***************************************************************** 03/06/05 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 13.51 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Guardian Unlimited: Blair still took us to war on a lie 2 Interfax: Russia comments on Iran-IAEA dispute 3 NewsFromRussia.Com: Tehran is making fuel for atomic warheads 4 FT.com: Iran accuses IAEA of leaking nuclear secrets 5 Xinhua: Iran expects rational atmosphere for nuclear case - Rafsanja 6 AFP: Iran and EU resume nuclear talks in sharp disagreement - 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Says It Won't Halt Uranium Enrichment 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Admits Keeping Nuclear Program Secret 9 AFP: Iran warns US, European pressure on nuclear could prompt oil cr 10 AFP: Iran criticises EU for lacking "seriousness" in nuclear talks 11 AFP: Iran criticises EU over nuclear demands 12 U.S. preaches to Iran & N. Korea while quietly building up 13 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Roh Won't Send Special Envoy to the North 14 Guardian Unlimited: China Calls U.S. to Start N. Korea Talks 15 Guardian Unlimited: China: N. Korea Willing to Discuss Nukes 16 Boston.com: Former envoy for North Korea defends nuclear program 17 AFP: China stands up for North Korean concerns in nuclear talks 18 asahi.com: Clinton: Mutual trust key in settling North Korea, Iraq, 19 US: [toeslist] U.S. quietly building up nuclear arsenal of WMD 20 US Allowed Pakistan to Spread Nuclear Technology 21 US: JS Online: Tilting at windmills 22 WorldNetDaily: On Jackie-baby's babbling 23 Daily Times: Generals used Khan for Pakistan’s nukes, says US report 24 Japan Times: U.S. retained first-strike option to keep Japan under n 25 Bellona: Norway continues to allocate millions for environmental 26 Daily Times: EDITORIAL: Ms Bhutto and the nuclear issue 27 AFP: Hitler had an atomic bomb - 28 Mos News: Russia Refutes Reports of U.S. Inspections at Nuclear Site NUCLEAR REACTORS 29 US: DailyItem: Nuclear power plant sets record 30 US: News-Leader.com: CU panel not ruling out nuclear energy 31 Turkish Daily News: Iran's arguments for nuclear power make some sen 32 US: mcall.com: Smoke seen at PPL's Susquehanna nuclear plant 33 Japan Times: Make public love nuke power: report 34 US: PittsburghLIVE.com: Will nuclear energy's appeal be realized? - 35 UK The Times: 'Reckless' nuclear plant dumps waste on beaches 36 US: The Herald: Contaminated stone found on beach 15 miles from nucl NUCLEAR SAFETY 37 [DU-WATCH] 1,503 SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ- IN PICTURES: BUSH'S 38 US: [toeslist] Some effects of depleted uranium from the US 39 US: Deseret News: Convincing fallout evidence 40 Sunday Herald: MoD study reveals potential impact of nuclear sub acc 41 US: MehrNews.com: Heads roll at VA, mushrooming DU scandal blamed 42 Independent: Recruitment crisis leads to nuclear safety fears NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 43 Las Vegas RJ: Western Shoshones file Yucca lawsuit 44 BBC: Dounreay waste claims dismissed 45 US: Salt Lake Tribune: Panels say hot waste should stay where it was 46 US: EC: Half Of Our Drinking Water Supply Is Already Contaminated 47 AFP: Nuclear waste dumped on Britain's beaches - 48 US: Boston.com: Superfund site cleanup likely to begin this year 49 Scotsman.com: 'Regret' over Dounreay Radioactive Discharge 50 Scotsman.com: 'Nuclear Cowboys' Caused Dounreay 'Disaster' - Claim 51 Mohave Daily News: Congressman testifies against federal proposals 52 US: News & Star: I live 12 miles from Sellafield and I am frightened 53 Guardian Unlimited: Fifteen years ago it was a popular holiday beach 54 Nevada Appeal - Opinion: Yucca Mountain nuclear dump isn't 'inevitab NUCLEAR WEAPONS 55 US: David Krieger: Saving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement US DEPT. OF ENERGY 56 ABQjournal: Lab Oversight Bureau May Get Funds 57 RGJ: Las Vegas museum traces atomic bomb history 58 ABQjournal: 2 LANL Whistle-Blowers Sue UC OTHER NUCLEAR 59 More Dialog on DU (Including Peer Reviewed) ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Guardian Unlimited: Blair still took us to war on a lie Comment To insist that the ends now justify the means is morally disgraceful Geoffrey Wheatcroft Saturday March 5, 2005 The Guardian An Israeli conservative has said something sarcastic but apt about the struggle in the Holy Land. Historically the Arabs were the world's great warrior nation, while the Jews were the masters of debate and dialectic. But in this conflict, "the Arabs have lost every battle and the Jews have lost every argument". It was a good line, and it's a useful distinction. Tony Blair now thinks he can claim victory in Iraq - but having won his battles, he must not be allowed to win the argument. After Blair had forced his government, his party and his country into a war which most British people did not want, Iraq was conquered, Saddam was captured, and now elections have been held. And Blair could be forgiven for thinking that he has won the argument. He says there is "a ripple of change" in the Middle East ostensibly triggered by the new regime in Baghdad. There is much triumphalist, and maybe hubristic, cheering and jeering from supporters of the war, and even some former critics, Labour MPs and Guardian columnists among them, have been saying sheepishly that the war may after all have had a beneficial outcome. But even if, and that is a pretty large "if", liberal democracy has been established in Iraq, and every Arab nation is clamouring for representative government, nothing about the causes of the war has been changed, except the subject. Our prime minister is very good at changing the subject, but he can only win his argument if the rest of us are prepared likewise to alter the historical record, to accept a long campaign of obfuscation, and to forget the simple fact that, although there might have been good reasons for the war, the reasons Blair gave could not have been good, since they weren't true. Looking back, the crucial moment of Blair's imposture was not March 2003, when the war began, but the previous September. He made our flesh creep with claims about weapons of mass destruction ready for use within 45 minutes, and the almost more disgracefully false claim that Saddam represented a "serious and current" threat to British interests. And he got away with it, because even sceptics asked the wrong question. Instead of, "does Saddam really possess noxious weaponry?" the question should have been, "is Saddam's weaponry, whatever it might be, the real reason for the war on which this country is about to embark, or is it a pretext, provided after Blair has already decided to go to war?" Which is to say that the absolutely crucial question was and is: When was the decision for war taken? Grasping this was the climax of Hugo Young's career. "The great over-arching fact about the war that Blair will never admit but cannot convincingly deny," he said in a column shortly before his death, is that "he was committed to war months before he said he was". Blair's deepest falsehood was not so much the WMD claims as his pretence that he was "working for peace" and had made no military commitment - when he had certainly done so no later than his meeting with George Bush in Texas in April 2002. Obfuscation took a new turn after no weapons were found. It was suggested, wrongly, that this had been, at worst, an error in good faith. Mary Ann Sieghart of the Times has said morosely that her friend Tony had assured her personally about the existence of WMD. If that was risible, far more so is the way in which she has since forgiven him. Blair "should be angry about having been led into war on the basis of false intelligence", she writes, and yet "not a single British spymaster has even lost his job". Can she really believe that Blair sat helplessly while those malign spooks fed him duff information? What actually happened was very much in the spirit of Citizen Kane when his newspaper was fomenting war in Cuba. "I could write your prose poems about scenery," his correspondent cables, "but there's no war," to which Kane replies, "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war." That was what Blair said to John Scarlett, and to Lord Goldsmith also. The chairman of the JIC provided prose poems in the form of intelligence which appeared to justify the war militarily, as the attorney general gave his own in the form of a opinion justifying it legally. Some supporters of the war have been more honest than others, although the "liberal hawks" still have difficulties. Michael Ignatieff says that he was dismayed by the failure to find WMD, but now recognises that the case for a "pre-emptive" war, against a tyrant who posed an "imminent danger", was wrong anyway, and that "the honest case for war was 'preventive' - to stop a tyrant with malignant intentions from acquiring lethal capabilities or transferring those capabilities to other enemies". That seems fair enough - until Ignatieff adds glumly that "the problem for my side is that if the honest case had been put - for a preventive as opposed to a pre-emptive war - the war would have been even more unpopular than it was." Yes, that was indeed the problem for Blair, and it still is for those who now say that the war might have done good whatever its original rationale. The Washington neoconservatives come out of the war far better than the Labour MPs. Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle knew what they were doing, they always wanted a war to destroy Saddam - and they are disciples of Leo Strauss, who, following Plato's "noble lie", argued that "moral virtue" in a mass democracy means "controlling the unintelligent majority". Tony Blair also adopted the principle, even if he didn't spell it out like that. No doubt politicians habitually sway from planned failure to unplanned success, and the law of unintended consequences operates all the time, but there is the separate fallacy of post hoc and propter hoc. Primitive peoples suffering from drought put a maiden to death and the rains come. Did the human sacrifice change the weather? Even if the war has changed Iraq from a despotic to a constitutional regime, it is outrageous to justify it thus when Blair had been advised that regime change would not provide a legal basis for war, and specifically said that this was not the reason for the invasion. The arguments now being advanced are logically absurd, politically disastrous and morally disgraceful. Nothing will alter the fact the war was fought on a lie. If we concede that such means are justified by the ends, do we deserve ever to be told the truth again? · Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book, The Strange Death of Tory England, is published this month wheaty@compuserve.com The issue explained 27.01.2005: Iraq's elections 27.01.2005: The key parties Chronology January 1 2005 - present Feb 1 2004 - 31 Dec 2004 July 16 1979 - Jan 31 2004 Interactive guides The siege of Falluja [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 2 Interfax: Russia comments on Iran-IAEA dispute Updated: Mar 7 2005 2:25AM (MSK) Đóńńęŕ˙ âĺđńč˙ Mar 5 2005 7:39PM MOSCOW. March 5 (Interfax) - Russia expressed hope on Saturday that a recent dispute between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concerning Iran's nuclear industry would be resolved in the course of "routine" IAEA inspections in Iran. "In his speech at the March session of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), its deputy director general Pierre Goldschmidt said that, in the course of inspections at a uranium conversion plant in Isfahan on December 15, 2004, an underground tunnel under construction was discovered of which Iran had failed to advise the agency on time [that is, half a year before the start of construction]," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary published on its website. © 1991-2004 Interfax All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 3 NewsFromRussia.Com: Tehran is making fuel for atomic warheads 23:46 2005-03-05 Iran warned on Saturday it would return to making nuclear fuel and that the Middle East would get even more unstable if the Islamic Republic was sent to the U.N. Security Council over its atomic program. Washington is seeking to haul Iran before the council for possible sanctions, arguing that Tehran is making fuel for atomic warheads. Iran insists it intends to use enriched uranium only in power stations. "If the Americans succeed in referring Iran's case to the Security Council, Iran will immediately suspend all its voluntary confidence-building measures," Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rohani told a conference. Iran agreed last year to suspend making nuclear fuel for a few months while it held talks with Britain, France and Germany. The EU states are encouraging Iran to drop its fuel program in return for economic incentives, tells Reuters. Any effort by Washington to bring Tehran's suspended uranium enrichment program under the Security Council scrutiny is a dangerous path, warned Hasan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator. Rowhani, speaking during a two-day international conference on nuclear technology, also confirmed that Iran was building a tunnel next to a nuclear facility in Isfahan without first informing the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. A diplomat familiar with Iran's dossier said this week that parts of the concrete tunnel could run as deep as a half-mile underground and could withstand the severest of air attacks, publishes ABC News. NR Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials ***************************************************************** 4 FT.com: Iran accuses IAEA of leaking nuclear secrets By Gareth Smyth in Tehran, Stephen Fidler in London and Guy Dinmore in Washington Published: March 3 2005 18:48 | Last updated: March 4 2005 00:44 [Iran & Nuclear symbol] A senior Iranian security official on Thursday accused the International Atomic Energy Authority of lying, and leaking information from inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities. Speaking on Iranian television, Hossein Mousavian, foreign policy head of the Supreme National Security Council, also warned the UK, France and Germany that Iran would leave talks with them on its nuclear programme unless there was “tangible progress”. [ height=] © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2005. "FT" and "Financial Times" are trademarks of the Financial Times. ***************************************************************** 5 Xinhua: Iran expects rational atmosphere for nuclear case - Rafsanjani www.xinhuanet.com www.chinaview.cn 2005-03-04 23:29:19 TEHRAN, March 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran's powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani voiced hope on Friday that a rational and logical atmosphere could be created to solve the Iranian nuclear issue, the official IRNA news agency reported. "We hope that rationality and logic would replace a tendency towards monopoly, pride and discrimination in the examination of Iran's nuclear case," Rafsanjani was quoted as saying. Rafsanjani, who is currently chairman of Iran's Expediency Council, said that no wise person would treat a civilized and strong country which enjoys strong public support and has repeatedly proven itself in many cases of harsh situations like this. "The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Union (EU) and the United States should know that Iran will never forsake its right for conducting nuclear activities," Rafsanjani reiterated. "The IAEA was duty bound to transfer nuclear technology to all countries, and the Iranian nation, too, should be able to manipulate nuclear technology," he stressed. As to the IAEA's recent request of "more transparency," Rafsanjani said that Iran had showed transparency of high degree during the cooperation with the agency. "Iran let the IAEA inspectors be present in all stages of uranium enrichment process though it was quite aware that the inspectors could not legally demand inspections from a number of its sites," he said. The EU, the broker of the Iranian nuclear issue, has been endeavoring to encourage Iran to halt its activities on the construction of nuclear reactors in exchange for a wholesale of economic and technological incentives. Washington has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons secretly, urging to refer the country's case to the UN Security Council. However, the United States recently softened its stance and showed interest in supporting the EU diplomatic efforts. The IAEA Board of Governors' meeting on Thursday called on Iran to do more in the cooperation with the agency. Enditem Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 AFP: Iran and EU resume nuclear talks in sharp disagreement - Sunday March 6, 03:41 PM VIENNA (AFP) - Negotiators from Iran and the European Union meet in Geneva this week for new talks on Tehran's nuclear policy, with Iran flatly refusing to accede to the Europeans' key demand that it abandon uranium enrichment, a fuel process which can also make atom bombs. Iran's top nuclear official Hassan Rowhani warned Saturday that his country would never agree to a permanent halt on enriching uranium. "We cannot have and we will not have negotiations with the Europeans if what they want is an end" to uranium enrichment, Rowhani told reporters in Tehran. EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany are trying to convince Iran to dismantle nuclear fuel work which the United States says is part of a covert atomic weapons development, in return for economic and political rewards. But Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely for civilian energy needs. Iran agreed with the EU trio in November to suspend uranium enrichment as a "confidence-building measure" to show its nuclear intentions are peaceful, but stressed the halt would be temporary. The suspension opened the way to talks on trade, technology and security concessions to Iran if it abandons enrichment as an "objective guarantee" that it will not develop nuclear weapons. A diplomat close to the EU-Iran talks which began in December told AFP that while the language from Iran is hardline, it is no different than what the Iranians have been saying for months. The diplomat said the Europeans "are waiting to see what it really means," when a fourth round of talks starts in Geneva on Wednesday and Thursday. Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian was Sunday quoted by the Iranian news agency IRNA as saying the Europeans had so far "not shown any seriousness" and that Iran doubted "their capacity" to strike a deal. "Europe has not presented any plan or proposition and has taken no initiative regarding objective guarantees," he said, warning that Iran's suspension of sensitive nuclear fuel work could be in danger. Non-proliferation experts said however that Iran may yet cut a deal with the EU, although this may not take place before Iranian presidential elections in June. "I do not think any progress has been made because Iran has not decided yet whether it is prepared to accept limits on its enrichment programme," Gary Samore, from London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, said while in Tehran for a nuclear technology conference. "In the run-up to the presidential elections, I do not think any of the Iranian officials have any interest in showing any flexibility because they will be strongly criticised for giving away Iran's rights," Samore said. A conservative is seen as being almost certain of winning the presidency, but it is not clear whether it will be a hardliner -- such as former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati -- or a pragmatist like top cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani or even Rowhani. Meanwhile, the United States is now more open to helping the EU offer incentives to Iran. Samore said it was "important that (US President George W.) Bush has crossed a psychological threshold and accepted the principle that any agreement with the EU is going to have to include active American support." Joseph Cirincione, from the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said any deal would have to be a "win-win deal -- where Iran has to be able to come back to its people with victory." Still, he said: "I think the EU has a real chance of reaching an agreement with Iran." Iranian official Syrus Nasseri had proposed at a meeting of the UN atomic agency in Vienna last week for Iran to "have fuel production and we can have arrangements that will provide credible assurance to our interlocutors and to the international community that nothing will be diverted" from peaceful use. A senior European diplomat told AFP that this was, however, unacceptable since the idea was to halt all enrichment activities. Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Says It Won't Halt Uranium Enrichment From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday March 6, 2005 12:01 AM AP Photo XHS102 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran said Saturday it will never agree to permanently stop making nuclear fuel and warned that any attempt to haul it before the Security Council for possible sanctions would lead to more instability in the Middle East. Any effort by Washington to bring Tehran's suspended uranium enrichment program under Security Council scrutiny is a dangerous path, warned Hasan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator. Rowhani, speaking during a two-day international conference on nuclear technology, also confirmed that Iran was building a tunnel next to a nuclear facility in Isfahan without first informing the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. A diplomat familiar with Iran's dossier said this week that parts of the concrete tunnel could run as deep as a half-mile underground and could withstand the severest of air attacks. ``Constructing a tunnel is not a nuclear activity,'' Rowhani said. ``It's not clear for us if we had to inform the IAEA of the tunnel construction at all.'' Rowhani said the tunnel, which is under a mountain, will be used to store unspecified equipment. Asked if the tunnel was meant to protect nuclear equipment against airstrikes, he added: ``Airstrikes won't be able to do anything against it.'' Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on Thursday had asked the IAEA to investigate reports about the tunnel. She won tentative support Saturday from Russia's Foreign Ministry, which said the nuclear agency should clear up concerns about the tunnel ``in the process of routine IAEA monitoring activity.'' Washington has accused Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build a nuclear bomb. Iran says the program is geared toward generating electricity. Last month, President Bush said fears that Washington was preparing an attack were ``ridiculous,'' but he nonetheless said ``all options are on the table.'' Iran will halt negotiations and resume making nuclear fuel ``without any hesitation,'' Rowhani said, if European negotiators insist Iran turn its temporary suspension into a permanent halt. Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities last year to create confidence in its negotiations and avoid Security Council referral. But Tehran says maintaining the voluntary freeze depends on progress in ongoing talks with Britain, Germany and France, who are negotiating on behalf of the European Union. Rowhani said referring Iran to the Security Council would only make things worse. ``Americans and Europeans will be the first to lose in that case,'' he told more than 50 nuclear scientists and experts attending the Tehran conference. ``It will cause problems for regional energy and for the European economy. And it will cause additional problems for America.'' The EU wants to get an Iranian commitment to scrap enrichment plans in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for Tehran's efforts to join mainstream international organizations. Rowhani said Iran has already achieved proficiency in the full range of activities involved in enriching uranium - for nuclear fuel or weapons. He also suggested the negotiations will fail if EU negotiators succumb to U.S. pressure for a harder line, saying ``if there is no U.S. pressure, we will reach a compromise with Europeans in the near future.'' Bush has backed European efforts, but documents circulated among IAEA board members last week indicated Washington would try to pressure Tehran further by the next agency board meeting in June of the European talks fail. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 8 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Admits Keeping Nuclear Program Secret From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday March 6, 2005 7:46 PM AP Photo XHS109 By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran on Sunday blamed American sanctions and European restrictions for denying Tehran access to advanced civilian nuclear technology, forcing it to keep the program secret in its early days and driving the country to the black market for needed materials. Despite the initial secrecy, Iran now openly admits that it has already achieved proficiency in the full range of activities involved in enriching uranium - a technology that can be used to produce fuel for nuclear reactors or atomic bombs. Washington has accused Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build a nuclear bomb. Iran denies the charge, claiming its nuclear program is designed to generate electricity. ``True. There was secrecy,'' said former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. ``But secrecy was necessary to buy equipment for a peaceful nuclear program.'' ``If sanctions had not been imposed on us, we would have declared everything publicly, but we had problems buying metal. Nobody sold us anything in the market,'' he said. Rafsanjani was speaking at the closing session of a two-day international conference on nuclear technology in Tehran, attended by more than 50 international nuclear scientists. President from 1989-97, Rafsanjani also is chairman of the Expediency Council, a powerful body that arbitrates between the parliament and another council that approves proposed legislation. He is believed to have a great influence over Iran's nuclear program. Since last year, Iran has publicly acknowledged that it once bought nuclear equipment from middlemen in south Asia, lending credence to reports that Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, was one of the suppliers. Rafsanjani said Iran resorted to the black market because of political ``injustice'' by the U.S. and Europe. He said Washington and the Europeans had approved the building of 20 nuclear power plants in Iran and provide advanced nuclear technology when Tehran was under the pro-Western shah in the 1970s. But they reversed course after the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the shah and brought the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power. ``If the Shah is in Iran, you would give him nuclear technology, but if Imam (Khomeini) is in Iran, you can't do that ... the history of nuclear energy in Iran is a lesson in contradictions in Western policy toward Iran,'' he said. But Rafsanjani said Iran has been very transparent since 2002 when aspects of its nuclear activities were revealed. He said the country had cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, to dispel suspicions that it was seeking nuclear weapons. He said Iran would never agree to a permanent halt on enriching uranium, a technology he says Tehran is entitled to under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran suspended its uranium enrichment activities last year to create confidence and avoid U.N. Security Council sanctions. But Tehran says maintaining the voluntary freeze depends on progress in ongoing talks with Britain, Germany and France, who are negotiating on behalf of the European Union. ``Definitely we can't stop our nuclear program and won't stop it. You can't take technology away from a country already possessing it,'' Rafsanjani said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: Iran warns US, European pressure on nuclear could prompt oil crisis Sunday March 6, 05:45 AM TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's top nuclear official warned the United States and Europe of the danger of an oil crisis if Tehran is sent before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme, rejecting outright their demands to halt uranium enrichment. Taking the matter to the Security Council would be "playing with fire", Hassan Rowhani, whose country is the second largest oil producer in OPEC, told reporters. "The first to suffer will be Europe and the United States themselves, this would cause problems for the regional energy market, for the European economy and even more so for the United States," Rowhani said at a conference in Tehran on nuclear technology and sustainable development. EU members Britain, France and Germany are trying to convince Iran to dismantle nuclear fuel work -- which the United States says is part of a covert atomic weapons development -- in return for economic and political rewards. Tehran has argued that it wants to enrich uranium to generate atomic energy for purely civilian use, and argues such work is authorised by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The United States says the country is "cynically" manipulating a loophole in the NPT, and has threatened to take the matter to the Security Council to seek international sanctions. If Washington brings the issue before the Security Council, "Iran will retract all the decisions it has made and the confidence-building measures it has taken." He said Iran's leaders "could be called upon to make new decisions", but did not provide any details on what that would involve. "The stability in the region would become fragile and the United States would be the first to suffer," he said. The EU is seeking a permanent halt to uranium enrichment, a process which can provide both nuclear fuel for civilian power plants and be used in the making of nuclear bombs. In return for a permanent halt, the EU is offering Iran a package of incentives covering trade, security and technology. But while Iran agreed in November to suspend enrichment, it would not agree to a permanent halt, Rowhani, who visited the German and French capitals for talks on the issue at the end of February, said Saturday. "We cannot have and we will not have negotiations with the Europeans if what they want is an end" to uranium enrichment. "We will not continue the talks for one single minute, we have made it very clear to Paris and Berlin," he said. During those visits, Rowhani told officials that Iran had five "other formulas to ease concerns" while still allowing Tehran to continue uranium enrichment. "I hope we will reach an agreement on these formulas because time is short," he said. "If US pressure doesn't prevent it, I think we will manage to reach an agreement with the Europeans because they don't want to deprive the Iranian people of their right and will try to act fairly," Rowhani said. The European countries hope the US would lend its support to any deal by lifting its veto on Iran's World Trade Organization (WTO) membership among other things. Rowhani dismissed however such incentives as being of "little significance". Meanwhile, Rowhani insisted that the controversial construction of a heavy water reactor in Iran was only for research purposes and would not be used to produce plutonium for a nuclear bomb. "The goal is research, it's a peaceful goal," he said, adding: "We are not seeking to produce plutonium for military use." He said the construction would be completed by 2008. The IAEA last year asked Iran to refrain from building the reactor amid concerns about the proliferation risk, as the reactor could produce 8-10 kilograms of plutonium per year, enough to make at least one nuclear bomb annually. Iran has rejected an offer from the European Union to help it get a light-water research reactor in exchange for giving up its heavy-water project. Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 10 AFP: Iran criticises EU for lacking "seriousness" in nuclear talks Sunday March 6, 07:47 PM TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian officials doled out heavy criticism of the European Union for lacking "seriousness" in negotiations aimed at securing guarantees the Islamic republic will not acquire nuclear weapons. Quoted by the state news agency IRNA, top diplomat and negotiator Hossein Moussavian complained that Britain, France and Germany had so far "not shown any seriousness" and that Iran was "seriously doubting their capacity" to strike a deal. "Iran has not seen the desired progress," he was quoted as saying, ahead of a fresh round of talks this week in Geneva. "Europe has not presented any plan or proposition and has taken no initiative regarding objective guarantees," he said, warning that Iran's suspension of sensitive nuclear fuel work could be in danger. EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany are trying to convince Iran to dismantle nuclear fuel work which the United States says is part of a covert atomic weapons development, in return for economic and political rewards. The Europeans see a halt in fuel cycle work, including enrichment, as the only way Iran can provide "objective guarantees" it will not use its atomic energy drive to military purposes. But Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely for civilian energy needs, and that its fuel cycle work is therefore permitted by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters Sunday that any demand for Iran to completely halt its enrichment activities went beyond a deal reached in Paris last October that kicked off the current round of talks. "The text of the Paris agreement was in English. There was nothing about permanent suspension. It mentioned 'objective guarantees', which means we continue enrichment and they are assured that no deviation is done," he asserted. "Our aim in the negotiations is to build trust and for them to respect our legitimate rights. The Europeans have to be careful not to act in contrary to what they have said," Asefi added. And he also complained that the incentives on offer were hardly attractive. "What they are offering are not incentives. They are Iran's rights, which have been blocked by other countries," he explained, citing Iran's membership of the World Trade Organisation -- consistently vetoed by the United States -- as an example. "We want to make it clear we are not haggling. We are not looking for incentives." The spokesman also asserted that the Islamic republic was not concerned about US threats of being hauled before the UN Security Council. "We do not want to have our case referred to the UN Security Council. It could be solved by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the EU. But, if it is referred, we are not worried," Asefi said. "If the Americans, the Europeans or anyone else think they can threaten Iran with the Security Council so Iran will give up its legitimate right, they are mistaken and one day they will regret it. This is Iran's red line." Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 11 AFP: Iran criticises EU over nuclear demands Monday March 7, 08:41 AM TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian officials doled out heavy criticism of the European Union (EU) for demanding Iran abandon its sensitive nuclear fuel work and said it wanted to see more results when talks resume this week. Top diplomat and nuclear negotiator Hossein Moussavian, quoted by the state news agency IRNA, complained that Britain, France and Germany had so far "not shown any seriousness". Iran was "seriously doubting their capacity" to strike a deal, he said. Top cleric and powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani also told a nuclear technology conference in Tehran that "three months have passed and we have seen nothing yet. "If we feel that no progress is being made, there is no point losing time," he said of the talks with Britain, France and Germany. "We are waiting for them to make marked progress in the coming days." Rafsanjani also told reporters that Iran viewed its suspension of uranium enrichment -- a process that could be diverted to building bombs -- was only a six-month halt and that the country still wanted to resume nuclear fuel work. But the so-called EU-3 are trying to convince Iran to dismantle its fuel cycle -- seen by the United States as part of a covert atomic weapons development -- in return for economic and political rewards. The Europeans see a halt as the only way Iran can provide "objective guarantees" it will not use its atomic energy drive for military purposes. But Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely for civilian energy needs, and that its fuel cycle work is therefore permitted by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A fourth round of talks starts in Geneva on Wednesday and Thursday. "We have said clearly to the Europeans that a halt (of enrichment) is not acceptable," said another Iranian negotiator, Cyrus Nasseri. He also asserted that Iran was instead thinking of building "10 other Natanzes" -- a reference to the enrichment facility in the centre of the country. And foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters that any demand for Iran to completely halt its enrichment activities went beyond the deal reached in Paris last October that kicked off the current round of talks. "The text of the Paris agreement was in English. There was nothing about permanent suspension. It mentioned 'objective guarantees', which means we continue enrichment and they are assured that no deviation is done," he said. "We want to make it clear we are not haggling. We are not looking for incentives." The spokesman also asserted that the Islamic republic was not concerned about US threats of being hauled before the UN Security Council. "We do not want to have our case referred to the UN Security Council. It could be solved by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the EU. But, if it is referred, we are not worried," Asefi said. "If the Americans, the Europeans or anyone else think they can threaten Iran with the Security Council so Iran will give up its legitimate right, they are mistaken and one day they will regret it. This is Iran's red line." But despite the defiant tone, prominent analysts said Iran may yet accept a deal with the EU but is likely to delay any decision until after crucial presidential elections in June. "I think those negotiations are in limbo right now. I do not think any progress has been made because Iran has not decided yet whether it is prepared to accept limits on its enrichment programme," explained Gary Samore, Director of Studies at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies. "In the run-up to the presidential elections, I do not think any of the Iranian officials have any interest in showing any flexibility because they will be strongly criticised for giving away Iran's rights," he explained. "So I think we have a period of time now when people are exploring different ideas. But I do not think political decisions have been made in Tehran about whether or not to really seek a diplomatic solution." Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 12 U.S. preaches to Iran & N. Korea while quietly building up Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 00:49:28 -0600 (CST) FinalCall.com News - Refer This Page National News U.S. quietly building up nuclear arsenal of WMD By Katherine Stapp Updated Mar 3, 2005, 06:11 pm * US Arms Control Hypocrisy is the Real Threat to Security (CommonDreams.org, 02-24-03) NEW YORK (IPS/GIN) - Even as the United States leans on North Korea and Iran to renounce any nuclear objectives, peace activists say it has stepped up spending on its own arsenal, including investments in a new generation of longer lasting and sturdier "bunker buster" weapons. The "quiet effort" involves a relatively modest budget of $9 million for engineers at the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories-Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia. Its goal is to produce new warhead prototypes in the next decade. According to the Western States Legal Foundation, an anti-proliferation group, U.S. nuclear weapons spending has swelled by 84 percent since 1995, now amounting to $40 billion annually. This budget supports the maintenance of some 10,000 nuclear warheads-2,000 on hair-trigger alert. Some experts say the "Reliable Replacement Warhead Program," approved by Congress in November, marks a disturbing evolution of the former policy introduced under President Bill Clinton of "stockpile stewardship" in which the labs concentrated on maintaining the safety and reliability of the nation's existing nuclear arsenal. Although the United States is a member of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which outlaws new weapons tests, the pact permits computer-simulated testing and underground "sub-critical" nuclear tests. In the past 10 years, experts say the United States has carried out 21 sub-critical tests, 1,000 feet below the desert floor. "We have spent over three trillion dollars on our nuclear arsenal," Alice Slater, president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment in New York, told IPS. "The waste of intellectual and economic treasure has been enormous and we see the bitter fruits these programs gave birth to: nuclear proliferation in India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran." In 1970, the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), promising to give up their nuclear weapons if other countries promised not to acquire them. The treaty will be reviewed this May at the United Nations, where the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and hundreds of others will repeat calls for immediate negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons stockpiles. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the catastrophic bombing of those two Japanese cities, in which an estimated 210,000 people were killed. Meanwhile, a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says that the United States still deploys about 480 nuclear weapons at its air force bases in Europe, nearly twice as many as was previously believed. The targets for these weapons are most likely in Russia, Iran and Syria, according to NRDC experts, even though Russia withdrew all of its tactical nuclear weapons from the former socialist states following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States also withdrew thousands of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, but left the 480 in place. France and Britain have 350 and 185 nuclear weapons, respectively, in Europe, but the United States is the only country that deploys this class of arms outside its own territory. The report discloses, for the first time, how many nuclear bombs the United States would provide to non-nuclear NATO allies in the event of war. It found that as many as 180 bombs would be delivered by Belgian, German, Italian, Dutch and Turkish aircraft. The group argues that this arrangement skirts international law because the NPT prohibits a nuclear state from transferring nuclear weapons to a non-weapon state, and prohibits a non-nuclear state from receiving such weapons. Documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, military publications, commercial satellite imagery, and other sources were used to compile the 100-page report, entitled "U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe." A U.S. Defense Department spokesperson told IPS that the weapons are maintained in accordance with NATO's Strategic Concept, which states that "nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO provide an essential political and military link between the European and North American members of the Alliance." However, the NRDC report notes that NATO keeps detailed nuclear strike plans against potential targets, namely Russia and Middle Eastern countries, most likely Iran and Syria. "It's counter-productive and undercuts non-proliferation efforts to maintain a nuclear arsenal overseas, especially against countries that themselves are proliferating weapons of mass destruction, i.e., Iran and Syria," said Hans Kristensen, the author of the report. "There's something very contradictory about going to these countries and saying 'you can't have nuclear weapons, but we need ours to use against you.'" (c) Copyright 2005 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com Top of Form <> Subscribe to Our News E-List Enter email address: <> <> Bottom of Form [demime 0.98e removed an attachment of type image/bmp which had a name of ole0.bmp] [demime 0.98e removed an attachment of type image/bmp which had a name of ole1.bmp] [demime 0.98e removed an attachment of type image/bmp which had a name of ole2.bmp] ***************************************************************** 13 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Roh Won't Send Special Envoy to the North Home> National/Politics Updated Mar.6,2005 19:47 KST Peninsula, President Roh Moo-hyun will not send a special envoy to North Korea while Pyongyang refuses to participate in six-party nuclear disarmament talks, high-ranking officials said Sunday. Cheong Wa Dae and government officials said President Roh had no plans to resolve the nuclear issue by sending a special envoy to Pyongyang, as earlier signaled, and believes the ball to be entirely in North Korea's court. They said Roh had conveyed this to relevant ministers and the National Security Council. The government believes it will have no choice but to raise the level of pressure on Pyongyang through cooperation with the U.S. and Japan if North Korea does not change its attitude. It has prepared a number of contingency plans. ˇ°If North Korea asks for an exchange of special envoys first, we would see it as a major change in the situation, and we could consider it after consulting with other participating nations in the six-party talks,ˇ± a high-ranking government official said. The governmentˇŻs position contrasts with the atmosphere late last year when sending a special envoy to the North was openly discussed within the government. Before North KoreaˇŻs declaration that it is boycotting the talks, Unification Minister Chung Dong-young said it was natural for Seoul to consider sending an envoy, but recently he has been more ambiguous. RohˇŻs position is being read as expression of disappointment with Pyongyang. Seoul has given North Korea a large amount of rope, with the president directly asking U.S. President George W. Bush not to provoke the Stalinist country when the two met in Santiago, Chile in November. But North Korea responded by taking took an extremely hard line. Roh appears to feel that sending an envoy now would fracture cooperation with the U.S. and Japan at a time when it is uncertain whether such a move would get results. A high-ranking official reflected the chillier atmosphere when he explained that a special envoy was a form of direct communication between leaders, and there first needed to be some sort of breakthrough before that could be considered, (Shin Jeong-rok, jrshin@chosun.com ) ***************************************************************** 14 Guardian Unlimited: China Calls U.S. to Start N. Korea Talks From the Associated Press [UP] Saturday March 5, 2005 10:01 PM By JOE McDONALD Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) - The United States should meet one-on-one with North Korea to help revive stalled six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program, a Chinese official was quoted as saying on Saturday. ``To restart negotiations and make progress, I hope Washington agrees to hold bilateral talks with Pyongyang,'' said Yang Xiyu, director of the China Foreign Ministry's Office for Korean Peninsula Issues, according to the official newspaper China Daily. Such contacts could be similar to bilateral discussions held by the United States with the other governments taking part in talks, Yang was quoted as saying. Washington demands that North Korea give up its nuclear program and has rejected one-on-one talks, arguing that the problem is regional and requires a multinational settlement. ``While we speak directly with all the parties including North Korea at the six-party talks, we continue to believe that a multilateral approach is needed to resolve shared concerns about North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons,'' said State Department spokeswoman Darla Jordan in Washington on Saturday. Three rounds of talks in Beijing involving the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have produced no major progress toward a settlement. Pyongyang on Feb. 10 claimed that it had built nuclear weapons and would boycott talks indefinitely. The claim has not yet been verified. U.S. and Chinese officials agreed Thursday to launch a new effort to lure the North back to talks. ``It is the common responsibility of all the six parties involved to prevent the escalation of the tense standoff and resume talks to address the nuclear issue at an early date,'' Yang was quoted as saying. Responding to suggestions that China use its leverage as the North's main aid donor to force Pyongyang back to the bargaining table, Yang said sanctions would be futile, according to the China Daily. ``Even if China has some so-called leverage on the issue, we won't abuse it since sanctions often pose new problems or cause collateral damage while failing to address what they are meant to achieve,'' he was quoted as saying. China's ambassador on the nuclear issue, Ning Fukui, is due to visit Washington ``very soon,'' the newspaper said, citing unidentified sources. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 15 Guardian Unlimited: China: N. Korea Willing to Discuss Nukes From the Associated Press [UP] Sunday March 6, 2005 6:46 AM AP Photo SEL801 By JOE McDONALD Associated Press Writer BEIJING (AP) - North Korean leaders told China they are ready to resume six-nation nuclear talks, the Chinese foreign minister said Sunday, but he didn't say whether Pyongyang attached any conditions. China has been trying to arrange new talks on the North's nuclear program. Pyongyang announced Feb. 10 that it had produced nuclear weapons and had no interest in returning to the disarmament talks. Responding to a message from Chinese President Hu Jintao, the North Korean leadership said it ``remained ready and willing to continue to participate in the six-party talks,'' Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said. Speaking at a news conference, Li didn't say when China received the message, and he didn't respond when asked whether the North attached conditions. Hu's message would have been addressed to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, but Li didn't mention him by name as the source of the reply. Li appealed to Washington and Pyongyang to show flexibility, and said North Korea's ``legitimate concerns should be addressed.'' The foreign minister didn't answer directly when asked whether China, the impoverished North's main aid donor, might consider withholding oil or other assistance in order to compel the North to return to talks. Instead, Li said that as the main parties in the dispute, the United States and North Korea should ``gradually increase their mutual trust and mutual understanding.'' On Wednesday, the North called on Washington to drop its ``hostile policy'' and threatened to resume long-range missile tests if its demands weren't met. The nuclear dispute erupted in late 2003 when Washington said North Korean officials had admitted running a nuclear program in violation of an agreement that gave the North oil in exchange for scrapping nuclear development. Participants in the talks - which also include Japan, Russia and South Korea - missed a September deadline to hold their latest round after Kim's government refused to take part. On Saturday, a lower-level Chinese foreign ministry official was quoted by state media as recommending that the United States and North Korea meet one-on-one - a tactic that Washington has rejected. U.S. officials say the problem is regional and requires a multinational settlement. Li also said he did not know whether the North had nuclear weapons or a uranium enrichment program to produce them, telling a reporter, ``I don't know any more than you do.'' Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 16 Boston.com: Former envoy for North Korea defends nuclear program Boston Globe Sees declaration as effort to gain 'equal footing' By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times | March 6, 2005 BEIJING -- He arrived at the entrance to a restaurant and karaoke club owned by the North Korean government in the capital of China with a handshake and a request. ''Call me Mr. Anonymous," he said in English. This North Korean, an affable man in his late 50s who spent much of his career as a diplomat in Europe, is now tasked with helping his communist country attract foreign investment. With the United States and other countries protesting about everything from North Korea's nuclear weapons to its human rights record, it is a difficult challenge, he acknowledged. ''There's never been a positive article about North Korea, not one," he said. ''We're portrayed as monsters, inhuman, Dracula . . . with horns on our heads." Hoping to clear up misunderstandings, he expounded on the North Korean view of the world in two informal conversations. The North Korean described himself as a ''businessman" with ''close" ties to the government but said he did not want to be named because his views are personal, not official. But because North Koreans seldom talk to the US media, his comments provide rare insight into how things look from the other side. He said better relations with the United States are key to turning around his nation's economy, which has nearly ground to a halt over the past decade amid famine, the collapse of industry, and severe electricity shortages. ''For basic life, we can live without America, but we can live better with" it, he said. Still, he expressed strong enthusiasm over North Korea's recent announcement that it had developed nuclear weapons. The declaration was not intended as a threat, he said, but as a way to advance negotiations. ''Now that we are members of the nuclear club, we can start talking on an equal footing," he said. ''In the past, the US tried to whip us, as though they were saying, 'Little boy, don't play with dangerous things.' " A colleague, a 55-year-old visiting from North Korea, nodded. ''This was the right thing to do, to declare ourselves a nuclear power. The US had been talking not only about economic sanctions, but regime change," the businessman said. ''We can't just sit there waiting for them to do something. We have the right to protect ourselves." The North Koreans said they paid close attention to the language used by Bush administration officials with regard to their country. They were relieved that in the State of the Union address this year President Bush did not characterize North Korea as part of an ''axis of evil," as he did in 2002. But they were offended that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called North Korea an ''outpost of tyranny" during her confirmation hearings. He said Americans have a wrongheaded notion that North Koreans are unhappy with the system of government under leader Kim Jong Il. ''We Asians are traditional people," he said. ''We prefer to have a benevolent father leader." He also said US criticism of North Korea's record on human rights was unfair and hypocritical. The State Department in its annual human rights report characterized North Korea's record as ''extremely poor." It said that 150,000 to 200,000 people are in detention camps for political reasons and that there continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings and disappearances. ''Is there any country where there is a 100 percent guarantee of human rights? Certainly not the United States," he said. ''There is a question of what is a political prisoner. Maybe these people are not political prisoners, but social agitators." While Westerners tend to emphasize the rights of the individual, he said: ''We have chosen collective human rights as a nation. . . . We should have food, shelter, security, rather than chaos and vandalism. The question of our survival as a nation is dangling." The North Korean acknowledged that ''it is no secret that we have economic problems," and he said North Koreans were themselves in large part to blame because they let their industry become too dependent on the socialist bloc countries. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, trade fell sharply. But he faulted the United States for the collapse of a 1994 pact under which North Korea was supposed to receive energy assistance in return for freezing its nuclear program. The agreement fell apart after Washington accused North Korea in 2002 of cheating on the deal, and the United States and its allies suspended deliveries of fuel oil. ''Electricity is a real problem. We have only six hours a day," said the North Korean, who lives in an apartment in a choice neighborhood of Pyongyang, the capital. ''When you are watching a movie on TV, there might be a nice love scene and then suddenly the power is out. People blame the Americans. They blame Bush." The most important point the North Korean said he wanted to convey was that his nation is a place just like any other. ''There is love. There is hate. There is fighting. There is charity. . . . People marry. They divorce. They make children," he said. ''People are just trying to live a normal life." c Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company. ***************************************************************** 17 AFP: China stands up for North Korean concerns in nuclear talks Sunday March 6, 07:24 PM BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions were the only realistic way to resolve the "complex" issue and urged all parties to consider Pyongyang's concerns. "China pursues the objective of a nuclear-weapons-free, peaceful and stable Korean peninsula. At the same time we also believe the legitimate concerns of the DPRK (North Korea) should be addressed," Li told a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing National People's Congress. "The six-party talks present a realistic choice for the resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula through dialogue and should be continued." China has brokered three rounds of talks on the issue that include the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia, with North Korea refusing to continue discussions following the last round in June. Without naming names, he urged both North Korea and the United States to maintain flexibility and patience and work for the resumption of the talks. "We hope the relevant parties, particularly those major parties, can undertake their responsibility and demonstrate flexibility, sincerity and patience and work for an early reopening of the talks and further progress in the talks," Li said. North Korea last month announced that it possessed nuclear weapons which were needed to counter perceived aggression from the United States, which it fears is seeking violent regime change in North Korea. Li refused to comment on whether China actually believed that North Korea had such weapons, but insisted that the nation's Stalinist leader Kim Jong-Il remained committed to the goal of a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. "Concerning whether or not the DPRK has nuclear weapons, or the situation on this uranium program, I think you know more than I do, or to put it another way, I don't know anything more than you do," Li said. "But there is something that I should say and that is that North Korea's highest leader, when receiving a message from President Hu Jintao (said) the DPRK still adheres to the goal of a non-nuclear Korean peninsula and still hopes to continue to participate in the six-party talks." During the talks, the five parties have sought to put an end to Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions by offering security guarantees -- including a formal peace treaty to end the 1950-1953 Korean War -- and food and energy aid. China Saturday appeared to launch a low-intensity drive to get the United States to talk directly to North Korea, with officials urging Washington to hold the talks within the six-party framework. "To restart negotiations and make progress, I hope Washington agrees to hold bilateral talks with Pyongyang," Yang Xiyu, director of the Office for the Korean Peninsula Issue under the Chinese foreign ministry, told the China Daily. One-on-one meetings between US and North Korean delegates would be relatively easy to bring about, and have in fact taken place before within the six-party format, observers said. However, the United States has ruled out bilateral negotiations for the foreseeable future, and even North Korea has indicated recently it is less than keen. Last month, North Korea said there was "no justification" for undertaking "bilateral one-to-one talks on the nuclear issue with the United States." Copyright © 2005 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 18 asahi.com: Clinton: Mutual trust key in settling North Korea, Iraq, China issues The Asahi Shimbun Visiting former U.S. President Bill Clinton shared his views Feb. 26 on issues ranging from the Middle East peace process; the North Korean nuclear crisis; tension over the Taiwan Strait; and trilateral relations between Japan, China and the United States. Clinton talked with Asahi Shimbun foreign affairs columnist Yoichi Funabashi, and fielded questions from university students. The forum was sponsored by The Asahi Shimbun, which published the Japanese edition of Clinton's autobiography ``My Life.'' About 1,000 people attended the event at the Hotel Okura in Tokyo's Minato Ward. Following are excerpts from the forum: ON NORTH KOREA Showing a better lifestyle could spur regime change Funabashi: In your book, you mention that you had to decide whether to go to North Korea, and you didn't. If you had visited, do you think things would have worked out differently? Do you think it is possible to have diplomatic dealings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il? Clinton: I think the short answer is, I'm not sure, I don't know. I believe if I had gone to North Korea we could have gotten an agreement to end the production of long-range missiles. But let me remind you all of exactly what happened and what precipitated the current crisis. In 1994, North Korea had those spent fuel rods, highly valuable for producing fissile material for nuclear weapons. So we agreed in 1994 with the North Koreans that they would secure the spent fuel rods, they would not build the second nuclear reactor at 200 megawatts. They could have been building 10 or 12 nuclear weapons a year, if we hadn't done that in 1994. What we did not know is that in 1998, North Korea began a separate and secret small program using highly enriched uranium in a laboratory to try to to make a nuclear weapon. It was much, much smaller than the program we ended in 1994, but it still violated at least the spirit of our agreement. It could have given them enough fuel at most to make two weapons a year probably more like one, but it shattered the confidence of the Bush administration and a lot of other people. I think that the six-party talks are good. I think the North Koreans should come back. I think the Americans should talk frankly with them in the context of the six-party talks, and make it clear that we will be a part of helping them, as Japan has been very generous in doing, in providing food and energy. So we have to make a deal here, and I expect it to work out this year. But the real problem is North Korea feels that its only leverage to gain attention and force people to do anything is to threaten to do what it does well, build bombs and missiles. That goes back to your final question, can we trust them? We don't have to trust them if we have inspection provisions that are strong enough. We just need to draw up an inspection provision that's strong enough so that, if they cheat, we'll find out, then we don't have to worry about trust. Funabashi: According to North Korea, the United States did not honor the Agreed Framework. Clinton: You know it's just not true that we weren't making a good faith effort to implement the framework agreement. The North Koreans knew perfectly well that I had worked with the Japanese primarily and the South Koreans to try to get the food and energy they needed. So all they did by pulling this stunt with this laboratory testing was to give aid and comfort to their adversaries in America. I think they did it, because they thought they needed a little extra leverage to get a better deal in the end. But they made a bad mistake because they made us all mad in America. Funabashi: Around 1994 to 1995, some senior officials in your administration started suggesting that the North Korean regime would not last very long. What were your thoughts about the North Korean regime's sustainability? Clinton: I was much more skeptical about regime change in North Korea than some people were in my government and some people are on President Bush's government. For one reason, you can't replace somebody with nobody. And ironically, you know the absence of civil society, the absence of political opposition, the absence of any known sources of strength and capacity to govern make it harder to change. And I felt that the best way to get change and to build up centers of opposition over the long run was to open up North Korea. I think that the best way to hasten regime change is to expose the people of North Korea to a different, better lifestyle. So I think we should engage if we can. But they've got to put the nuclear program down. They have to stop producing and selling long-range missiles. ON MIDDLE EAST Mideast shifts show need for multilateral diplomacy Funabashi: What is needed for the stability and democratization of Iraq? To what extent can Iraq achieve these targets? Clinton: There was an attempt in the Sunni area to intimidate voters, and yet 58 percent of the people in the country went to the polls and voted. So in that sense, it was clearly a success. I think that the most important thing now is to set up a functioning representative government without cutting the Sunnis out. Then we need help from all willing countries to train security forces so that this new government can provide an atmosphere of order and safety. It's quite possible that the experiment will work, if they can be genuinely representative, and if they can provide for the security of their people. Funabashi: What is your assessment of al-Qaida? Clinton: As to the capacity of al-Qaida throughout the world, we were successful, when I was president, in taking down more than 20 of their cells and stopping several attacks they had planned in various parts of the world. Since Sept. 11, more than 20 more cells have been taken down. A lot of the money networks have been disrupted. And to some extent, al-Qaida is acting more like a management consultant for terror. That is, while their operational capacity has been rather dramatically eroded in many places, they still have lots of contacts. They still have lots of money. They still have expertise. They still have some operatives. So I would say they're still the most dangerous independent terrorist network in the world. But their operational capacity is much less than it once was. Funabashi: Why couldn't former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat come to an agreement on Middle East peace? Can President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon make any progress in achieving peace? Clinton: I think that insofar as Mr. Arafat got any message at all from the Arab nations, he was encouraged to sign the agreement. I think in the end he decided he was terrified that anybody would accuse him of compromise. Well, you can't have an agreement without a compromise. He would have gotten about 97, 98 percent of what he wanted. The Palestinians would have had a state, and thousands and thousands of people would be alive in the Middle East today. Arafat was not a coward. He survived a lot of assassination attempts. But he lacked the emotional courage to look people who called him a traitor in the eye and tell them they were wrong. It requires a different kind of courage. And sometimes it requires more courage to stand up to words than to stand up to bullets and bombs. Abbas has basically said the conflict is over, terrorism is illegitimate, and he wants to work with the Israelis on peace. Sharon has dissolved his own government and took in Labor Party leader Shimon Peres so there would be a coalition sufficient to withdraw from Gaza. But let me remind you all that withdrawing from Gaza is just the beginning. They need some investment. They need something positive to do while the diplomacy is working its will. Also, they should tell everybody right now what the final agreement is and then phase in the implementation of it. That way you can hold people to the deal because they know what it's going to look like at the end. Funabashi: How should the United States deal with the rising tide of anti-Americanism? Clinton: I think that by sending Condoleezza Rice to the State Department, President Bush was saying that diplomacy would be more important than force in his second term. Or at least, he hopes it will be. And the world should not see America solely through the Iraq policy, even if you disagree with it. Because on balance, we're not an imperialist country and we mean the world well. My policy was that we should cooperate with other people whenever we can, and act alone only when we're forced to. In Bush's first term, there was a little of the reverse. We should act alone when we can, and cooperate if we have to. But I think you will see in this second term more diplomacy. Funabashi: Abdul Qadeer Khan was involved in black-market sales that aided the nuclear programs of Libya, North Korea and Iran. Some say this black market has the risk of