, breadfruit and coconut 
crabs, were also too radioactive for human consumption. Medical 
tests of urine samples from the 100 people living on Bikini 
detected the presence of low levels of plutonium 239 and 240. 
Robert Conard of Brookhaven Laboratories commented that these 
readings "are probably not radiologically significant."
 				
In October of 1975, after contemplating these new, terrifying and 
confusing reports on the radiological condition of their atoll, 
the Bikinians filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court demanding 
that a complete scientific survey of Bikini and the northern 
Marshalls be conducted. The lawsuit stated that the U.S. had used 
highly sophisticated and technical radiation detection equipment 
at Enewetak Atoll, but had refused to employ it at Bikini. The 
result of the lawsuit was to convince the U.S. to agree to 
conduct an aerial radiological survey of the northern Marshalls 
in December of 1975. Unfortunately, more than three years of 
bureaucratic squabbles between the U.S. Departments of State, 
Interior and Energy over costs and responsibility for the survey, 
delayed any action on its implementation. The Bikinians, unaware 
of the severity of the radiological danger, remained on their 
contaminated islands.
 				
While waiting for the radiological survey to be conducted, 
further discoveries of these radiological dangers were made. In 
May of 1977 the level of radioactive strontium-90 in the well 
water on Bikini Island was found to exceed the U.S. maximum 
allowed limits. A month later a Department of Energy study stated 
that "All living patterns involving Bikini Island exceed Federal 
[radiation] guidelines for thirty year population doses." Later 
in the same year, a group of U.S. scientists, while on Bikini, 
recorded an 11-fold increase in the cesium-137 body burdens of 
the more than 100 people residing on the island. Alarmed by these 
numbers, the DOE told the people living on Bikini to eat only one 
coconut per day and began to ship in food for consumption.
 				
In April of 1978 medical examinations performed by U.S. 
physicians revealed radiation levels in many of the now 139 
people on Bikini to be well above the U.S. maximum permissible 
level. The very next month U.S. Interior Department officials 
described the 75% increase in radioactive cesium 137 as 
"incredible." The Interior Department then announced plans to 
move the people from Bikini "within 75 to 90 days," and so in 
September of 1978, Trust Territory officials arrived on Bikini to 
once again evacuate the people who were living on the atoll. An 
ironic footnote to the situation is that the long awaited 
northern Marshalls radiological survey, forced by the 1975 
lawsuit brought by the Bikinians against the U.S. government, 
finally began only after the people were again relocated from 
Bikini.                         

In the 1980's, after filing a lawsuit in the U.S. Federal Claims 
Court [Juda vs. the United States] in 1981 that was eventually 
dismissed in 1987, the people of Bikini received two trust funds 
from the United States government as compensation for giving up 
their islands to the U.S. government for nuclear testing. You can 
read about these trust funds on our Reparations for Damages page.                   

In the 1990's the Bikinians began a Tourism program on Bikini for 
those people who might want to visit our historic atoll. You can 
read about this operation on our Dive Tourism and the Sport 
Fishing pages.                  

On March 5, 2001, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal handed down a 
decision on a seven year lawsuit the Bikinians had brought 
against the United States for damages done to their islands and 
their people during the nuclear testing on Bikini. The Tribunal 
gave them a total award of $563,315,500.00 [loss of value 
$278,000,000.00, restoration costs $251,500,000.00, suffering and 
hardship $33,814,500.00], which is the final amount after 
deducting the past compensation awarded by the U.S. government 
[see above three trust funds]. The problem is that the Nuclear 
Claims Tribunal, which was created by the Compact of Free 
Association of 1986, was underfunded and does not have the money 
to pay for this claim. It is now up to the people of Bikini to 
petition the U.S. Congress for the money to fulfill this award. 
This is expected to take many years and it is uncertain if the 
United States will honor their claim.                   

 			

Read the submitted testimony [in .pdf form] to Congress on July 
10, 2003 by attorney Jonathan Weisgall on behalf of the people of 
Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Uterik atolls regarding the 
Compact of Free Assocation between the United States and the 
Marshall Islands, and the U.S's refusal to consider the nuclear 
issue in these negotiations.                    

Read the January 2003 Thornburgh Report on the legitimacy of the 
Nuclear Claims Tribunal findings in .pdf format. [download]                     

Read the decision of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in .pdf format: 
[download]                      

At this time the people of Bikini remain scattered throughout the 
Marshall Islands and the world as they wait for the cleanup of 
Bikini to begin in earnest, mostly due to the fact that the money 
they have received from the U.S. government is not adequate to 
fund a full radiological cleanup of the entire atoll.                  

RMI Changed Circumstances petition for nuclear victims 
compensation still needed from the United States [condensed]. 
Submitted to the United States government on 9/11/00.                   

For demographic information about the people and where they are 
today, please read Bikini Atoll Facts. For the latest 
developments with regard to the Bikinians and their attempts to 
resettle their homeland, please read the Radiological Cleanup and 
Future and Resettlement Program pages, along with the news 
articles linked below. We have also provided a Resource Page for 
Researchers of Bikini Atoll.                    

Resource Page for Researchers of Bikini Atoll. 			

Marshall Islands Nuclear Testing Chronology by the U.S. 
Department of Energy: An excellent resource.                                                    

For current events and the the most up-to-date information about 
the Republic of the Marshall Islands go to www.yokwe.net.This is 
a great web site!                       

Read the 1946 Newsweek magazine articles about Bikini Atoll. 			

***A Tribute to the Late Bikinian Senator Henchi Balos 
7/15/46-9/10/00***                      

Bikini Excavation Indicates Early Man in Micronesia. 			

San Francisco Chronicle: Section A story about radiological 
cleanup issues in the Marshall Islands from 12/7/99.                    

See How Bikini Day was commemorated on Kili Island in March of 
1999.                   

See the special Saratoga Picture and Movie page! 			

The Baltimore Sun: front page story of 10/26/97 regarding 
radiological and other health issues in the Marshall Islands.                   

Read the August 6, 2002 "Nuclear Special" section of the Guardian 
(United Kingdom) that includes a story about Bikini.                   

Firsthand Bikinian Elder Accounts of their History.
 				
                                The Cultural Journey Further 
interviews with the people of Bikini with regard to their proud 
heritage, customs & history.                        

Atom and Hydrogen Bomb Yields in the Marshall Islands from the 
U.S. Nuclear testing.                   

<b>The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal</b> Information 
on the nuclear claims filed with the Marshall Islands Nuclear 
Claims Tribunal for damages done to the Marshallese and their 
islands by the U.S. testing.                      

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? The Final Resting Places of all ships used at 
Bikini Atoll for Nuclear Testing.                    

 			
Visit the Atomic Veterans History Project<br> The Portland, 
Oregon metropolitan area is home to at least a few dozen military 
service veterans who participated in the atmospheric atomic 
testing during the Cold War. The original purpose of this web 
site was to record and post these Portland Oregon veterans' 
compelling stories. Soon however, atomic veterans across the 
country contacted this organization with their contributions to 
this history.                                                          

 THE FULL STORY OF THE PEOPLE OF BIKINI IN THEIR OWN WORDS!
 									
                                                                FOR 
THE GOOD OF MANKIND: A History of the People of Bikini and their 
Islands by Jack Niedenthal [EXPANDED NEW SECOND EDITION: 260 
pages w/photos, paperback, ISBN 982-9050-02-5] With a Foreword by 
Dr. Leonard Mason.                                          

*MORE Details about the tragic history of the people and their 
islands *MORE Interviews with elder Bikinians and their leaders 
about their struggles from ancient to modern times and personal 
stories about the author's relationship with the islanders 
*Updated Details about the Bikinians' local government and trust 
funds *Updated Information on the radiological concerns and 
cleanup on Bikini Atoll *Updated Demographics about the people 
and the geography of their islands *Brief histories about the 
ships now at rest in Bikini's lagoon and also info as to the 
whereabouts of the other ships that were used for nuclear testing 
on Bikini *Tourism details and dive profiles *Updated Sources for 
researchers of Bikini Atoll's history *Fully indexed with a brand 
new bookcover.                                              
							 								
*ALL PROFITS FROM THE SALE OF THIS BOOK GO TO THE PEOPLE OF 
BIKINI.                                                               

Order from or from this direct ordering link at Amazon.com.
							 						 					   				 			
Now available exclusively from the Bikini Atoll Online Store: 
Copies of the 1 hour, 1988 Academy Award nominated production of 
RADIO BIKINI "An extraordinarily perceptive, haunting, and 
informative documentary, an outstanding achievement on all 
levels." LA TIMES
				

Produced and directed by Robert Stone, Radio Bikini is a 
sensational, eye opening film. With the passing of the Freedom of 
Information Act, filmmaker Robert Stone was able to acquire this 
formally top secret footage. Winner of numerous national and 
international awards, this film won the San Francisco Film 
Festival's "Golden Gate Award" in the category of "Historical and 
Political Issues." Radio Bikini recounts the almost too 
terrifying to be true tradgedy surrounding the Bikini Island "A" 
Bomb test operations, which were, ironically, to be promoted as 
the biggest news story of the century. Using rare, 
never-before-seen archival footage, Radio Bikini unfolds through 
the eyes of the elderly Chief of the Bikinians and includes 
comments by a former American serviceman who was there [he died 
of cancer shortly before the film's completion]. Radio Bikini 
combines "live" radio broadcasts from Bikini in 1946 with footage 
of the event as it happened, creating an effect that is both 
haunting and surreal.                              

