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NUCLEAR
Hunting a Deadly Soviet Legacy
Vietnam, South Korea to cooperate on nuclear power plant
Excerpt from interview with YASSER ARAFAT TO MELHEM KARAM"
Bosnian Radiation Blamed on NATO
Radioactivity Detected in Bosnia Where NATO Used Depleted Uranium Shells
UNEP Identifies DU Risks in Bosnia-Herzegovina
US Used More DU Weapons In Afghanistan Than Gulf
RWE to operate first on-site nuclear waste storage
We're not spies, says inspection chief
Iraq Inspections Receive Support From Arab League
U.N. Set to Move in Quickly to Seek Iraq Nuclear Arms
A Missile Shield Appeals to a Worried Japan
U.S., allies consider halting oil shipment
U.S., Allies Grapple with N.Korea Nuclear Issue
Flawless test flight for US cruise missile
Malaysia rejects Yemen-style US military action
More radioactive waste shipped from Murmansk region
Bush Marks Veteran's Day With Vow on Iraq
Lott Says Senate Could Pass Security Bill Within Days
MILITARY
Biological Blame Game: USA in First Place
Defense stocks rise on election news
Iraqi oil, American bonanza?
Saddam tells MPs to decide
U.S. Warplanes Strike Iraq Targets
Lawmakers in Baghdad Meet on Response to U.N. Resolution
Leaking plans for a rolling war
Destination Iraq for UK soldiers
INTERVIEW WITH THE LEADER OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
Arab Diplomats Say Iraq to Abide By Resolution
Al-Qaida Leaders Said in Pakistan
Manufacturing terror
Laden, Mullah Omar calling shots in Kashmir, Chechnya: Putin
Kremlin to impose its peace plan on Chechnya
Sweden Expels Two Russian Diplomats for Spying
Russia Convicts Officer of Spying
Studies barely scratch surface of Gulf War's toll on health
Iraqi Battleground Fiercer, Veterans Say
Photonic Crystals in Uniforms
Only matter of time before US hit by terrorists: Ridge
Bush Dodges the Pomp in Dealing With the Press
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI Whistle-Blower's Case Reexamined
FBI Urged to Protect Whistleblowers
A fate worse than prison
We Should Shun Assassinations
ENERGY AND OTHER
Dutch energy firms slam planned green subsidy cuts
Physicists Split the Anti-Atom
Grand Jury Subpoenas Energy Records
Universities Fined for Hazwaste Violations
As AIDS Spreads, India Struggles for a Workable Strategy
Gates Pledges $100 Million in India's AIDS Fight
Shadow Economy Guarantees Russia's Stability
ACTIVISTS
Greenpeace activists block Hungary chemicals plant
Anti Nuclear Protestors Demonstrate
Iran Students Stage Third Day of Protests
2 German Police Hurt in Nuke Protest
-------- NUCLEAR
Hunting a Deadly Soviet Legacy
Concerns About 'Dirty Bomb' Drive Efforts to Find Radioactive Cesium
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36157-2002Nov10?language=printer
TBILISI, Georgia -- In the 1970s, scientists in the former Soviet Union developed scores of powerful radioactive devices and dispatched them to the countryside for a project known cryptically as Gamma Kolos, or "Gamma Ears." Its purpose: to deliberately expose plants to radiation and measure the effects.
Some of the tests were aimed at simulating farming conditions after a nuclear war. In rugged eastern Georgia, researchers bombarded wheat seed with radiation to see if the plants would grow better. All the experiments used a common source of radiation, a lead-shielded canister containing enough radioactive cesium 137, U.S. officials now say, to contaminate a small city.
The experiments stopped long ago, but last year's terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon have kindled an intense interest in Gamma Kolos that revolves around a single question: Where's the cesium now?
Spurred by fears of a "dirty bomb" attack that could spread radioactive poisons across major cities, U.S. and international nuclear experts have begun quietly searching former Soviet republics to recover the remains of the Gamma Kolos project before someone else does.
Unknown in the West until recently, the Soviet project is viewed as especially dangerous because its cesium devices could be easily exploited for terrorism: small, portable and possessing a potent core of cesium chloride in the form of pellets or, more frequently, a fine powder. Cesium 137, a silvery metal isotope used commonly in medical radiotherapy, emits powerful gamma radiation and has a half-life of three decades.
"It's like talc -- extremely dispersible," said Abel Gonzales, director of radiation and waste safety for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations-chartered nuclear watchdog. "You don't even need a bomb. Just open a can and people will die."
With heightened urgency and new backing from the U.S. Energy Department, the IAEA led a 10-month sweep of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, now a troubled but independent state. The search turned up five of the Gamma Kolos devices, all of which are now in safe storage. Four more devices have been found in Moldova, while in Russia U.S. officials are helping to construct security systems for agricultural research centers where large quantities of powdered cesium are stored.
But elsewhere across the old Soviet empire, the search is hampered by a lack of funding and a dearth of information. None of the cesium devices is known to have been stolen, but in some Central Asian states there are no records showing how many of the devices exist or what has happened to them. Estimates of the total number of devices are vague -- "anywhere from 100 to 1,000," not counting stocks of cesium in loose storage in Russia, a senior IAEA official said.
Russia is beginning to cooperate in the search, although it cannot yet account for all the cesium, Bush administration officials said.
"I can tell you the Russians themselves are very worried about the cesium that's still out there in some of the [former Soviet] republics," a top official of the U.S. Nuclear Security Administration said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
At least some of the republics share that concern. In Georgia, officials are combing the countryside with radiation detectors following a string of accidents in which civilians stumbled upon abandoned radioactive devices and suffered severe radiation burns. In at least one instance, the radioactive device had drawn the interest of local businessmen who were hoping to sell it on the black market, according to U.S. and Georgian government officials.
"We're not a nuclear country, yet we have these problems with nuclear material," said Zurab Tavartkiladze, Georgia's deputy environmental minister. "How many more are out there? We don't know, because we don't know how many existed to start with." 'Dirty Bomb' Concerns
While the United States has spent billions of dollars in the past decade helping secure or destroy Soviet-era nuclear and chemical weapons, only since September 2001 has the U.S. effort expanded to include nonfissile radioactive material such as cesium 137. The interest first arose from intelligence reports last fall that al Qaeda terrorists were exploring the use of radiological weapons known as dirty bombs. It grew with the discovery by U.S. troops of detailed bomb-building instructions in Afghan caves used by al Qaeda forces. In June, the threat became personal for many Washingtonians when the Justice Department announced it had foiled an alleged al Qaeda plot to explode such a device in a U.S. city, possibly the capital.
The concerns prompted Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in September to call for a global housecleaning to find and secure material that could be used in dirty bombs -- a threat that was made "horrifyingly clear" by the events of the previous 12 months, he said.
"After September 11 [2001], there could be no doubt, if there ever was one, that terrorists would use nuclear materials to harm innocent citizens of the civilized nations of the world -- if they could acquire them," Abraham said.
