Subject: HEADLINES 18 - 20 JANUARY 1996 Jan 18 1996 (Reuter) - The head of Germany's BND intelligence service Konrad Porzner said on Thursday that Iran and Iraq have been acquiring nuclear materials using undercover buyers on the international black market. He said that of 32 cases of interested buyers registered by German intelligence last year, 16 were made on behalf of states -- proportionally more than those detected in previous years. Also on offer was enriched uranium from reactors of nuclear submarines, which could be used to build atomic bombs. --- -- - Jan 18 1996 (Reuter) - Chances are high that a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty (CTBT) will be achieved within the next six months.Three of the five declared nuclear powers, France, the United States and Britain, have publicly backed a so-called "zero yield" outlawing all nuclear explosions of whatever size. But diplomats close to the negotiations said India, an unofficial nuclear power, had been arguing that it should be seen as a disarmament issue, and had called for a parallel negotiating committee to be set up on nuclear disarmament. Jan 18 1996 (Reuter) - Foreign Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday Israel's greatest strength was its perception as a nuclear power among Arab states. He stopped short of confirming Israel has the bomb, which it is widely believed internationally to possess. Barak, an ex-army chief, also warned Syrian President Hafez al-Assad that Israel would defeat him if forced to go to war. Foreign reports say Israel has some 200 nuclear bombs. --- -- - Feb 17 1996 (Reuter) - A deal outlining future aid to French Polynesia after the end of nuclear testing in the South Pacific is likely to be signed next month, French Polynesian territorial president Gaston Flosse said on Wednesday. Defence Minister Charles Millon reasserted on Wednesday that France would complete its underground nuclear tests at the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls by the end of February at the latest and then sign a treaty outlawing tests for ever. --- -- - Jan. 18 1996 (UPI) -- U.N. officials said Thursday they are confident of reaching a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty within the next six months, despite ambivalent signals from China and France's decision to conduct at least one more test in the South Pacific. "The massive outrage expressed against French and Chinese testing shows the world public is demanding a treaty to end nuclear tests be negotiated now," said Joshua Handler, disarmament coordinator for environment group Greenpeace. "There are still over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, and new ones still being produced," Handler said. Jan 19 1996 (Reuter) - A Munich university said on Friday it is ignoring U.S. objections and forging ahead with controversial plans for Germany's first experimental nuclear reactor to use weapons-grade uranium. "The Technical University of Munich will not change the reactor plan as it stands," the university said in a statement. Plans begun in 1981 are so far along that they are now irreversible, it added. U.S. experts believe the Garching reactor could be redesigned to use less dangerous low-enriched uranium as fuel, the official said. Jan 19 1996 (Reuter) - Chancellor Helmut Kohl's top intelligence aide denied on Friday that he had known Russian plutonium would be brought into Germany by plane in an operation to trap nuclear smugglers. Russia and opposition parties in Germany have accused the BND secret service of staging the affair in August 1994 to justify its existence in the post-Cold War era. The three men arrested at the airport, two Spaniards and a Colombian, were jailed in July for smuggling the radioactive material, although the court decided they had been lured by an agent in the pay of German intelligence. Jan 19 1996 (Reuter) - Three nuclear projects under construction this year will boost China's nuclear power capacity to 8,700 megawatts by 2003, a nuclear power official said on Friday. Two French-built reactors at the Ling'ao plant in southern Guangdong province will have generating capacity of 1000 MW each when completed by 2001, said the official from the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). Jan 19 1996 (Reuter) - Senior parliament deputies on Friday expressed outrage at a suggestion by President Alexander Lukashenko that Belarus might redeploy nuclear arms it has given up if NATO expanded toward its borders. "I can't comment -- I'm speechless," deputy chairman Gennady Karpenko told reporters in the capital of the former Soviet republic wedged between Russia and Poland. Jan 19 1996 (Reuter) - A French air force Mirage 2000-N nuclear bomber flew into a flock of birds and crashed as it was landing on Friday at its base in southern France, but no nuclear weapons were aboard, the air force said. The two-man crew ejected safely from the aircraft which was returning to its base at Istres, near the Mediterranean port of Marseille, after a training mission. Jan 19 1996 (Reuter) - A Munich university said on Friday it is ignoring U.S. objections and forging ahead with controversial plans for Germany's first experimental nuclear reactor to use weapons-grade uranium. The plans fly in the face of U.S. efforts to minimise international traffic in this fuel. The U.S. is particularly concerned that the German reactor project will increase traffic in weapons-grade fuel from Russia to western Europe. JAN 19 1996 (Reuter) - Vatican sources said France's resumption of nuclear testing in the South Pacific last year was not expected to dominate the talks, which were expected to cover the situation in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East peace process and the problems in Africa, where France was once the dominant colonial power. But the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, used a welcoming front-page editorial marking Chirac's visit to recall an address by the Pope to the diplomatic corps earlier this month in which he called for a swift ban on nuclear tests. Jan 17 1996 (Reuter) - Japan's ambitious plans to boost reliance on nuclear power have been badly upset by an accident at its prototype fast-breeder reactor last month, the head of the country's top energy research body said on Wednesday. "Future nuclear power capacity is expected to fall drastically short of government plans," economist Kazuya Fujime, managing director of the private Institute of Energy Economics, said in an interview. The government aims for Japan's nuclear power capacity to reach 70.50 gigawatts (gw) by 2010, with nuclear power accounting for 42 percent of total power supplies. Jan 20 1996 (Reuter) - Paris and Rome have ended a diplomatic spat over France's nuclear weapons tests, prime ministers Alain Juppe of France and Lamberto Dini of Italy said on Saturday. "We have experienced a few vexing moments over the past few months but now we must look to the future," Juppe told reporters after he and Dini met in Paris. "I know that the nuclear tests will soon be completed and once that has happened, I am certain we will be able to consider that a page has been turned," Dini said, adding that the testing issue never came up during their 45-minute talks. Jan 20 1996 (Reuter) - France has agreed to recycle plutonium extracted from waste from German nuclear power plants and return it to Germany, an official of the French state-run nuclear power company COGEMA said on Saturday. "We are in the process of arranging several contracts with German electricity plants on the fabrication of plutonium," COGEMA deputy director-general Christian Gobert told Reuters. COGEMA will use the extracted plutonium to make a nuclear fuel called MOX, he said. Germany is unable to produce MOX on its own and has turned to both France and Belgium for help, Gobert said. Jan 20 (Reuter) - The Hong Kong government said on Saturday it had demanded more information about incidents at China's Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant following reports operating rules there had been breached. The Hongkong Standard quoted a notice at the plant as saying staff had repeatedly breached safety procedures through the unauthorised operation of cooling system valves. Plant officials told the Standard the incidents involving the valves occurred in the past 10 days but the notice was simply a reminder of operating principles.