THIS FILM IS A "MUST HAVE" FOR ATOMIC VETERANS. 				

In Great Britian, THE GUARDIAN called Radio Bikini "mind 
boggling...Stone's film is a powerful reminder of the 
destructiveness of U.S. nuclear policies."                              

*******THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE ON THE INTERNET WHERE THIS FILM CAN 
BE PURCHASED********                                

$28.00 which includes U.S. Priority Air Mail Shipping to the U.S. 
[$36.00 for orders outside of the U.S.]


Also available: "Saratoga: Size Does Matter" T-shirt, "Dive 
Bikini Atoll's Nuclear Fleet" T-shirt, and "Bikini Atoll's Shark 
Pass: Survive the Dive" T-shirts and Bikinian music cassettes!
				

For ordering information: 				

+ Books on Line from AMAZON.COM[just double-click on the title 
and you will go directly to the ordering page for the book at 
www.amazon.com]:
 			

[ width=] <b><font size="+2">100 Suns by Michael Light</font></b> 
This is an amazing photo collection "coffee table" book of 
nuclear explosions.                                                  

Bravo for the Marshallese<br> By Holly Barker. A book about the 
nuclear victims of the Marshall Islands.                                                                                              
							 								 							 							
  + <b><img src="sarabook.jpg" height="213" width="160" 
align="TOP" border="0" naturalsizeflag="3"></b> + Diving 
Micronesia by Eric Hanauer: Eric is the best diving journalist 
that has been to Bikini Atoll. His book is a *must* for anyone 
traveling to Micronesia. + The Last Dive: A Father and Son's 
Fatal Descent into the Ocean's Depths by Bernie Chowdhury: If you 
are a serious diver, you must read this book. One of the best 
books on diving anywhere. + The Cruiser's Handbook of Fishing by 
Scott and Wendy Bannerot: A book about fishing methods that 
pertain to the Pacific and the Marshalls. + Ocean's End: Travels 
Through Endangered Seas by Colin Woodard: This is a great, well 
written book that includes a small section about Bikini with an 
interview by a Bikinian.
							
  + USS Saratoga Cv-3 : An Illustrated History of the Legendary 
Aircraft Carrier 1927-1946 by John Fry [If you want a beautiful 
book on the Saratoga, buy this. It is remarkable, fantastic and a 
treasure for those who have served and who have dove on this 
magnificent ship]. + Ghost Fleet: The Sunken Ships of Bikini 
Atoll [paperback] by James P. Delgado + Ghost Fleet: The Sunken 
Ships of Bikini Atoll [hardback] by James P. Delgado + Operation 
Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll by Jonathan M. 
Weisgall + No Place to Hide 1946/1984 by David J. Bradley + Dark 
Sun : The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes
							
  + The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes + The Day the 
Sun Rose Twice:The Story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion by 
Ferenc Morton Szasz + Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the 
Manhattan Project by Leslie R. Groves, et al + Picturing the Bomb 
: Photographs from the Secret World of the Manhattan Project by 
Rachel Fermi, et al + Brighter Than a Thousand Suns : A Personal 
History of the Atomic Scientists by Robert Jungk, James Cleugh 
(Translator)
							
  + Genius in the Shadows : A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man 
Behind the Bomb by William Lanouette, Bela Silard (Contributor)
							
  + Enrico Fermi Physicist by Emilio Segre + Mortality of Veteran 
Participants in the Crossroads Nuclear Test by J. Christopher 
Johnson (Editor), Susan Thaul, William F. Page                                                                                                                                            

THE BIKINI BATHING SUIT 			

From the American Heritage Dictionary: 			

bikini n, 1. A very brief two-piece bathing suit worn by women. 
2. Brief underpants that reach to the hips rather than to the 
waist. [Fr. Bikini, an atoll in the Marshall Islands.]                  

 			
The History of the Bikini Bathing Suit
 			 			
To purchase Bikini Atoll historical books, award winning 
documentary videos, dive program high quality polo shirts, 
T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, patches, and music from our U.S. 
based Secure Server.
 						   					 				
*****************************************************************
 58 NAPF Take Action: Urgent Actions: 50 Years of Nuclear Testing Fallibity. Bravo?

March 1 st , 2004 marks the 50 th anniversary of the 1954 US 
“Bravo” hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall 
Islands that unexpectedly turned out to be the largest US nuclear 
test ever exploded. “Bravo” gouged a crater about a mile wide in 
the reef of Bikini Atoll. Within seconds of the blast, the 
fireball was nearly three miles in diameter. On Rongerik, an 
island 135 miles east of the blast, the illumination from “Bravo” 
was visible for almost one minute. Physicist Marshall Rosenbluth, 
located on a ship about 30 miles away, stated that the fireball 
“just kept rising and rising, and spreading…it looked to me like 
what you might imagine a diseased brain, or a brain of some mad 
man would look like on the surface…and the air started getting 
filled with this gray stuff, which I guess was somewhat 
radioactive coral.” 

Human Fallibility 

“Bravo” brought to light the consequences of human fallibility
with regards to nuclear weapons. In preparing for the test, Los
Alamos scientists missed an important fusion reaction and
grossly underestimated the size of the explosion. The scientists
expected that the test would yield the equivalent of five
million tons of TNT, but instead “Bravo” yielded 15 megatons –
making the destructive force three times larger than expected
and more than 1,000 times greater than the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima that caused a total of some 135,000 casualties. 
Human Consequences 

Some 80 miles east of Bikini , a snow-like substance began
raining down on 23 fishermen onboard a Japanese tuna fishing
vessel called the Lucky Dragon. The fishermen had no idea that
the ash was fallout from the hydrogen bomb test. When they
returned to their home port of Yaizu in Shizuoka prefecture on
14 March, all of the fisherman were suffering from severe
radiation sickness. In September 1954, the radio telegraph
operator on the Lucky Dragon died. The incident raised interest
and concern both in Japan and around the world. Following
extended negotiations, the US made a payment of $2 million to
the Japanese government in January 1955, without legal
liability, to compensate for all injuries and damages caused as
a result of the five nuclear tests it had conducted in the
Marshall Islands .   Marshall Islanders on Rongelap and Utirik
atolls (about 100 miles east of Bikini ) were also exposed to
the fallout. An Islander on Rongelap recalls, “[There was] a
loud explosion and within minutes the ground began to shake. A
few hours later, the radioactive fallout began to drop on the
people, into the drinking water, and on the food. The children
played in the colorful ash-like powder. They did not know what
it was.”   While 28 US Service Personnel located on Rongerik
(about 135 east of Bikini ) were evacuated within 34 hours of
the test, Rongelap and Utirik islanders exposed to the fallout
were not evacuated for another day. By this time, many of the
Rongelap islanders had severe burns, lesions and were beginning
to lose their hair.   The Marshall Islands became a United
Nations Trust Territory of the US after World War II. While
“Bravo” is a well-known test, the US conducted a total of 67
nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands alone from 1946 to 1958.
The total yield of the 67 tests was 108 megatons, equivalent to
the destructive force of more than 7,000 Hiroshima bombs. In
1988, the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal was
established to grant compensation to Marshall Islanders for
personal injury deemed to have been caused by nuclear testing.  

Although some $270 million was provided to victims between 1986
and 2001, half a century later, islanders are still waiting on a
stalled bid for compensation. During a visit to the Marshall
Islands in January 2004, Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA), who
chairs the House Resources Committee which oversees funding to
the Marshall Islands , admitted that Washington 's obligations
have not ended. Pombo stated, "Obviously, the United States has
an ongoing liability (for the nuclear test legacy). This issue
is 50 years old. At some point we need to find closure." 
Historical Lesson Lost? 

Despite fallibility in the history of US nuclear testing,
Congress authorized the US Department of Energy (DoE) $34
million in its Fiscal Year 2004 budget to improve the Nevada
Test Site. In addition, the FY 2004 budget authorized $25
million for enhanced test site readiness, which decreased the
preparation time to resume nuclear testing from 24-36 months to
24 months. 

The DoE's FY 2005 budget recommendation submitted to Congress
includes a funding request to ensure that the Nevada Test Site
could execute an underground nuclear weapons test within 18
months of receiving orders by the President. According to the
DoE's budget documents, the Nevada Test Site would receive a 14%
increase in its “science campaign,” with some of the money
improving test readiness by “maintaining critical personnel,
equipment and infrastructure.” 