Although far less lethal than traditional nuclear weapons, dirty bombs could be attractive to terrorists because they can inflict widespread disruption for relatively little cost. With conventional explosives and a few ounces of cesium 137 or strontium 90, a dirty bomb could contaminate large swaths of real estate with dangerous radiation, unleashing panic and rendering some areas uninhabitable for decades.
In a computer simulation of a dirty bomb attack on New York, the detonation of 3,500 curies of cesium chloride in Lower Manhattan -- about 50 grams or 1.75 ounces -- would spread radioactive fallout over 60 city blocks. Immediate casualties would be limited to victims of the immediate blast, but the aftereffects, including relocation and cleanup, would cost tens of billions of dollars, said Michael A. Levi, a physicist and director of the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Project, which conducted the study.
"The financial costs, from the loss of property to business losses, could be huge," Levi said. "People may refuse to return, and others may be unwilling to travel to the area. The threshold for scaring people away from some activities is very low."
Radioactive material for such a bomb can be found in almost every country, including the United States. But terrorists looking for bargains could hardly do better than in the former Soviet Union. The Soviets are known to have produced tens of thousands of radioactive devices for uses ranging from medical diagnostics to military communications, and many were simply abandoned after the Soviet breakup in 1991. Some regions are so littered with such devices that published tourist guides caution travelers to watch out for them.
Nowhere has the problem attracted greater attention than in Georgia, a struggling democracy and staunch U.S. ally in which there have been not only mishaps involving radioactive devices, but documented attempts to steal or smuggle nuclear material. Porous borders with the separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have become thoroughfares for smuggled contraband from cigarettes to weapons, according to Georgian and U.S. government officials. Four years ago, a sting operation in the port city of Batumi netted three kilograms of enriched uranium -- one of the largest seizures ever made of material that could be used in a nuclear bomb.
"Not only is Georgia's government incapable of stopping this kind of smuggling, but some local officials would no doubt take part in it," said Mikheil Saakashvili, a parliament member and leader of Georgia's opposition National Movement party. "There are no resources for monitoring, and the pay for the border guards is $30 to $50 a month."
To head off future thefts, Georgia last year launched an aggressive campaign to find abandoned radioactive devices and store them in a secure, central location. Last month, dozens of Georgian workers armed with hand-held radiation detectors swept an abandoned Soviet missile base near the capital city of Tbilisi, part of a grid-by-grid search that has now covered 15 percent of the country, including all major population centers.
The search turned up small amounts of cesium 137 and strontium 90: in tools, calibration devices, night-vision equipment. "Most of it was junk," said Lia Chelidze, the Georgian government's liaison to the IAEA. But in all, she said, Georgians recovered more than 200 pieces of radioactive equipment during their search, 11 of them with massive radioactive potency.
Of those 11, six were strontium-powered generators once used in military communications equipment. The five other items had been designated for use on farms as part of a project only a few Georgians knew by name: Gamma Kolos. A Lone Sentry
The devices themselves resemble antique milk cans, and for years they were left to rust in sheds owned by Georgia's agriculture department. Today, a small radiation symbol, visible on some of the devices, offers the only hint of their highly lethal contents.
"That's 2,100 curies, just there," said Lerry Meskhi, head of Georgia's nuclear and radiation safety service, pointing to one of the Gamma Kolos devices soon to be entombed in a freshly dug pit beneath a government storage building. "In this small space, there's more than 10,000 curies," or units of radiation, he said.
The measurements were alarming. By comparison, the second-worst civilian nuclear accident -- after the 1986 Chernobyl accident -- involved a medical radiotherapy machine containing roughly half as many curies of cesium 137. Poor villagers in the Brazilian town of Goiania found the machine in an abandoned clinic in 1987 and broke it apart to salvage the metal. Within days nearly 30 people suffered serious radiation injuries and four of them later died. Hundreds of others were treated for exposure and dozens of houses were demolished in the cleanup.
"Even one curie can cause a lot of harm, but it's not something that would attract a terrorist," said the IAEA's Gonzales. "With 2,000 or 3,000 curies you can do a lot of damage."
There is no evidence of immediate danger in the rambling government compound where Georgia's Gamma Kolos equipment is stored. Hidden from public view, the building is in a decaying suburb of the capital, flanked by massive factories that have been idle since shortly after the Soviet collapse more than a decade ago. The few cars that pass must navigate their way around truck-sized potholes and livestock that freely roam the street.
A lone sentry, in civilian clothes and apparently unarmed, guards the roll-away gate to the compound. Georgian officials acknowledge that the real security is in the form of tons of concrete that will seal the devices from intruders, compliments of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Few, if any, officials of the current government were in office when Gamma Kolos was active. Although records are sparse, Georgian environmental officials said the devices were probably built in the 1970s and have lost more than half of their original 4,500-curie strength due to normal atomic decay. The canisters were mounted on tractors and towed directly into fields for planting, they said. Wheat seeds were fed into the machine for a jolt of gamma radiation before being dropped into furrows. "It was supposed to speed up germination and increase yields," one official said. Whether it worked is unclear; in the West, scientists have used radiation to force mutations in crop strains.
The Soviet practice remains a puzzle to some experts in the West. But at the time, it was deemed successful enough that Soviet scientists sent the devices to other republics, from Moldova to Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. Precise figures are unknown, but IAEA officials say they believe the number of devices in other states is much higher than in Georgia, one of the smallest of the former Soviet republics. "Georgia is a mosquito compared to these other places," a senior IAEA official said.
In other regions, the devices were buried in fields to test how crops would perform in a radioactive environment, according to U.S. officials familiar with the experiments. More of the devices and large quantities of surplus cesium were kept at Soviet agricultural institutions and in a network of regional radioactive dumps, the officials said.
Energy Department officials said the U.S. government became aware of the problem in the late 1990s but decided to focus on what was regarded at the time as more serious threats: securing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium as well as the vast stocks of Soviet chemical weapons.
"Two years ago, these radiological sources were not even on the horizon," one Energy Department official said. "But if September 11 taught us anything, it's that whatever seemed unimaginable before is very much imaginable now."
With $25 million in new spending approved by Congress and earmarked for the project, U.S. officials are hoping to make rapid progress in locating missing cesium devices and locking them away in vaults such as the one recently built in a Tbilisi suburb. After initial hesitation, Russia this spring formally embraced the effort and pledged full cooperation in helping U.S. and IAEA officials locate missing radioactive devices, including those in other countries.
"The Russians now 'get it,' " a senior Energy Department official said, "and their cooperation is important because they are aware of things that went on in those regions that we don't know about."
So far, the Russian cooperation has yet to produce a single document or solid lead. But the recent commitments by the Russian government reflect a growing awareness that dirty bombs are Russia's problem, too, Abel Gonzales of the IAEA said.
"The attitudes are starting to change, so for the first time we see that we're all in the same boat," Gonzales said. "After that, it's just a matter of going after them, one by one."
-------- asia
Vietnam, South Korea to cooperate on nuclear power plant
Mon Nov 11,
AP World Politics
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021111/ap_wo_en_po/vietnam_south_korea_1
HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam and South Korea (news - web sites) agreed Monday to cooperate on a nuclear power project for Vietnam, an official said.