undermining the nonproliferation treaty regime. Clinton: Well, first of all, I think that the identification and the exposure of the Khan network has been the most important achievement of the intelligence community by far since President Bush has been in office. The existence of the Khan network, it seems to me, emphasizes two points that may be in conflict of one another. One is the importance of a nonproliferation regime to restrain the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. And the second is the difficulty of doing it. We're not going to plug every hole, we're not going to succeed at every effort. But we can drastically minimize the problem by first identifying, securing and, wherever possible, destroying all supplies of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and nuclear materials that we can. ON CHINA AND JAPAN Competing on military terms is counterproductive to ties Funabashi: In your second term as president, you said there should be a strategic partnership between China and the United States. Do you think even to this day that China should have been seen as a counterpart for a strategic partnership? Clinton: Well, first of all it is true that we used the term strategic partnership, although it wasn't solely a military term. We developed that phrase partly to answer the fears of the Chinese that America was trying to contain them rather than cooperate with them in the 21st century. And we developed that phrase to show that we could build a future together. I still believe it is in our interest. China is also a little nervous about America and Japan, because of our recent security declaration in which Japan mentioned Taiwan for the first time and joined with America in mentioning it. Although, all we really did was reaffirm our joint policy which is that we think there ought to be a peaceful resolution to this. But the Chinese saw it in the context of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's criticism of their military build-up, and the president's (Bush's) attempt to dissuade the Europeans from selling weapons to China. So we've got kind of a messy situation here. Japan and the United States would be better off if our competition with the Chinese were in the economic, athletic, cultural and scientific fields, and not military. So we should work for a strategic partnership which embeds China more deeply in international institutions of cooperation, both regional and global, and give them every incentive to act responsibly. So, we should work and hope for the best, but we have no choice but to remain prepared for whatever might happen. Funabashi: You once said China's introduction to the Internet may help its democratization. Is it happening? Clinton: Well I think some Chinese leaders thought that it would facilitate the speed of democracy, too, which is why they tried to control part of the Internet and access to some Web sites. I think the political system per se is still not democratic, not close. There is a lot more personal liberty in China than ever before. Funabashi: Now, Japan-China relations are in a very difficult state. How do you see Japan in these relations and how will they affect U.S. interests in the long term and the future of Asia. Some of those so-called Neo-Cons in the United States say that a deteriorating situation between Japan and China would be even better for the United States. Clinton: I don't agree with that. The Neo-Cons are part of what I would call the clan mentality in America. They desperately need an enemy and they are only happy when they have an enemy. Saddam Hussein is gone and they need a new enemy. You should fight your enemies when they present themselves as such; you shouldn't define them as enemies in advance because then you create the very crisis that you claim you're only responding to. Now having said that, I think it is for the foreseeable future likely that the United States will always be closer to Japan because we are both democracies. But unlike the Neo-Cons, I don't want to pick a fight with China. I want to find a way to change China to make them come to us. Funabashi: Looking back, how do you see your policy toward Taiwan? When we consider the future of Taiwan, what are the things we have to bear in mind? Clinton: The short answer to your question is that I think my policy succeeded and I will explain why: We have a ``One China'' policy but we want neither side to do anything to try to change the situation by force. I was afraid that would happen and that is why (in 1996) I sent those two aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Strait. But if you go back and look, you will also see that I didn't say anything. That is, I didn't have any big macho rhetoric, I didn't try to do anything to embarrass the Chinese. I was just trying to say, ``Let everyone calm down here and not have any killing, not have any violence, not have any problems.'' There are 10 million people on mainland China working for Taiwanese companies. There is massive bilateral trade, investment and communications. If no political action is taken by either side to change the current status quo, the people involved will resolve it, that is, we'll have one China. They'll be so tied together economically and socially and personally that no one would think of having any serious military conflict over it. Funabashi: With regard to this East Asia Summit and the movement for East Asian regionalism what are your views? Clinton: I feel the same way about East Asian regionalism as I did about the EU. So long as it's not going to be used to sort of shut us out economically or forget about our security interests and your need for our security partnership in this region, I think more regional cooperation is good. That's got to be in America's interest over the long-time run. I think sometimes this (resistance toward regional cooperation) is all psychological. We need to live in a world where we do not define our success by someone else's failure. Funabashi: Is it possible at all, from the U.S. perspective, to improve Japan-U.S. relations? Clinton: First of all I think that I was thrilled that President Bush and Mr. Koizumi got along so well. Whether you think we are right or wrong in Iraq, I just think, when the United States and Japan feel that they are close together, it increases both our security, our sense of security, and it makes us more willing to try to build a better world. But again I think that it is important that you say, ``OK, they're getting along and we feel good about each other, what are we going to do with our partnership?'' We should expect our president and the prime minister to maintain a strong security and economic partnership and then we should say: `Now what do we do to build a 21st century world?'(IHT/Asahi: March 5,2005) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun. All rights reserved. No reproduction ***************************************************************** 19 [toeslist] U.S. quietly building up nuclear arsenal of WMD Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 00:50:01 -0600 (CST) From FinalCall.com News - Refer This Page http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/printer_1838.shtml National News U.S. quietly building up nuclear arsenal of WMD By Katherine Stapp Updated Mar 3, 2005, 06:11 pm * US Arms Control Hypocrisy is the Real Threat to Security (CommonDreams.org, 02-24-23) NEW YORK (IPS/GIN) - Even as the United States leans on North Korea and Iran to renounce any nuclear objectives, peace activists say it has stepped up spending on its own arsenal, including investments in a new generation of longer lasting and sturdier "bunker buster" weapons. The "quiet effort" involves a relatively modest budget of $9 million for engineers at the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories-Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia. Its goal is to produce new warhead prototypes in the next decade. According to the Western States Legal Foundation, an anti-proliferation group, U.S. nuclear weapons spending has swelled by 84 percent since 1995, now amounting to $40 billion annually. This budget supports the maintenance of some 10,000 nuclear warheads-2,000 on hair-trigger alert. Some experts say the "Reliable Replacement Warhead Program," approved by Congress in November, marks a disturbing evolution of the former policy introduced under President Bill Clinton of "stockpile stewardship" in which the labs concentrated on maintaining the safety and reliability of the nation's existing nuclear arsenal. Although the United States is a member of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which outlaws new weapons tests, the pact permits computer-simulated testing and underground "sub-critical" nuclear tests. In the past 10 years, experts say the United States has carried out 21 sub-critical tests, 1,000 feet below the desert floor. "We have spent over three trillion dollars on our nuclear arsenal," Alice Slater, president of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment in New York, told IPS. "The waste of intellectual and economic treasure has been enormous and we see the bitter fruits these programs gave birth to: nuclear proliferation in India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran." In 1970, the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), promising to give up their nuclear weapons if other countries promised not to acquire them. The treaty will be reviewed this May at the United Nations, where the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and hundreds of others will repeat calls for immediate negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons stockpiles. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the catastrophic bombing of those two Japanese cities, in which an estimated 210,000 people were killed. Meanwhile, a new report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says that the United States still deploys about 480 nuclear weapons at its air force bases in Europe, nearly twice as many as was previously believed. The targets for these weapons are most likely in Russia, Iran and Syria, according to NRDC experts, even though Russia withdrew all of its tactical nuclear weapons from the former socialist states following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States also withdrew thousands of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, but left the 480 in place. France and Britain have 350 and 185 nuclear weapons, respectively, in Europe, but the United States is the only country that deploys this class of arms outside its own territory. The report discloses, for the first time, how many nuclear bombs the United States would provide to non-nuclear NATO allies in the event of war. It found that as many as 180 bombs would be delivered by Belgian, German, Italian, Dutch and Turkish aircraft. The group argues that this arrangement skirts international law because the NPT prohibits a nuclear state from transferring nuclear weapons to a non-weapon state, and prohibits a non-nuclear state from receiving such weapons. Documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, military publications, commercial satellite imagery, and other sources were used to compile the 100-page report, entitled "U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe." A U.S. Defense Department spokesperson told IPS that the weapons are maintained in accordance with NATO's Strategic Concept, which states that "nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO provide an essential political and military link between the European and North American members of the Alliance." However, the NRDC report notes that NATO keeps detailed nuclear strike plans against potential targets, namely Russia and Middle Eastern countries, most likely Iran and Syria. "It's counter-productive and undercuts non-proliferation efforts to maintain a nuclear arsenal overseas, especially against countries that themselves are proliferating weapons of mass destruction, i.e., Iran and Syria," said Hans Kristensen, the author of the report. "There's something very contradictory about going to these countries and saying 'you can't have nuclear weapons, but we need ours to use against you.'" C Copyright 2005 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com ***************************************************************** 20 US Allowed Pakistan to Spread Nuclear Technology Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 01:32:33 -0600 (CST) http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-khan27feb27,0,2403259.story A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout By Douglas Frantz The Los Angeles Times Sunday 27 February 2005 The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation. Washington - Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes provide an excellent starting point for anyone trying to develop an effective atomic warhead. "This involved the spread of very sensitive nuclear knowledge, and it is the most serious form of proliferation," one of the specialists said. Both described the designs on condition that their names be withheld because the plans are classified. The sale of the plans is particularly troubling to some investigators because the transaction occurred at least 18 months after U.S. and British intelligence agencies concluded that Khan was running an international nuclear smuggling ring and identified Libya as a suspected customer, according to U.S. officials and a British government assessment. Interviews with current and former government officials and intelligence agents and outside experts in Washington, Europe and the Middle East reveal a lengthy pattern of watching and waiting when it came to Khan and his illicit network. The trail dated back more than 20 years as Khan went from a secretive procurer of technology for Pakistan's atomic weapons program, which he headed, to history's biggest independent seller of nuclear weapons equipment and expertise. For most of those years, Khan's primary customers were Iran and North Korea. In 2002, President Bush said the countries were part of an "axis of evil," in part because of nuclear programs nourished by Khan and his network. Despite knowing at least the broad outlines of Khan's activities, American intelligence agencies regularly objected to shutting down his operations. And policymakers in Washington repeatedly prioritized other strategic goals over stopping him, according to current and former officials. Some officials said that even as the picture of the threat posed by Khan's operation got clearer and bigger in 2000 and 2001, the intelligence was too limited to act on. Other officials said the CIA and the National Security Agency, which eavesdropped on Khan's communications, were so addicted to gathering information and so worried about compromising their electronic sources that they rebuffed efforts to roll up the operation for years. "We could have stopped the Khan network, as we knew it, at any time," said Robert J. Einhorn, a top counter-proliferation official at the State Department from 1991 to August 2001. "The debate was, do you stop it now or do you watch it and understand it better so that you are in a stronger position to pull it up by the roots later? The case for waiting prevailed." Current and former Bush administration officials say the patience paid off. They say that in late 2003, combined U.S. and British intelligence on Khan finally yielded enough information to persuade Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi to relinquish his nuclear technology and turn over conclusive evidence used to shut down the Pakistani scientist, who by then had been removed as head of his nation's primary nuclear laboratory. "A.Q. Khan is a textbook case of government doing things right," John S. Wolf, then assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation, said when Kadafi gave up his nuclear equipment. Others say that the price of patience was too high, emphasizing that for years Khan fed the nuclear ambitions of countries that the U.S. says have ties to terrorism and pose major foreign policy problems. "I don't see what was gained by waiting," said George Perkovich, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "Iran got centrifuge equipment and knowledge at the very least, and possibly a weapons design. We don't even know what North Korea got." An American diplomat in Europe was more blunt, saying, "It's absolutely shocking that Khan spread nuclear knowledge while he was being watched." As a global inquiry into Khan's network enters its second year, investigators from several countries and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna are trying to answer two vital questions - how much damage did Khan do and how did he stay in business for so long? The challenge has been made tougher by Pakistan's refusal to allow outside investigators to question Khan, who is under house arrest in Islamabad, and because his network began systematically shredding papers and deleting e-mails in the summer of 2002, after realizing it was under surveillance. Investigators said the previously undisclosed destruction of records is making it harder to discover whether the network sold its deadly wares, including the warhead plans, to as yet unidentified countries or even extremist organizations. It also increases the chances that remnants of the ring will re-emerge. "Regrettably, they had a long time to destroy evidence," said a senior investigator who had interviewed members of the network. "They knew they were being watched." A detailed chronology of the long history of Khan and the spies who watched him, based on extensive interviews and hundreds of pages of public and confidential records, provides an unusual look at the inherent tension between gathering intelligence and taking action, which allowed the scientist and his network of engineers and middlemen to operate unchecked. Path to Deception Abdul Qadeer Khan, believed to have been born in India in 1935, moved with his family to Pakistan in 1952 in the aftermath of ethnic violence in India. He was a bright student whose studies took him to Europe, where he eventually received a doctorate in metallurgy. In May 1972, Khan started work for an engineering firm in Amsterdam that was a major subcontractor for Urenco, a British-Dutch-German consortium founded two years earlier to develop advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian power plants. Though he was supposed to work only with material labeled confidential, over the next 3 1/2 years Khan got access to top-secret dossiers on every aspect of the enrichment process, according to a lengthy report prepared last year by Dutch anti-nuclear activists. When he returned to Pakistan in December 1975 with his Dutch wife, Hendrina, and their two daughters, ostensibly for a holiday, he carried with him designs he had copied while working in the Netherlands, intelligence and law enforcement authorities said. His timing was excellent. Pakistan had fought wars in 1965 and 1971 with neighboring India and the two countries were locked in a race to develop nuclear weapons. Khan mailed his resignation letter to Amsterdam and quickly assumed a primary role in the Pakistani government's nuclear program, which would succeed in testing its first bombs in 1998 partly because of Khan's skills. Initially, he served under the nation's atomic energy commission, but he bristled at the constraints and won the right to work without official oversight. "He asked for and received autonomy and an unlimited budget," said Feroz Khan, a retired Pakistani brigadier general and nuclear expert who is not related to A.Q. Khan. "There was no accountability." Enriching natural uranium to weapons grade is a complicated process requiring huge arrays of slim cylinders called centrifuges and sophisticated machinery to regulate them as they spin at twice the speed of sound. Pakistan did not have the material to manufacture the delicately balanced centrifuges or much of the other equipment required, so Khan used his outsize budget to establish a clandestine procurement network. The first purchases were from companies associated with Urenco and were orchestrated through Pakistani embassies in Europe in 1976, creating what became known as the Pakistani pipeline. Alarm bells rang in 1978 after a British company sold Pakistan high-frequency electronic devices used in the enrichment process. The ensuing investigations pointed at Khan, according to media reports at the time. President Jimmy Carter cut off U.S. assistance to Pakistan in April 1979 when it was discovered that Khan had stolen plans from Urenco and was using them in Pakistan's nuclear effort. But the U.S. sanctions were short-lived. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year pushed counter-proliferation concerns to the back burner and lowered the heat on Khan and Pakistan for the next decade. During that period, Islamabad was the principal conduit for huge amounts of U.S. aid to anti-Soviet fighters in neighboring Afghanistan. The Dutch were unable to prove that Khan stole the designs, but in 1983 he was convicted in absentia of writing two letters seeking classified nuclear information. The conviction was overturned because he never received a proper summons. A former CIA agent who worked in the region said the Reagan administration had "incontrovertible" knowledge of Pakistan's progress toward the bomb and Khan's central role in procuring material, but chose not to act. The pattern and priorities had been established. Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations sent $600 million a year in military and economic assistance to Pakistan for its help on Afghanistan, according to a report last month by the Congressional Research Service. Not until the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan did the first President Bush reimpose sanctions on Pakistan, in 1990, for developing atomic weapons. But U.S. intelligence had not lost complete sight of Khan. The CIA was told in 1989 that the Pakistani scientist was providing centrifuge designs and parts to Iran, said two former U.S. officials who read the reports. Not for the first time, however, U.S. intelligence officials and policymakers underestimated Khan's talent for spreading nuclear know-how. "We knew he traveled a lot, but we thought it was probably related to imports rather than exports," said Einhorn, who read about the Iran link when he joined the State Department nonproliferation bureau in 1991. "We thought the Iran connection had fallen off during the 1990s and that Iran was mainly looking to Russia rather than Pakistan for its nuclear supplies." In fact, Khan started providing material to Iran in 1987 and continued as its primary nuclear supplier for at least a decade, recent reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency state. As demand for his wares grew, he turned for help to many of the companies and engineers supplying Pakistan. Tapping Old Contacts The network was a sort of old boys club from Urenco. It included Dutch, German and Swiss members, former Urenco subcontractors who had gotten rich helping Khan turn Pakistan into a nuclear power. But rivalries developed within the group as orders from Iran slowed in the mid-1990s, and Khan, even as he ran Pakistan's enrichment facilities, tried to expand his illicit sales to other countries, investigators said. "Some guys got along and some guys didn't," said an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A.Q. dealt with them individually. There were some group meetings, but there was never a meeting of all the major players at once." Khan developed a particularly close friendship with B.S.A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman who eventually turned his computer business in Dubai into the network's operational base. The two men traveled together frequently and twice made the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Khan visited at least a dozen countries in the Middle East and Africa in search of new customers for the network, but nuclear weapons proved a harder sell than he had imagined, investigators said. In 1997, he got a cold reception when he told an audience of scientists and military officers in Damascus that Syria should acquire its own nuclear weapons to counter Israel's arsenal, said a former Syrian official who attended the talk. But that same year he appeared to strike it rich. At a series of meetings in Istanbul, Turkey, and Casablanca, Morocco, he made a deal to sell Libya a complete bomb-making factory for approximately $100 million. This appears to have been the network's biggest transaction, and it led Khan to take a risk and expand beyond the original participants and his own safe base in Pakistan. The Libya deal was taking shape just as Khan reaped enormous benefits at home. On May 28, 1998, the desert of southwestern Pakistan rumbled deeply as five nuclear weapons were detonated. It was Pakistan's first nuclear test and it answered India's detonation of three bombs two weeks earlier. Already a powerful figure, Khan basked in nationwide adulation as he was dubbed the father of the Islamic bomb, a title that many experts say exaggerated his role. Still, he boasted in an interview with a Pakistani magazine about evading efforts to stop him and exploiting Western greed. "Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with the figures and numbers of instruments and materials," he said. "They begged us to purchase their goods." Even with his role in making nuclear weapons now in the open, Khan continued to quietly make deals with other nations. In late 1998, U.S. intelligence picked up evidence that he was trading enrichment technology to North Korea in return for missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads into India, a former senior U.S. official who read the reports said. The suspicions were added to a growing, highly classified chronology of Khan's actions kept at the State Department, said another former senior official. In January 1999, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott raised the North Korean deal at a lunch in Islamabad with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He asked Sharif to stop the illicit trade in nuclear technology and end the deals with Pyongyang, Talbott wrote in his 2004 book "Engaging India." A second U.S. official who attended the meeting corroborated the account. Though Talbott did not mention Khan by name, the second official said it was clear that Talbott was talking about Khan when he asked for a halt to the nuclear proliferation and the deals with North Korea, which intelligence data showed were being handled directly by Khan through his research laboratory in Pakistan. "It is true that Pakistan has important defense cooperation with North Korea, but it is for conventional military equipment," Sharif replied, according to the second official. "Nothing nuclear is taking place." Former Pakistani officials said the Americans never provided hard information that could have led to action against Khan, though critics argue that the scientist could not have conducted his business without at least a wink and a nod from Pakistan's military establishment. "They were very vague warnings and there was no real evidence or we would have acted," Feroz Khan, the former Pakistani brigadier general who is a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., said in a telephone interview. The situation for Abdul Qadeer Khan began to deteriorate after Sharif was ousted in a coup in October 1999 by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the head of the armed forces. Aides to Musharraf said he tried almost immediately to assert control over the country's nuclear establishment, including imposing the first audit requirements on Khan Research Laboratory, the government complex renamed after him that was his base of operations. Khan resisted and Musharraf ultimately forced him out as head of the lab, though he lavished praise on Khan at his retirement banquet, saying his team had "sweated, day and night, against all odds and obstacles, against international sanctions and sting operations, to create, literally out of nothing, with their bare hands, the pride of Pakistan's nuclear capability." The unprecedented restrictions at home coincided with increasing demand for centrifuges and other goods for Libya's bomb-making factory. Khan responded by finding new sources of equipment in South Africa and Malaysia. Pakistan was known in U.S. intelligence circles as a "hard target," which meant penetrating Khan's inner circle and his facilities there was extremely difficult. Pakistani authorities were aware of U.S. interest in their nuclear facilities and took steps to protect them and their scientists. The shift to other locations for production created a new vulnerability that was quickly exploited by the U.S., most likely by eavesdropping on phone calls and monitoring e-mail. "We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms," said George J. Tenet, the former director of the CIA, describing that period to an audience last year. A former U.S. intelligence officer said the CIA and National Security Agency were focused on the Khan network and collecting important pieces of the puzzle, but both agencies argued for caution out of a strong desire to protect sources and methods. "In the NSA's case, we could be talking about the potential compromise of a collection system costing millions of dollars or a specific, crucial source that would be evident if the information were acted on," the former officer said. The best public source of information for what intelligence agencies were learning at the time is a report issued in July by a British government commission. Two U.S. officials described the report as an accurate reflection of information shared between the CIA and its British equivalent, MI6. By April 2000, intelligence showed that Khan was supplying uranium enrichment equipment to at least one customer in the Middle East, thought to be Libya, the report says. Five months later, intelligence operatives learned that the network was mass producing centrifuge components for a major project. When the new Bush administration came into office in January 2001, the CIA briefed officials at the National Security Council on the dangers posed by Khan. The NSC officials recognized the threat as well as the need to get as much information as possible before acting, said two people involved in the talks. "The suspicion was that the intelligence guys were all about reporting and watching and they had to overcome that," said Richard Falkenrath, an NSC staff member at the time. "The other question was, 'What would we do about Khan, what would Pakistan tolerate?' " Throughout 2001, the CIA and MI6 tracked Khan's activities. A comprehensive assessment in March 2002 concluded that Khan's network had moved its base to Dubai and established production facilities in Malaysia. A few months later, new information led the agencies to conclude that Khan's network was central to a Libyan nuclear weapons program. By January 2003, the British were concerned that "Khan's activities had now reached the point where it would be dangerous to allow them to go on," the report says. Libyan officials later would tell the Americans and British that Khan had delivered the warhead plans to them in late 2001 or early 2002. Wolf, the former assistant secretary of State, said he was unsure whether the Americans or British knew about the plans until after the Libyans decided to give up their nuclear ambitions. Even as the danger mounted, there was a new constraint on action. The terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, had restored Pakistan as a vital ally, and U.S. officials were reluctant to take any step that might jeopardize the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Unraveling the Network The endgame for Khan began in March 2003. Seif Islam, Kadafi's elder son, approached an MI6 agent in London with an offer to talk about rumors that Libya possessed weapons of mass destruction, several officials briefed on the episode said. Intelligence agents from the CIA and MI6 held sporadic talks with the head of Libyan intelligence, Mousa Kusa, through the spring and summer. The U.S. and Britain wanted Libya to give up its chemical weaponry and nuclear technology, and Kadafi wanted assurances that in return economic sanctions hobbling its economy would be removed. In August, with the issue still unresolved, British intelligence got a tip about a shipment that would be leaving Khan's factory in Malaysia for Libya. U.S. spy satellites tracked the shipment, and the vessel was eventually diverted by U.S. and Italian authorities to an Italian port, where five crates of delicate centrifuge components were unloaded. U.S. officials involved in the episode said the interception finally persuaded the Libyan leader to give up his weapons programs, a decision Kadafi announced on Dec. 19, 2003. As part of the deal, teams from the U.S., Britain and the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Libya in January 2004 to dismantle the 500 tons of nuclear equipment that Khan's network had shipped there. The most sensitive material was loaded onto a U.S. military cargo plane that had been stripped of its identifying marks and flown nonstop to the national weapons laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Among the items on the plane was a sealed pouch containing the warhead designs, said people involved in the shipment. The two nuclear weapons specialists who examined the top-secret plans said the Libyans had handed them over in two plastic shopping bags. They said identifying marks had been removed but the designs were clearly for a warhead tested by China in 1966 and later provided to Pakistan. One bag contained about 100 production drawings for fabricating the warhead; the other held hundreds of pages of handwritten notes and unclassified documents from sources such as the U.S. Department of Energy. The notes, written in English by at least four people, were numbered sequentially and appeared to be the detailed records of a year-long seminar given long ago by Chinese experts to Pakistanis on how to build the warhead, the experts said. Even before Kadafi made his announcement, U.S. officials had confronted Musharraf with the Libyan evidence against Khan, leaving the Pakistani leader with little choice but to act. But Khan remained too popular - and Musharraf's grip on power too tenuous - for a public arrest. Instead, Khan was placed under house arrest and made a brief televised confession on Feb. 4, 2004, and he was pardoned immediately. Since then, Pakistan has kept Khan outside the reach of investigators, leaving many questions about the proliferation network unanswered. In one troubling discovery, investigators and customs officials in Europe say they recently found signs that elements of the network had resumed work. This time, the client again is Pakistan, which investigators suspect is trying to get material for a new generation of centrifuges. "With Pakistan today, it's hard to know how much they need, but already a couple of items have been stopped very recently, including a shipment of high-strength aluminum for centrifuges," an investigator said. In the meantime, Congress has approved and funded a request for a three-year, $3-billion package of economic and military assistance to Pakistan, which remains a key ally in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Go to Original Iran Was Offered Nuclear Parts By Dafna Linzer The Washington Post Sunday 27 February 2005 Iran says it was offered nuclear parts by associates of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. (Photo: The Washington Post) International investigators have uncovered evidence of a secret meeting 18 years ago between Iranian officials and associates of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan that resulted in a written offer to supply Tehran with the makings of a nuclear weapons program, foreign diplomats and U.S. officials familiar with the new findings said. The meeting, believed to have taken place in a dusty Dubai office in 1987, kick-started Tehran's nuclear efforts and Khan's black market. Iran, which was at war with Iraq then, bought centrifuge designs and a starter kit for uranium enrichment. But Tehran recently told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it turned down the chance to buy the more sensitive equipment required for building the core of a bomb. There is evidence, however, that Iran used the offer as a buyer's guide, acquiring some of the pricier items elsewhere, officials said. "The offer is the strongest indication to date that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, but it doesn't prove it completely," said one Western diplomat who is familiar with the details of the offer and would comment on the investigation only on the condition of anonymity. Much of the equipment that Iran obtained can be used for peaceful purposes and is scattered throughout Iran's energy program. Iran insists that its nuclear activities are aimed at producing nuclear energy, and IAEA inspectors have not found any weapons program underway now. The Bush administration charges that Iran is using the energy program as a cover for a secret effort to build nuclear weapons. Although the latest discoveries shed no light on Iran's current activities, diplomats believe they provide the most significant public information to date regarding Tehran's interest over the years in nuclear weapons technology and its possible intentions. The White House often focuses on those two areas when trying to explain why Iran should face greater international pressure. After prodding by the IAEA, Iran turned over a copy of the offer last month. Its contents, along with details of the Dubai meeting, were substantiated in interviews conducted by the agency in recent months, according to diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. The information comes as the IAEA's probe of Iran's nuclear program enters its third year. Tomorrow, the IAEA's 35-member board will meet in Vienna, as it does every three months, to discuss Iran's case and the agency's latest lines of inquiry. The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully at board meetings to persuade members to send Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to impose sanctions or an oil embargo. Some U.S. officials familiar with limited details of the new intelligence believe it could strengthen the case for U.N. referral. But the new information is unlikely to sway Britain, France and Germany from a negotiating path they began with Iran in November. European diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that although the new information reinforces suspicions, it is not enough to take the issue to the Security Council - a move that would likely end their process with Iran. Since November, Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, which could be used to make the key ingredient for a bomb, have been shut down and are under constant IAEA monitoring as part of Tehran's deal with the three European powers. Iranian officials have said the suspension will continue as long as there is progress in negotiations. For Europe, the deal is meant to avert a crisis over Iran's nuclear program by finding diplomatic, rather than military, options. President Bush indicated during a trip to Europe last week that he would be willing to consider ways to assist the diplomatic process, although some of his top aides have long expressed concern that such a move would only strengthen Iran's clerical government. Over the last two years, the IAEA has uncovered an 18-year-old nuclear program, which the Iranians began in secret and in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But because much of the equipment can be used for energy development and there is no evidence of past weapons work, the violations are technical and based on Iran's not reporting the program. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said recently that there is no new evidence to suggest Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program. But he gave no indication in an interview on Feb. 15 that the 1987 offer had been discovered weeks earlier and was being considered as a new development in the investigation. "There's not much happening on the nuclear file," he said then. But he made clear that the IAEA had learned much about Iran's programs over the years. "Iran tried to cover up many of their activities, and they learned the hard way." Aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said ElBaradei is expected to report to the board that Iran is honoring a suspension of its nuclear-related activities, as it committed to do in a deal it signed last year with European powers. But he also plans to chide the Islamic Republic for breaking the spirit of the accord. Since it was signed in November, Iran has carried out limited uranium-conversion work, quality control tests and maintenance on some equipment, and is constructing tunnels near a nuclear facility for storing materials in case of an attack. Beyond monitoring the suspension, the IAEA's investigation into the black market network that supplied Libya and Iran has led to several new lines of inquiry on Iran's program. Inspectors began pursuing the 1987 information in November. Several details have since come to light, but inspectors still lack a coherent picture. Diplomats believe the Dubai meeting was attended by as many as three Iranian officials, a Sri Lankan businessman named Mohamed Farouq who was friendly with Pakistan's Khan, and a German named Heinz Mebus, who was one of Khan's original suppliers. Mebus is deceased and Farouq's whereabouts are unknown. Khan's network of nuclear manufacturers and suppliers stretched across more than 30 countries and sold goods to Iran, Libya and North Korea. He was put out of business in 2003, mostly as a result of the Iran investigation and the exposure of Libya's now-dismantled weapons program. Farouq's nephew, B.S. Tahir, is in jail in Malaysia for his role in the network and its sales to Libya. Tahir was recently questioned by IAEA officials and by the CIA, U.S. and foreign diplomats involved in the Khan investigations said. Khan, who often sold his products through friends and intermediaries while he ran Pakistan's nuclear program, did not attend the meeting. He and several associates are under house arrest in Pakistan and are off-limits to U.S. and foreign interrogators. But the IAEA learned enough about the meeting to prod Iran again about the offer, and last month Iranian official produced a copy for inspectors. Two Western diplomats familiar with its contents described it as a five-point, phased plan in which the network offered to supply Iran with drawings for Pakistani centrifuges and then a starter kit of one or two centrifuges. Phase three included as many as 2,000 centrifuges, which could be used to enrich bomb-grade uranium. Auxiliary items for the centrifuges and enrichment process would have been delivered afterward, followed by reconversion and casting equipment for building the core of a bomb. Khan and his associates stood to gain millions from the sales, but the agency believes Iran outsmarted the dealers by buying much of the equipment and technology at lower prices from European, Russian and Chinese competitors during the early 1990s. The equipment was used for programs that could develop nuclear energy, and there is no evidence the materials were assembled in a manner consistent with bomb-building. "Iran had its own procurement network and bought a lot of stuff themselves," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, who has monitored the Iran and the Khan investigations. "But this offer would also show that even this early on, Pakistan was willing to go the extra mile to help Iran get the bomb. Maybe Iran didn't take the offer, maybe Pakistan wanted too much money, but what's new is that Iran got a guide, and if you have a guide it's a lot easier to do." Copyright 2005 by TruthOut.org ***************************************************************** 21 JS Online: Tilting at windmills Wind power growing in state By LEE BERGQUIST lbergquist@journalsentinel.com Posted: March 5, 2005 Brownsville - The Horicon Marsh was a respite for migrating birds long before Thomas Edison helped bring electric lights into American homes. Photo/Dale Guldan Wind turbines whirl at sunset along Highway 18, just west of the Town of Cobb. The Monfort Wind Farm is the largest wind power project in Wisconsin. The state is likely to see an explosion in wind energy, because of improvements in technology, a warmer political climate and rising raw energy costs. But the technology continues to have its critics. Quotable I can see 10,000 birds flying through a meat grinder. - Joe Breaden, president of Horicon Marsh System Advocates, a group opposed to the project If it's beneficial to have renewable energy, yes, there might be some impact. But on balance, is it worth it? We contend that it is. - Neil Palmer, Forward Wind Energy Center spokesman Proposed Wind Turbines Today the massive wetland and neighboring countryside are at the center of a controversy over plans to build one of the largest electric-generating wind farms east of the Mississippi River. Two green groups that normally see eye-to-eye are sharply divided over a proposal to string 133 wind turbines on nearby hilltops in Dodge and Fond du Lac counties - a landscape that offers some of the best sustained winds in the state. Are the windmills good or bad for the environment? Opponents, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, fear that the big twirling blades will turn untold numbers of birds into veritable fields of pate. Rising 389 feet, the closest turbines would stand two miles from the refuge, and well within the busy flight path of Horicon's feathered visitors. Thousands of bats that hibernate nearby also would be at risk, some say. Others raise concerns about aesthetics, noise and the potential impact on property values. Advocates of the 200-megawatt project see the Forward Wind Energy Center as a source of clean, renewable electricity in a state that depends almost entirely on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The turbines could meet the electric power needs of 100,000 homes. Further, few birds are killed by wind farms, said a consultant for the developer, Chicago-based Invenergy LLC, based on a review of scientific literature. His own study at the marsh concluded that the project would have little effect on the geese, ducks, sandhill cranes and other migratory birds that come to Horicon. The rancor surrounding the project underscores the inherent controversy of wind power. Despite the eco-friendly attributes, disputes have arisen at other wind farms. "One, they are fairly large projects," said wind power supporter Michael J. Vickerman, executive director of Madison-based RENEW Wisconsin. "And two, people instinctively are unsettled by change - and these turbines represent change." In Manitowoc County, Citizens Opposing Wind-turbine Sites is challenging a permit to Minnesota-based Navitas Energy Inc. granted in December to build 49 turbines in three townships. The fight is reminiscent of neighborhood revolts that led to the withdrawal of proposed wind projects in the Town of Addison in Washington County in 2002 and in Shawano County in 2003. Still, thanks to tax credits, new technology and government mandates, Wisconsin is poised for a bumper crop of wind projects. Developers have plans to increase the state's wind capacity to more than 20 times its current capacity of 53 megawatts. Seventeen other states are mandating larger renewable portfolios, as well. While many environmentalists extol the virtues of wind, many projects are buffeted by opposition. In New Jersey, Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey in December placed a 15-month moratorium on wind farm development as plans were under way to build hundreds of turbines along the state's coast. In Massachusetts, opponents say proposals to build windmills off the coast of Cape Cod would be unsightly. In Kansas, the Audubon Society is using the same argument in the Flint Hills, worrying that turbines are not aesthetically compatible with native tall grasses and could harm migrating prairie birds. And in California, environmentalists have sued the owners of thousands of windmills along Altamont Pass, east of San Francisco, for failing to take measures that would have saved thousands of golden eagles and other raptors that have been killed. The bird destruction at Altamont in California is blamed on old technology - the 20-year-old turbines are lower to the ground and in the path of raptors' aerial hunting grounds. Last week, wind companies said they would move or shutter some of the turbines. Key wind resources At the Horicon refuge, the hills that climb east are a mix of native grasses and farmland. And as they rise, they offer some of the best sustained winds in the state and postcard views of a major U.S. wetland. The terrain is known as the Niagara Escarpment, which was formed by erosion millions of years ago and runs from eastern Wisconsin to Niagara Falls, N.Y. The wind farm would be built in strategically positioned rows across 32,000 acres of the escarpment in Dodge and Fond du Lac counties. "There are few areas in Wisconsin where there are adequate air resources," said Neil Palmer, a spokesman for the Forward Wind Energy Center. "You've got to stay on the escarpment. We aren't just arbitrarily putting turbines there." But opponents worry about the effect that so many windmills would have on the huge number of birds and bats that visit the marsh and surrounding countryside each year. More than 1 million Canada geese alone fly into the marsh annually - 200,000 or more geese during peak periods in the fall. During the summer, many of the geese live above the tree line on Hudson Bay in Canada. Then, as they have for thousands of years, they use the Horicon in the fall as a landing strip and food depot before heading as far south as Tennessee or Arkansas. Sometimes they stay for days, other times for weeks, blackening parts of the sky with their comings and goings, drawing birdwatchers and hunters alike. It's during their hiatus at the 14-mile long marsh that opponents fear the turbines will kill birds, especially at night or during periods of fog. "I can see 10,000 birds flying through a meat grinder," said Joe Breaden, a Mayville High School ecology teacher and president of Horicon Marsh System Advocates, a group opposed to the project. Breaden said his group supports wind power. "We're against the placement of them," he said. "You don't put them next to something like the Horicon Marsh." One local supporter of the wind farms is Myron Ehrhardt, who has signed an agreement that will place a turbine 300 yards from his home. Ehrhardt, 70, considers himself an environmentalist. In 1982, he and his wife moved out of the family's Victorian farmhouse and built an earth-covered home next door. The clean power from wind is a big attraction - and so is the $4,200 annual payment for each turbine on a landowner's property, he said. But he thinks a threat to birds is unlikely. "My gut feeling is that I have lived all of my life in nature, and sometimes we don't give animals enough credit," he said. "They can navigate pretty damn good." The decision on whether to build the wind farm will be made by the state Public Service Commission in Madison in July. Both local opponents and the Fish and Wildlife Service said they want more study on the effects of wind turbines before they go up. A big concern: low-flying birds that biologists think could fly directly into the path of the 28 turbines closest to the refuge. "The service is concerned that these birds in particular, including large numbers of geese and cranes, are in danger of collisions with turbines in the proposed westernmost rows," said Charles M. Wooley, acting regional director with the agency, in a Feb. 8 letter to the PSC. Agency biologists raised questions about a study from the wind farm's consultant, which it says played down the potential of blades killing birds - something that developers reject. Wooley said his agency was troubled that much of the consultant's work was not done during peak periods of waterfowl migration and did not adequately account for other species. But Palmer said consultant Paul Kerlinger, of Cape May Point, N.J., studied geese, ducks, songbirds and raptors long enough during the migration cycle - 12 days last spring and 33 days last fall - to conclude there would be little harm. In addition to birds, the Fish and Wildlife Service is worried about potential harm to bats. The proposed wind farm would be 10 miles from the shuttered Neda mine - the largest hibernaculum in Wisconsin and one of the largest homes to hibernating bats in the Midwest. Another proposed wind farm, Butler Ridge, which would sell 54 megawatts to We Energies of Milwaukee, is two miles from the former iron ore mine. The Fish and Wildlife Service said it is concerned that bats are more susceptible to turbines than most birds. In its letter to the PSC, officials worried that the two wind farms could kill thousands of bats annually. "It's an 'all-your-eggs-in-one-basket situation,' " said David Redell, a bat ecologist at the state Department of Natural Resources, adding that disturbances such as vandalism, a flood in the mine or mortality from turbines could affect ecosystems far away. Redell has spent considerable time around the Neda mine. Between 2000 and 2002, he used infrared light beams, a video camera and mathematical models to calculate the population. He estimates that about 140,000 bats are hibernating there. In the spring, he found that bats leave the mine in dribs and drabs, and they immediately fly as far as hundreds of miles away. In the fall, the returning bats fly in and out of the mine - passing through the proposed wind farms - and feed on insects at night before eventually hunkering down for the winter. Biologists are closely watching the Mountaineer Wind Energy Center, a ridge-top wind farm in West Virginia, where 2,092 bats were killed in 2003 and thousands more in 2004. "With proper siting, bats and turbines can co-exist," Redell said. "We're still on the fast track of learning here. This is really a recent issue. And it's gotten real big, real fast, and both sides are trying to figure this out." Criticism of the wind farm is overblown, said spokesman Palmer. Less is known about the effect of wind turbines on bats, but studies to date show that mortality in most cases is not significant, he said. What's lost in the debate, he said, is that renewable energy means less pollution, which would otherwise harm humans, fish and game. Mercury from power plants falls on water and converts to its more toxic form. Palmer emphasized that in the worst scenarios, the number of waterfowl killed would pale in comparison with the number of geese that hunters shoot in the marsh annually. DNR figures show that hunters killed an estimated 19,500 Canada geese in Dodge and Fond du Lac counties in 2003. According to Forward's consultant, Horicon geese will fly above the sweep of the rotors and sandhill cranes will fly below them. "There's no significant biological impact" from the project, Palmer said. "That's really our bottom line. If it's beneficial to have renewable energy, yes, there might be some impact. But on balance, is it worth it? We contend that it is." Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report. From the March 6, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. Journal Sentinel Inc. is a subsidiary of ***************************************************************** 22 WorldNetDaily: On Jackie-baby's babbling SATURDAY MARCH 5 2005 [Supercritical Thoughts] [Gordon Prather] © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Addressing the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week, Jackie Sanders, the U.S. representative, warned the panel that it "cannot ignore forever its statutory obligation to report this matter to the United Nations Security Council." What matter? Well, it seems that IAEA Deputy Director General Pierre Goldschmidt had just provided the Board an update on the comprehensive report made last November verifying Iran's compliance with a) its Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Safeguards agreement, b) its voluntary adherence to an Additional Protocol, and c) its voluntary suspension – as a confidence-building measure –of enrichment-related and reprocessing-related activities. Goldschmidt began by noting that "Iran has facilitated in a timely manner Agency access to nuclear material and facilities under its Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol." He also reported that the IAEA "has continued its activities to verify all elements of Iran´s voluntary suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities." So far, so good. But, in an effort to be "completely transparent" about its current and past nuclear programs, Iran has voluntarily provided the IAEA all sorts of information about its past activities. In particular: During a meeting on 12 January 2005 in Tehran, Iran showed the Agency a handwritten one-page document reflecting an offer said to have been made to Iran in 1987 by a foreign intermediary. While it is not entirely clear from the document precisely what the offer entailed, Iran has stated that it related to centrifuge technology acquisition. This document suggests that the offer included the delivery of: a disassembled sample machine (including drawings, descriptions and specifications for production); drawings, specifications and calculations for a "complete plant"; and materials for 2000 centrifuge machines. The document also reflects an offer to provide auxiliary vacuum and electric drive equipment and uranium re-conversion and casting capabilities. Iran stated that only some of these items had been delivered, and that all of those items had been declared to the IAEA. This information is still being assessed. The Agency has requested that all documentation relevant to the offer be made available for the Agency's review." Now, some of you may recall that, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, the IAEA had discovered a one-page memo, dated Oct. 6, 1990, summarizing a meeting between members of the Mukhabarat – the Iraqi intelligence service – and an intermediary who said he represented the Khan network. Metallurgist A.Q. Khan had worked for a subsidiary of Urenco, the European uranium-enrichment consortium. Khan had stolen Urenco designs for a first-generation gas-centrifuge and Urenco supplier lists, returned to Pakistan and established an international procurement network for creating in the early 1980s the Pakistani gas-centrifuge uranium-enrichment program. Now, in 1990, the Khan network was apparently offering – for a price – to help "Iraq establish a project to enrich uranium and manufacture a nuclear weapon." So, now the Bush-Cheney administration and the National Council of Resistance of Iran – the political arm of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq , a U.S. and European designated "terrorist group" – are charging that the offer made three years earlier to provide Iran with uranium metal "casting capabilities" amounted to an offer by the Khan network to help Iran manufacture a nuclear weapon. Now, bear in mind that after almost two years of go-almost-anywhere, see-almost-anything inspections, the IAEA has found no evidence whatsoever that Iran has – or ever had – a nuclear weapons program. Nevertheless, Jackie-baby warned the Board that it "cannot ignore forever its statutory obligation to report this matter to the United Nations Security Council." What obligation? Here is what the IAEA statue has to say [non-compliance being defined elsewhere in the statue as the use of NPT-proscribed materials and facilities "in such a way as to further any military purpose"]: The inspectors shall report any non-compliance to the Director General who shall thereupon transmit the report to the Board of Governors. The Board shall call upon the recipient State or States to remedy forthwith any non-compliance which it finds to have occurred. The Board shall report the non-compliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations. Wow! It's a good thing for Iran that the IAEA inspectors have not found any instances of Iranian "non-compliance." Because, if it had, "in the event of failure of the recipient State or States to take fully corrective action within a reasonable time," the IAEA Board may "suspend any non-complying member from the exercise of the privileges and rights of membership." Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. --> news@worldnetdaily.com--> Contact WND ***************************************************************** 23 Daily Times: Generals used Khan for Pakistan’s nukes, says US report Monday, March 07, 2005 WASHINGTON: A disarmament group has claimed that Pakistan used the Khan network for 25 years to “obtain technology, components, and materials for its own nuclear weapons.” The Arms Control Association (ACA), a Washington-based group formed in 1971 to promote arms control, in an article by Leonard Weiss in its March newsletter to members states that though Dr Khan’s activities had been tracked by US intelligence for “more than two decades, little attempt had been made to roll up the network he created. Rather than focusing on this profound long-term strategic danger to national security, the United States had chosen to pursue short-term, tactical foreign policy gains with Pakistan.” But according to a briefing given to Pakistani journalists on February 1, 2004, by Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, commander of Pakistan’s Strategic Planning and Development Cell, Dr Khan signed a 12-page confession in which he admitted to providing Iran, Libya, and North Korea with technical assistance and components for making high-speed centrifuges used to produce enriched uranium. In addition, according to three of the 20 Pakistani journalists who attended the briefing, Khan was defending himself by saying that he was pressured to sell nuclear technologies by two (now deceased) individuals associated with Bhutto, that nuclear assistance to Iran was approved by then army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, and that the deal with North Korea was reportedly supported by two former army chiefs, one of whom now Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. Describing it as a “misguided policy approach”, the writer charges that the Bush administration has chosen to subordinate nonproliferation goals, including fully breaking apart the Khan network, to the short-term goal of building a relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Nor has Bush proposed a long-term strategy to prevent a similar network from taking birth in the future. Tracing the history of US-Pakistan relations, Weiss notes that the US turned a blind eye during the Afghan war to Pakistan’s nuclear programme that allowed Dr Khan to “obtain all the technology, materials, and equipment needed to build nuclear weapons.” He writes that the National Security Agency (NSA) was “routinely intercepting faxes and telexes from high-tech firms in Germany and Switzerland looking for a Pakistani nuclear connection and they were aware of assistance coming from firms in Turkey. Indeed, dozens of démarches were issued to the Turkish government during the late 1970s and 1980s protesting ongoing shipments of electrical components - many of them made in the United States - to Pakistan. Turkey claimed that its export laws were insufficient to allow the government to interfere with such trade. After some time, Turkey passed a stronger export control law, but its enforcement was feeble. Additionally, the US government refused to acknowledge the Turkish role officially because doing so would have required the cutoff of military assistance to an important NATO ally.” According to Weiss, the Reagan and Bush administrations “did all they could to keep Congress in the dark about the details of the Pakistani programme.” Richard Kerr, a senior CIA official, has said that Pakistan had the bomb by 1987, something that Benazir Bhutto confirmed in an interview to the Voice of America this week. When she visited the United States in 1989, she was told that the determination of “no possession” made that year would be the last one. “Yet, there is little evidence that any of Khan’s suppliers were shut down at the time. Khan realized that he could use the network he had created, now also including Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure, to enable other countries with nuclear ambitions to obtain critical components and materials for their own weapon programmes, with Pakistan (and Khan) reaping large rewards in the process.” Iranian nuclear scientists began to receive training in Pakistan beginning in 1988. Assistance was also provided to Iran’s centrifugue programme in 1989. The Khan laboratory began publishing brochures, distributed at arms fairs, advertising equipment for sale that was useful in the construction and operation of centrifuges, including vacuum devices to enable rotors to spin in relatively frictionless chambers. “The Khan laboratory was not the only one, however, touting sales and delivery of equipment useful for nuclear-enrichment purposes. In 1999, following its nuclear-weapon tests the previous year, the Pakistani government put out its own advertisement of procedures for the export of nuclear equipment and components. The ad also listed equipment for sale, including ‘gas centrifuges and magnet baffles for the separation of uranium isotopes.’ ” Weiss states that the ads had the desired effect and other countries began viewing Pakistan as a source for building nuclear weapons. Khan was contacted and began selling off surplus centrifuges and components. Shipments were sometimes made using official government cargo planes to middlemen in other countries, who were used to disguise the origin of the cargo. Khan later arranged for parts to be ordered through his middlemen and to be delivered directly from his network sources. The spectrum of supplies that could be provided by the network included older and advanced centrifuges, bomb design (based on the original Chinese design given to Pakistan in 1983), electronic components, and advanced materials. The network also provided logistical and technical assistance. The sales, claims the article, were not only producing funds for support of Dr Khan’s laboratory; they were also helping Pakistan in its development of missile capability, a programme that was run out of the Khan laboratory as well. For years, North Korea had been selling missiles to Pakistan. Pakistan had been paying cash for the missiles but ran into a foreign currency reserves crunch around 1996. At that point, it is believed, the North Koreans agreed to a barter transaction involving the provision of centrifuges in exchange for missiles. Iran is believed to have been the first customer of Pakistan/Khan nuclear sales. khalid hasan Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 24 Japan Times: U.S. retained first-strike option to keep Japan under nuke umbrella Sunday, March 6, 2005 WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The U.S. government dropped a plan in 1994 to abandon its option of pre-emptive nuclear strikes due to concern over weakening its nuclear umbrella for Japan amid North Korea's threats and fears of undermining the security alliance with Tokyo, according to former administration officials. Had the administration of President Bill Clinton declared the no first-use policy, it could have paved the way for member states of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to create a pact on "negative security assurances" committing nuclear powers not to use nuclear weapons against countries without nuclear weapons. Ironically, however, Japan became a drag on the U.S. attempt, underscoring the inconsistency of its long-standing policy of seeking global nuclear elimination as the only nation that experienced atomic bombings while relying on the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Despite Japan's three avowed principles of not producing, possessing or allowing nuclear weapons on its soil, the country's leaders effectively allowed visits of U.S. vessels equipped with nuclear warheads. In January 1965, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato told U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson in a summit at the White House, "Japan has no nuclear (arms). We have no choice but to rely on the security pact (with the U.S.)." Then Sato said Japan "needs (a U.S.) guarantee for protection," seeking to come under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, according to the records of the meeting by the U.S. side. The proposed pact remains the most contentious issue for the 35-year-old NPT regime, which is bound for an international review conference from May. The Clinton administration considered strengthening the negative security assurance policy Washington declared in 1978, according to Steve Fetter, who took part in the first post-Cold War review of the U.S. nuclear policy then as special assistant to the assistant defense secretary for international security policy. The discussions involved such options as adopting a policy of not using nuclear weapons pre-emptively and maintaining the policy of not using nuclear weapons against nonnuclear countries that are not allies to nuclear powers. But the proposed no first-use policy was not adopted because it might weaken the deterrence provided to Japan and South Korea that could be attacked by North Korea or other nations, and would not lead the North, Iraq and other countries to change their activities and stop them from developing the bomb. "If the United States pledged no first use, the North might believe that it could more easily attack the South and maybe Japan, or that they could attack airfields in Japan, maybe with chemical weapons to prevent the use of those airfields," Fetter said. "That was a major element of debate." Fetter also said, "Key nonnuclear allies such as Germany and Japan will be upset because they will view it as weakening of U.S. commitment to their defense, and we don't want to send that signal." Janne Nolan, a professor at the University of Pittsburg who was also indirectly involved, said, "It was implicit in the argument that the whole nuclear umbrella would be eroded if we were to be moved away." The Japan Times: March 6, 2005 ***************************************************************** 25 Bellona: Norway continues to allocate millions for environmental projects in North-West Russia Murmansk region will receive 31 million Norwegian crowns (about $5m) for solving environmental problems in Andreyeva bay and securing radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs. 2005-03-04 19:41 On February 15, the governor of Murmansk region Yury Yevdokimov and the governor of Finnmark county Gunnar Kjřnnřy met in Kirkenes and agreed on the list of projects to start in 2005. According to the agreement, six projects will start in Andreyeva bay this year. Finnmark county allocated for them 11 million Norwegian crowns (about $1.7m), which will be spent of the reconstruction of the maritime terminal for future spent nuclear fuel loading as well as power lines, water supply system, sewage, fire station etc. The rest of the sum 20 million Norwegian crowns (about $3.3m) will be spent for the RTG’s project, which stipulates securing 31 RTGs, most of which are used as power sources for lighthouses and navigation beacons, and changing them for the solar panels, Norwegian state channel NRK reported. Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 26 Daily Times: EDITORIAL: Ms Bhutto and the nuclear issue Monday, March 07, 2005 The chairperson of Pakistan People’s Party, Benazir Bhutto, is in Washington. While there, in an interview to the Voice of America, she is reported to have said that Pakistan had acquired the capability to produce a nuclear device by 1988 although it did not assemble a device until ten years later in May 1998 when the government of former premier Nawaz Sharif decided to test nuclear bombs in response to India’s nuclear tests earlier in the month. In the same interview she also referred to Dr AQ Khan and stressed the need for Pakistan’s own investigations into the proliferation network. Of her own role, she accepted the fact that as prime minister in her second term (1993-96) she was interested in longer-range missiles to match India’s capability but dismissed any suggestion that her government might have offered nuclear technology to North Korea as quid pro quo. Ms Bhutto has been prime minister of Pakistan twice and remains in the run despite her current difficulties. Indeed, she is in Washington because she wants to catch the Bush administration’s attention for a passage back home. She is also the head of Pakistan’s largest political party. On both counts, her statements are significant. However, precisely for these reasons, she needs to show circumspection when she travels to foreign lands and chooses to talk to the press on certain national security issues. In the past few years, as tension between General Pervez Musharraf and herself grew, we witnessed a rather cavalier attitude on her part regarding certain such issues. For a start, her previous standard line — especially in the wake of the so-called 1990 crisis — was that she was ignorant of the extent and scope of Pakistan’s nuclear programme during her first tenure. This is what she told the Americans as well as the Indians. She also claimed, after her government was dismissed in 1990, that she had no idea that the then foreign minister Sahibzada Yaqub Khan had held out a nuclear threat to India. Most people believed that statement because Mr Khan was perceived to have been imposed on Ms Bhutto by the establishment. But what she is saying now, though well-known from other sources, does not exactly jibe with her previous statements on the issue. As for whether Pakistan had the bomb by the late eighties, the first significant signal came in January 1987 from Dr AQ Khan who claimed, in the wake of India’s Operation Brass Tacks, that Pakistan had the nuclear capability and if threatened with extinction would not hesitate to use it. While the crisis had largely defused by the time Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar could get the interview for publication, the signalling indicated that Pakistan had crossed the threshold. Of course, expectedly, the contents of the interview were also duly denied by Dr Khan as well as Pakistan because having the bomb in the basement dictated its own limits on signalling. Also, Pakistan was getting aid from the US and could have been sanctioned under the Pressler Amendment for having crossed the red line. Ms Bhutto’s other assertion about the need to get longer-range missiles is also ill-timed. The denial that Pakistan did not get into a reciprocal arrangement with North Korea over transfer of nuclear technology makes it worse. The argument that most of this is now known does not wash because press reports remain just that — reports. What comes from the players is a world apart from the reports themselves. Ms Bhutto, as we have noted, remains a major player in Pakistani politics and could one day become the prime minister again despite General Musharraf. Since she remains in the contest, she needs to be careful about what she says, when and where. Her assertion that Pakistan had the capability in 1988 but chose not to assemble a device until the tests is clearly meant to curry favour with the US administration. This bodes ill because it shows that a politician, who has also been the chief executive, is prepared to talk loose on issues that she should not unduly be dilated upon. There is absolutely no need for her to hold forth on Pakistan’s missile requirements or when and how Pakistan crossed the line. The same holds true for her emphasis that Pakistan should investigate the Khan network. Pakistan continues its investigations and Dr Khan is confined to his house precisely as a result of these investigations. As for expanding the scope of investigations, Pakistan is hardly in a position to investigate what the nationals of many countries have done. Indeed, it is worth restating that Pakistan is the only country that has taken action against its nationals. The nuclear issue is a sensitive one and Ms Bhutto knows this very well. General Pervez Musharraf’s government has tried unnecessarily to push her to the sidelines of the political contest. It was, and remains, a poor policy. Ms Bhutto can legitimately hit back. But her riposte must not damage Pakistan itself. That is the least we expect from someone who wants to re-emerge as the country’s chief executive. * Home | Editorial EDITORIAL: Ms Bhutto and the nuclear issue VIEW: Malaysians are forgetting shared past with Indonesia —Farish A Noor VIEW: On the death of Peter Benenson —Jonathan Power DEVELOPING PAKISTAN: Missing link between warfare and development? —Miguel Loureiro VIEW: A city dying on its feet —Navid Shahzad VIEW: Proliferation again —Shaukat Qadir VIEW: UN has only itself to blame for crisis —Miranda Husain LETTERS: ZAHOOR'S CARTOON: Daily Times - All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 27 AFP: Hitler had an atomic bomb - Sunday March 6, 03:59 PM BERLIN (AFP) - Nazi Germany built a nuclear reactor and atomic weapons before the end of World War II, contrary to popular belief, a Berlin historian says in a book to be released later this month. In his book "Hitler's bomb", Rainer Karlsch says a reactor was functioning by the winter of 1944/45 and that nuclear weapons were being tested on a Baltic Sea island and Thuringia, central Germany, under the supervision of the SS. "The Third Reich was extremely close to winning the race to build the first working nuclear weapon," publisher Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA) said in a statement on Sunday. However, the weapon was not well-developed enough to be dropped by air. Karlsch, whose book will be released here on March 14, maintains that he found "the first German nuclear reactor in working order" near Berlin and discovered documents on a project for a plutonium-based bomb dating from 1941. According to DVA, his work is based on careful examination of building plans, aerial photographs, soil analyses, diaries of researchers linked to the project and reports by US and Russian spies. Despite sabotage by the Allies and funding difficulties, Nazi Germany did succeed in producing "dirty bombs" which killed "several hundred" prisoners during tests in Thuringia. They were nowhere near as devastating as the atomic bombs dropped by US aircraft on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated total of more than 200,000 people by the end of 1945. Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP ***************************************************************** 28 Mos News: Russia Refutes Reports of U.S. Inspections at Nuclear Sites - NEWS - MOSNEWS.COM Created: 05.03.2005 13:58 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:59 MSK Russia’s Defense Ministry on Saturday officially refuted a report circulated by Russian media that U.S. inspectors will be allowed to enter Russian nuclear sites, the RIA-Novosti news agency reports. The ministry’s Information and Public Relations department issued the statement in which it dismissed all the allegations as completely groundless. The head of Russia’s General Staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, recently said that “small nuclear weapons could soon fall out of control of the nuclear powers and become accessible in the world”. Some analysts have alleged that such a statement could mean that U.S. inspections of Russian nuclear sites could receive a broader status. “Such a statement allegedly made by the head of the General Staff does not correspond to what he really said on March 1,” the ministry’s statement reads. Write us: info@mosnews.com Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM Designed by kB "Gazeta.Ru" ***************************************************************** 29 DailyItem: Nuclear power plant sets record www.dailyitem.com March 5, 2005 BERWICK — Unit 2 at PPL Corporation’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant has produced power for 677 consecutive days — a full run between the last time the plant replenished its fuel in 2003 and today’s start of the unit’s biennial refueling and inspection outage. Operators of the Luzerne County, Pa., plant safely shut down Unit 2 on Feb. 26, marking the first time in the unit’s 20-year history for continuous operation between refueling outages. "This record puts Susquehanna among the best in the industry for reliability," said Lou Ramos, community relations manager for PPL Susquehanna. "Our ability to produce power with this type of reliability is the result of our focus on safety and equipment. This is evident by the generation records we’ve set in four of the past five years and now this continuous run record on Unit 2." The record breaks Unit 2’s previous record of 526 consecutive days set in 2002. The Unit 1 record of 426 days set in 1995 reflects the only other time in Susquehanna’s history that a unit operated continuously between refueling outages. "To produce more power safely and reliably, Susquehanna employees dedicated themselves to developing processes to reduce the frequency of unplanned shutdowns, increase the time between planned outages and reduce outage duration," Ramos said. Since its last refueling and inspection outage two years ago, Unit 2 has generated about 18.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough to power nearly 2 million homes in Northeastern Pennsylvania. "While providing a reliable source of electricity is extremely important, we will always set safety as a higher priority than achieving a record," Ramos said. During this year’s planned refueling outage, employees will replenish about 40 percent of Unit 2’s uranium fuel, which will allow it to operate continuously for 24 months before another refueling. Employees also will conduct more than 2,000 inspections and perform routine maintenance on key equipment to ensure the safe, reliable operation of the plant. In addition, crews will upgrade the unit’s two moisture separators, which remove moisture from steam passing through the turbines. The more efficient separators will increase the plant’s generating capacity. "We identify and plan outage work throughout the year so we are well- prepared to safely complete more than 8,000 activities in a controlled manner. Hundreds of Susquehanna employees and outside contractors ensure all critical equipment is in good working condition before we start the unit back up," Ramos said. The outage is the 12th on Unit 2 since it began producing power in 1985. Susquehanna performed a similar refueling and inspection outage on Unit 1 last spring; it was the unit’s 13th such outage since it began producing power in 1983. PPL Susquehanna LLC schedules these outages for the spring because the demand for electricity is lower then, compared to other times of the year. The dual-unit Susquehanna plant, located about seven miles north of Berwick, Pa., is owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. and is operated by PPL Susquehanna. Copyright © 2003 The Daily Item Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 30 News-Leader.com: CU panel not ruling out nuclear energy | Springfield, Mo. | Published Saturday, March 5, 2005 Power-supply task force will consider a range of options as Springfield looks for more electricity. By Wes Johnson News-Leader staff --> Nuclear power could become an option as a growing Springfield searches for more electricity. The co-chair of the newly empaneled Power Supply Community Task Force says that nuclear is an option that ought to be considered. Carol Williamson said the 17-member group will look at a range of options before making a recommendation to Springfield City Utilities in mid-July. Williamson and co-chair Jack Stack sent all the members a list of energy topics they intend to cover, including coal, solar, wind, conservation and renewables such as biomass and methane. Buying electricity from the nation's power grid and partnering with another utility to obtain more power aren't on the list. However, Williamson said the task force likely will discuss those options for which specific discussion dates have been set, as well as nuclear energy. "I think we should look at nuclear," Williamson said. "We should be open to all possibilities out there." Missouri has one nuclear power plant at Fulton that produces 13 percent of the state's electricity. The last nuclear power plant to come online in the United States is at Watts Bar, Tenn. It began generating electricity in June 1996, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Nationwide, there are 103 nuclear reactors producing electricity in 31 states. The CU board of directors asked Mayor Tom Carlson and Greene County Presiding Commissioner Dave Coonrod to appoint the energy task force. In announcing the task force members, Coonrod and Carlson said the group's charge is to "study power-supply issues and recommend a solution, and potential alternatives, that provide reliable, cost-effective and environmentally sensitive electricity that will be supported by the community." Fifteen people representing a variety of community interests were initially appointed. Coonrod and Carlson later added two more members — CoxHealth chief operating officer Norb Bagley and Rita Needham, executive director of the Southwest Area Manufacturers Association. CoxHealth is one of the major electricity users in Springfield. Bagley said he's approaching the task force with an open mind. "Nuclear power? I can't answer that yet," Bagley said. "I don't know if it's on the table to be discussed or not. I assume members of the task force will have some questions about it." Bagley said the task force's mission is an important one for Springfield. "Absolutely," he said. "This is driven by population growth and development. If we're going to continue to grow and prosper, we'll need to deal with this issue." Needham was rejected twice as a task force appointee but pressed her case to become a member so smaller manufacturers will have a voice on the power-supply issue. Along with renewable energy sources, she said she hoped the task force would consider partnerships with other utilities or buying power from elsewhere as an alternative to building a new coal-fired power plant. "At least we're going to have a dialogue on this," Needham said. the News-Leader ***************************************************************** 31 Turkish Daily News: Iran's arguments for nuclear power make some sense tdn.com.tr Sunday, March 6, 2005 IRAN In the absence of a 'smoking gun,' Washington often says the fact Iran is the No. 2 producer in OPEC and sits on the second biggest natural gas reserves in the world is enough to make its atomic ambitions suspicious PAUL HUGHES TEHRAN - Reuters Iran's argument that despite vast oil and gas reserves it needs nuclear power to meet booming energy demand holds more water than U.S. officials give credit. But Tehran, which denies U.S. accusations that it is secretly seeking nuclear arms, is on shakier ground with its insistence on producing its own fuel for atomic reactors through uranium enrichment -- a costly endeavor, both economically and politically, for the Islamic state. In the absence of a "smoking gun," Washington often says the fact Iran is the No. 2 producer in OPEC and sits on the second biggest natural gas reserves in the world is enough to make its atomic ambitions suspicious. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of Britain's Parliament said last March that based on a study it commissioned: "It is clear ... that the arguments as to whether Iran has a genuine requirement for domestically produced nuclear electricity are not all, or even predominantly, on one side." Some U.S. arguments against Iran "were not supported by an analysis of the facts" the committee added, noting that much of the natural gas flared off by Iran -- which U.S. officials say could be harnessed instead of nuclear power -- was not recoverable for energy use. Iranian officials are quick to point out that before the 1979 Islamic revolution, which brought clerics to power, the United States firmly supported its ally the Shah's plans to build up to 23 atomic reactors by 1994. "At that time we were the second biggest oil producer in the world. Now we are the fifth and our population has almost tripled," Ali Akbar Salehi, an adviser to Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and an expert on nuclear affairs, told Reuters. Heavy energy consumer: Nearly 40 percent of Iran's 4 million barrels a day oil output is consumed locally. Iran imports hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of gasoline a year to meet demand. "It's true we're an energy-rich country, but we are a heavy consumer as well," said Salehi. Precious oil export revenues, on which the state-dominated economy is highly dependent, would be wasted on electricity production, Iran says. Natural gas is more valuable as feedstock for petrochemical plants, it adds. "Despite being very rich in energy (resources), nuclear energy makes perfect sense," agreed Pavel Baev, an analyst at the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute. With a youthful population of nearly 70 million and a fast-growing economy, energy consumption is rising by around 7 percent annually. Iran estimates that it may need capacity to generate some 90 GW by 2020, from about 31 GW at present. About three quarters of current electricity needs come from gas-fired power stations, and the rest from hydroelectricity or oil. Iran is experimenting with wind power and geothermal energy but says it wants to produce at least 7 GW from nuclear power by 2020. The first 1,000 MW reactor, being built with Russian help in the southern port of Bushehr, will come onstream next year. Nuclear energy is cleaner than fossil fuels and its higher cost of production does not take into account the opportunity cost lost from the more profitable uses for hydrocarbons and likely future penalties for burning fossil fuels, Iran says. "Iran wants to ... change its energy portfolio in favor of clean and renewable sources, as recommended by the Kyoto protocol," Mohammad Hossein Adeli, Iran's ambassador to the UK, wrote in the Financial Times last month. Iran is not the only resource-rich country to diversify its energy needs away from hydrocarbons. Fellow OPEC member Venezuela meets more than 70 percent of its electricity demand from hydroelectric power. Russia, a major oil exporter with huge gas reserves, is a leading nuclear energy power. Enrichment not viable: But Moscow, which hopes to play a major role in Iran's nuclear energy expansion plans, says Iran's attempt to develop a full atomic fuel cycle, including uranium enrichment -- the most sensitive aspect of its nuclear program -- is not economically viable. "There is technically proven data, which shows the creation of a full cycle for a country with less than eight to 10 reactors worth 1,000 megawatts each, is not feasible and in fact ruinous," Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, said on Monday. "We keep telling this to the Iranians." Iran has paid a high political cost for refusing to scrap uranium enrichment, which can be used to make bomb-grade, as well as reactor, fuel. It risks being hauled before the U.N. Security Council and could even face military attack unless it can reach agreement on its atomic plans in talks with the European Union. But Tehran says it has learned from past experience that it cannot be dependent on others. "We need to spend $10 to $12 billion to build the seven nuclear power plants," said Salehi. "Imagine after building them they say we cannot supply your nuclear fuel, what should we do? We cannot challenge the world to give us the fuel, so we have to have security of supply." © 2004 Dogan Daily News Inc. | Rights and Permissions turkishdailynews.com.tr: Contact Us | About ***************************************************************** 32 mcall.com: Smoke seen at PPL's Susquehanna nuclear plant [The Morning Call Online] 'Unusual event' declared. No fire found and no one is hurt. By Sam Kennedy Of The Morning Call Smoke at PPL Corp.'s Susquehanna nuclear power plant led to a low-level emergency declaration on Friday afternoon. Crews detected smoke in a construction area at one of the Luzerne County facility's two nuclear units. The unit was out of service for refueling. As a result, an ''unusual event'' was declared for about 55 minutes. An unusual event is the lowest of the four emergency classifications established by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for nuclear power plants. ''Our plant fire brigade responded and no fire was found. The smoke has stopped,'' said Joe Scopelliti, spokesman for the Susquehanna plant. ''There were no injuries. We are investigating the cause. No action by the general public was required.'' Unit 2 had been shut down since Feb. 26 for a refueling and inspection outage. The smoke was detected at 2:57 p.m. in a construction area near a moisture separator, which is used to ''dry'' the steam heading for the turbines. Unit 1 continued to operate at full power, PPL said. The Susquehanna plant, about seven miles north of Berwick, is owned jointly by PPL Susquehanna LLC and Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. and is operated by PPL Susquehanna. With headquarters in Allentown, PPL controls about 12,000 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets and delivers electricity to customers in Pennsylvania, the United Kingdom and Latin America. 610-820-6517 © 2005 THE MORNING CALL Inc. ***************************************************************** 33 Japan Times: Make public love nuke power: report Saturday, March 5, 2005 Restoring public confidence in nuclear power plants is still key to achieving success with atomic energy policy in light of Japan's recent accidents and coverups in the industry, a government report said Friday. The Atomic Energy Commission, headed by University of Tokyo professor Shunsuke Kondo, spelled out the objective for a third time in the 2004 White Paper on Nuclear Energy, which was presented to the Cabinet in the morning. The report cites several accidents, including the deadly pipe rupture at a Kansai Electric Power Co. plant in Fukui Prefecture last August and the defect coverups by Tokyo Electric Power Co. that came to light in August 2002. The white paper also covered a coolant leak at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, that was revealed in February 2002, as well as the sodium leak accident at the fast-breeder reactor Monju, in Fukui Prefecture, in December 1995. The report says said the state must fully explain the dangers inherent in nuclear projects -- including those involving fuel reprocessing plants, storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel, and the nuclear fuel cycle based on the pluthermal process -- to residents who live nearby. It also emphasizes the importance of communication between the central and municipal governments. It also discussed ways to promote nuclear power in a market economy despite the high costs. Friday's white paper is the third in a row that lists restoring confidence as a key theme. In the 2003 white paper, which was published after a five-year hiatus, the commission highlighted the need to restore public confidence in the wake of Japan's first fatal nuclear accident -- in which workers disregarded safe operating procedures and triggered a nuclear chain-reaction at a uranium processing plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, in September 1999. The Japan Times: March 5, 2005 ***************************************************************** 34 PittsburghLIVE.com: Will nuclear energy's appeal be realized? - FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, March 6, 2005 Could it be that a great reconciliation will take place in the next 10 years? Not in foreign affairs but in the economy. The "Greens" -- the environmentalist, global warming people -- will come to terms with nuclear power. They've practically got to. Because America's appetite for electricity will grow another 20 percent. And there's no way "renewable" wind or solar power can keep coal from gobbling up all the coming market. Only the atom feasibly can do it, without emitting "greenhouse gases." And without making America more subject to oil and gas imports, and threats of embargo, from the Middle East. You may not lose sleep over global warming, but have you caught energy's usage growth of late? It's close to 100 percent in the past couple of decades, according to researchers Peter Huber and Mark P. Mills. Our industrial and transportation processes keep replacing "thermal energy" with electric. Lasers, telecommunications, the swarm of electronics under the hood of a car all need that spark. Information technology accounts for a full 60 percent of capital spending to keep U.S. industry and workers competitive. Hence the strong case that Huber and Mills make for "Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power," in the winter issue of City Journal, published by Manhattan Institute. True, the atom remains an orderbook embarrassment. The Three Mile Island accident near Harrisburg -- 26 years ago this month -- put a stop to all new U.S. A-plant plans. Some punishment! The "disaster" let loose not a bit of radiation. But environmentalists were spooked anyway. Nevertheless, our existing 100-odd nuclear plants actually gained from 11 percent to 20 percent in market share of national electricity. In alarm, plant operators began sharing expertise. A typical reactor works 11 months a year now, up from seven. The technical (not political) problems of nuclear waste storage are solved. As are issues of plant protection against terrorism and meltdown. But meanwhile, electricity's market growth increased coal usage by 400 million tons a year. Huber and Mills say the Greens have got to ponder if more coal-burning is what they want. That's the real question, because wind and solar look like no more than a 1 or 2 percent solution. And here come the gasoline-electric "hybrid" cars! A big new market approved by Greens. "You can shift roughly 25 percent of a typical driver's fuel-hungriest miles (in stop-go city driving) to the electric grid," write Huber and Mills. "Urban drivers could go long stretches without going near a gas station." Their conclusion? Economic, environmental and geopolitical signs all point the same way. "Promote electrification on the demand side and nuclear fuel on the supply side." And they didn't even mention that nuclear power is a strength of the Pittsburgh area, a legacy of Westinghouse. Could the long wait be ending? Retired business editor Jack Markowitz writes Sundays and Thursdays. E-mail him at . Images and text copyright © 2005 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 35 UK The Times: 'Reckless' nuclear plant dumps waste on beaches March 06, 2005 Kenny Farquharson and Mark Macaskill SAFETY breaches at one of Britains biggest nuclear research stations resulted in hundreds of thousands of radioactive particles escaping into the environment, a former safety officer has revealed. Highly radioactive waste was pumped into the sea and evidence of the pollution was covered up by managers who had a reckless disregard for public health, according to Herbie Lyall, a health physics surveyor at the Dounreay plant in Caithness for 30 years. They come as the plants owner, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, is facing a possible criminal prosecution over a series of radioactive leaks. More than 50 radioactive particles have been recovered from a public beach two miles west of the plant. The latest find was on Friday when a stone contaminated with caesium-137 was recovered from another beach 20 miles from Dounreay. The authority has admitted that at least several hundreds of thousands of plutonium and uranium particles, each the size of a grain of sand, have been released from Dounreay. A report by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, to be published next month, is expected to reveal leukaemia clusters around Dounreay. The committee studied leukaemia cases within a 15-mile radius of nuclear power plants and military bases since the mid-1980s. Lyall, who worked at Dounreay from 1960 to 1989, has spoken publicly for the first time about his years there despite facing possible prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. In a dossier passed to The Sunday Times, Lyall claims: oHigh-level radioactive waste was washed down drains intended for low-level waste. This liquid went into effluent pits which were then flushed into the open sea, sometimes on an incoming tide. oRadioactive materials were handled without appropriate protection. Two workers who were contaminated later died of cancer in their forties. oEffluent samples were collected for analysis using a wellington boot on a piece of string because sampling machinery was a heap of rust. + One of the first discoveries of radioactive material on the public beach next to the plant was covered up. + Radioactive containers left in dumps were not marked properly, leading to confusion over what they contained. + A dumping pit used for years for high-level waste disposal was redesignated to be used as a temporary store for less hazardous material. Lyall had intended that his account should come to light only after his death. However, continuing concerns about the health risks from contamination around the nuclear plant have persuaded him to speak out. There have been so many lies told to con the public about Dounreay that I feel I must put the record straight, said Lyall. This contamination is a legacy being left for my childrens children. It is an absolute disaster. They are talking about prosecuting these people. They deserve execution, not prosecution. This was peoples lives they were playing with. They were acting like nuclear cowboys. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, is demanding a ministerial inquiry. These allegations raise grave and far-reaching questions about the management of the Dounreay plant over the past 30 years, he said. They deserve the fullest possible investigation by ministers and an end to the culture of complacency and cover-up that seems to surround the plant. If this has been going on at Dounreay, what has been happening at other nuclear establishments in the UK? Lyall said he was a member of a survey team that found a highly radioactive particle on Sandside beach in 1984, a find that should have led to immediate public warnings about the safety of the beach. The atomic energy authority has denied any knowledge of the find. Lyall accuses it of a cover-up and of risking the health of families and tourists who visited the beach for 13 more years until new concerns were raised. He claims that he regularly complained to management and through trade union officials about safety breaches, but action was rarely taken. On one occasion, when he refused to carry out a dangerous procedure that went against rules laid down by the government, he was charged with refusing to obey an order, he said. The two men who died of cancer had removed a faulty probe from a reprocessor without adequate protection, Lyall said. These two gentlemen were not only my colleagues but personal friends, he said. I cant say if the dose they got from this probe contributed to their deaths, but I have my own thoughts. This example is only the tip of the iceberg. Some management decisions left Lyall astonished. A pit used for years as a dump for radioactive waste was turned into a temporary storage area for non- hazardous materials, which carried an inevitable risk of becoming contaminated, he said. He witnessed the routine disposal of radioactive liquid waste down drains intended for low-level waste. Managers would simply send it for disposal minus its paperwork. One instance in 1988 involved the disposal of 40 litres of highly radioactive glycol oil. A spokesman for the authority yesterday conceded that safety standards at Dounreay were less stringent in the past than now. Sandy McWhirter, Dounreay project manager, admitted that some past practices could be considered reckless if not culpable today. McWhirter described Lyalls criticisms as one mans perception of what was adequate in the way of safety. He may not have been in a position to fully understand it. Lyall, he said, was a very enthusiastic fellow who had seen various things and, in many cases, had misinterpreted them. In other cases I have no way of checking what he says. Copyright The Times - timesonline.co.uk ***************************************************************** 36 The Herald: Contaminated stone found on beach 15 miles from nuclear plant Web Issue 2215 March 04 2005 DAVID ROSS, Highland Correspondent March 04 2005 INVESTIGATIONS are under way into the source of a small stone contaminated with radioactivity which has been found on a public beach almost 15 miles from the Dounreay nuclear plant, the furthest from the complex such contamination has been found. Radioactive particles have been appearing on the Dounreay foreshore in the seabed and on Sandside beach, two miles west of the plant, for the past 20 years. However, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), Dounreay's operator, which had been told by the regulatory authorities to extend monitoring to Dunnet Beach for the first time, found a small stone contaminated with Caesium 137 in seaweed on the beach. Colin Punler, UKAEA communications director, said last night: "The stone is emitting low levels of radioactivity and was found to have caesium on it. We don't yet know whether it is simply a stone with a radioactive particle on it. "The item was picked up and taken to Dounreay, where it is undergoing laboratory analysis to establish its nature and origin." Highland Council owns approximately 328 acres of land adjoining Dunnet Beach. A spokesman said: "We are awaiting the results of the detailed examination of the small item of contaminated material found on the beach. "Once these are known, we will assess health and environmental advice and take the appropriate action. "The safety of the public is paramount. As a minimum response, the council intends to erect signs advising the public of the find, and allowing visitors to make their own choice regarding using the beach." NHS Highland said last night it would be monitoring the situation closely. Copyright © Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights ***************************************************************** 37 [DU-WATCH] 1,503 SOLDIERS KILLED IN IRAQ- IN PICTURES: BUSH'S Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 00:45:28 -0600 (CST) 1503 DEAD IN IRAQ 158 DEAD IN AFGHANISTAN See: http://icasualties.org/oif/ http://icasualties.org/oef/ http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf See also http://cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw.htm Eyeballing the Iraq Kill and Maim Zone http://cryptome2.org/ikz-eyeball.htm The editors of Coalition For Free Thought In Media hope that this very powerful pictorial can serve as a tribute to all the fallen and wounded soldiers. There have been little or no pictures of funerals and the dead and wounded soldiers appearing in the US media. This is the awful reality of the war we are fighting, that the US government has attempted to black out and hide from the public. The Bush administration has officially ordered the US media not to carry pictures of the coffins or the dead soldiers. Pictures like this must be seen by the public, so that the real horrors and tragedy is never forgotten. We at C.F.T.M. feel it is our duty to do this. Over 50% of people recently polled in the US could not say how many soldiers had died in Iraq (within 500). It is because our views of the coffins returning and the funerals are being deliberately blockjed and hindered. Since March 2003, a newly-enforced military regulation has forbidden taking or distributing images of caskets or body tubes containing the remains of soldiers who died overseas. FOR MORE INFO ON THE COFFIN BAN SEE: Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A55816-2003Oct20¬Found=true JAY SHAFT, EDITOR, C.F.T.M. Photo Tribute Compiled by Jay Shaft and the Editors of C.F.T.M. IF THESE PICTURES DO NOT TRANSMIT INTACT, THE ORIGINAL POST CAN BE FOUND AT http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/message/30261 When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. Dwight D. Eisenhower U.S. Troops Deaths in Iraq Top 1,500 AP 3/3/05 BAGHDAD, Iraq - The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq has topped 1,500, an Associated Press count showed Thursday after the military announced the deaths of three Americans, while car bombs targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least four people in separate attacks. "I think war is a dangerous place." George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 7, 2003 "Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean," Mr Bush said. "'Bring 'em on' is the classic example, when I was really trying to rally the troops and make it clear to them that I fully understood, you know, what a great job they were doing." 1/14/05 http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1391044,00.html "If you're reading this, then I've died for our country. I just hope it wasn't for nothing." US Army Spc. David P. Mahlenbrock, 20. Killed by a roadside bomb in Kirkuk on 12/03/04 Most Americans Don't Know How Many Have Died in Iraq War By THOMAS HARGROVE and GUIDO H. STEMPEL III Feb 12, 2005, 06:44 http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_6200.shtml No cameras for US war dead's return http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3239659.stm Ever since the Vietnam war, it has been assumed - in the United States and abroad - that American public opinion cannot stomach high casualties. US concern over war dead photos http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3652171.stm The Pentagon says the ban on showing coffins is to protect soldiers' families AP Deputy Under Secretary of Defence John Molino said Pentagon lawyers were looking into whether banning the further release of such photographs would fall foul of the Freedom of Information Act. "The attorneys now are looking to see if the policy and the law are in conflict, or if the policy and the law are not in conflict and there was just some misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the situation that allowed that release," he told reporters. "We need to stop hiding the deaths of our young" Dead US soldier's mother In March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains. A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances. The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities. --------------------------------- --------------------------------- WOW! W. MUST REALLY BE PROUD TO HAVE SUCH A "LOW" DEATH TOLL FROM TWO DIFFERENT WAR ZONES AT ONCE! SEE HIM SMILE??? IS THAT NOT A SELF-SATISFIED SMIRK??? \ THIS IS BUSH'S REWARD!!!!! THIS IS WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE PRICE COSTS!!!!! WE CANNOT AFFORD TO LET ANOTHER SOLDIER DIE FOR THIS MADNESS! WE CANNOT LET ANOTHER CIVILIAN OR INNOCENT VICTIM DIE BECAUSE OF THIS WAR! OUR SOLDIERS MUST NOT BE USED FOR SUCH A FRIVOLOUS CAUSE! HOW MANY MORE GEORGE? HOW MANY MORE? HOW ABOUT GOING OVER WITH LAURA AND THE KIDDIES AND LETTING THE REST OF THE SOLDIERS COME HOME WITH THEIR LIVES AND LIMBS INTACT? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED???? DO THIS LOOK LIKE IT WAS ACCOMPLISHED? IS KILLING MORE TROOPS ACCOMPLISHING ANYTHING? Halliburton Co., under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, would receive an extra $1.5 billion as part of the Bush administration's additional war spending proposal for fiscal 2005, a senior U.S. Army budget official said on February 25, 2005. Halliburton, once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, is the largest corporate contractor in Iraq and has drawn fire for its no-bid contracts there. Halliburton's Houston is shown in this May 9, 2003 file photo. Photo by Richard Carson/Reuters HOW MANY MORE CHILDREN ARE YOU GOING TO LEAVE WITHOUT PARENTS GEORGE? WHEN WILL THIS STOP? HOW MANY MORE CHILDREN HAVE TO MOURN? Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005, to discuss military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. A big concern was further funding for continued military prescence in both countries.(AP Photo) Senators Grill Military Leaders on Budget Tactics 2/11/05 AP WASHINGTON The chiefs of the military services faced sharp questioning on Capitol Hill on Thursday for submitting a $419-billion Pentagon budget that senators described as artificially low, with regular military costs left for an upcoming emergency spending bill. Costs for 30,000 extra Army soldiers, 3,000 additional Marines and military equipment should be included in the regular 2006 Defense spending measure not the $80-billion emergency war bill the Bush administration will seek next week, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said. Faced with tough questioning that seemed aimed more at Rumsfeld and the White House than at the service chiefs, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker told senators that the Pentagon avoided other cuts by putting some of the spending in the war bill instead of the regular budget. "If we were to pull that inside of our core budget, inside the '06 budget, we would have to displace other things that are too important to us," Schoomaker said. (2/11/05 AP) U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker Thursday's session put the uniformed chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines in the uncomfortable position of defending a spending plan that ultimately was decided by Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, with advice from the commanders. (2/11/05 ASSOCIATED PRESS) This soldier did not have to die. Rumsfeld dismissed that criticism in a Pentagon briefing this week. Asked if he was hiding military funding in the supplemental bill, Rumsfeld, smiling, said: "No, that would be wrong. And we wouldn't do that." (2/11/05 ASSOCIATED PRESS) Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld attends a hearing on President Bush's funding request for the war in Iraq. Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak -- AP Rumsfeld- Estimates on Iraq Insurgency Unreliable - 2/16/05 U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gestures while testifying before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill, February 16, 2005. Rumsfeld said U.S. intelligence agencies have failed to provide reliable estimates of the size of Iraq's insurgency. Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (R) gestures while testifying before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Richard B. Myers (L), February 16, 2005. Rumsfeld testified about the Defense Department's needs for additional supplemental funds to continue military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. REUTERS/Larry Downing "UH, DUH!!! WE NEED LOTS MORE MONEY!!!! WHERE DID ALL THE OTHER MONEY GO? DON'T ASK ME! DON'T ASK ME QUESTIONS LIKE THAT! I'M THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, DAMMIT!" (NOT AN ACTUAL QUOTE-- BUT IT'S WHAT HE'S THINKING, YOU CAN JUST TELL BY LOOKING AT HIS FACE.) Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in this Feb. 3, 2005 file photo, to discuss military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is contemplating other key personnel moves that will influence the course of the Bush administration's defense policies and the future shape of a military that is under great strain. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, Files) "As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, responding to a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq who asked him why troops had to dig through scrap metal to armor vehicles (Read more Rumsfeldisms) Sue Niederer, whose son Lt Seth Dvorin was killed in Iraq addresses the crowd at city hall. "I am the master of low expectations." Bush To Iraqi Militants: 'Please Stop Bringing It On' WASHINGTON, DC - In an internationally televised statement Monday, President Bush modified a July 2003 challenge to Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces. "Terrorists, Saddam loyalists, and anti- American insurgents: Please stop bringing it on now," Bush said at a Monday press conference. "Nine months and 500 U.S. casualties ago, I may have invited y'all to bring it on, but as of today, I formally rescind that statement. I would officially like for you to step back." The president added that the "it" Iraqis should stop bringing includes gunfire, bombings, grenade attacks, and suicide missions of all types. Cindy Sheehan clutches a photo of her son, Casey, at Wednesdays protest. Casey died during an April mission in Sadr City, Iraq. Nancy Lessin, center, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, lists her complaints against Secretary Rumsfeld as Sue Niederer, left, and Bill Mitchell display photos of their sons, who were killed while serving in Iraq. "We can see a lot of progress being made, but it is far from over," he said. "It's going to take a lot of time, patience and dedication on the part of our soldiers away from their families." Donald Rumsfeld June 19th, 2003 Taps: Day is done, gone the sun, From the hills, from the lake, From the sky. All is well, safely rest, God is nigh. Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,May the soldier or sailor,God keep.On the land or the deep,Safe in sleep. Love, good night, Must thou go,When the day, And the night Need thee so?All is well. Speedeth all To their rest. Fades the light; And afar Goeth day, And the stars Shineth bright, Fare thee well; Day has gone, Night is on. Thanks and praise, For our days,'Neath the sun, 'Neath the stars,'Neath the sky, As we go, This we know, God is nigh. ALL PICTURES COPYRIGHT OF THE ORIGINAL OWNER OR LICENSEE. WARNING!!!! This TRIBUTE contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. C.F.T.M. is making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of all current issues. C.F.T.M .believes this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this TRIBUTE for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. --------------------------------- Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the Digital Divide! http://us.click.yahoo.com/V_qgJD/3MnJAA/xGEGAA/Sj.0lB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/du-watch/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: du-watch-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 38 [toeslist] Some effects of depleted uranium from the US Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 00:51:52 -0600 (CST) This is so despicable, I'm sure it will have the same effects on our troops, and I'm sure the military is well aware of these consequences and they don't give a shit. I'm so ashamed to be a citizen of this country. Brian -----Original Message----- From: KathyGing@aol.com [mailto:KathyGing@aol.com] Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 1:45 AM To: kathy@kathyging.com Subject: photos of deformed babies from effects of depleted uranium bullets Folks, the truth hurts: what we have done with our tax dollars is seen below; a friend recently gave a lecture on the effects of depleted uranium. A geologist friend of mine sent me this URL. Pls. forward far and wide: this monstrous activity (depleted uranium used in bullets, etc.) has got to stop. I sadly wonder what happens to these poor babes. http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html ***************************************************************** 39 Deseret News: Convincing fallout evidence [deseretnews.com] Saturday, March 5, 2005 The nuclear test fallout controversy is up for review, now with Mike Leavitt involved. I personally saw evidence in May 1955 that there was heavy fallout in the Fillmore area. A Geiger counter went wild over a little deer manure. The browse was so saturated with fallout it concentrated in the stomach and intestines of the deer. My brother-in-law and I thought we had struck it rich with uranium until we saw that it was not the ground activating the counter, but the droppings on the ground. Norval Turner Murray © 2005 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 40 Sunday Herald: MoD study reveals potential impact of nuclear sub accident - By Rob EdwardsEnvironment Editor THOUSANDS of people could be contaminated with radio activity in breach of safe limits if there was an accident on a nuclear submarine at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde, an assessment by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) reveals. A leaking submarine reactor could give everyone within two kilometres a radiation dose that would increase their cancer risk. In some scenarios the contamination could spread wider and cause more significant consequences, the MoD admits. The same risks are also faced by people living near six other sites in Scotland where nuclear submarines can berth. Three of them are around the Clyde, and three are in the Highlands. The MoD stresses accidents are highly unlikely and great care is taken to ensure safety. But some experts accuse the MoD of playing down the dangers, and say people up to 30km away could be contaminated. In response to a request from the Sunday Herald, the Royal Navy last week released the MoDs new assessment of the accident risks at Faslane. This Hazard Identification and Risk Evaluation, as it is called, was conducted under the governments Radiation (Emergency Preparedness and Public Information) Regulations (REPPIR). For submarine reactors, the assessment identified a number of scenarios that could lead to an offsite release of radioactive material. These would trigger a radiation emergency which could last several hours, the MoD concludes. Members of the public within two kilometres of the accident could be exposed to more than five millisieverts of radiation, it says. The internationally recommended safety limit is one millisievert a year. The assessment shows there are 1000 to 1600 people living within two kilometres of nine potential accident sites at Faslane. In addition, there are more than 3000 workers on the base at any one time. It is very unlikely anyone outside the two-kilometre zone would get a radiation dose above five millisieverts, the assessment argues. However a small number of low-probability scenarios have been identified with more significant consequences. However, the MoD does point out: For a significant release to occur it is necessary for there to be a plant failure followed by a breach of multiple containment barriers. The potential accidents analysed by the MoD include a loss of coolant from the submarine reactor and runaway chain reactions. Emergency measures in the event of an accident include evacuation and advising people to take shelter to minimise radiation exposure. People will also be asked to take iodine tablets, which can reduce the risk of thyroid cancer. But these plans are dismissed by independent nuclear consultant John Large as totally inadequate. He says that under the worst scenario conceived by the MoD, radioactive contamination could reach high levels as far as 30km from an accident. If its cooling system failed, a reactor could melt down, explode and rip open a submarine hull in 20 minutes, Large claims. This would be a very bad accident and it would cause chaos. The risks from a naval reactor are significantly higher than the risks predicted for civilian reactors. Its a whole different kettle of fish. The navy says there are three other places around the Clyde where nuclear submarines can berth. They are the explosives handling jetty at Coulport on Loch Long, an anchorage known as B4 between Gourock and Dunoon, and Loch Goil. There are also two berths in Loch Ewe off Wester Ross. According to the MoD, one is a buoy within two kilometres of the 150 people living in Mellon Charles, and the other is a jetty close to 350 people in Aultbea. The MoD assessment of the other berth at Broadford Bay off Skye suggests 526 people are at risk of radioactive contamination from an accident. The nuclear submarine, HMS Trenchant, has been moored there since Friday, as part of an attempt to reassure locals. However, anti-nuclear campaigners dismissed the visit as a charm offensive that will not allay fears. This in turn is denied by the navy, which points out that its nuclear monitoring team had been in Broadford before the vessel arrived. Navy spokesman Neil Smith warned that taking the MoD report out of context would be misleading. Its all about continuous improvement and avoiding complacency. And its against a background of a pretty good safety record. The navy has had 60 operating years of nuclear submarines and there hasnt been a nuclear accident. The assessments are carried out under the radiation regulations and made available to local authorities to help their emergency planning, he added. We will do anything we can to make things as safe as possible. The navy admits that many local residents are at risk from a minor nuclear accident, says John Ainslie, co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. But they put their heads in the sand and refuse to prepare for a serious accident which could affect large parts of Scotland. Although the MoD report on Faslane concludes that a submarine reactor accident could lead to a radiation emergency, it claims this couldnt happen with the nuclear bombs on Trident submarines. It is not reasonably foreseeable that a radiation emergency can result from this activity, it says. 06 March 2005 © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 41 MehrNews.com: Heads roll at VA, mushrooming DU scandal blamed Tehran Times Opinion Column, March 6, By Bob Nichols E-Newsletter has charged that the reason U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War. Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the â€Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.” Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.” He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of â€Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam. “The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” wrote Bernklau. “He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, (it)… is far too big to hide or to cover up!” “Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that â€Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 veterans,” said Berklau. “The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as â€spectacular… and a matter of concern!’” When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for “destroying things and killing people,” Fulk was more specific: “I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!” Principi could not be reached for comment prior to deadline. Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war. References 1. Depleted uranium: “Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: A death sentence here and abroad” by Leuren Moret, http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml. 2. Veterans for Constitutional Law, 112 Jefferson Ave., Port Jefferson NY 11777, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director, (516) 474-4261, fax 516-474-1968. 3. Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter. Email Gary Kohls, gkohls@cpinternet.com, with “Subscribe” in the subject line. Email Bob Nichols at bobnichols@cox.net. (Courtesy of San Francisco Bay View) MS/HG End © 2003 Mehr News Agency ***************************************************************** 42 Independent: Recruitment crisis leads to nuclear safety fears www.independent.co.uk Regulator warns that staff shortages are undermining the industry, while consultancy fees soar and American firms cash in By Tim Webb 06 March 2005 The safety of Britain's nuclear reactors is at risk because of a shortage of inspectors, the former regulator of the nuclear industry has warned. The crisis has been compounded by continuing industrial unrest at the regulator. Inspectors, backed by their union, Prospect, have for the past 18 months refused to work overtime to help clear the backlog of work in a protest over pay. They receive less than their counterparts at nuclear companies, making it even harder for the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) to recruit new staff. The NII is responsible for the safety and regulation of Britain's 27 reactor and research sites, as well as the dozens of nuclear waste storage sites. Now there are fears within the nuclear industry that the regulator does not have the resources to oversee the construction of a new fleet of reactors. The Government is expected to seek bids to build the reactors next year, but bidders must have their design licensed by the regulator before work can begin. Likely bidders - which include Westinghouse, the US arm of state-owned BNFL, and AECL of Canada - are concerned that the regulator's staff-shortage problems could delay the process. Lawrence Williams, the former NII chief inspector, highlighted the crisis before leaving the regulator late last year. He warned: "Prolonged reduction of inspection will undermine our ability to effectively monitor the safety performance of the nuclear industry. There is a growing backlog of work that is being delayed or not being done and this, together with new work arising from industry programmes, concerns me." The recruitment crisis has since worsened, with 14 current vacancies for inspectors out of a maximum of 179 staff at the NII, despite a recent major recruitment drive. Heightened security fears and the establishment of a new nuclear waste body, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), mean the NII has more work, making its staffing problems worse. Mr Williams, who has been appointed director of safety at the NDA, had for some time been concerned at the continuing staff shortages at the NII. There are also fears within the nuclear industry that if this crisis continues, the operational performance of Britain's generating companies, BNFL and British Energy, may be affected. Inspectors from the NII must authorise the restarting of a nuclear reactor when it is shut down for maintenance reasons. British Energy's output last year was down by more than 10 per cent on the previous year because of extended shutdowns at its Hartlepool and Heysham1 reactors. This pushed up losses for the last nine months of 2004 to Ł349m against Ł81m in 2003. However, a spokesman for the company said the shutdowns had not been prolonged by the shortage of inspectors. British Energy is also planning to ask the regulator to extend the life of its reactors later this year. All but two of its reactors will be taken out of service within the next 10 years. A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive, which oversees the NII, admitted that non-urgent work - approving new designs and modifying existing facilities, for example - is being delayed because of the shortage of inspectors. The spokesman also said "periodic safety review work", which documents the safety history of a reactor and must be carried out before its life can be extended, has been delayed. But he insisted there was no day-to-day operational impact on the running of Britain's nuclear reactors, which provide just over a fifth of the country's electricity. "In the light of staffing shortages, NII senior management continually reprioritise the work so that safety-critical issues are given top priority," he added. He blamed the staff shortage on a recruitment crisis within the nuclear industry, explaining: "There is a small pool of people to draw on, with fewer people studying physics." ©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 43 Las Vegas RJ: Western Shoshones file Yucca lawsuit Saturday, March 05, 2005 Tribes cite 1863 treaty in claiming land cannot be used for waste repository By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Western Shoshone John Wells, left; attorney Robert Hager; Raymond Yowell, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council; and Ian Zabarte, the council's secretary of state, walk toward Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse on Friday to file a lawsuit against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. Photo by K.M. Cannon. A contingent of Western Shoshones played what Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project opponents consider their ace in the hole Friday: a lawsuit based on an 1863 treaty that the tribes say doesn't allow building a repository on their native land. It is the first time the Ruby Valley Treaty, authorized by Civil War Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, has been used in a case that targets Yucca Mountain, said Reno attorney Robert Hager, who represents the Western Shoshone tribes. "I have always felt the Western Shoshone have the best claim to stop Yucca Mountain," Hager said, flanked by tribal leaders outside Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse in Las Vegas where the case was filed. Yucca Mountain is a sacred site for Western Shoshones. Hager said the tribes want to hold the departments of Energy and Interior accountable for the contractual agreement that specifies how their 93,750-square-mile swath across parts of Nevada, California, Utah and Idaho should be used. The agreed uses do not include a disposal site for highly radioactive waste or a railroad to deliver waste to the mountain, which the federal government intends to do by submitting a repository licence application to regulators by the end of this year. The lawsuit, with a motion for an injunction to stop the project, names Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton as defendants. A spokesman for the Energy Department's Office of Repository Development in Las Vegas had no comment on the lawsuit. The mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is the planned site for a repository to entomb 77,000 tons of spent reactor fuel and deadly defense wastes. The repository sits on land covered by the treaty, an eight-part pact with the Western Shoshones that was negotiated by James Nye, who was then governor of the Nevada Territory. The plaintiffs from the Timbisha and Te-Moak bands -- Joe Kennedy, John Wells, Pauline Esteves and Kevin Gillette -- and the Western National Council claim the treaty allows only five uses for the land: settlements, mines, ranches, roads and a railroad. "We've always talked about using this as a last resort," Raymond Yowell, 75, chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, said of the lawsuit. Kennedy, of the Timbisha tribe, said the timing of the lawsuit, nearly three years after Congress overrode Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto to approve the repository, is important "not only for Western Shoshone but for all people and the citizens of Las Vegas." "They just can't run over the people," Kennedy said of DOE officials. "We're looking out for Nevada as a whole. They (DOE officials) have to be accountable and just can't put nuclear waste in the mountain. It could be devastating," he said. Kennedy said his ancestors who forged the treaty and others before them long have considered Yucca Mountain and nearby Forty Mile Wash sacred places. To Western Shoshones, the mountain lives as a giant snake slithering westward for nearly 20 miles across the remote terrain of southern Nye County. Ian Zabarte, the council's secretary of state, said unlike other cases involving the treaty, this one focuses on contractual issues and puts the burden on the U.S. government to demonstrate title. "They can't possibly do that," he said. Wells, a Western Shoshone from Las Vegas, said the lawsuit "is finally putting the treaty out there where it belongs." Yowell, 75, who lives on a reservation 27 miles south of Elko, estimates there are roughly 10,000 Western Shoshones, most scattered across the United States. In 1946, an American Indian claims commission determined that when the West was settled, the Western Shoshones lost their land through gradual encroachment. In 1985, the Supreme Court favored the federal government in a lawsuit over who had title to the land. Last year, President Bush approved a congressional measure to pay Western Shoshones more than $145 million in compensation and interest for their territory. The payment was for $27 million the claims commission awarded them in 1979 for what their territory was valued at in 1872. According to Yowell, no money has yet been doled out to Western Shoshones who are split on whether or not to accept it. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been a staunch opponent of the Yucca Mountain Project but also was instrumental persuading Congress to distribute the claims commission compensation. Reached late Friday, Reid's spokeswoman, Tessa Hafen, said the senator "feels if the case is successful and Yucca Mountain is stopped, then that's good for Nevada and the country." In Carson City, project critic Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said he was pleasantly surprised when he heard the lawsuit was filed. "I think it's great news. I think every bit of help we can get on Yucca Mountain is great," he said. Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group, said the lawsuit is significant because it shows the Western Shoshone are "are fighters and they're not going to sit still for this." "This may be the thing that saves our butts from Yucca Mountain," she said. Copyright Las Vegas Review-Journal ***************************************************************** 44 BBC: Dounreay waste claims dismissed Last Updated: Sunday, 6 March, 2005 [Dounreay Nuclear Power Plant] Radioactive particles have been found close to Dounreay Claims that the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness was being run with a "reckless" disregard for public health have been dismissed by its operators. Herbie Lyall, a former safety officer, has said that high level waste was washed down drains and a radioactive particle discovery was covered up. Dounreay is facing prosecution for releasing particles into the open. Site operators, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority said there was no record of the particle find. But it did concede that practices in previous decades were not as stringent as currently. This was people's lives th were playing with. They were acting like nuclear cowboys Herbie Lyall Former safety officer Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Lyall a health physics surveyor at the north coast plant for 30 years, branded his former employees "nuclear cowboys". In the last two decades more than 50 radioactive particles have been recovered from Sandside beach, two miles west of the plant. Lat month the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) lodged a report with the procurator fiscal into the release of fragments of spent nuclear fuel from the reprocessing plant into the environment in the 1960s and 1970s. Mr Lyall accused Dounreay bosses of covering up the discovery of a radioactive particle on Sandside beach, near the facility, in 1984. Health concern He claimed high-level nuclear waste was washed down drains intended for low-level waste and that radioactive materials were handled without appropriate protection. Mr Lyall, who was at Dounreay from 1960 to 1989, also alleged that effluent samples were collected for analysis using a Wellington boot on a piece of string because sampling machinery was "a heap of rust". The UKAEA insisted that the discovery of a particle on Sandside was made public in 1984 and they could find no record to substantiate claims about a second find that year. [Dounreay] Monitoring of radioactive particles has been stepped up However, Mr Lyall said he was a member of a survey team which found a particle on Sandside which was not reported. Mr Lyall had intended that his account should come to light after his death, but said continuing concerns about the health risks to the public had persuaded him to speak now. "There have been so many lies said to con the public about Dounreay that I fell I must put the record straight," he told the paper. "This contamination is a legacy being left for my children's children. It is an absolute disaster. "They are talking about prosecuting these people. They deserve execution, not prosecution. The question in our minds why Mr Lyall took 20 years after retiring to complain UKAEA spokesman "This was people's lives they were playing with. They were acting like nuclear cowboys." A UKAEA spokesman said the company had already spoken to Mr Lyall about his concerns. He said: "It is absolutely true to say that, as with any industry, not all of the processes which were in place in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s would be acceptable by today's much more stringent standards. "The question in our minds is why Mr Lyall took 20 years after retiring to complain." He added: "However, as regards the particle find in 1984, one was discovered that year, it was reported to the Scottish Office and the regulators and made public. "We spoke to former employees involved in surveying beaches at the time but found no information or record to substantiate claims of a further find that year." ***************************************************************** 45 Salt Lake Tribune: Panels say hot waste should stay where it was made Article Last Updated: 03/05/2005 02:58:33 AM By H. Josef Hebert The Associated Press WASHINGTON - A significant amount of radioactive waste from Cold War bomb-making should remain at former production sites, and several locations should be kept open longer than planned to treat waste from elsewhere, scientists recommended this week. Reports by two panels of the National Academies urged the Energy Department to revamp its massive $140 billion clean-up plans for defense nuclear waste with the goal of transporting less of it to a central facility. This would allow clean-up activities to be completed sooner and cost less, the panels said. The current clean-up schedule, involving dozens of sites, envisions most waste treatment and disposal to be finished in 20 years. But the scientists also called for greater involvement outside of the Energy Department in determining what wastes should be left in place and what should be transported to a geological repository. The report said the department's credibility on decisions involving waste disposal is hampered because the DOE both proposes and approves waste disposition plans. ''DOE should not attempt to adopt these changes unilaterally,'' said the panel, suggesting the Environmental Protection Agency or Nuclear Regulatory Commission and perhaps an independent group of experts get involved in assessing how radioactive wastes should be treated. This approach was applauded by some environmentalists Tuesday, who have argued that DOE has too much power in making waste disposal decisions. The report ''clearly sent a message that Congress must rein in DOE and address the mess that it has made of nuclear waste clean-up policy,'' said Geoff Fettus, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council. States with some of the biggest clean-up challenges - including Washington, Idaho and South Carolina - and have argued that high-level defense nuclear waste should be taken away for deep geological burial. But a National Research Council panel, asked to review the government program, concluded that the ''recovery of every last gram'' of such waste ''will be technically impractical and unnecessary.'' In some cases removing waste could lead to increased human exposures to radiation, the panel said. It also said the expense associated with retrieval, immobilization and disposition of some of the waste in a central repository ''may be out of proportion with the risk reduction achieved, if any.'' An attempt to recover all of this waste - such as the hardened ''heel'' waste attached to the inside of buried tanks at the Hanford site in Washington state - could lead to more contamination than if it were left in place, the report said. © Copyright 2005, The Salt Lake Tribune. ***************************************************************** 46 EC: Half Of Our Drinking Water Supply Is Already Contaminated Environment California FACT SHEET: The rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate, which can cause thyroid damage, contaminates the Colorado River. The Colorado River provides drinking water to 15 million Californians. Photo by the North Coast Regional Water Control Board Our drinking water is more polluted than you may think. In fact, more than half of all Californians draw their tap water from contaminated sources.* It’s no wonder, when you consider that legal limits on some of the most dangerous kinds of pollution are weak or nonexistent. That’s why Environment California is calling for tough limits on three of the worst pollutants: Chromium 6, perchlorate and arsenic. Over the past year, we’ve documented the extent of the problem and the threat to public health. With such a strong case for immediate action, we’re urging the governor to set strict limits, now. Polluters are pressuring the state to allow more pollution Despite the serious health effects of chemicals like Chromium 6, polluters are pressuring officials not to set strong limits on their presence in our drinking water. • Chromium 6, made famous by Erin Brockovich, can cause cancer and other serious problems. Yet there is no limit on Chromium 6 in our drinking water. • Perchlorate can cause ADD, lower IQ and thyroid damage. In 2002, a lawsuit by perchlorate polluter Lockheed suspended state-proposed health recommendations on perchlorate in drinking water. • Arsenic, the main ingredient in rat poison, can cause cancer, heart attacks, birth defects and liver damage. A federal standard limits its presence in drinking water to 10 parts per billion—which allows a cancer risk 20 times greater than limits for other carcinogens. The governor has the power to set tough new limits on water pollution As the executive decision-maker behind all California state agencies, the governor has the authority to require tough new limits on pollutants in our drinking water. He has only to direct the Department of Health Services to set timely, health-based standards for each contaminant. Once that limit is set, polluters will have to clean up their emissions of dangerous chemicals, in order to protect Californians’ drinking water. Environment California is working to show the governor that this issue can’t wait. Arsenic, extracted from rock by many mining operations, contaminates the water supplies of 42 California counties. Photo by ClipArt.com We need tough limits on drinking water pollution California faces some of the worst drinking water contamination problems in the nation. But without tough limits on chemicals in our water, polluters have little reason to clean up contaminated supplies. Powerful interests are pressuring officials to delay action or to set weak, insignificant limits—which would allow them to continue poisoning our water. Environment California is calling on the governor to stand up to polluters and set tough limits on contamination. Support Environment California Support Environment California. Your contribution will help us stand up to powerful interests to ensure safe drinking water for Californians. Source: *California Dept. of Health Services, Southern California Metropolitan Water District, State Water Resources Control Board. 3435 Wilshire Blvd. #385 • Los Angeles, CA 90010 Phone (213) 251-3688 • Fax (213) 251-3699 E-mail: Top Photo © Br. Alfred Brousseau, Saint Mary's College ***************************************************************** 47 AFP: Nuclear waste dumped on Britain's beaches - New Scientist | AFP Sunday March 6, 05:00 PM LONDON (AFP) - Highly radioactive waste has been dumped in Britain's seas and washed ashore, and nuclear research station workers covered up the pollution, The Sunday Times quoting a former safety officer as saying. The newspaper said the owner of the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness, in Scotland, faced a criminal prosecution over a series of leaks, which have sent more than 50 radioactive particles onto a nearby public beach. Herbie Lyalls, a health physics surveyor at the plant from 1960 to 1989, gave the paper a dossier that describes high-level radioactive waste washed down drains intended for low-level waste, and later flushed out into the sea. It also claimed that radioactive materials were handled inappropriately, and may have led to at least two deaths from cancer. The Sunday Times said Lyalls had spoken out about the pollution despite facing prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. "There have been so many lies told to con the public about Dounreay that I feel I must put the record straight," Lyall said. He said he was part of a survey team in 1984 that covered up health risks on a local beach where a highly radioactive particle was found. Tourists continued to visit the beach for 13 years after that, until new concerns were raised, the paper said. The UK Atomic Energy Authority, which owns the plant, said safety standards were not as stringent previously as they are now. Sandy McWhirter, a project manager at Dounreay, said he could not confirm Lyall's claims but added that the former surveyor "may not have been in a position to fully understand" proceedings there. The UK Atomic Energy Authority has admitted that "at least several hundreds of thousands" of particles of plutonium and uranium, about the size of a grain of sand, had been released from Dounreay, the paper said. Copyright © 2005 AFP AFP. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 48 Boston.com: Superfund site cleanup likely to begin this year The Boston Globe Depleted uranium barrels to be moved By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent | March 6, 2005 One of the major fronts in the cleanup of the Starmet Corp. Superfund site in West Concord -- the removal of more than 3,700 barrels of depleted uranium -- is expected to get underway by year's end, according to environmental officials. Last Wednesday was the deadline for bids to be submitted to the state Department of Environmental Protection for this work, which could take a year or more to complete. The contractor is expected to be selected March 22 or 23, said Ed Coletta, a department spokesman. In late spring, Coletta said, the contractor will begin evaluating and inventorying the barrels, which contain small amounts of radioactive material. They are being stored in Starmet buildings on the 46-acre property off Route 62. The US Army, one of five parties cited by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 2003 for contaminating the site, has agreed to pay for the disposal of the barrels. Starmet's predecessor company, Nuclear Metals Inc., made uranium-tipped bullets for the Army from 1970 to 1999. An investigation of how to clean up the property is continuing, directed by De Maximis Inc. of Weatogue, Conn., which is conducting its research for the Army and the other culpable parties. Next Wednesday, Bruce Thompson, De Maximis project director, will give highlights of his firm's work so far to two Concord groups, Citizens Research and Environmental Watch and the 2229 Main St. Committee. (The Starmet property is located at 2229 Main St.) James West of Concord, a technical assistance coordinator for Citizens Research and Environmental Watch, said De Maximis has been studying all the appropriate site data, but ''the issue will be what they've found." The citizens research group has a $50,000 technical assistance grant from the EPA, which is holding the Wednesday meeting at Concord town offices. The meeting will not be open to the public. Most of the samples taken late last year of metal debris and remnants of some 60 underground drums have now been analyzed by General Engineering Laboratory of Charleston, S.C., Thompson said in a telephone interview last week. ''We'll present the latest interpretations of those analyses" at this week's meeting, Thompson said, declining to give details before the meeting. ''We'll also discuss potential contaminants other than uranium," he added. Thompson reiterated that monitors installed around the property's perimeter are indicating that no contaminants have been released into the air. Next month, he said, groundwater sampling will be done around the 99 monitoring wells, and near 3 to 4 acres of bogs and a cooling-water pond. A second round of sampling will be conducted six months later, he said. An assessment of risks to human health posed by the site could begin later this year, following the final water sampling, Thompson said. Besides the Army, the other responsible parties are the US Department of Energy; Whittaker Corp. of Simi Valley, Calif. ; Textron Inc. of Providence; and MONY Life Insurance. Co. of New York City. The Starmet site went on the EPA's Superfund list in June 2001. The list designates severely contaminated sites, which are being cleaned up under federal supervision. ***************************************************************** 49 Scotsman.com: 'Regret' over Dounreay Radioactive Discharge Sun 6 Mar 2005 By Paul O’Hare and Russell Fallis, Scottish Press Association The UK Atomic Energy Authority today said it regretted the “historic discharge” of radioactive particles from a nuclear plant but claimed a whistleblower’s claims had no relevance to its modern day operation. In a dossier given to the Sunday Times, Herbie Lyall, a former health physics surveyor at Dounreay, accused bosses of covering up the discovery of a radioactive particle on Sandside more than 20 years ago. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who has lodged several Parliamentary questions about the Caithness plant, demanded a ministerial inquiry following the revelations. But the Authority today said conditions at the site had improved significantly since the safety officer retired in 1989. In the last two decades more than 50 radioactive particles have been recovered from Sandside beach, two miles west of the plant, which is currently being decommissioned. But Mr Lyall accused nuclear bosses of concealing the discovery of a radioactive particle on Sandside in 1984. He claimed high-level nuclear waste was washed down drains intended for low-level waste and that radioactive materials were handled without appropriate protection – in one case by two workers who subsequently both died from cancer in their forties. Mr Lyall, who was at Dounreay from 1960 to 1989, also alleged that effluent samples were collected for analysis using a wellington boot on a piece of string because sampling machinery was “a heap of rust”. He told told the Sunday Times he was a member of a survey team which found a particle on Sandside which was not reported. Mr Lyall also claimed that on one occasion, when he insisted he could not carry out a dangerous procedure as it went against Government rules, he was charged with refusing to obey an order. He said two friends who died from cancer had removed a faulty probe from a reprocessor without adequate protection. The former safety officer had intended that his account should come to light after his death, but said continuing concerns about the health risks to the public had persuaded him to speak now. “There have been so many lies said to con the public about Dounreay that I fell I must put the record straight,” he added. “This contamination is a legacy being left for my children’s children. It is an absolute disaster. “They are talking about prosecuting these people. They deserve execution, not prosecution. “This was people’s lives they were playing with. “They were acting like nuclear cowboys.” Mr Duncan Smith told the newspaper: “These allegations raise grave and far-reaching questions about the management of the Dounreay plant over the past 30 years. “They deserve the fullest possible investigation by ministers and an end to the culture of complacency and cover-up that seems to surround the plant.” Friends of the Earth Scotland said the claims should be thoroughly investigated. FoE chief executive Duncan McLaren said: “By stepping forward like this Mr Lyall is finally able to make it possible to start learning much more of what we’ve long suspected about Dounreay’s activities. “His account reveals a catalogue of pollution, incompetence and cover-up. “If it is true that staff and the wider environment were unwittingly exposed to radiation then those in charge at the time should now be facing prosecution.” But UKAEA said the allegations did not reflect current practice at the plant. A spokeswoman for the authority said: “The story is based on the comments of an employee who retired from the site in the 1980s. “It focuses on safety standards during his 30-year career at the plant, and in particular on the release of radioactive particles which were produced during operations there in the 1960s and early 70s. “UKAEA has repeatedly expressed its deep regret that the historic discharge of particles took place.” The Authority said much had changed at the plant since Mr Lyall retired. “UKAEA today is very different from the organisation which ran Dounreay 20 to 30 years ago,” the spokeswoman said. “It has a new management team, whose first and highest priority is safety. “The programme is clearly focused on clearing the legacy of the past through decommissioning and clean-up of the site, and today’s safety standards as in all aspects of life are unrecognisable by comparison with those of the past.” Scotsman.com | ***************************************************************** 50 Scotsman.com: 'Nuclear Cowboys' Caused Dounreay 'Disaster' - Claim Sat 5 Mar 2005 By Russell Fallis, Scottish Press Association A former safety officer at Dounreay nuclear plant tonight branded his former employees “cowboys”, revealing a dossier of alleged breaches which he claimed showed a “reckless” disregard for public health. Herbie Lyall, a health physics surveyor at the Caithness facility for 30 years, spoke out two weeks after it emerged that Dounreay’s owners, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, could face prosecution over radioactive releases. In the last two decades more than 50 radioactive particles have been recovered from Sandside beach, two miles west of the plant, which is currently being decommissioned. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) lodged a report with the procurator fiscal into the release of fragments of spent nuclear fuel from the reprocessing plant into the environment in the 1960s and 1970s. In a dossier given to the Sunday Times, Lyall accused nuclear bosses of covering up the discovery of a radioactive particle on Sandside in 1984. He claimed high-level nuclear waste was washed down drains intended for low-level waste and that radioactive materials were handled without appropriate protection – in one case by two workers who subsequently both died from cancer in their forties. Mr Lyall, who was at Dounreay from 1960 to 1989, also alleged that effluent samples were collected for analysis using a wellington boot on a piece of string because sampling machinery was “a heap of rust”. Former Tory Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who has lodged several Parliamentary questions about Dounreay, demanded a ministerial inquiry following the claims. The UKAEA tonight conceded that practices in previous decades were not as stringent as currently. But they insisted that the discovery of a particle on Sandside was made public in 1984 and they could find no record to substantiate claims about a second find that year. However, Mr Lyall told the Sunday Times he was a member of a survey team which found a particle on Sandside which was not reported. Mr Lyall also claimed that on one occasion, when he insisted he could not carry out a dangerous procedure as it went against government rules, he was charged with refusing to obey an order. He said the two “personal friends” who died from cancer had removed a faulty probe from a reprocessor without adequate protection. “I can’t say if the dose they got from this probe contributed to their deaths, but I have my own thoughts,” he told the newspaper. “This example is only the tip of the iceberg.” Mr Lyall had intended that his account should come to light after his death, but said continuing concerns about the health risks to the public had persuaded him to speak now. “There have been so many lies said to con the public about Dounreay that I fell I must put the record straight,” he added. “This contamination is a legacy being left for my children’s children. It is an absolute disaster. “They are talking about prosecuting these people. They deserve execution, not prosecution. “This was people’s lives they were playing with. “They were acting like nuclear cowboys.” Mr Duncan Smith told the newspaper: “These allegations raise grave and far-reaching questions about the management of the Dounreay plant over the past 30 years. “They deserve the fullest possible investigation by ministers and an end to the culture of complacency and cover-up that seems to surround the plant.” A UKAEA spokesman said the company had already spoken to Mr Lyall about his concerns. He said: “It is absolutely true to say that, as with any industry, not all of the processes which were in place in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s would be acceptable by today’s much more stringent standards. “The question in our minds is why Mr Lyall took 20 years after retiring to complain. “Sandy McWhirter, our then head of engineering, spoke to him three years ago because we welcome any information that would help us understand what happened in the past as we, today, continue the process of decommissioning the site. “However, as regards the particle find in 1984, one was discovered that year, it was reported to the Scottish Office and the regulators and made public. “We spoke to former employees involved in surveying beaches at the time but found no information or record to substantiate claims of a further find that year.” 2005 Scotsman.com ***************************************************************** 51 Mohave Daily News: Congressman testifies against federal proposals Saturday, March 5, 2005 8:37 PM PST WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative Jon Porter testified at the House Budget Committee March 3 in opposition to the Bush Administration's plan to divert revenue from the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act to the U.S. Treasury, a proposed nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, and a proposal that would require casinos to garnish winnings from "deadbeat" dads. Excerpts from the Republican congressman's testimony include: "ŠThe goal of SNPLMA is to protect and preserve Southern Nevada for future generations. Since being signed into law, SNPLMA has been amazingly beneficial for Clark County. These funds have paid for the development of much-needed parks and trails in one of the fastest growing communities in the nation, and SNPLMA funds have helped in building and maintaining visitor facilities in some of the most visited national parks and conservation areas in the nation. "As a congressman who represents a state with approximately 90 percent federal land, I am here to say that SNPLMA helps to 'free up' federal dollars for other areas, such as the Florida Everglades, Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks, and our Grand Canyon. This law also allows Southern Nevada to use SNPLMA, as opposed to federal dollars, to protect endangered or threatened species. We simply do not need to rely as strongly on other federal funding sources to support all of the federal lands we have in Southern Nevada. "Transporting 77,000 tons of nuclear waste across Nevada, through your community and mine, is a dangerous and bad idea. We are talking about storing the most deadly substance known to man in a geographical site that has been proven unsafe. I have been fighting Yucca Mountain for 20 years, and will continue to make known the facts of this unsafe program. I urge this committee to be prudent in making any decision with respect to this project. "This 'deadbeat dads' proposal has a commendable goal but uses dubious tactics. No one condemns any effort to avoid child support payments more then me. But mandating the gaming industry to garnish winnings from those listed in a government database raises serious privacy questions. Do we really need to create a new federal bureaucracy to process this information? What we ought to do is provide the individual states and localities with the resources they need to locate and penalize those 'deadbeat dads.'" Tri-State Online // Mohave Daily News Privacy Policy 2435 Miracle Mile / Bullhead City, Arizona 86442-7311 / 928-763-2505 Last updated: Saturday, March 05, 2005 ***************************************************************** 52 News & Star: I live 12 miles from Sellafield and I am frightened Published on 05/03/2005 [ ' We don’t want you: Why should we have the world’s nuclear waste on our doorstep, asks reader Tony Stevenson' We don’t want you: Why should we have the world’s nuclear waste on our doorstep, asks reader Tony Stevenson I AM responding to a letter from a worker (News & Star, February 23) who referred to the lost plutonium at Sellafield . The writer said that if the News & Star continued to discredit Sellafield readers will stop buying it. Does he not realise that not everybody in West Cumbria, or Copeland, supports Sellafield? Sellafield has provided a lots of jobs, but now we are not just talking about a nuclear power station, we are talking about Thorp and Mox which produce dangerous materials. Why should we have the world’s nuclear waste on our doorstep? The letters supporting Sellafield are all from the people who work there. Most of us are living with fear all of the time. I live 12 miles away from Sellafield. Tony Stevenson Queen St Whitehaven ***************************************************************** 53 Guardian Unlimited: Fifteen years ago it was a popular holiday beach but radioactive finds have made it a no-go area Nuclear agency is accused of cover-up at Dounreay David Hencke and Gerard Seenan Monday March 7, 2005 Snow falls gently and the waves roar in as Geoffrey Minter looks down at the deserted beach. A warning sign stands in the foreground; further back, the dome of Dounreay nuclear plant peers through the winter haze. "Yes, of course you can accuse me of naivety in buying an estate next to Dounreay, but I did not know then what I know now. No one outside Dounreay did," he says. "This place seemed like paradise to me: a farm, some sport, a bit of sea, a lovely beach. It is what I dreamed of - and worked bloody hard to get." Back in his office, Mr Minter flicks through his papers. He bought Sandside estate in 1990 believing Dounreay was no more than an unsightly neighbour. Now the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is facing prosecution for the unauthorised dumping of irradiated nuclear fuel particles from Dounreay. Particles that are being washed up on Mr Minter's beach. "If this had been a south coast beach in England, there would be uproar about what is going on," said the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. "Just because it is in a remote corner of Scotland [UKAEA] thought they could get away with it." Sandside beach once teemed with people. "When I was a boy you would get school groups, trips from the WI, tourists, locals, everyone would be on the beach. It was one of the best on the north coast," says Willie McIvor. "Now you won't see anyone. I wouldn't let my children set foot on it, they never have. It should be closed." The scale of the nuclear leaks from Dounreay - and an alleged cover-up - have led Mr Duncan Smith to call for a public inquiry. "As a pro-nuclear supporter, I am appalled at the scale of this cover-up and the cloak of secrecy surrounding the operation at Dounreay which has gone on for 30 years," he said. "This is not just a problem in Scotland, it calls into question what proper safety measures have been taken at other nuclear plants." The scale of the nuclear contamination remains unclear. UKAEA admits to more than 1,000 particles being washed ashore. How many more are at out at sea, no one knows. People tell stories of salmon fishermen dying of cancer; Mr Minter says two of his dogs which foraged on Sandside beach died from the disease. But people don't want to speak out against the plant. In northern Caithness, Dounreay is almost all the industry there is. "Well, yes, I am worried about the particles on the beach and I wouldn't go on it, but surely they would close it if it was that dangerous," said Margaret - not her real name - from the nearby village of Reay. "But Dounreay has kept this place going. What else is there for jobs and to keep the young people here?" The UKAEA admits to finding 54 radioactive particles on Sandside beach; many times that number on the seabed. But detection methods are inefficient, and Mr Minter accuses it of hiding the problem. Using the new freedom of information laws, he asked the UKAEA for details of the finds on Sandside beach. The authority has no record of what Mr Minter and a former inspector at the plant say was the first find on Sandside beach. In 1984, Herbie Lyall, then a health physics surveyor for the UKAEA, was sent to survey Sandside beach. He found a particle buried 18 inches in the sand. "I was shocked to find that [the UKAEA] had never reported this or carried out any other investigation," said Mr Lyall. "Until this information came to light I had assumed that they had. I think the organisation has been involved in a long term cover-up about the amount of nuclear particles that are on this beach." A spokesman for the UKAEA said Mr Lyall had been interviewed but it could not find any record of his find. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has reported the Dounreay authorities to the procurator fiscal over the particles on Sandside beach. Prosecution may follow. Next month Dounreay begins the lengthy process of decommissioning, which will run until 2036 and cost Ł2.7bn. The UKAEA will relinquish control of the site to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The UKAEA spokesman said an independent risk assessor would examine the legacy of nuclear pollution. Public consultation is planned; one option under consideration is digging up the seabed around the decommissioned reactor. Mr Minter has put on hold legal action against the UKAEA, pending mediation."All I want, all I have ever wanted is for them to clean the beach. Yes, I do want compensation, I should be compensated for my loss. But this is not about money." [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 ***************************************************************** 54 Nevada Appeal - Opinion: Yucca Mountain nuclear dump isn't 'inevitable' Guy W. Farmer March 6, 2005 Even though former Gov. Bob List and other highly paid shills for the nuclear energy industry keep telling us that the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is "inevitable," it is now clear that this fatally flawed project is in serious trouble in Washington, D.C., and here in Nevada. In an appearance before the State Senate Finance Committee late last month, Attorney General Brian Sandoval predicted that the toxic waste dump will never open. Sandoval accurately described the Yucca Mountain site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as "a volcano that sits on an earthquake fault above an aquifer, next to the Nevada Test Site, next to one of the nation's largest organic farms, next to the state's largest dairy, adjacent to ... (America's) fastest-growing metropolitan area (and) next to one of the busiest Air Force bases in the country." "If you could choose a worse place to store nuclear waste, I really challenge you to do so," he added. "It's just a matter of time before this project fails." Well said, Mr. Attorney General. As a high-profile Republican, Sandoval's strong opposition to the waste dump is in direct contrast to the position of the Nevada Republican Party, which endorsed the Yucca Mountain project last year and urged state officials to make a deal with the Feds and the nuclear industry. "No way!" responded GOP elected office-holders Sandoval, Gov. Kenny Guinn, Sen. John Ensign and Congressman Jim Gibbons. I admire them for holding the line against their party's sell-outs, who are willing to mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren for federal dollars. Yucca Mountain proponents have already acknowledged that the waste dump won't open by the 2010 target date and thanks to efforts by Nevada's congressional delegation, led by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, the project's budget was cut by 35 percent, from $880 million down to $572 million, in the current fiscal year. And that's only the beginning as more and more design and safety flaws are revealed. "The (Bush) administration is still pushing the project," said Sen. Reid, "and still wasting millions of dollars on it, but the lower budget request also indicates they realize there are significant hurdles ahead." Are there ever! And the more the better. Former Gov. List, who opposed the Yucca Mountain project while he was in office, is still trying to convince us that we should allow the federal government to dump 77,000 tons of the nation's most deadly radioactive waste on our state. List told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that "the likelihood of this project is greater than it has ever been." And according to the Reno News & Review, the nuclear energy industry is promoting a new coalition of money-grubbing businessmen and lobbyists dubbed "For a Better Nevada," which - in the words of the RN&R - "seeks to exploit the dump as a cash cow for Nevada." This group's phony name reminds me of that "Nevadans for Better Law Enforcement" outfit that tried to legalize drugs in our state. We saw through that scam, however, and will do the same for the nuclear dump advocates. Rep. Gibbons and Attorney General Sandoval, among others, have asked why the federal government isn't studying nuclear recycling technology as an alternative to Yucca Mountain. "I can't think of a more primitive way to deal with this waste ... than to dig a hole in the ground and cover it up," Sandoval told state lawmakers. A Gibbons spokesperson opined that "we should be spending (taxpayer) money on 21st century technology to deal with the problem," in view of the fact that nuclear waste recycling is currently operating in France and other countries. Just prior to the start of this year's legislative session, the Nevada Nuclear Projects Commission delivered a report to Gov. Guinn declaring that the Yucca Mountain project is "on the verge of collapse" as it "limps along" toward its eventual demise. But a U.S. Energy Department spokesman said Yucca Mountain is moving forward despite all of the obstacles in its path including a Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirement that all project documents be part of an electronic database and a federal court decision ordering the EPA to re-draft safety standards and the NRC to change its licensing rules. That looks like an uphill battle to me, and it couldn't happen to more deserving folks. Another possible solution to this toxic problem would be to dump the radioactive waste in Skull Valley, Utah, where the Goshute Indians are campaigning for a nuclear waste repository on tribal lands about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City. Although that site would be uncomfortably close to Elko and Wendover, it's a better alternative than Yucca Mountain. Ironically, the state of Utah and environmental groups argue that the Skull Valley site is dangerously close to a major population center, too dependent on the movement of highly dangerous waste by rail, and too vulnerable to terrorists. Do those arguments sound familiar? Following the "NIMBY" rule, however, the Utah congressional delegation always votes to dump the nuclear waste in Nevada. Now it's their turn to fight against a dump site in their own state. As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to nuclear waste, turnabout is fair play. So I hope the Bush administration and the Energy Department fall flat on their collective faces as they attempt to move the Yucca Mountain project forward in the face of overwhelming opposition - more than 70 percent - from the citizens of our state. Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City. All contents © Copyright 2005 nevadaappeal.com Nevada Appeal - 580 Mallory Way - Carson City, NV 89701 ***************************************************************** 55 David Krieger: Saving the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement CounterPunch March 5 / 6, 2005 Bush Must Lead by Example, Not Force By DAVID KRIEGER North Korea's recent announcement that it has manufactured nuclear weapons highlights the precarious nature of the global nonproliferation regime and particularly the failure of the Bush administration's approach to the problem. In an official statement, North Korea indicated that the impetus for its actions was "the Bush administration's increasingly hostile policy." In fact, the Bush administration has dragged its feet for more than four years and made inadequate efforts to provide either security assurances or development aid to North Korea in exchange for halting its nuclear program. Yet it is widely agreed on all sides of the political spectrum that preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons is the most important item on the U.S. national security agenda. This was the one point that President Bush and Sen. John Kerry could agree upon in their presidential debate on foreign policy. At the center of the nonproliferation regime is the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). What most Americans don't know is that this treaty is based upon an important tradeoff. The nonnuclear weapons states agree not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear weapons states agree to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. Every five years, the parties to this treaty, now 188 countries, meet at the United Nations to review progress. At the 2000 Review Conference, the parties agreed by consensus to 13 practical steps for nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately, the nuclear weapons states, and particularly the United States, seem to have made virtually zero progress in the past five years. Despite its pledges to do otherwise, the United States has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; opposed a verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty; substituted the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which is fully reversible, for the START treaties; scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, opening the door for deployment of missile defenses and moves toward placing weapons in outer space; kept nuclear weapons at the center of its security policies, including research to create new nuclear weapons; and demonstrated no political will toward the elimination of its nuclear arsenal. The only small glimmer of hope in U.S. nuclear policy was Congress' cutting the funding requested by the administration in the 2005 budget for "bunker buster" and low-yield nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the administration is already back seeking the inclusion of this research in the 2006 and 2007 budgets. With less than three months remaining before the beginning of the next Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, there is a sense that prospects for the future of the nonproliferation regime are dim. I was recently at a meeting on "The Future of the NPT" held at The Carter Center in Atlanta. The conference was sponsored by the Middle Powers Initiative, a coalition of eight international civil society organizations. I was there representing one of the eight, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. In attendance were many of the key ambassadors who will be participating in the 2005 NPT Review Conference. Ambassador Sérgio de Queiroz Duarte of Brazil, the president-designate of the Review Conference said that there is "a persistent and serious situation of erosion of confidence in the mechanisms of the NPT and on the ability of the instrument to survive the tests it has been through." Participants in the Atlanta meeting drew attention to the unbalanced situation in the Middle East, with Israel, not a party to the NPT, already having nuclear weapons and Iran seeming to hold its options open for developing them. They also expressed concern about North Korea's withdrawal from the treaty and its reported development of a nuclear arsenal. The greatest concern, however, was over the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament in accord with previous promises. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who spoke at the meeting, pointed out that prospects for this year's discussion are not encouraging. He noted that the prepatory committee for the conference had so far failed even to achieve an agenda because of the "deep divisions between the nuclear powers who seek to stop proliferation without meeting their own disarmament commitments and the Non-Aligned Movement, whose demands include firm disarmament commitments and consideration of the Israeli arsenal." For the Non-Proliferation Treaty to fail or begin to unravel would be a disaster for the world, perhaps most for the United States. Yet the U.S. administration seems to think that it can go on with business as usual and disavow its pledges on the 13 practical steps for nuclear disarmament made in 2000. Other countries are getting restless and some, like Iran and North Korea, after having been designated by President Bush as part of the "axis of evil," seem to be moving toward creating their own nuclear arsenal. This is a situation that cannot be countered by force without throwing the international order into chaos. It can only be dealt with using diplomacy, cooperation and a leveling of the nuclear playing field by fulfilling promises for nuclear disarmament. The nonproliferation bargain must be two-sided. If we are going to prevent a breakdown of the nonproliferation regime, the United States is going to have to lead by example rather than by force. This would require a major shift in policy for this administration. Congress and the American public need to be active participants in order to create such a shift. Direct citizen involvement in U.S. nuclear policy has been successful in the past in ending atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1960s and freezing the level of nuclear arms in the 1980s. It will serve our common interests to end the proliferation of nuclear weapons and strengthen the global nonproliferation regime. David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. WWW http://www.counterpunch.org ***************************************************************** 56 ABQjournal: Lab Oversight Bureau May Get Funds the Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Saturday, March 5, 2005 Lab Oversight Bureau May Get Funds Albuquerque Journal--> By Adam Rankin Journal Staff Writer State lawmakers are considering a measure that would supplement federal dollars for the chronically underfunded state-operated office that double-checks Los Alamos National Laboratory's environmental monitoring programs. Because of a shortfall in federal funding, state scientists are having to discard environmental samples that would normally serve as independent verification of LANL's environmental monitoring. State Rep. Jim R. Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, sponsored House Bill 1023, which would siphon $300,000 from the state's general fund to the state Environment Department's Department of Energy Oversight Bureau for testing of Los Alamos air, water and soil samples for contamination. "If they don't get a little supplemental funding, they are going to be in the red by $225,000 by June 30," said Amy Williams of Santa Fe-based Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, which helped Trujillo develop the proposal. In recent years, the Oversight Bureau, charged with verifying LANL's environmental compliance through independent analysis, has faced decreasing federal funding. Established through an "agreement in principle" in 1989 between DOE and the state, the Oversight Bureau receives all of its funding through a DOE grant. Funding of $1 million in 2004 was the least the bureau has received since its first year of operation in 1991. Funding peaked at $3.25 million in 1995. Over the bureau's 14-year history, funding levels have averaged around $2 million. Bureau scientist Michael Dale said the office of 15 staff members and scientists is operating on $1.2 million this year, about $600,000 short of what he said would be ideal. Last year, bureau scientist Ralph Ford-Schmid said the department had been collecting samples that it couldn't afford to test. He said storm water runoff samples were piling up in refrigerators. "They've discarded 40 samples from 2003 because of a lack of funding, they are considering discarding storm water samples from 2004 because of a lack of funding, they disabled their confirmatory air-monitoring system around the entire complex in June 2004 because of a lack of funding," Williams said. At times, the bureau has resorted to shifting bureau scientists to other state environment programs to avoid layoffs. Williams said the bureau has only about $62,000 to spread around for sampling costs over the next two years, forcing difficult decisions about what to evaluate at the 40-square-mile laboratory. "We have no one to confirm that the air monitoring that LANL is doing is accurate" without the bureau's work, she said. Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 57 RGJ: Las Vegas museum traces atomic bomb history + [Reno Gazette-Journal] [Reno Gazette-Journal] March 06, 2005 Reno, Nevada, USA 775-788-6200 ASSOCIATED PRESS 3/5/2005 11:18 pm http://www.atomictestingmuseum.org LAS VEGAS — Descending a dark tunnel past Civil Defense relics toward a digital countdown on a bomb shelter’s concrete walls might chill those from a Cold War generation weaned on nuclear fallout drills. But curators of the new Atomic Testing Museum said they hope it stirs the imagination of those with no memory of mushroom clouds and the role the nearby Nevada Test Site played in the development of nuclear deterrence. “Nuclear weapons aren’t gone,” museum Director William Johnson said as he led the way through the $3.5 million facility that opened last month just east of the Las Vegas Strip. “The world is just a different place now.” The museum traces a half-century of nuclear weapons testing in a world that grew to love or loathe the bomb. It describes developments that let scientists peer into the first millionth of a second of a nuclear blast before instruments vaporized and it charts research that continued after earthshaking explosions ended in 1992 at the test site. Victims unhappy It also has drawn criticism as revisionist history among advocates who call it a forum for nuclear apologists, and it has reopened wounds for “downwinders” sickened by fallout from atmospheric atomic blasts. “Once you’ve been a victim of nuclear weapons you’re less enthusiastic about it,” said Michelle Thomas, 52, a lifelong resident of St. George, Utah. “I don’t hate or fear anyone bad enough to want to see happen to them what happened to us.” Johnson doesn’t deny that testing caused problems. He pointed to exhibits describing the plight of downwinders and of test site workers sickened by silicosis, and to a reading room and nuclear testing archive containing more than 310,000 documents. “I want people to come here and learn,” Johnson said. “But if there’s only one message taken away, it’s that the Cold War was a war. It was a struggle with the Soviet Union.” The story is told with a timeline, artifacts, interactive and touch-screen displays and several films, including a 10-minute presentation in the concrete bunker dubbed the Ground Zero Theater. Visitors sit on varnished wooden seats modeled after the warped, weathered benches still on News Nob, a rocky outcrop overlooking Yucca Flat where news reporters observed atmospheric nuclear tests beginning with “Charlie” in April 1952. Light bursts as the big screen shows a nuclear test. The room rumbles with embedded speakers. Air blasts tousle the hair, imitating a shock wave. “It’s almost like you’re sitting there. That’s real stuff to me,” said Mike Margalski, 49, a Las Vegas maintenance engineer who said he wanted to experience what his father did as an Army soldier exposed to more than one nuclear test in the early 1950s. Eugene “Geno” Margalski died of prostate cancer in 1996, at age 65. “My dad never ever talked about it until just a few days before he passed away,” Margalski said. “He talked about going out and walking in it while they came around with Geiger counters.” This is no theme park. It is as somber as the 230,000 deaths and injuries in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; as sober as the concept of “mutually assured destruction” that shadowed the world for half a century afterward. Some exhibits have a gee-whiz element — chronicling how scientists tested nuclear rocket engines, shrank the size of nuclear devices and measured the effects of radionuclides on plants, animals and food. This being Las Vegas, the museum also chronicles how tourists sipped cocktails on casino rooftops, gazing at blast clouds on the horizon at the test site, 65 miles to the northwest. The museum — a partnership between the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation and the Desert Research Institute — is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. Field trips expected Administrators foresee schoolchildren marveling at the column of instruments used to measure underground nuclear explosions, working a manipulator arm like the one scientists used to handle radioactive materials and hearing the clicks of a Geiger counter measuring low-level radioactivity. “I would hope they come away with an understanding of what is radiation and why we did testing,” said Loretta Helling, a former Energy Department public affairs specialist who spent eight years curating the collection. “We try to have a balanced view in there.” Preston Truman foresees the museum ignoring unpleasantries while teaching “that everything was good and beneficial and that America won the Cold War.” “In 50 years, when all the people who had a negative opinion are dead, it will be just that — one-sided history,” said Truman, who founded and directs an advocacy group called Downwinders. First memory of blast Truman, 53, a Malad, Idaho, resident, said his first memory in life is sitting on his father’s knee in Enterprise, Utah, watching a mushroom cloud at the Nevada Test Site. He figures that was 1955, a year that the government conducted 18 atmospheric tests. “We’re children of the bomb. We saw the flash. We heard the bangs. A couple of times, the shock waves broke out windows that they paid for,” he said. “We got radiated and we got lied to.” Thomas remembers a fine ash falling like snow across St. George. When fallout warnings sounded, her mother would don an old straw hat, pull on rubber dish gloves and tie a dish towel around her own mouth to pluck laundry from the outdoor drying line. “She would wash the sheets twice in hot water so her kids wouldn’t have to sleep with radioactive fallout,” Thomas said. Thomas said she started developing maladies as a junior in high school: ovarian cysts, breast cancer, a benign salivary gland tumor. She said she was diagnosed in 1974 with polymyositis, an autoimmune system disease similar to lupus. She and two siblings each received a one-time “downwinder” payment of $50,000 under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. “I think we’ve learned that the government is fallible and may not be entirely upfront,” Thomas said. “But it was considered unpatriotic in those days to question the government.” Johnson, 47, recalled hearing the wail of Friday morning Civil Defense sirens as a child in Miami. He said the museum tried to put the nation’s 1,054 above- and below-ground nuclear tests in context. Of the 928 detonated at the test site, 100 were atmospheric tests. Seven tests were exploded elsewhere in Nevada, three each in New Mexico and Alaska, two each in Colorado and Mississippi and 106 on Pacific islands. Three tests were conducted in South Atlantic islands. The number of nuclear tests peaked at 96 in 1962 — the year the United States and the Soviet Union stared each other down with their fingers on the button during the Cuban missile crisis. “The paradigm of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was that the Northern Hemisphere was going to be blown to bits,” Johnson said. The scientists, technicians and administrators at the test site, he said, “were thinking they were saving the world.” © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett Co. Inc.Newspaper. ***************************************************************** 58 ABQjournal: 2 LANL Whistle-Blowers Sue UC Albuquerque Journal newspaper. Friday, March 4, 2005 Albuquerque Journal--> By Adam Rankin Journal Staff Writer Two Los Alamos National Laboratory whistle-blowers, both former internal auditors at the lab, filed a lawsuit against the University of California and five of its employees on Thursday alleging retaliation for their outspoken criticisms of what they claim are LANL's ongoing financial and procurement problems. Chuck Montańo, a 26-year LANL veteran, and Tommy Ray Hook, who was hired by LANL in 1989, allege in the suit that LANL and University of California managers attempted to make their jobs so miserable in retaliation for uncovering management failures that they would be forced to resign. The men name Richard Marquez, LANL's associate director for administration; John Bretzke; Vernon Brown; William Barr; and University of California head auditor Patrick Reed in their lawsuit. The Santa Fe-based law firm of Rothstein, Donatelli, Hughes, Dahlstrom and Schoenburg and the Washington, D.C.-based firm of Bernabei and Katz are representing the men. Bernabei and Katz represented LANL whistle-blowers Glenn Walp and Steve Doran in another suit filed against the university in 2003. The two whistle-blowers claim that each of these men conspired to retaliate against them by "downgrading their performance evaluations, denying them positions and promotions for which they applied, denying them meaningful work, repeatedly threatening them with termination, and denigrating them to (U.S. Department of Energy) officials in order to silence them from speaking out publicly about matters of public concern... " Hook and Montańo seek to have all adverse employment actions stricken from their employment histories, a return to meaningful work commensurate with their experience and at least $2 million each for economic damages and $2 million each for punitive damages. Officials at the University of California, which operates LANL under contract for the DOE, say they take Montańo and Hook's whistle-blower complaints seriously. University spokesman Chris Harrington said university officials are working on a "full and completely independent outside investigation," which he said is nearing completion. He said the investigations have been extended twice due to the length and breadth of the reviews, which have included an evaluation of more than 7,000 documents, many of which were provided by Hook and Montańo, and more than 20 employee interviews. Harrington wouldn't comment on the specific allegations made in the lawsuit, but he did say the lab has worked hard to accommodate both men and understands they have previously said that they found their current jobs rewarding. In the lawsuit, Hook and Montańo say their current positions are below their skill levels and that their supervisors refuse to provide them with meaningful work. Part of the lawsuit claims LANL stifled their First Amendment rights to free speech by trying to prevent them from disclosing serious management failings relating to purchasing and contract matters. Copyright Albuquerque Journal Steve@abqjournal.com ***************************************************************** 59 More Dialog on DU (Including Peer Reviewed) Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2005 10:33:40 -0600 (CST) Forwarded from toes list at yahoo.com: From: "Brian Hill" Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:23 am Subject: Some effects of depleted uranium from the US military This is so despicable, I'm sure it will have the same effects on our troops, and I'm sure the military is well aware of these consequences and they don't give a shit. I'm so ashamed to be a citizen of this country. Brian -----Original Message----- From: KathyGing@a... [mailto:KathyGing@a...] Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 1:45 AM To: kathy@k... Subject: photos of deformed babies from effects of depleted uranium bullets Folks, the truth hurts: what we have done with our tax dollars is seen below; a friend recently gave a lecture on the effects of depleted uranium. A geologist friend of mine sent me this URL. Pls. forward far and wide: this monstrous activity (depleted uranium used in bullets, etc.) has got to stop. I sadly wonder what happens to these poor babes. http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html ************************************************ From: "Michael Givel" Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 11:42 am Subject: Re: Some effects of depleted uranium from the US military I agree. This is despicable and I might add horrifying. But, in the interest of accuracy, how do we know that these pictures are due to DU? Where is the actual evidence documenting the link with these severe deformities, a number of them are documented to be caused by other reasons. In fact the author of the article acknowledges this when they say: "The majority of the pictures were supplied to me by a source who prefers to remain anonymous at the current time. I was unable to acquire either original negatives, or prints from negatives. They arrived in the form of colour A4 copies. I scanned them into Photoshop and attempted to clean and sharpen them as best I could. There has not, and I repeat not, been any digital alteration other than the cleaning and sharpening process. No text documentation arrived with the pictures, so I have described them as accurately as I can. It is my understanding that the photographs were taken from 1998 onwards. I would be grateful to anyone who could potentially supply me with further information about these types of deformities; medical terms for them, etc. Additional pictures were taken by Dr. Siegwart Horst-Gunther, President of the International Yellow Cross. Most appeared in his 1996 book "URANIUM PROJECTILES - SEVERELY MAIMED SOLDIERS, DEFORMED BABIES, DYING CHILDREN" (Published by AHRIMAN - Verlag, ISBN: 3- 89484-805-7). The book is a documentary record of DU ammunition after-effects, and they were taken between 1993 and 1995. Dr. Gunther also supplied me with additional photographs from his unpublished collection, some of which feature the birth deformities being experienced by Western Gulf war veterans' children. I have asked Dr. Gunther's permission for his pictures to be treated as 'Public Domain' and copyright free. He has agreed and you may reproduce them as you see fit." I have not read the book above, so I can not comment on its accuracy in terms of solid evidence. Does anybody have any further information? *************************************************** From: "Michael Givel" Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 12:03 pm Subject: Other Information on DU (Peer Reviewed) In partial answer to my own question, I just checked the Pubmed search engine of all peer reviewed articles in public health and medical journals. Located here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=ucsflib&tool=cdl&otool=cdlotool Dr. Gunther has not published a peer reviewed article on this subject of depleted uranium. There are other articles among the 191 articles that appeared after I typed the words "depleted uranium": I copy below the abstract of the two latest with respect to a war situation. There is also an article that appeared when I typed the words: "depleted uranium Iraq" I copy that below. This leads to the question since Gunter has not published a peer reviwed scientific article on the subject, as far as I know, was his book also peer reviewed for scientific integrity? Also, what exactly is the International Yellow Cross? Med Arh. 2004;58(5):275-8. Related Articles, Links The number of malignant neoplasm in Sarajevo region during the period 1998-2002. Obralic N, Gavrankapetanovic F, Dizdarevic Z, Duric O, Sisic F, Selak I, Balta S, Nakas B. Clinical Center University Sarajevo. Due to the specific war and post-war situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina it is possible to notice some differences in the number, type, advancement, biological course, treatment and its outcome. The actual situation which appeared in connection to depleted uranium has additionally raised questions about its influence on human health and about eventual increase in the number of malignant diseases in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In public, we often see that there are claims about enormous increase in the incidence of cancer. In order to achieve a realistic picture of actual condition and to avoid panic and ignorant attitude, correct and constant data of malignant tumors are necessary. THE AIM OF THE STUDY: To collect and analyze data on population with malignant tumors in the region of Sarajevo city, which represents a symbol of difficult times in our country in the recent past. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We have collected and analysed data on, population with malignant tumors which included persons with permanent residence in Sarajevo Canton during 5-year period, from 01.01.1998, until 31.12.2002. Results were compared to regional and world indicators, and were observed in the light of specific local situation. RESULTS: During period of 5 years (1998-2002) 7733 new cases of malignant tumors were registered in Sarajevo Canton; 3940 among men and 3809 among women. Mostly registered tumors were: lung cancer, amelanotic skin tumors, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, cervical and uterine cancer, urinary bladder cancer, prostate cancer and cancer of larynx. CONCLUSIONS: Number of all malignant tumors in the region of Sarajevo Canton correlates to those in South European countries and the one estimated by GLOBCAN 2000. High number was registered in 1998, possibly due to normalization of the health services (diagnostics and treatment of malignant tumors), which didn't exist during the war and early post-war period. After 2000, there is a gradual increase in the number of people with malignant tumors. The most common tumors are lung and breast cancer. Significant differences to estimation and data registrated in other South European counties is high number of laryngeal cancer, urinary bladder cancer, bone and cartilage sarcoma, brain tumors and malignant lymphomas among both genders. Cervical cancer is extremely high up on the list, which correlates with data in developing countries. The incidence of smoking in Bosnia and Herzegovina is extremely high, almost complete, which can influence not only the appearance of lung cancer but also laryngeal and urinary bladder cancer. It is hard to say whether the war and post-war stress, irregular and insufficient nutrition during and after the siege of the city or some other factor have influenced their appearance among exposed population and differences in the observed incidence. PMID: 15628249 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] ****************** Sci Total Environ. 2005 Jan 20;337(1-3):109-18. Related Articles, Links Uranium contents and (235)U/(238)U atom ratios in soil and earthworms in western Kosovo after the 1999 war. Di Lella LA, Nannoni F, Protano G, Riccobono F. Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali "G. Sarfatti"-Sezione di Geochimica Ambientale, University of Siena, Via del Laterino 8, I- 53100, Siena, Italy. The uranium content and (235)U/(238)U atom ratio were determined in soils and earthworms of an area of Kosovo (Djakovica garrison), heavily shelled with depleted uranium (DU) ammunition during the 1999 war. The aim of the study was to reconstruct the small-scale distribution of uranium and assess the influence of the DU added to the surface environment. The total uranium concentration and the (235)U/(238)U ratio of topsoils showed great variability and were inversely correlated. The highest uranium levels (up to 31.47 mg kg(- 1)) and lowest (235)U/(238)U ratios (minimum 0.002147) were measured in topsoils collected inside, or very close to, the clusters of DU penetrator holes. Regarding the fractionation of uranium in the surface soils, the uranium concentrations in the soluble and exchangeable fractions increased as the total uranium concentration of the topsoils increased. High and rather uniform percentage contents of uranium (24-36%) were associated with the poorly crystalline iron oxide phases of soils. In the U-enriched soils the elevated levels of the element were probably due to the presence of very small, unevenly distributed oxidized DU particles. The total uranium concentration in earthworms was in the range 0.142-0.656 mg kg(-1), with the highest concentrations in Lumbricus terrestris. The juveniles of all three studied species seemed to accumulate uranium more than adults, probably due to age-related differences in metabolism. The (235)U/(238)U ratio in the earthworms was variable (0.005241-0.007266) and independent of both the total uranium contents in soils and the absolute uranium levels in the animals. Bioconcentration was greater at lower U concentrations in soil, probably due to an increasing rate of elimination of uranium by the earthworms as the soil contents of the element increase. The results of this study clearly indicate that DU was added to the soil of the study area. Nevertheless, the phenomenon was very limited spatially and the total uranium concentrations fell within the natural range of the element in soils. Moreover, the absolute uranium concentrations indicate that there was no contamination of the earthworm species studied. PMID: 15626383 [PubMed - in process] ******************** Environ Int. 2004 Mar;30(1):123-34. Related Articles, Links Environmental and health consequences of depleted uranium use in the 1991 Gulf War. Bem H, Bou-Rabee F. Institute of Applied Radiation, Technical University of Lodz, ul. Zwirki 36, 90-924, Lodz, Poland. henrybem@c... Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the 235U radionuclide enrichment processes for nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. DU in the metallic form has high density and hardness as well as pyrophoric properties, which makes it superior to the classical tungsten armour-piercing munitions. Military use of DU has been recently a subject of considerable concern, not only to radioecologists but also public opinion in terms of possible health hazards arising from its radioactivity and chemical toxicity. In this review, the results of uranium content measurements in different environmental samples performed by authors in Kuwait after Gulf War are presented with discussion concerning possible environmental and health effects for the local population. It was found that uranium concentration in the surface soil samples ranged from 0.3 to 2.5 microg g(-1) with an average value of 1.1 microg g(- 1), much lower than world average value of 2.8 microg g(-1). The solid fallout samples showed similar concentrations varied from 0.3 to 1.7 microg g(-1) (average 1.47 microg g(-1)). Only the average concentration of U in solid particulate matter in surface air equal to 0.24 ng g(-1) was higher than the usually observed values of approximately 0.1 ng g(-1) but it was caused by the high dust concentration in the air in that region. Calculated on the basis of these measurements, the exposure to uranium for the Kuwait and southern Iraq population does not differ from the world average estimation. Therefore, the widely spread information in newspapers and Internet (see for example: [CADU NEWS, 2003. http://www.cadu.org.uk/news/index.htm (3-13)]) concerning dramatic health deterioration for Iraqi citizens should not be linked directly with their exposure to DU after the Gulf War. PMID: 14664872 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] ********************************* I also checked to see if there were any other articles related to the Iraq war. This is what I found: Health Phys. 2002 Apr;82(4):527-32. Related Articles, Links An examination of uranium levels in Canadian forces personnel who served in the Gulf War and Kosovo. Ough EA, Lewis BJ, Andrews WS, Bennett LG, Hancock RG, Scott K. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON. ough-e@rmc.ca A uranium bioassay program was conducted involving 103 active and retired Canadian Forces personnel. The total uranium concentrations in each of two 24-h urine collections were analyzed separately at independent commercial laboratories by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA). The mean and median concentrations were determined to be 4.5 ng L(-1) and 2.8 ng L(-1), respectively, from ICP-MS and 17 ng L(-1) and 15 ng L(-1), respectively, from INAA. The total uranium concentrations were sufficiently low so that isotopic (238U:235U ratio) assays could not be performed directly from urine samples. Isotopic assays were performed on hair samples from 19 of the veterans participating in the testing. The isotopic hair assays were scattered around the natural 238U:235U ratio of 137.8, ranging from 122 +/- 21 to 145 +/- 16 (1sigma). Due to concern expressed in the media over possible depleted uranium exposure and long-term retention in bone, a single bone sample (vertebrate bone marrow) from a deceased member of the Canadian Forces was also analyzed for total uranium content and isotopic ratio by ICP-MS. The sample was shown to have 16.0 +/- 0.3 microg kg(-1) uranium by dry weight and a 238U:238U isotopic ratio of 138 +/- 4, consistent with natural uranium. PMID: 11908516 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] *********************************************** ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************