While the present US administration insists that it will not end
the worldwide test moratorium that has been in place since 1992,
increased funding for enhanced readiness of the Nevada Test Site
appears to be part of a well-coordinated effort to resume
production of nuclear weapons, including new and untested
weapons. Resumption of US full-scale underground nuclear testing
would undoubtedly lead other countries to resume testing,
essentially defeating any chance for near or long-term US
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Neither the
US nor the rest of the world can afford the nuclear arms race
that would be caused by resuming nuclear testing.   

Take Action 

1. Voice your concerns to your elected officials. Call, email,
fax or write the President and your Congressional
representatives, asking them to maintain the current moratorium
on nuclear testing and reject any funding for nuclear weapons
testing or enhanced readiness of the Nevada Test Site. 
  + Here is a sample letter that you can modify and email or
print and fax to the President. 
  + To find contact information for your Congressional
Representatives, visit and simply enter your zip code. Click
here to download a sample letter that you can modify and send. 
2. Find out more about "Bravo." For more information on those
affected by US nuclear testing and to take further action,
please visit:   

© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 1998 - | Powered by 
*****************************************************************
 59 AVHP: 50th Anniversary of Operation Castle

Atomic Veterans History Project
 
1954 - 2004 Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Military 
Participation in Operation Castle. 
                                
[H-bomb] 
Hydrogen test and Atomic Veterans. Distance approximately 30
miles from Zero.  

The Atomic Veterans History Project contains over 600 personal 
narratives about the military duties and memories of US 
Servicemen who witnessed these atomic and hydrogen weapons tests. 
Many veterans have sent photos, certificates and newspaper 
articles which we have added. There are over 500 photos from the 
recently declassified DOE atomic test films. Over 2500 files 
(stories, pictures and documents) are posted. 

Atomic Veterans are invited to email their personal 
recollections. Information on researching your atomic military 
history is provided. What's New
 
     A master list of declassified video programs about the 
atmospheric tests from 1945 - 1962 are available by clicking 
here. Atomic Test Series and Dates
 
Atomic Veterans History Project ©1997--2004 For use of the 
material found on this web site, please send us an emailwith your 
request. This web site has been visited 115209 times since June 
14, 1997. 
*****************************************************************
 60 ITAR-TASS: Losyukov: NKorea agrees to freeze nuclear programme
 	 	 	 
[ITAR-TASS News Agency of Russia]     

29.02.2004, 16.37

[Alexander Losyukov (TASS Photo)] 

 MOSCOW, February 29 (Itar-Tass) - Pyongyang “agreed to freeze
its nuclear programme while settling this problem”, Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov said in an exclusive
interview with Tass on Sunday after his return from Beijing
where he headed the Russian delegation at the six-party talks on
the North Korean nuclear problem. “This is a positive move,” he
emphasized. 

According to the deputy minister, “North Korea considered a
possibility of getting any compensations for this, including in
the energy aid sphere”. “Our delegation and China expressed
support for North Korea in this issue,” he added. 

“The international KEDO consortium is a dead project,” the
diplomat claimed. “The United States will not participate in it,
since it demands North Korea’s refusal, apart from developing
nuclear weapons, from the nuclear programme in the energy
sphere,” Losyukov explained. He reported that “the Beijing talks
did not discuss the KEDO”. 

© ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy,
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 61 [Fwd: More Bomb Building at Livermore-Urgent]
 
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Dear friends:

You are invited on Thursday, March 4 to an

URGENT COMMUNITY MEETING

7 PM - 9 PM o Tri-Valley CAREs' offices o 2582 Old First Street, Livermore
(925) 443-7148 o Chinese food, presentations, strategy and handouts!

The Dept. of Energy has just released the draft site-wide Environmental
Impact Statement on Livermore Lab's planned operations for the next TEN
YEARS.

Here is what is planned - and why YOUR PARTICIPATION IS NEEDED now to stop
the bomb makers.

o This plan will more than DOUBLE the limit for PLUTONIUM at Livermore Lab
from 1,540 pounds to 3,300 pounds. To give you some idea of what that means
- 3,300 pounds of plutonium can make more than 300 nuclear bombs. And, one
microscopic particle of plutonium, if inhaled, can cause lung cancer or
other diseases.

o This plan will REVIVE a project that was canceled more than 10 years ago
because it was dangerous and unnecessary. The project is called PLUTONIUM -
ATOMIC VAPOR LASER ISOTOPE SEPARATION. This is a scheme to heat and
vaporize plutonium and then shoot toxic-dye laser beams through the vapor
to separate out plutonium isotopes. To do this, Livermore Lab plans to
increase how much plutonium can be used in a single room from 44 pounds to
132 pounds - a 3-fold increase. Plutonium - Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope
Separation is both a health risk and a nuclear proliferation nightmare.

o This plan will add PLUTONIUM, highly-enriched uranium and lithium hydride
to experiments in NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY megalaser when it is completed
at Livermore Lab. Using these materials in the NIF will increase its
usefulness for nuclear weapons development. It will also make the NIF more
hazardous to workers and the environment. We must stop NIF - and these
dangerous, new experiments in it.

o This plan will allow the MANUFACTURE of radioactive TRITIUM TARGETS for
the NIF  megalaser on site at Livermore Lab. Making fusion targets will
increase the amount of tritium that is used in any one room at the
Livermore Lab from the current limit of just over 3 grams to 30 grams -- a
nearly 10-fold increase.

o This plan makes Livermore Lab the place to test new technologies for
MANUFACTURING PLUTONIUM PITS for nuclear weapons. (A pit is the
softball-sized piece of plutonium that sits inside a modern nuclear weapon
and triggers its thermonuclear explosion.).

o This plan also calls for Livermore Lab to develop diagnostics to
"enhance" the nation's readiness to conduct full-scale underground NUCLEAR
TESTS. This is a dangerous step back to the days of unrestrained nuclear
testing.

Just what are these projects, anyway? What are their health and
environmental risks? How will they be used in bomb design and other nuclear
enterprises? How will these new programs affect our lives? U.S. nuclear
policy? WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THEM? These and other questions will be
answered at this important community-building workshop.

Come to the community meeting in Livermore on March 4 to learn more. Then,
come to a public hearing in April to voice your protest. DOE will hold
public hearings in Livermore on April 27, in Tracy on April 28 and in
Washington, DC on April 30. Get active today! Be at a public hearing to
speak out in April!

Come & create democracy with us. Together, we will make a difference!

P.S. If you belong to an organization in Northern California - and you
would like to have a Tri-Valley CAREs speaker come to your next meeting or
event to talk about these new nuclear weapons programs and how to stop them
- call us today.

P.P.S. On Thursday, March 4, we will have Chinese food at the community
meeting. Come and feed your mind and body!

Peace,
Marylia Kelley

Marylia Kelley
Executive Director
Tri-Valley CAREs
(Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
2582 Old First Street
Livermore, CA USA 94551

<http://www.trivalleycares.org> - is our web site address. Please visit us
there!

(925) 443-7148 - is our phone
(925) 443-0177 - is our fax




*****************************************************************
 62 [du-list] UK MoD warns troops DU may harm health
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:36:37 -0800

 
<x-flowed>
MoD Œlied¹ over depleted uranium

.INVESTIGATION.
Army advises troops in Iraq of health risk but insists Scottish firing range
is safe, despite growing international concern
By Neil Mackay and Amy Wilson

http://www.sundayherald.com/40306

CLAIMS by the Ministry of Defence that depleted uranium (DU) is not a risk
to life have been undermined by a Sunday Herald investigation that found the
British army is telling soldiers in Iraq that it can cause ill-health.

The revelation has outraged the military, scientists and politicians.
Studies have shown DU leads to cancers, birth defects, memory loss, damage
to the immune system and neuro-psychotic disorders. But the MoD has claimed
since the first Gulf war that ³DU does not pose a risk to health or the
environment².

However, military sources have passed an MoD card to the Sunday Herald which
is being handed to troops on active service in Iraq. It reads: ³You have
been deployed to a theatre where depleted uranium (DU) munitions have been
used. DU is a weakly radioactive heavy metal which has the potential to
cause ill-health. You may have been exposed to dust containing DU during
your deployment.

³You are eligible for a urine test to measure uranium. If you wish to know
more about having this test, you should consult your unit medical officer on
return to your home base. Your medical officer can provide information about
the health effects of DU.²

The MoD had fired more than 6350 DU rounds into the Solway Firth from its
testing range at Dundrennan by 1999. In the first Gulf war 320 tonnes of DU
were used, in the second more than 1000 tonnes were used .

Locals in the Dundrennan area and their political leaders are angry that
British troops are being warned about the risk of DU, while they are not.

A UN sub-commission has ruled that the use of DU breaches the Geneva
Convention and the Genocide Convention. DU has also been blamed for the
effects of Gulf war syndrome among some 200,000 US troops.