The memorandum of understanding was signed in Hanoi by Vietnamese Vice Minister of Industry Nguyen Xuan Chuan and South Korean Vice Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy Kim Dong-won, said an Industry Ministry official.
Under the agreement, South Korea will help Vietnam with its long-term nuclear energy strategy, that includes eventually producing some of the power-plant parts locally. No other details of the deal were released.
Vietnam has said that it needs nuclear power plants by 2017 to meet increasing electricity demands, average growth of some 15 percent per year.
More than 50 percent of Vietnam's electricity is generated by hydropower plants, the remainder by gas-fueled or coal-fired plants.
-------- depleted uranium
Excerpt from interview with YASSER ARAFAT TO MELHEM KARAM"
November 11, 2002
http://www.mmorning.com/article.asp?Article=4673&CategoryID=3)
"...See how many resolutions have been adopted by the UN Security Council but have never been applied by the Jewish state, including the one calling for an inquiry into the massacre perpetrated in the Jenin camp. In the same way, American documents reveal the use by Israel of arms prohibited under international law, such as depleted uranium and other weapons. We have often mentioned this...."
(See "--- israel / palestine" below.)
--------
Bosnian Radiation Blamed on NATO
November 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bosnia-Depleted-Uranium.html
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- U.N. experts said Monday they found three radioactive hotspots in Bosnia resulting from ammunition containing depleted uranium used during NATO airstrikes in 1995.
The tests found radiation at two sites in the Sarajevo suburb of Hadzici and one in Han Pijesak, in the Bosnian Serb republic, according to preliminary results released by the United Nations Environmental Program.
During its 1995 bombings of Serb positions around Sarajevo, NATO used munitions containing depleted uranium, a slightly radioactive heavy metal that is used to pierce armor. The Bosnian government said some 10,800 rounds with the material were fired in its territory.
Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create an up to 100-fold increase in uranium levels in groundwater, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.
``We are concerned about the situation at the Hadzici tank repair facility and the Han Pijesak barracks,'' said Pekka Haavisto, the chairman of the U.N. agency's task force.
In Sarajevo, the U.N. team detected depleted uranium-related materials and dust inside buildings that are now used by private businesses. At the site in the Bosnian Serb republic, the contaminated area is used as a storage facility by army troops.
The areas where radiation is detected should not be used until the sites are decontaminated, Haavisto said.
The international experts were invited by the Bosnian government to investigate concerns that depleted uranium could harm residents and international peacekeepers.
The U.N. team advised the Bosnian government to start decontaminating the three sites and educating people about potential hazards.
Apart from this team, a medical sub-team composed of experts from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Army, visited several hospitals in Bosnia, collecting medical data and statistics. A full report was to be published by UNEP in March 2003.
----
Radioactivity Detected in Bosnia Where NATO Used Depleted Uranium Shells
VOA News
11 Nov 2002,
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=2E04BFCA-5B02-4AB4-AB6D812B566B5214
United Nations environmental experts have said they have detected radioactivity in three areas of Bosnia where NATO forces used depleted uranium shells during an air strike in 1995.
U.N. Environment Program officials Monday warned against deploying forces in those areas for fear of a possible health risk coming from the radioactive material.
The head of the U.N. team, Pekka Haavisto, said the three places of concern were an ammunition storage site near Sarajevo, a nearby tank repair factory and a military barracks in Han Pijesak in eastern Bosnia.
The areas were hit by NATO air strikes using depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds in 1995 as part of an effort to curb attacks by Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Investigators had probed 14 sites over the past month.
NATO authorities last year launched a probe into the possible link between the use of depleted uranium ammunition in the Balkans and increased cancer rates among peacekeepers who had served in the area. But a committee reported that medical research so far had not proved any link between the weapons and the health problems.
Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.
----
UNEP Identifies DU Risks in Bosnia-Herzegovina
From United Nations Environment Programme
Monday, November 11, 2002
http://www.enn.com/direct/display-release.asp?id=7785
SARAJEVO - A team of experts fielded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has investigated 15 sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina targeted with weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) during the mid-1990s.
The UNEP team used highly sensitive instruments to measure surface radioactivity at 14 sites. These measurements revealed the presence of radioactive "hot spots" and pieces of DU weapons at three sites - the Hadzici tank repair facility, the Hadzici ammunition storage area and the Han Pijesak barracks.
"Following a request by the Council of Ministers of Bosnia-Herzegovina, UNEP is carrying out this scientific assessment", said Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of UNEP. "Seven years after the conflict, DU still remains an environmental concern and, therefore, it is vital that we have the scientific facts, based upon which we can give clear recommendations how to minimize any risk."
"We are concerned about the situation at the Hadzici tank repair facility and the Han Pijesak barracks", said Pekka Haavisto, Chairman of UNEP DU projects. "The UNEP team detected DU-related materials and DU dust inside buildings that are currently used by local businesses or, in the case of Han Pijesak, by troops as storage facilities."
"Before using any DU-targeted building there should always be proper clean-up. When people are working in buildings that have not been decontaminated, unnecessary risks are being taken, and, therefore, we will discuss with the Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities the need for decontamination inside the buildings currently in use as a first precautionary step. Such a job should be carried out by experts", said Mr. Haavisto.
The UNEP team found that the general public is not aware of what DU ammunition looks like and the dangers it can pose. UNEP will discuss with the national civil protection authorities the possibility of offering de-mining personnel, other local authorities involved in DU work, and interested members of the public with an easy-to-read flyer on the issue of DU ammunition in the environment.
The two recommended precautionary measures of decontaminating the targeted buildings and educating the public are consistent with those proposed in UNEP's earlier DU studies in Serbia & Montenegro and Kosovo.
In addition to the 14 sites that were examined the team could not to enter one site due to safety concerns over nearby mines.
The 17-member UNEP team included experts from UNEP, the Swedish Radiation Protection Authority (SSI), Spiez Laboratory (Switzerland), Italy's Environmental Protection Agency and Technical Services (APAT, former ANPA), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Greek Atomic Energy Commission, the US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM), the Nuclear Safety Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Bristol (UK).
The Bosnia and Herzegovina Ministry for European Integration hosted the UNEP team. Local scientists also joined the team on different occasions. The team received local support from the United Nations Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), the Bosnia and Herzegovina Mine Action Center (MAC) and NATO/SFOR.
The team took almost 200 environmental samples, including 47 surface soil samples, three full soil profiles, three penetrators, one full DU bullet, four smear samples, 24 air samples, 42 water samples, 19 lichen samples, and three bark, two moss, one mushroom and two vegetable samples.
The samples collected will be analysed for radioactivity and toxicity at three internationally recognized laboratories - Spiez Laboratory (Switzerland), APAT (Italy) and Bristol University (UK).
A medical sub-team composed of the experts from WHO and the US Army Center (USACHPPM) visited three hospitals and examined medical data and statistics in the Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation and in the Republika Srpska. The sub-team stayed in close contact with both Ministries of Health (Srpska and Federation) and received their full support.
In parallel to the medical sub-team, the IAEA expert assessed the overall situation on radioactive sources in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This included regulations on handling, radioactive sources in use and storage of radioactive wastes.