It has led to birth defects in the children of veterans and Iraqis and is
believed to be the cause of the ³worrying number² of anophthalmos cases ­
babies born without eyes ­ in Iraq. A study of veterans showed 67% had
children with severe illnesses, missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory
problems and fused fingers.

Professor Doug Rokke, the ex-director of the Pentagon¹s DU project and a
former US Army colonel who was tasked by the US defence department to deal
with DU after the first Gulf war, said: ³The MoD card acknowledges the
risks. It contradicts the position it has taken publicly ­ that there was no
risk ­ in order to sustain the use of DU rounds and avoid liability.²

Rokke attacked the US and UK for ³contaminating the world² with DU munitions
and said the issuing of the card meant that they had ³a moral obligation to
provide care for all those affected² and to clean up the environment in
Iraq.

³DU is in residential areas in Iraq, troops are going by sites contaminated
with it with no protective clothing or respiratory protection, and kids are
playing in the same areas.²

He added: ³What right does anyone have to throw radioactive poison around
and then not clean it up or offer people medical care?² Rokke said that the
use of DU in Iraq should be deemed a war crime.

³ This war was about weapons of mass destruction, but the US and UK were the
only people using WMD ­ in the form of DU shells.²

Ray Bristow, trustee of the UK¹s National Gulf Veterans and Families
Association, said the MoD card ³confirms what independent scientists have
said for years². Bristow, 45, suffers from chromosomal abnormalities and
conditions similar to those who survived the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima.

A former warrant officer in the medical corps in the first Gulf war, he is
now only able to walk short distances with a walking frame and often has to
use a wheelchair.

³While the card may have been issued to British troops we have to ask, Œwhat
about the Iraqi people?¹ They are living among DU contamination. And what
about the people in Dundrennan?

³The MoD line has always been that DU is safe ­ it has been caught out in a
lie.²

Bristow says some 29,000 British troops could be contaminated. He was found
to have uranium in his system more than 100 times the safety limit. ³I put
on a uniform because I believe in democracy and freedom,² he said. ³Now I
can¹t believe a word my government says.²

He also believes the discovery of the DU card will help affected troops sue
for compensation. ³Globally, this discovery is of huge significance.²

Alasdair Morgan, the SNP MSP for the Dundrennan area, called for a ban on
DU. He added: ³This find vindicates those who have said DU should never have
been used or tested. T esting should stop in this area completely.²

Chris Ballance, the Green list MSP for the area, added: ³DU is a weapon of
mass destruction that must be banned.²

He said the MoD must remove the shells that had been fired into the Solway
Firth and tell the people of Dundrennan about the risks.

Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at Sunderland
University and an expert on DU, said it was ³administrative deception² for
the MoD to claim DU was not a risk to health while issuing warnings to
troops.

Hooper, who is a government adviser on DU, described the government¹s
behaviour as ³a dreadful experiment Š an obscenity Š and a war crime against
our own troops².

He said that the issuing of the card was ³a confession of failure² by the
government .

Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, said: ³ I can remember
similar denials about Agent Orange, but invariably we discover these
substances do have long-term consequences.²

Despite claims on its own website saying DU does not lead to health risks,
an MoD spokesman said, when confronted with the card issued to troops: ³We
never said it was a safe substance. It is radioactive, but there is no
evidence to link it to ill-health.²

He said the cards had been issued to ³reassure² troops, adding that the
take-up of testing had been low as ³most soldiers understand the risks are
minimal².

The MoD insisted it had not changed its policy.

29 February 2004

***

See warning card, comment and related information at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_mod_warning_cards.html

And more breakings news and resources on uranium weapons at
http://www.traprockpeace.org/#breakingnews

Charles Jenks, attorney at law
President of the Core Group
Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road
Deerfield, MA 01342
413-773-1633; Fax 413-773-7507
charles@mtdata.com
http://traprockpeace.org



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*****************************************************************
 63 Rocky Mountain News: Union Carbide and Uravan through the years

February 28, 2004

1928: Union Carbide buys Standard Chemical Co.'s Uravan
holdings. 

1936: Union Carbide begins uranium production in Uravan. 

1943: The federal government's secretive Manhattan Project to 
build atomic weapons sets up shop in Uravan. 

1948: The Atomic Energy Commission renovates the Uravan mill to 
continue production of uranium for the government's weapons 
program. 

1968: The state of Colorado takes over the licensing of the 
Uravan mill from the AEC. 

Jan. 15, 1970: Potentially dangerous levels of radiation are 
found in two Union Carbide homes in Uravan, and the families are 
moved out as a precaution. 

March 23, 1980: More than 9 million tons of radioactive tailings 
sitting in two huge ponds atop a mesa overlooking Uravan become 
the center of a controversy over whether Union Carbide's mill 
will be allowed to keep running. 

1984: Union Carbide uranium mill in Uravan closes permanently. 

Dec. 3, 1984: At least 2,500 people die and 20,000 are injured in 
Bhopal, India, when deadly methyl isocynate leaks from a 
pesticide plant operated by Union Carbide. The plant closes after 
the incident. 

Dec. 10, 1984: San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli files a $15 
billion lawsuit against Union Carbide, saying the company was 
negligent in the design and operation of its plant in India. 

April 9, 1985: The government of India files suit against Union 
Carbide, saying the multinational corporation's negligence 
resulted in a chemical leak that killed at least 2,500 people. 

Aug. 12, 1985: A yellow cloud of choking gas leaks from a Union 
Carbide pesticide plant in Institute, W.Va., and rolls "like a 
fog" through four towns, injuring at least 150 people before 
dissipating. 

Aug. 29, 1985: Union Carbide announces 4,000 layoffs and a 
continuing sale of about $500 million of its "non-strategic 
assets." 

March 25, 1986: The Indian government rejects a $350 million 
out-of-court settlement between Union Carbide and private lawyers 
for victims of the Bhopal chemical plant disaster in 1984. They 
said the amount was too low and "totally unacceptable." 

April 2, 1986: Union Carbide regularly used employees as human 
"canaries" to detect leaks at its Institute, W.Va., plant, the 
federal government charges. 

July 23, 1986: Union Carbide says it is selling all of its 
agricultural division except the Bhopal plant, because it can't 
keep pace with the larger farm chemical companies. 

Nov. 1, 1986: Union Carbide agrees to pay at least $42 million to 
clean up millions of tons of radioactive waste in Uravan. It was 
the largest amount any state had received in settlement of a 
lawsuit filed under the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup 
program. 

Jan. 3, 1987: Epidemiologist Susan Austin says she found no 
significant health problems in Ura- van residents from exposure 
to radon gas. She had conducted a seven-year, Union Carbide- 
sponsored study of radon's effects. 

Feb. 15, 1989: Union Carbide's stock soars to $31.25 a share 
after news of a $470 million settlement with the Indian 
government over the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster. It is less than the 
market thought the company would have to pay. 

Aug. 5, 1999: Dow Chemical Co. agrees to buy Union Carbide for 
$11.6 billion in stock and debt, creating the world's No. 2 
chemical company and the dominant maker of plastics. The deal 
ultimately closes in 2001.   

*****************************************************************
 64 Rocky Mountain News: Suing over Uravan

February 28, 2004

In their lawsuit, plaintiffs are: 

 • Claiming they or family members have suffered physical injury, 
wrongful death or emotional distress because of exposure to 
radioactive hazards decades ago 

• Alleging Union Carbide was negligent in not warning workers of 
those hazards • Asking for unspecified monetary damages and 
ongoing medical monitoring 

• Also asking the judge to award punitive damages, designed to go 
beyond medical claims and "punish" Union Carbide 

What's next: 

• Plaintiffs' lawyers must serve Union Carbide with the lawsuit. 

• Once Union Carbide is served, a federal judge will decide if 
the lawsuit moves forward to a jury trial.   

*****************************************************************
 65 WorldNetDaily: Iran can produce nuke warhead in days
 
 FEBRUARY 28 2004           
        
GEOSTRATEGY-DIRECT INTELLIGENCE BRIEF 

 Cleric-led regime covertly developed uranium enrichment
facilities
 
 Editor's note: WorldNetDaily brings readers exclusive, 
up-to-the-minute global intelligence news and analysis from a new 
online newsletter edited by veteran journalist Robert Morton and 
featuring the "Backgrounder" column compiled by Bill Gertz. 
Geostrategy-Direct is a subscription-based service produced by 
the publishers of a free news service frequently linked by the 
editors of WorldNetDaily. 

Iran has secretly developed its uranium enrichment facilities in 
Natanz, which is now considered the linchpin of the nation's 
nuclear weapons program, reports Geostrategy-Direct, the global 
intelligence news service. 

U.S. officials said that Iran transferred research, development 
and assembly operations to Natanz in an effort to transform the 
site into the main facility for the Iranian gas centrifuge 
program. 

Iran has ambitious plans for Natanz. Currently, the site includes 
centrifuge assembly areas and a pilot fuel-enrichment plant 
slated to hold 1,000 centrifuges. A production-scale 
fuel-enrichment plant is being constructed at Natanz to house 
some 50,000 centrifuges. 

Iran has designed its nuclear weapons program so that it could 
produce enough enriched uranium to construct a warhead within 
days, official says. 

"Natanz could be operated to make low-enriched uranium fuel until 
Iran decided it wanted to make weapon-grade material," David 
Albright and Corey Hinderstein write in the March/April 2004 
issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

"It wouldn't take long to enrich the low-enriched material to 
weapon grade. For example, if Natanz was operating at full 
capacity and recycled the end product – low-enriched uranium [5 
percent uranium-235] – back into the feed point, the facility 
could produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a single weapon 
within days." 

Officials said Iran possesses blueprints for the construction of 
the advanced P2 gas centrifuge, which can enrich bomb-quality 
uranium in half the time of first-generation Pakistani-origin 
centrifuges. Iran has acknowledged possessing hundreds of P1 
machines at Natanz. The International Atomic Energy Agency board 
of governors is scheduled to meet March 8-10 in Vienna to discuss 
the issue. 

U.S. officials and analysts have assessed that the Iranian 
nuclear facilities the IAEA inspected are part of an 
infrastructure designed to produce up to 30 nuclear weapons 
annually. 

The Iranian nuclear infrastructure includes both open and closed 
facilities, such as the Bushehr nuclear reactor, the Natanz 
uranium enrichment plant, the Kalaye facility and the Arak heavy 
water plant. 

Despite Iran's pledge to the IAEA, Teheran has continued to 
conceal its nuclear weapons program, including designs for the 
enrichment of uranium as well as experiments with polonium, an 
element that facilitates the chain reaction that produces a 
nuclear explosion, officials said. 

"There's no doubt in our mind that Iran continues to pursue a 
nuclear weapons program," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard 
Armitage said. 

"They have not been fully forthcoming with their arrangement with 
the IAEA and we need to continue our effort, along with our 
European friends, to gain compliance." 

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said: "The information 
that the IAEA has learned is certainly consistent with the 
information that we had, and it's not surprising. It's another 
act of Iranian deception and not something that leads to any 
feeling of security, that they are carrying through on their 
commitment to suspend enrichment activity." 

Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science 
and International Security, said that prior to Iran's suspension 
of uranium enrichment in November 2003, Teheran was conducting 
both single machine tests and small cascades with uranium 
hexafluoride at the pilot plant. 

Iran was assembling four-rotor machines similar to the P1 design, 
each with a capacity of roughly three separative work units [swu] 
per year, he said. 

Albright and Hinderstein, a senior researcher at the institute, 
said the pilot plant at Natanz could produce about 10 kilograms 
of weapon-grade uranium a year. This would be far less than the 
amount of enriched uranium required to provide fuel for all of 
the civilian power plants Iran intends to build over the next 20 
years. 

"Alternatively, the same capacity could be used to produce 
roughly 500 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium annually," Albright 
and Hinderstein wrote. "At 15-20 kilograms per weapon, that would 
be enough for 25-30 nuclear weapons per year." 

Albright said U.S. and other intelligence agencies knew of 
Pakistan's contribution to Iran's nuclear weapons program as 
early as a decade ago. But the agencies were hampered by a lack 
of knowledge of Iran's nuclear program, particularly whether it 
was succeeding in procuring vital components. 

By the mid-1990s, Iran had succeeded in concealing its 
procurement of critical centrifuge components from U.S. 
intelligence agencies. Albright said U.S. intelligence estimates 
regarding the time Iran needed to build a pilot centrifuge plant 
proved to be reasonably accurate. 

"After the mid-1990s, according to former senior U.S. government 
officials, U.S. intelligence agencies learned little concrete 
about Iran's centrifuge progress," Albright said. "As a result, 
there was little concerted action until 2002 to stop Iran's 
secret centrifuge program or demand far more intrusive IAEA 
inspections in Iran. From 1995 until 2002, Iran moved relatively 
freely and secretly toward building a domestic centrifuge 
industry that could enrich significant quantities of uranium." 

webmaster@worldnetdaily.com
*****************************************************************
 66 Rocky Mountain News: Uravan's nuclear history
                                

Maria J. Avila © News

Former uranium worker Ken Bonner, 81, discusses Union Carbide's 
uranium operations around Uravan after having coffee with friends 
Pat Daniels, 87, and Ida Williams, 77, at the Munch and Fun Pit 
Stop in Naturita. The Union Carbide mill in Uravan employed about 
250 people during its peak operations.


February 28, 2004

• In 1921, President Warren Harding gave a gram of radium from 
Uravan - valued at $125,000 at the time - to Nobel Prize-winning 
scientist Marie Curie, on behalf of American women. 

• The raw material for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during 
WWII came from Uravan. 

 • During the Cold War, the Atomic Energy Commission bought most 
of Uravan's uranium to stock the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The AEC 
connection ended in 1972. 

• Uranium oxide from Uravan was used to fuel some U.S. nuclear 
power plants. 


Source: Rocky Mountain News Archives  

*****************************************************************
 67 Rocky Mountain News: Uranium fallout

Maria J. Avila © News

Elva Archer Ayers, 82, sits in the coffee shop that she owns with 
her son, Harry Archer, in Naturita. Ayers grew up in the Uravan 
area and says she doesn’t blame Union Carbide for the illnesses 
that several of her family members contracted after working in 
area uranium mines.


Group sues Union Carbide, unit 20 years after Uravan mill closes

By Heather Draper, Rocky Mountain News
February 28, 2004

NATURITA - Elva Archer Ayers' father, husband and five of her
brothers worked in uranium mines near the former Colorado town
of Uravan. 

All seven died of cancer or lung ailments. 

 But Ayers, 82, doesn't fault Union Carbide, the company that did 
most of the uranium and vanadium mining from 1936 to 1984 in the 
mineral-rich region about 90 miles southwest of Grand Junction. 

"No, I don't blame anybody," Ayers said. "It was the way we had 
to make a living around here." 

Her son, Harry Archer, 59, worked for more than six years at the 
vanadium mine near Uravan, which was named after the minerals 
uranium and vanadium found in the canyon walls surrounding it. 

Archer also worked briefly in the Uravan post office, until he 
says his skin broke out from uranium poisoning and he was forced 
to quit. 

While he is thankful that he is healthy today, he thinks the 
radiation-related deaths in his family stemmed from "the times we 
lived in." 

"We did the best we could, but people just didn't know . . . 
well, the government kind of knew, but that was just the times we 
lived in," Archer said. "It was just the way it was." 

Some former Uravan residents, however, tell a different story. 
They are sick or have had family members die from what they 
allege were radioactive hazards in their town. 

Twenty years after the Union Carbide uranium mill in Uravan 
closed in 1984, a group of 82 former Uravan residents and 
descendants of company employees is suing Union Carbide and its 
wholly owned subsidiary Umetco Minerals Corp., blaming the 
companies for a variety of suspected mining- and milling-related 
illnesses and genetic disorders. 

The lawsuit, asking for unspecified monetary damages, was filed 
Jan. 23 in Denver federal court. 

Although it may be difficult to prove so many years later, the 
lawsuit charges that "hazardous substances, both radioactive and 
nonradioactive, were spread throughout the town" and that 
plaintiffs died or suffered physical injury as a result of 
exposure to radioactive and nonradioactive hazardous substances 
released by Union Carbide's uranium mining and milling facilities 
in Montrose County. 

Uranium is the main raw material for nuclear weapons and the key 
fuel for nuclear reactors. Found in ores throughout the 
southwestern United States, uranium contains ionizing radiation 
that can be a health hazard (in high enough doses) because it 
destroys living cells, according to the Maryland-based Institute 
for Environment and Energy Research. 

People in the Uravan area grew up among radioactive hazards, but 
seem unfazed by it. They are proud of the community's rich 
history and fondly reminisce about the 1950s and '60s, growing up 
in the dusty mining town on the San Miguel River. Their homes 
were neat and tidy, complete with white picket fences around 
their yards. Union Carbide was a family company, they say, and 
treated its employees well. 

Once a bustling community of more than 700 residents with its own 
post office, grade school and public swimming pool, Uravan was 
the economic engine powering Montrose County. The Union Carbide 
mill there employed about 250 people during its peak operations. 

"It was like we were one big family within the walls of the 
canyon," said Jacque Blinn, 56, a Nucla resident who grew up in 
Uravan. "The kids climbed the hills and slid down the (uranium) 
tailings piles." 

She said the first thing that came to mind when recalling Uravan 
was, "I wish I could have raised my kids there." 

Anyone suing Union Carbide "is suing the wrong people. They bent 
over backwards for us," Blinn said. "Plus, you get about as much 
radioactivity from the sun in Telluride as we were getting in 
Uravan." 