The UNEP DU assessment is funded by the Governments of Italy and Switzerland. The final results will be published in a UNEP report in March 2003.
For more information, please contact: Mr. Pekka Haavisto, Chairman of UNEP DU Projects, +41-79-477-0877, pekka.haavisto@unep.ch, Eric Falt, UNEP Spokesperson in Nairobi, +254-20-623292, or Michael Williams, UNEP Information Officer in Geneva, at +41-22-917-8242, +41-79-409-1528 (cell), michael.williams@unep.ch. See also http://postconflict.unep.ch
For more information, contact: Jim Sniffen Information Officer United Nations Environment Programme 1-212-963-8210 sniffenj@un.org Web site: http://www.unep.org
----
[This popped up on a Google search. Have no idea who "Jihad Unspun" are, but they make an interesting allegation. Perhaps someone can either support or debunk this? mailto:prop1@prop1.org - be sure to include the URL for this NucNews (http://prop1.org/nucnews/2002/021111nn.htm.)
US Used More DU Weapons In Afghanistan Than Gulf
Nov 11, 2002
Jihad Unspun - A Clear View On The US War On "Terrorism"
Source: NNI
http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=33210&list=/home.php&
"U.S. forces must refrain from using depleted uranium weapons like the ones they used in Afghanistan in their possible attack on Iraq," said the discoverer of Gulf War syndrome, Dr. Asef Dracovic, in an interview with Al-Jazeera television. He warned against the syndrome and said that if U.S. forces use depleted uranium (DU) in the threatened attack on Iraq, as they did in Afghanistan, it would have very serious implications.
Dracovic said that U.S. forces used more DU weapons in Afghanistan than they used in the Persian Gulf War and the Balkans wars, adding that if the same amounts were used in Iraq, it would have terrible consequences. He stated that thousands of DU bombs were used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. About 80,000 U.S., 15,000 Canadian, and a large number of British soldiers are suffering from Gulf War syndrome, but unfortunately the media has covered up the whole issue under pressure from the U.S. administration.
Meanwhile, in recent days there have been numerous reports about the birth of many disabled and deformed children in Afghanistan. A large number of health specialists in Afghanistan as well as international observers, including one of the officials of a local hospital, regard the increased number of birth defects in Afghanistan to be the direct result of the U.S dropping DU bombs on Afghanistan.
The use of DU weapons has not only harmed children but also has contaminated plant and animal life in the war-ravaged and impoverished country. If U.S. forces use DU weapons in their threatened war against Iraq, two important Muslim countries of the region will suffer for years.
-------- germany
RWE to operate first on-site nuclear waste storage
REUTERS GERMANY:
November 11, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18514/story.htm
FRANKFURT - German utility RWE said last week it had obtained approval to operate an on-site interim storage for nuclear waste at its Emsland reactor in northern Germany.
The approval is the first for one of 12 such sites which will hold German nuclear waste for up to 40 years prior to it going into a final repository.
Under a nuclear consensus deal between the German government and power industry in 2000, utilities said they would build the sites to avoid the unpopular atomic waste transports.
"KKW Lippe-Ems, majority-owned by RWE, today received the approval for an interim site at the Emsland nuclear reactor in Lingen...from the federal authority for the protection against radiation (BfS)...," RWE said in a statement.
"The storage of (CASTOR) nuclear storage containers will start in due course."
"The facility will help to secure the disposal of waste from Emsland until the government has met its obligation to provide a permanent repository."
"Construction of other interim sites will be probably be completed by 2005."
Construction of the 25 million euros ($25.28 million) site which can hold 130 CASTOR containers took 18 months.
A permanent storage site has yet to be chosen for use after Germany shuts all its nuclear plants, which under the consensus deal is due by the early 2020s.
The utilities have to build the interim sites at costs of around 25 to 50 million euros each, although central storage sites at Gorleben and Ahaus could hold all of the nuclear waste until final decommissioning of Germany's 19 nuclear plants.
But the costs to police transports to the two central sites exploded in the past because of large demonstrations by anti-nuclear protestors, who cite safety risks.
Some groups say they aim to disrupt transports in order to force operators to pull out of nuclear power production sooner.
Utilities may have nuclear waste reprocessed abroad, but this covers only 10 percent of present waste volumes and may only take place until 2005.
-------- inspections
We're not spies, says inspection chief
Blix tries to allay Iraqi fears of espionage
Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Monday November 11, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,837656,00.html
Hans Blix, the UN's chief weapons inspector, has assured Iraq that the team he is sending into the country next week will be as free of spies as he can make it.
The previous inspections team, Unscom (UN special commission), which served in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, was regularly accused by Iraq of containing US spies. There were suspicions about British, French and Russian agents being involved too, and, indirectly, the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.
Although the accusations were denied at the time, the involvement of at least the CIA was later confirmed by the UN, by the US administration and by former weapons inspectors.
A spokesman for the new weapons team, Unmovic (UN monitoring, verification and inspections commission), said yesterday that Mr Blix has taken significant steps to try to avoid any repetition of the spying by changing the make-up of the team as well as its finances.
The Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, sought a guarantee from Mr Blix earlier this year that there would be no more spies. According to the Unmovic spokesman, Mr Blix told Mr Sabri that "we can never guarantee that we have not been infiltrated".
Mr Blix said that if he had given a guarantee, the Iraqis would not have believed him anyway. Instead, he pledged that he had taken steps to filter out spies and anyone involved in such activities would face immediate dismissal.
In an attempt to counter accusations of infiltration by intelligence organisations, only 25% of Mr Blix's 270-strong Unmovic team has been drawn from its heavily criticised predecessor, Unscom.
Mr Blix has expanded the number of countries from which his team has been drawn to 44, which amounts to a threefold increase in the pool of countries that made up Unscom, which had been heavily dependent on the US.
Mr Blix's team has only 27 members from the US, 10% of the total, and 13 from Britain. The Russians are sending 22 and France 25.
One of the flaws in Unscom was that staff were mainly provided by governments who not only seconded their own people but paid them. They were open to the charge that their first loyalty was to their countries rather than the UN.
Mr Blix's spokesman said that to avoid accusations of such bias this time round, only about half the staff have been provided by governments and the rest have been recruited directly through adverts. The inspectors tend to be specialists in their own scientific fields who are then given training on how to hunt for weapons.
A crucial difference from Unscom is that all the Unmovic staff will be paid for directly by the UN. The cash will come from Iraq: an Iraqi fund is held at the UN under an oil-for-food programme established to alleviate the impact of sanctions. Unmovic takes 0.8% of this fund to pay its staff and other costs.
Unscom had a stormy relationship with Iraq and was headed by a fiery individual, the Australian diplomat Richard Butler, and a former US marine, Scott Ritter. In an account of his time in Iraq, Endgame, Mr Ritter recounted how a CIA agent provided logistical and other help.
The US involvement included smuggling into Baghdad a large listening device known as "Stephanie", which was stored in Mr Ritter's office. He said that the most sensitive information went back to the US rather than Unscom. Mr Ritter was also quoted in an Israeli paper at the time praising the contribution of Israeli intelligence in passing on information to help the inspectors.