Attorney Rebecca Lorenz of Melat, Pressman &Higbie in Colorado 
Springs and a team of lawyers led by renowned personal injury 
attorney Gerry Spence of Spence, Moriarity &Shockey in Jackson, 
Wyo., are representing the plaintiffs suing Union Carbide. 
Lawyers at both firms refused to comment on the lawsuit, and none 
of the plaintiffs contacted by the Rocky Mountain News would 
discuss it. 

A lawyer for Union Carbide also declined comment, saying the 
company hasn't been served the lawsuit yet. 

The allegations 

The complaint actually focuses on two uranium mining "ghost 
towns" southwest of Grand Junction - Uravan, which had modern 
homes and amenities, and Long Park, a mining camp of tents, 
shacks and no running water or electricity. 

A few road maps still show Uravan on Colorado 141 northwest of 
Naturita, but Long Park is no more than a memory. 

The communities were company towns, owned and operated for 
several decades by Union Carbide - a subsidiary of Midland, 
Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co. since their merger was finalized in 
2001. 

The lawsuit aims to prove that Union Carbide knew of the 
radioactive hazards in the towns and failed to adequately protect 
Uravan and Long Park miners, millers and their families from 
those hazards. 

The examples of alleged negligence in the complaint are many and 
varied, including the charge that Union Carbide dumped liquid 
uranium wastes directly into the San Miguel River from 1936 to 
the mid-1950s. The company began putting liquid and solid wastes 
into containment ponds in the mid-1950s, the suit said, but those 
ponds were unlined - meaning the wastes could seep down into the 
soil and contaminate groundwater. 

Because Union Carbide didn't supply water for Long Park, 
residents often drank water from the uranium mines, the suit 
said. And without electricity to run a refrigerator, Long Park 
residents sometimes stored their food in the mines, which were 
cool. 

In Uravan, Union Carbide permitted employees to leave its mines 
and the mill without showering or changing clothes, the suit 
said. Workers' clothes were covered in uranium dust and were 
washed along with the family's clothing. 

The suit describes dirt and dust kicked up by the ore trucks 
rumbling up and down Main Street spreading "hazardous substances, 
both radioactive and nonradioactive," to the nearby elementary 
school and the rest of the town. 

"All of these situations exposed family members to elevated 
levels of radioactive and nonradioactive hazardous substances," 
the suit said. "Defendants failed to warn residents of the risks 
associated with these activities." 

Burden of proof 

The lawyers representing the former Uravan residents will have a 
tough job proving their case, said Lee Foreman, a defense 
attorney for John Ramsey in the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case and 
partner in the Denver firm Haddon, Morgan &Foreman. 

The first debate will likely revolve around statute of 
limitations, he said. 

"In most general terms, statute of limitations happens from when 
you first become aware that you've suffered injury," Foreman 
said. "The debate right at the start will be whether these facts 
were known or should have been known for some time." 

If the facts were known for some time, he said, a statute of 
limitations argument against the lawsuit would stand. If not, 
"maybe a lawsuit can be brought . . . you can get around the 
statute of limitations," he said. 

Foreman said the plaintiffs' lawyers also will have to prove that 
Union Carbide failed to act reasonably according to the standard 
at the time rather than what is known today. 

"There are all kinds of things that nobody thought were bad for 
you and are now known to be bad for you," he said. "Look at 
asbestos." 

If the materials the plaintiffs were exposed to were dangerous 
and the manner in which they were handled "didn't meet the 
standards of the time, then maybe they're negligent," Foreman 
said. 

One of the most difficult things the Uravan lawyers will have to 
do, he said, is connect the dots to show that exposures to the 
materials caused the physical harm they are alleging. 

In the lawyers' favor is the fact that Colorado is "a green 
state," meaning juries are more open to lawsuits alleging 
pollution or physical harm, Foreman said. But they have a lot of 
work ahead of them at any rate, he said. 

"If they just filed this in January, it could take years before 
they're ready to go to trial." 

Massive cleanup 

Whether former Uravan residents love their little town or blame 
it for poisoning them, all they have left is their memories. 
Today, an empty 90-year-old boarding house and vacant recreation 
hall built in the 1930s stand as the only reminders of a town 
that once was the pride of Montrose County. 

The two buildings are surrounded by fences with signs that warn 
of potential radioactive hazards. 

In 20 years, the narrow canyon valley filled with a milling plant 
and related processing facilities, a general store, gas station, 
post office and more than 150 homes has been transformed into 
revegetated grasslands and contaminated-waste repository sites. 

Uravan's downfall began when the bottom fell out of the uranium 
market in 1979, after a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear 
power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown, quelling 
Americans' appetite for nuclear power. 

The nation's focus turned to cleaning up its Cold War legacy. The 
state of Colorado sued Union Carbide and Umetco in 1983, seeking 
to recover damages from contamination created by mill operations. 
The mill was shut down in 1984. 

Two years later, all of Uravan's residents were evacuated and 
most of the town's 260 buildings were removed. The most highly 
contaminated homes and commercial buildings were dismantled and 
disposed of in a specially lined waste holding cell. 

The Environmental Protection Agency put Uravan on the Superfund 
National Priorities List in 1986, citing "contamination of the 
air, soil and groundwater" near the plant and the San Miguel 
River. Official cleanup of the 450-acre site began in 1987, and 
it's about 90 percent completed, according to Umetco Minerals. 

"Even though it's gone, I can still see everything in my mind," 
said Roxanne DeFoe, 50, of Cooper Landing, Alaska. DeFoe was born 
in Uravan in 1954 but moved away in 1976, shortly after she 
married. She was in Nucla this month visiting her sister, Jacque 
Blinn. 

DeFoe recalled greased-pig contests at Labor Day picnics, 
Christmas decoration competitions among Uravan's housewives and 
roller-skating parties at the recreation hall. 

"Union Carbide built us a pool, and it was the only one around 
for miles and miles," she said. "Everyone from all over - Nucla, 
Naturita, Norwood - came to use our pool." 

Now the only "pools" in what was once Uravan are the double-lined 
retention ponds built in the late 1980s to collect and clean up 
groundwater, and hillside and tailings "seepage," or surface 
water contamination. 

As of May 2002, the ponds had contained and evaporated about 69 
million gallons of hillside seepage that contained 5,500 tons of 
"contaminated compounds," according to a Umetco Minerals report 
submitted to the Colorado Department of Health. 

Umetco, which is in charge of the Uravan cleanup, also has 
collected more than 240 million gallons of "contaminated liquids" 
from its groundwater extraction program. 

The cleanup has cost Umetco and the federal government about $100 
million so far, said -Rahe Junge, Umetco engineering geologist. 

"The goal is to have the Uravan cleanup completed by the end of 
2006," Junge said. "Right now, you can actually see the end in 
sight." 

Picnics in the mine 

During Union Carbide's operation of the Uravan uranium mill 
between 1936 and 1984, the company produced 42 million pounds of 
uranium oxide, commonly known as yellowcake, according to a 
report by Umetco. 

Yellowcake, which sells for about $15.50 a pound these days, is 
the dusty yellow-red powder that results from the milling of 
uranium ore. It is the first step toward enriched uranium, used 
in nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. 

Micky Byers-Watts, 49, of Mesa, Ariz., remembers how her family's 
clothes would turn yellow after being washed in their old, 
wringer-style washer with her father's work clothes. 

"The water would come out just yellow from the yellowcake," 
Byers-Watts said. "None of us knew how bad it was, how poisonous 
it was. If we had, we would have done a lot of things 
differently." 

She is not part of the Colorado lawsuit, but her father, Walter 
Byers Sr., worked at two different mines near Uravan when she was 
young. 

She and her siblings have battled several illnesses, so she says 
she understands why uranium workers' descendants would file a 
lawsuit claiming physical ailments from exposure to radioactive 
hazards. 

"I'm on disability and two of my siblings are on disability," 
said Byers-Watts, who has lupus and has survived cancer. 

She recalls picnics in the uranium mine with her father. 

Her father, who suffered from several lung ailments and 
cardiovascular problems before he died in 1994, came home from 
work only once every two weeks. Byers-Watts "tried to be with my 
dad as much as possible," she said. "I would take his lunch down 
to him in the mine." 

She blames both the various companies her father worked for and 
the U.S. government for not warning uranium workers "how 
poisonous the stuff was." 

"They didn't tell my dad (it was hazardous), or he wouldn't have 
brought me down in the mine with him." 

Rich heritage 

Standard Chemical Co. built Uravan - what was then called the Joe 
Jr. Camp - in 1909, and began processing radium from uranium ores 
in around 1912, according to historical documents. 

Scientists first believed the element radium was a cure for 
diseases such as cancer - based on French scientist Marie Curie's 
work - but in the late 1920s discovered that people who worked 
with radium often developed cancer or other ailments. Curie 
herself died in 1934 from a radium-related illness that attacked 
her red blood cells. Radium is over a million times more 
radioactive than the same mass of uranium. 

The mill produced radium until 1919, when the U.S. radium market 
collapsed because lower- cost radium began coming out of the 
Belgian Congo (now Zaire), according to Umetco documents. Miners 
then began to concentrate on vanadium, which is used to harden 
steel. 