Despite Mr Blix saying that he will try to keep spies out of his team, he is prepared to make use of material provided by US and British intelligence. Tony Blair put out a dossier in September of suspect Iraqi sites linked to the production of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. US and British intelligence services were believed at the time to have held back the most sensitive information, though this has been, or will be, passed to the inspectors.
Saddam Hussein has repeatedly said he has no weapons of mass destruction. It could prove awkward for him in a month or less, when he has to make a disclosure of precisely what illegal weaponry, if any, Iraq has been developing.
----
Iraq Inspections Receive Support From Arab League
November 11, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/international/middleeast/11ARAB.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 10 - Arab governments voiced collective support today for new weapons inspections inside Iraq, although they want Arab experts added to the inspection teams and warned that the latest United Nations resolution should not be considered a free pass for Washington to invade.
The support, expressed in a resolution at a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo, suggests that most governments in the region remain perfectly happy to see Saddam Hussein defanged, political experts said, yet fear the repercussions of another war in the region.
The action by the Arab League stressed that the Security Council vote "is not a pretext for another military action against Iraq," Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, said at a news conference after the Arab League meeting.
At the same time, Iraq appeared to be bowing toward the inevitable, with Iraqi television announcing that Mr. Hussein was planning to convene a special session of Parliament on Monday to discuss the issue of renewed inspections - the usual choreography for a simulated public stamp of approval for a decision the leadership finds distasteful.
The extent to which Arab governments are concerned about the effects of any action against Iraq on regional stability was expressed today by Syria's foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, on the sidelines of the meeting. He said Syria's decision to join in a unanimous 15-0 Security Council vote to pass the resolution demanding renewed weapons inspections was intended to spare the Iraqis from being attacked by the United States.
"This resolution stopped an immediate strike against Iraq, but only an immediate strike," he said. "Now America cannot strike Iraq under U.N. auspices, although of course the United States can strike Iraq unilaterally outside international law. If this happens, the world will not be with the Americans. It will have to deal with all those demonstrators from Los Angeles to the Far East and the Arab countries."
"This resolution was for the immediate effect," he said. "It avoided an inevitable strike against Iraq."
Iraq's government-controlled newspapers had initially called the Security Council resolution "bad and unfair." But by today, Iraqi officials and news media were hailing it as an international effort to thwart the American desire for war.
Although Iraq has until Friday to declare that it intends to comply fully with the terms of the resolution, Mr. Sabri noted that Iraq had agreed before to renewed inspections and thought there was no need to alter the United Nations guidelines about the way they worked.
"The problem is that we need experts who work in a professional, objective way," Mr. Sabri said, adding that, as the Arab League communiqué said, the new inspection teams should not "try to provoke or incite clashes as they have previously."
He said that such unbiased arms inspections would expose the "great lie" promulgated by the United States. "It is the lie about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," he said.
The Arab League resolution also restated the longstanding Arab position that Iraq must work with the United Nations inspectors, and it emphasized that only the Security Council should evaluate reports from the inspectors. Such cooperation should lead to the lifting of penalties that have been in place against Iraq since it invaded Kuwait in 1990, the league said, adding that ordinary Iraqis had suffered because of the sanctions.
In addition, the league proposed that the United Nations pay equal attention to Israel's weapons of mass destruction and stressed that Arab League members were committed both to maintaining Iraq as a united country and to maintaining the stability of all Arab countries. "They reiterate the absolute Arab rejection to striking Iraq and consider it a threat to the national security of all Arab countries," the league resolution said.
Although an Arab summit meeting in Beirut last March issued a statement that an attack on Iraq would be considered an attack on all Arab countries, commentators have dismissed that as an empty threat. But concern remained that any such conflict would rearrange the existing state of relations among countries in the region and between those countries and the United States.
The official Iraqi news agency reported today that Mr. Sabri had sought assurances from Arab governments that they would take specific steps in the event of an attack. The steps included not only barring American forces from using bases in their countries to attack Iraq, but also committing themselves to further measures like stopping oil shipments to countries that participate in any attack, breaking diplomatic relations and withdrawing financial assets.
Finally, Mr. Sabri proposed that governments should allow their citizens to volunteer to defend Iraq, the report said. None of those specific proposals were reflected in the communiqué issued by the league. "They have been meeting over and over, and they are trying to justify themselves, to save face in front of their constituency, in front of the Arab people," said Nizar Hamzeh, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, referring to the Arab League countries. "They are afraid about what comes after this war against Iraq: which is the next country, what is the next target?"
Worst-case scenarios in the region have raised fears that the United States could redraw the map of the region, much the way the secret Sykes-Picot pact by Britain and France did early in the last century, although calmer heads reject such an outcome.
"All the Arab states that I know would prefer Iraq without weapons of mass destruction," said Abdelmonem Said, the director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, speaking by telephone from Cairo. "It's journalists and the intelligentsia who want Iraq to have weapons of mass destruction because Israel has them."
Governments in the region are also concerned how others will suddenly act - Iran in particular - if a traditional enemy is suddenly rendered toothless by an American invasion.
"You start to shuffle the cards and everybody gets worried," said Mr. Said. "That is what they are worried about, the strategic implications of a war against Iraq."
Commentators in the region have said that when Syria voted with the Security Council, it was less out of a desire to shield Iraq than out of fear of the consequences of ignoring the United States - whether affecting future Mideast peace talks or, worse, making Syria a tempting target for the kind of treatment Iraq has been accorded.
"The price of even abstaining would be high, at the very least it would be complete isolation," wrote Zohair Qussaibati, a columnist for Al Hayat, an Arabic-language daily published in London. He argued that all Arab states would eventually line up similarly. Although Arab states would like to present the resolution as a victory, he wrote, it really reflected the United States' ability to do what it wants.
"Everyone came out of this meeting pretending that they are wise, happy and victorious, including Baghdad, which considered that the international community triumphed over the evil American administration," Mr. Qussaibati wrote. "This is a catastrophe in reading what happened," he added, noting that something as simple as Iraq firing at a plane in its airspace might end up being considered sufficient cause for a war.
--------
INSPECTIONS
U.N. Set to Move in Quickly to Seek Iraq Nuclear Arms
November 11, 2002
New York Times
By JULIA PRESTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/international/middleeast/11INSP.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 10 - United Nations atomic experts have finished detailed plans for a "full court press" of fast-moving inspections that will quickly uncover any major nuclear weapons program Iraq has undertaken in the last four years, according to Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the nuclear team.
While Mr. ElBaradei said he was confident he would find "all large components" of nuclear weapons work in Iraq, he cautioned that his inspectors could face difficulties detecting smuggled nuclear materials and will need help from other governments. He said it could take several months to assess evidence the Bush administration has provided to support its claims that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
"We are going to use every weapon in our diplomatic inspection arsenal to make sure that if there was any breach, we can detect it and detect it early," said Mr. ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an interview Friday, when the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution giving the inspectors enhanced authority.
"We are going to be tough," he said. "We will not tolerate any cat-and-mouse."
Mr. ElBaradei will travel to Baghdad on Nov. 18 with Hans Blix, the head of the United Nations chemical, biological and long-range missile inspections team. The inspectors have been barred by Iraq since they withdrew in December 1998, on the eve of American and British bombing raids to punish Baghdad's failures to cooperate with the inspectors.
Bush administration officials have said they will be watching the inspectors' every move, ready to go to the Security Council to call for war against Saddam Hussein at the first sign that he is cheating or obstructing the inspectors' work. But while the United States and Britain, the co-authors of the resolution, see the inspections as a trigger for war, other Security Council members are hoping they will force Iraq to disarm and lead to peace.
Up to now, Mr. ElBaradei, who is based in Vienna, has stayed in the background as Mr. Blix talked to the Security Council and reporters, even though the two chiefs have equal authority. But as the inspections get under way, Mr. ElBaradei becomes a key figure for the Bush administration.
In a report in February 1999, the atomic agency said its inspections to that point "revealed no indication" that Iraq had a nuclear weapon or retained "any practical capability" to make fuel. Iraq is only allowed to have very limited amounts of radioactive isotopes for medical treatment and agricultural uses.
President Bush has charged that Mr. Hussein reactivated his nuclear program, employing many scientists and technicians and withholding key information about procurement and foreign assistance. Mr. Bush warned that if Iraq acquired fissile material, it could build a weapon within a year.
Mr. ElBaradei said he would arrive in Iraq with about 10 atomic experts, and a week later start building the team to about 25 inspectors. They will move quickly to revisit sites they examined previously, he said, to see whether old surveillance systems remain in place and to set up environmental sampling to test for radioactivity.
He said that he would need up to three months to set up a broader plan of work based on programs that Iraq declares and suspicions the inspectors may have about hidden activity.
He said that he and Mr. Blix expect to have latitude to make judgments about Iraq's cooperation, suggesting their standards might be more flexible than the administration's.
The inspectors will not be alarmed by "a minor omission" in Iraq's weapons declaration, Mr. ElBaradei said. "We will be guided by the definition of material breach, which is really a major violation of the very purpose of the process."
Mr. ElBaradei said it is virtually impossible for Iraq to conceal an advanced nuclear weapons program, as it requires large industrial facilities and emits radioactivity. But it will be hard for inspectors to discover if Iraq has smuggled in small amounts of uranium or plutonium.
"The difficult part would be if Iraq were to import nuclear material from abroad, across the border, that would be a real challenge to our system," Mr. ElBaradei said. He is appealing for intelligence data any country might have about black market nuclear trading with Iraq.
The atomic chief predicted that evaluating information provided by the Bush administration about Iraq's attempt to buy aluminum tubes, which the president cited as the most damning evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, would be a complex job. While he is expecting more details from Washington, he said he did not yet know if the tubes went to Iraq, and he remained unsure if they were for nuclear development. "Our assessment is that they could have been used for conventional rockets in addition to being used for uranium enrichment," he said.
During the Security Council's heated negotiations over the resolution, Mr. ElBaradei, an Egyptian, reached out to the Arab world to defend the inspections, and conducted a long interview with Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language television station. "The Arab world must understand that there is a problem in Iraq, and it is not because Iraq is an Arab country," he said. "It is because Iraq has not fulfilled its obligations with regard to disarmament."
The new resolution, he stresses, has language - albeit deeply buried - that holds out the prospect to Baghdad of an end to economic sanctions within a year if Mr. ElBaradei and Mr. Blix give their approval. But Mr. ElBaradei expects his word to carry weight in the Middle East if he says that Mr. Hussein balked. "I think they will probably listen to me, because I will speak to them in their own language," he said.
-------- japan
A Missile Shield Appeals to a Worried Japan
November 11, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/international/asia/11MISS.html
TOKYO, Nov. 10 - Alarm over North Korea's missile and nuclear weapon programs is pushing Japan toward joining the United States in trying to develop a missile defense program, officials and analysts here say.
"We should exert efforts to get the program to leave the research phase as soon as possible," Japan's Defense Agency chief, Shigeru Ishiba, told a Parliament committee last week, urging faster work with the United States on a program that uses missiles to intercept other missiles.
With parts of Japan only 350 miles away from North Korean territory, many Japanese have recently felt a surge in insecurity. First, North Korea admitted to a visiting American diplomat that it maintains a secret nuclear bomb program. Then, last Tuesday, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman reacted to a breakdown in talks with Japan by saying that North Korea was "reconsidering" the moratorium on missile tests that it adopted after it test-fired a rocket over Japan in 1998.
"The impact of the news from North Korea has been strong," Masashi Nishihara, president of the National Defense Academy, Japan's interservice military college, said on Friday. "North Korea has reversed its positions. That justifies us to move forward to develop missile defense, and to eventually deploy it."
In a poll conducted a week ago for the liberal daily Asahi Shimbun, 95 percent of 2,068 Japanese respondents surveyed said they were "concerned" about North Korea's nuclear program.
On Friday, Yomiuri Shimbun, a conservative daily, ran a headline that said, "U.S. to Press Japan to Build Missile Shield." But in a briefing for the news media, the reported instrument of pressure, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said there was no need for a heavy sales job.
"You don't have to pressure Japan for Japanese to realize that Japan is facing a serious threat of missile attack," he said, referring to North Korean capabilities. "There are missile arcs that one could draw that clearly cover Japan. That's what makes the missile threat very serious."
The Pentagon says North Korea has about 100 Rodong missiles with a range of about 1,000 miles that are capable of hitting all major Japanese cities. Chinese officials estimated last month that North Korea had at the most five nuclear weapons.
Asahi Shimbun said the United States was moving missile surveillance units to Japan. On Oct. 21, an RC-135S Cobra Ball reconnaissance aircraft equipped for tracking ballistic missiles arrived in Okinawa from the United States, it said. Ten days later, the Invincible, a ship equipped with advanced radar to monitor mid- range missiles, visited Okinawa for the first time, it added.
American officials declined to address the reports, saying they do not comment on military operations.
Japan is already conducting research on antimissile technology, which the United States hopes to deploy in 2008. But, wary of provoking China, the long-established nuclear power of Northeast Asia, Japan had planned to delay until 2004 any decision on taking part in field trials. Mr. Ishiba, who took over as Japan's defense minister last month, has pushed for a commitment, though Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has remained noncommittal.
Within Mr. Koizumi's coalition government, a pacifist party, New Komeito, played a central role two weeks ago in winning elections for governing party candidates. New Komeito is reportedly preventing Mr. Koizumi from sending warships to the Arabian Sea to support American military operations.
"Our premise is that North Korea will sincerely implement agreements in the Pyongyang declaration and we want the North to sincerely maintain the declaration," Mr. Koizumi said on Tuesday, referring to the statement that he and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, signed on Sept. 17 in North Korea's capital. The declaration upholds the Korean peninsula as free of nuclear weapons.
Japan now demands that North Korea dismantle its nuclear bomb program before receiving Japanese aid. Japanese officials met recently with Pakistani officials, hoping to learn details of North Korea's technology. Last month The New York Times reported that Pakistan supplied North Korea with nuclear bomb-making equipment. Pakistan has denied the report.