In 1928, Union Carbide purchased the Standard Chemical holdings 
through its subsidiary, the U.S. Vanadium Corp. 

USVC established the town of Uravan in the 1930s to provide 
housing for its workers and their families and the company's 
focus turned to uranium. 

The U.S. government built facilities at Uravan in 1943 to process 
uranium into "green sludge" for its secretive Manhattan Project, 
later revealed to be its production of materials for atomic 
bombs. 

Union Carbide officially took over the Uravan milling and mining 
operations in the 1950s. 

Radiant flowers 

Estalee Silver, 83, lived in Uravan from 1953 to 1981, raising a 
family and substitute teaching at the grade school from time to 
time. 

In her small apartment in a retirement community in Grand 
Junction recently, she happily pulled out a book she had put 
together about Uravan that included an extensive collection of 
old photos of the town. 

She described Union Carbide as a company that took care of its 
employees and regularly monitored the radioactivity in Uravan. 

She and her husband, Cletus Silver, who worked in the mill, even 
had a Geiger counter from Union Carbide in their house for a 
while. The constant noise coming from the Geiger counter's normal 
operations (not from radiation detection, she noted) drove her 
husband crazy, so they took it out. 

The company also monitored the lawns in Uravan for radioactivity, 
she said. 

"My yard was just fine, except the flower beds," Silver said. 

"I had beautiful flowers," she added. "Really radiant." 

Harry Archer's coffee shop in Naturita - the "Munch and Fun Pit 
Stop" - is the daily meeting place for a group of friends who've 
been getting together every morning (except Sundays) since the 
late 1970s to drink coffee and share stories. 

Most of the folks in the coffee group now live in Nucla, but many 
of them lived in Uravan and worked in the mill there. 

A friend dubbed them the "Nucla Mafia Club" sometime in the 
1980s, said Harry's mother, Elva Ayers. "I'm not sure why they 
call us that," she admitted. 

On a recent Friday morning, they teased each other about who was 
the grumpiest and who was going to have to pay for the coffee. 

"We've lived with (the radioactive hazards) all our lives," said 
"mafia" member Leonard "Pat" Daniels, 87. "Look at me, I'm fine." 

Daniels, who worked at the mill, said he doesn't think the full 
story about the effects of radiation exposure has been told yet. 
He has been part of ongoing research by the Saccamanno Institute 
in Grand Junction, which is studying uranium workers for 
radiation effects. 

He is certain that uranium miners were affected by radiation 
hazards, but he isn't convinced that Uravan residents would have 
been exposed by simply living around uranium processing. 

"Miners were known for not taking care of their health," Daniels 
said. "They smoked, they partied hardy. It was just the times." 

Many of the people at the table that morning - almost all of them 
in their late 70s and 80s - "lived right under the (uranium) 
tailings pile," Daniels said. 

"But don't turn out the lights," he said. "We might glow in the 
dark." 

draperh@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5456 
  
*****************************************************************
 68 Amarillo Globe News: Experts plan to tweak Pantex safety

amarillo.com: 
            
02/28/04
 
 		  
022804 news 1 amarillo.com Experts are preparing corrective 
action plans in response to an incident last month when Pantex 
workers taped and moved a cracked high-explosive charge during a 
nuclear weapons dismantlement procedure.--> 

By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com The Amarillo Globe-News 

[Forums] "it was a shame that that people had to work the 
holidays. everybody seems to pity the poor employees at 
albertsons.well let us not forget the police that had to patrol 
the streets to keep your homes safe....or the firefighters that 
stood guard in case some drunk idiot set their christmas tree,or 
turkey fryer ablaze.or even the toot n' totum employees that made 
sure you had cold beer for the games." -

Experts are preparing corrective action plans in response to an 
incident last month when Pantex workers taped and moved a cracked 
high-explosive charge during a nuclear weapons dismantlement 
procedure.

 Top officials from Energy Department headquarters, Pantex and 
two nuclear weapons laboratories discussed the incident during a 
classified briefing Thursday, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety 
Board Chairman John Conway said Friday.

 Conway also confirmed the cracked high-explosive charge was a 
type of sensitive explosive used in older nuclear weapons 
systems. When damaged, such explosives become more sensitive, 
government reports show.

 Reports from Pantex and the safety board said weapons workers 
took appropriate actions during the Jan. 8 event, placed 
materials in a safe condition and stopped work.

 In a Wednesday letter to the board, Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham said contractor BWXT Pantex, Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory and Pantex Site Office are developing corrective 
action plans for the board's review.

 "The department has learned valuable lessons from these events 
regarding our abilities and processes to respond to off-normal 
events. We will continue to use the knowledge gained to enhance 
the safety of operations at Pantex," Abraham's letter said.

 Conway said his agency is studying a classified report to see 
what future steps should be taken.

 "We want to know what we have learned from the way we handled 
this and the way we will handle this in the future, and then 
particularly how we will do an autopsy to find out what caused 
the cracking," Conway said.

 According to a safety board report, the crack occurred during a 
W-56 weapons dismantlement program. The W-56 is a nuclear weapon 
carried on a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.

 "The configuration of the partially dismantled weapon and the 
nature of the cracks appear to have increased the opportunities 
for dropping all or part of the explosives and hence increased 
the potential for a violent reaction," the report said.

 The report credited Pantex workers for their response, but 
questioned the effectiveness of Pantex training and procedures 
ensuring safe nuclear explosive operations.

 "The prudent response of the production technicians as they saw 
unexpected behavior of the explosive provided the only effective 
barrier preventing a drop of explosives with potentially 
unacceptable consequences," the report said.

*****************************************************************
 69 lamonitor.com: Domenici says DOE must fund superconductivity 
research center 

The Online News Source for Los Alamos
 
By ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant
Editor 

A Department of Energy plan to cut superconductivity research in 
the energy funding bill for the current year was sternly rejected 
by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM.

Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee, warned DOE to reconsider restoring a proposed 37 
percent reduction in superconductivity research with a reminder 
of previous congressional directions supporting the program. "I 
simply do not accept the effort to make up for shortfalls in 
other areas by reducing funding for research at Los Alamos," 
Domenici said. "That will destroy the program with the greatest 
chance of providing a real, huge increase in the capacity of 
transmission lines."

Los Alamos National Laboratory, with its Superconductivity 
Technology Center located in the Research Park, is one of three 
national centers within the DOE complex, working on 
superconductivity research. 

The STC employs 50 people and was funded at $7.6 million in 2003, 
but DOE's request for 2004 was for only $4.8 million. FY 2004 
began Oct. 1 and extends through September.

Superconductivity is a property of certain materials that enables 
them to lose all resistance to the flow of electrical energy. In 
a press statement following a hearing Tuesday, Domenici said the 
funding cut could result in the loss of 30 jobs and the 
cancellation of nine cooperative research agreements and the 
effective termination of the program.

"Let me simply warn you not to shrug off the Congress. If you do, 
I assume that your budget problems have just begun," Domenici 
told Jimmy Glotfelty, director of the DOE Office of Electric 
Transmission and Distribution, a new office charged with 
financing improvements to the nation's electricity grid. 
Domenici's statement said that he obtained a commitment from 
Glotfelty to readdress the issue of funding the Los Alamos 
Center.

Speaking by telephone from Washington, LANL's STC leader Dean 
Peterson said he was holding a "superconductivity day," to raise 
DOE staff's awareness of the opportunities offered by 
superconductors.

Domenici's remark's "certainly got everybody's attention," said 
Peterson, optimistic that the funding constraints might soon be 
resolved.

Strains on DOE's superconductivity program budget became evident 
in FY2003, when the budget was reduced to $41.8 million, 
according to a superconductivity trade association report. DOE's 
budget request for FY2004 sought an increase to $47.8 million, 
which was approved by both House and Senate appropriations bills.

The problem, observed the Coalition for the Commercial 
Applications of Superconductors, arose during the House and 
Senate Conference Committee, when a number of special projects 
were "earmarked" into the Electricity Reliability budget, from 
which the superconductivity program draws its funds.

The Associated Press reported last week that lawmakers had 
reserved $26 million in the budget for some home-district 
projects, including $300,000 for "advanced ceramic engines," and 
$2 million for a power grid simulator at Drexel University in 
Philadelphia and the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 
Newark.

The ceramic engines have nothing to do with electrical 
transmission, according to Glotfelty, and the simulation project 
finished last in a competitive review by experts.

After last summer's power black-out, DOE's superconductivity 
program gained stature, as a way to bring more power into inner 
cities without having to dig up streets to add capacity.

The laboratory's STC won an R award for developing a 
second-generation coated tape that carries 200 times the 
electrical current of copper wire.

Using high magnetic fields, the materials offer no resistance to 
electrical current at the temperature of liquid-nitrogen. Known 
as high-temperature superconductivity, this is still a cool 
minus321F.