"The final aim of North Korea is to obtain economic aid - the key thing is money," Shunji Taoka, a defense affairs writer for Asahi Shimbun, said on Friday. Referring to the billions of dollars in aid that Japan has offered North Korea, he added, "Japan's Foreign Ministry has a rare chance to be a major player."
But if forced into a corner, North Korea might resort to a familiar negotiating tactic: provoking a crisis. It might test a new rocket engine, test-fire a new generation rocket or expel International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, Scott Snyder, Korea representative for The Asia Foundation, a United States government-supported group, said. "They will try to use a crisis to escalate things, and they can do it," he said.
A cartoon published here last week showed Kim Jong Il as a panhandler, holding a sign that read, "Will not bomb for food."
Several high-level American officials have been visiting Japan. Last Thursday, it was Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for Pacific and East Asian affairs, met here on Saturday with his Foreign Ministry counterparts from Japan and South Korea. The Kyodo news agency reported today that Mr. Kelly predicted to Japanese officials that next year Congress would stop financing for oil shipments to North Korea.
"Will Japan go nuclear?" Hau Boon Lai, a columnist for The Straits Times of Singapore, asked, echoing regional concerns that Japan is considering building nuclear bombs.
But aversion to nuclear arms runs deep here. Mr. Nishihara of the defense academy said, "I have not seen any arguments that Japan should go nuclear."
-------- korea
U.S., allies consider halting oil shipment
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021111-91586569.htm
Officials from the United States and its allies meet this week to consider suspending U.S. oil shipments to North Korea, and President Bush's national security adviser said yesterday "it's not going to be business as usual" since the recent disclosure of North Korea's nuclear-weapons program.
Condoleezza Rice would not say if a shipment of oil that left Singapore on Wednesday for North Korea would be allowed to reach the Communist state.
"I'm not going to get ahead of the diplomacy. We're dealing with our friends and allies on this," Miss Rice said.
The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, composed of the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union, plans to meet in New York this week to try to reach a consensus on whether the shipments should continue.
The United States has been providing 500,000 metric tons of heavy oil to North Korea annually since 1994 as part of an accord with the United States. Under the original plan, the shipments were to continue until two light-water reactors, financed by South Korea and Japan, are completed in North Korea.
But the oil shipments and the reactor projects are in jeopardy as a result of North Korea's admission last month that it is undertaking a new nuclear-weapons project.
Miss Rice said the Bush administration was having "very serious discussions" with organization members and Asian nations on how best to deal with North Korea.
The key, she said on ABC's "This Week," is "to convince the North Koreans that they cannot re-enter - or, I should say, enter [because] they've never been in it - the international community of peace-loving states and all the benefits that are there until they give up this program, this nuclear-weapons program, and all pretensions to it."
Asked about the possibility of the oil shipment reaching North Korea, Miss Rice said diplomacy should be given a chance to work. But, she said, "The North Koreans should understand that it's not going to be business as usual while they are in violation of their international agreements."
North Korea's development of its weapons program puts at risk economic and other aid that could help the impoverished Communist country, Miss Rice said.
--------
U.S., Allies Grapple with N.Korea Nuclear Issue
November 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-korea-north.html
SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) - Japan and South Korea reiterated demands Monday for a verifiable halt to North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but failed to work out a shared approach with the United States on ways to end it.
The three states put off a decision on halting deliveries of oil to Pyongyang until an allied meeting in New York this week.
In the intensifying triangular diplomacy to preempt a second North Korean nuclear crisis in a decade, South Korea hosted Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and James Kelly, the top U.S. negotiator for North Korea.
Officials said Kawaguchi's talks with South Korean counterpart Choi Sung-hong and Kelly's separate meetings in Seoul had failed to work out a shared approach to ending North Korea's uranium enrichment program for nuclear arms.
At issue is how to halt the program and whether to penalize Pyongyang for violating the 1994 Agreed Framework pact under which North Korea pledged to end an earlier drive for nuclear arms by extracting plutonium.
Japan and South Korea said the issue ``should not be decided in a hasty way, but that a careful approach will be needed,'' a Japanese government official said of the ministers' talks. ``They decided to leave these issues to KEDO,'' he said, referring to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization.
U.S. officials have been taking a more hard-line tack.
In Russia, one of the few countries with any influence on North Korea, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Moscow had no evidence Pyongyang had acquired nuclear weapons.
``We have no concrete information that North Korea has produced any nuclear developments or nuclear weapons,'' Interfax news agency quoted him as telling reporters in Moscow. ``It is unimportant who provides information about North Korea having such nuclear developments, but we need clear proof.''
Russia has asked North Korea for information on its nuclear weapons program since Pyongyang's acknowledgment it was proceeding with it. Russia has been rebuilding Cold War-era ties with North Korea and developing warmer relations with the South.
UPHOLDING THE 1994 DEAL
KEDO is implementing the 1994 deal, under which North Korea agreed to freeze its program in exchange for 500,000 tons of fuel oil each year and construction of two light-water reactors that cannot easily be converted to produce weapons material.
The decision on whether to deliver the latest shipment of oil is expected at a meeting of KEDO's executive board of KEDO Thursday and Friday. The New York meeting will be attended by U.S., Japanese, South Korean and European Union officials.
The United States has not announced a decision on the oil shipments, but there are growing calls in Washington to freeze them -- even going as far as recalling the latest shipment of fuel oil that left Singapore for North Korea last week.
Tokyo and Seoul believe an end to deliveries would be used by Pyongyang to ignore the deal and proceed with the program.
Indirectly stating that concern, the Japanese official said Tokyo and Seoul ``agreed on the point that the KEDO arrangement has been effective so far'' in freezing North Korea's plutonium-based weapons program.
Kelly, who met Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun and other officials, made no public comment. Seoul media quoted Jeong as saying: ``North Korea's nuclear program can never be tolerated, but it is desirable to resolve problems peacefully, so the two Koreas should not stop dialogue.''
In Seoul last week, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith stopped short of criticizing South Korea's engagement with North Korea, but said Pyongyang should not be allowed to conduct ``business as usual'' after breaking its nuclear pledges.
-------- missile defense
Flawless test flight for US cruise missile
November 10, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021110-095757-5301r.htm
TUCSON, Ariz., Nov. 10 -- A prototype Navy cruise missile that has the capability of being directed to a different target while in flight was successfully launched underwater for the first time Sunday.
Raytheon Company announced that the test flight completed the demonstration test-flight phase (DT-1) of its program to develop the Tactical Tomahawk, a cruise missile that can strike one of as many as 15 preprogrammed targets, or even be directed to an entirely new location while in flight.
"The resounding success of DT-1 and the entire test flight program demonstrates that the Navy-Raytheon team will be delivering...a strike weapon with transformational capabilities," said Navy Capt. Bob Novak, a manager of the Tomahawk program.
Those capabilities will allow cruise missiles to lurk in the sky over a battlefield for several hours until a suitable target is identified and its location is fed into the rocket's guidance system.
The Tactical Tomahawk is also equipped with a television camera that can be used by ground commanders to gain a bird's eye view of the battlefield.