The lab's superconductivity tape holds the world record for 
electricity transmitting capacity. Further, Peterson said, with 
widespread use and mass production to decrease costs, the 
technology could reduce power requirements, conserve fuel and 
reduce emissions.

Commercial production is not that far away.

Two companies, American Superconductor and SuperPower are each 
trying to produce these materials in various lengths.

"They could be commercially available in two years," Peterson 
said.

Peterson cited a host of potential applications, including 
magnetic energy storage, transformers without oil, half the size 
and weight of conventional devices, that could go on apartment 
buildings without having to worry about fire; and motors for ship 
drives.

"There are a lot of possibilities that will come about if we can 
get the price down," he said.   

  © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved.   
*****************************************************************
 70 Oakland Tribune: Livermore lab settles Discrimination Suit
 
 Saturday, February 28, 2004 -
 		   	 	
Women sued over disparities in pay compared with men
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

Ending a nine-year legal battle, a state judge on Thursday 
approved an $11.4 million class-action settlement that seeks to 
even pay and promotions for women and men working at Lawrence 
Livermore National Laboratory. 

More than 3,000 women chose to be part of the 
gender-discrimination settlement, sacrificing the option of 
pursuing their own cases against the nuclear weapons lab and its 
operator, the University of California. 

But at least one major provision of the settlement would revamp 
the lab's evaluation of raises for all employees in lower-paying 
clerical and technical support jobs. 

"It's doing good things for both the women and the men," said 
supercomputer programmer Shirley Rogers Jennings, a 23-year lab 
veteran. 

Most of the women will share in $9.7 million of the settlement 
payout, minus their legal fees. All will receive a 1 percent 
increase in their base pay, equal to about $1.7 million. 



"It's long overdue," Jennings said. "Women are very excited. They 
can't believe it's a reality. They can't believe that we won." 

Disparity in 1980s 

Female lab scientists noted disparities in their pay compared to 
men of similar skills in the 1980s but failed to persuade lab 
executives to close the gap. After they filed suit, attorneys for 
the women found that the laboratory had been conducting its own 
internal studies of pay disparities but was routing them through 
the lab counsel's office. Lab attorneys argued the studies were 
subject to attorney-client privilege and should not be released. 
A judge disagreed and ordered the lab to publish its findings. 

Human-resources experts for the lab argued that the reports did 
not reflect discrimination, steering the two sides toward a 
settlement in which the lab and the university admitted no 
discrimination. 

Livermore executives began improving conditions for women over 
the course of the suit. The number of women in senior management 
has doubled in the last decade, putting women in charge of 
several lab departments and divisions. 

Ranking system targeted 

In approving the settlement, Alameda County Superior Court Judge 
Ronald Sabraw agreed to oversee its enforcement until 2007. The 
lab will submit regular reports on gender differences in pay and 
promotions to attorneys for women, who may ask the judge for a 
court order if needed. 

In particular, the lab's female employees had targeted the lab's 
system of ranking employees against one another for the purpose 
of setting raises. 

"We argued in our case that the system was overly subjective and 
allowed unconscious biases against women to come into play," said 
Victoria Ni, staff attorney for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice 
in Oakland, one of four law firms working for the female 
plaintiffs. 



The lab has until October to replace that system for clerical and 
technical support employees with one that assesses them against 
clear measures of performance for each worker, she said. 

"You're not ranked against your peers but against set criteria 
for your own work," Jennings said. 

Female scientists and engineers will remain ranked under the old 
system but details of their comparisons with other employees will 
be revealed for the first time, she said.

     ©1999-2003 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
 71 Google News Alert - nuclear
 
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 13:38:39 -0800 (PST)

 
DELEGATES Report Some Progress at N. Korea Nuclear Talks
Voice of America - USA
Six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear programs are set to go into a
fourth day Saturday, after delegates reported some progress in their bid
to settle the ...
<http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=D41CD46C-B564-41B0-8C839F504BA1B786>
See all stories on this topic:
<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&client=google&num=30&newsclusterurl=http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm%3FobjectID%3DD41CD46C-B564-41B0-8C839F504BA1B786>

FRANCE asks Pak to show transparency in nuclear activities
PakTribune.com - Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: France has asked Pakistan to strengthen its export control system
and show greater transparency in nuclear activities. ...
<http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=56521>

NO deal as talks on N. Korea nuclear program end
Toronto Star - Toronto,Ontario,Canada
BEIJING (AP) — Six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear program ended
today without any major breakthrough, but a US official declared them
"very successful ...
<http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1077967951704&call_pageid=968256289824&col=968705899037>
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KEY quotes: Korea nuclear talks
BBC News - London,England,UK
Following are key quotes from participants in the six-party talks in Beijing
on North Korea's nuclear programme. The four days of ...
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3495908.stm>
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NUCLEAR Proliferation no longer possible: Musharraf
PakTribune.com - Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: President General Pervez Musharraf Saturday claimed that after
setting up of concrete institutional system nuclear proliferation was
no longer ...
<http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=56523>
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LOSIUKOV: Russia to actively join working group on nuclear issue
Xinhua - China
28 (Xinhuanet) -- Russia said that it will actively participate in the
working group for the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, as all parties concerned
have ...
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-02/28/content_1336764.htm>
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WANG Yi says first-phase goal of nuclear-free Korean Peninsula is ... 
Xinhua - China
28 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister WangYi Saturday said at
present the first-phase goal of realizing a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula
is clear. ...
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-02/28/content_1336758.htm>
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SIX countries committed to "nuclear-weapon-free" peninsula
Xinhua - China
28 (Xinhuanet) -- The six countries attending the just-concluded six-party
talks on the Korean nuclear issue expressed their commitment to a "nuclear-weapon
...
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-02/28/content_1336681.htm>
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NUCLEAR link between Pakistan, Iran known
Kansas City Star - Kansas City,MO,USA
WASHINGTON — Pakistan warned the United States 14 years ago that it might
give nuclear technology to Iran, former Pentagon officials say. ...
<http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/8061705.htm>
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US says Korea nuclear talks "exceeded expectations"
Reuters - India
BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States declared the talks on North Korea's
nuclear programme "very successful" on Saturday, saying all but the North
had agreed ...
<http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=worldNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4459798>
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 72 Google News Alert - nuclear
 
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 15:05:02 -0800 (PST)

 
WESTERN Doublespeak | Overlooking India's Nuclear Reality
Times of India - India
AQ Khan's confession, the disclosures of CIA director George Tenet and
president George Bush and media reports have revealed how insincere the
five nuclear ...
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/527223.cms>
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NUCLEAR arms program denied
Kansas City Star - Kansas City,MO,USA
BEIJING — North Korea on Saturday denied that it has a nuclear weapons
program and said that US assertions that it has a secret program are based
on “false ...
<http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/8067241.htm>
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NUCLEAR plants: SC tells court they can't overlook utility for ... 
Indian Express - New Delhi,India
NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 29: In A major judgement, the Supreme Court has ruled
that risk factors associated with setting up of sensitive plants like
nuclear ...
<http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=42119>
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EUROPE waking up to Iranian nuclear threat: Israeli FM
SpaceDaily - USA
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Sunday that Europe was becoming
more aware of the threat posed by Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.
...
<http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040229150439.8d8r158r.html>
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PAKISTAN committed to nuclear non-proliferation: Defence Minister
Pakistan Link - Inglewood,CA,USA
ISLAMABAD : Minister for Defence Rao Sikandar Iqbal, has said that Pakistan
will continue to further strength its nuclear programme as it is imperative
for ...
<http://www.pakistanlink.com/headlines/Feb04/29/06.html>
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NO Firm Agreement Reached as North Korea Nuclear Talks End
Voice of America - USA
Talks hosted by China on North Korea's nuclear program have wrapped up
with no concrete agreement, and North Korea says no progress was made.
...
<http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=58E9C564-105F-4031-975D40A621BF8196>
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KOREA talks: no deal, but new will
Christian Science Monitor - USA
Negotiations ended last week without new accords but with consensus on
the goal of a nuclear-free Korea. By Robert Marquand | Staff ...
<http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0301/p06s02-woap.html>

EARLY nuclear solution
Korea Herald - Seoul,South Korea
Few would call it a major breakthrough, but the six-party nuclear talks
in Beijing last week may well be considered a modest success. ...
<http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/03/01/200403010022.asp>
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PYONGYANG'S nuclear ambitions still unclear - Russian diplomat
Interfax - Moscow,Russia
Feb 29 (Interfax) - It is so far unclear whether North Korea is pursuing
a nuclear program or not, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov
told the ...
<http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=9176211>
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OPTIMISM, but little headway, in North Korea nuclear talks
Boston Globe - Boston,MA,USA
BEIJING -- Six-nation talks on ending North Korea's alleged nuclear weapons
program made more progress than expected, a top US delegate said yesterday
as the ...
<http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2004/02/29/optimism_but_little_headway_in_north_korea_nuclear_talks>
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