Current cruise missiles do not have the ability to be steered toward a new target once it is in the air, which limits its value in a battle when both enemy and friendly forces are constantly moving.
The Tactical Tomahawk is scheduled to be introduced in 2004 and will be deployed aboard both submarines and surface ships. The Navy plans to obtain more than 1,300 of the missiles over the life of the program at a cost of around $575,000 per copy, nearly half of the cost of the Navy's current Tomahawk.
Sunday's test fired the Tactical Tomahawk from an underwater launcher off San Clemente Island, 50 miles west of San Diego. The missile seamlessly skimmed across the ocean and continued on over land to the China Lake Test Range located in the desert around 200 miles to the northeast.
The successful flight moved the Tactical Tomahawk a major step closer to full production.
"We are excited to have completed this demanding flight which marks the end of the demonstration flight test phase," said Louise Francesconi, the president of Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson. "This major milestone allows the Navy to proceed into the technical evaluation period of the program."
(Reported by Hil Anderson in Los Angeles)
-------- pacific
Malaysia rejects Yemen-style US military action
Nov. 11, 2002
Agence France-Presse
http://www.inq7.net/brk/2002/nov/11/brkafp_6-1.htm
KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia warned Monday that any covert military action by the United States against terrorist targets, such as the missile strike in Yemen last week, would be unacceptable here.
"We do not need any foreign interference or foreign troops in the country. We are capable of fighting terrorists," Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak told the official Bernama news agency.
Najib had been asked to comment on a report that US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism Francis Taylor had said the Yemen strike could be emulated in Southeast Asia.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi also dismissed the possibility Sunday, saying the United States could not conduct any sort of military operation in Malaysia without first informing the government and seeking its cooperation. "There is no place for covert operations here," he said.
Manila, which was visited by Taylor last week, has also rejected the idea that the United States could conduct strikes similar to that in Yemen, in which six suspected al-Qaeda operatives were killed by a Hellfire missile launched from a remote-controlled CIA Predator spy plane.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao said any US missile attack in the Philippines without permission "would be an intrusion into our sovereignty".
Both Malaysia and the Philippines are strong supporters of the war on terrorism.
Meanwhile, both Najib and Abdullah have said they have no official information on media reports that two brothers of a key suspect in the October 12 Bali bomb blast, Amrozi, have fled to Malaysia.
Abdullah indicated that the Indonesian government had not contacted Malaysia about the issue. He said, however, that if it were true they had slipped into Malaysia, the government would arrest them and hand them over to the Indonesian authorities.
-------- russia
More radioactive waste shipped from Murmansk region
2002-11-11
http://www.bellona.no/en/20393.html
Ten shipments with spent nuclear fuel were carried out from Murmansk region to Mayak plant in Chelyabinsk region this year. 60 reactor cores were transported from Murmansk region during recent 8 years, Murmansk State Television Company reported. Russia possesses only two special trains for spent nuclear fuel shipment to Mayak. The Norwegian government funded the construction of one of them. Each train consists of three railway cars made of stainless steel, weighing 40 tons. The walls are 30 cm thick. The containers are secured against explosions, fire, falling from 10 meters height. The trains serve Murmansk region, and also the Russian Far East, Severodvinsk and other regions. The Murmansk Shipping Company carried out maintenance works at Lepse nuclear storage ship, which holds 639 fuel assemblies. Norway allocated 23.5 million Norwegian crowns for this project. Bellona foundation sponsored construction of the living modules to accommodate Lepse crew away from irradiation.
-------- us politics
Bush Marks Veteran's Day With Vow on Iraq
November 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Honoring those who served in the wars of yesteryear, President Bush said Monday he will lead America into a new battle if necessary to disarm Iraq. ``This great nation will not live at the mercy of any foreign plot or power,'' he said.
At Arlington National Cemetery, the hallowed burial ground of military heroes situated on a hillside overlooking the Potomac River, Bush said today's military serves ``on the scattered battlefields of a new kind of war,'' in Afghanistan and beyond.
``That mission will go on until the terrorists who struck America are fully and finally defeated,'' he said.
``This new kind of war also requires us to confront outlaw regimes that seek and possess the tools of mass murder,'' Bush said. ``We will not permit a dictator who's used weapons of mass destruction to threaten America with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons,'' the president said.
``The dictator of Iraq will fully disarm, or the United States of America will lead a coalition and disarm him,'' the president said, drawing a long applause.
Underscoring the threat, senior administration officials said that Bush has approved tentative Pentagon plans for invading Iraq should a new U.N. arms inspection effort fail. The strategy calls for a land, sea and air force of 200,000 to 250,000 troops, officials said.
Iraq's parliament condemned a tough new U.N. resolution as full of lies and ill intentions during a special session Monday, and a senior lawmaker there urged that it be rejected.
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, dismissed that response, and rejected the legitimacy of the parliament's debate on the resolution.
``One has to be a bit skeptical of the independence of the Iraqi parliament from Saddam Hussein,'' she said. ``I don't think anyone believes this is anything but an absolute dictatorship and this decision is up to Saddam Hussein.''
Iraq has no right to accept or reject the resolution, she said. ``They are obligated to accept, but the U.N. thought it best to ask for return-receipt requested,'' Rice said. In the meantime, the Bush administration was awaiting official word from Iraq on its intentions. Iraq has until Friday to accept its terms and pledge to comply.
Bush, who began his day with rain-soaked pre-dawn visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, called on new generations of warriors to draw inspiration from those who served -- and in many cases, died -- before.
``Especially in this time of war, we see in our veterans an example of courage and selfless sacrifice and service that inspires a new generation and will lead this country to victory,'' he told an East Room assembly after his early-morning visit to the black-granite memorial.
America remembers today those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, he said, reaffirming his doctrine of making war with terror networks and, if necessary, ridding the Iraqi regime of its ``weapons of mass murder.''
``The time to confront this threat is before it arrives, not the day after,'' he said, calling this ``an urgent task for America and the world.''
`` .. The events of September the 11th clearly demonstrate that a threat that gathers on the other side of the earth can bring suffering to the American homeland,'' Bush said.
On his impromptu visit to the 20-year-old Vietnam memorial, Bush encountered a group of veterans. ``Thank you for serving. God Bless you all,'' he said.
A steady rain pelted his dark umbrella as the president walked up to the wall and scanned the tiny script that records the 58,229 names of those killed or missing in the war from 1959 to 1975. Air Force Col. Jeff Newell, a White House military aide, handed Bush an American flag, and the president placed it at the base of the wall.
Later, he presided over a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. It was still pouring, but Bush was sheltered by a marble dome.
Among those in the front row at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were former Sen. Bob Dole and his wife, soon-to-be Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Bush, wearing a black coat, stood with hand over heart during the playing of ``Taps.''
Administration officials on Sunday promised ``zero tolerance'' if Saddam Hussein refuses to comply with a new U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that he eliminate weapons of mass destruction and open up to inspectors. They said they are watching closely to ensure that the Iraqi president cooperates.
A Pentagon plan for invading Iraq calls for a land, sea and air force of 200,000 to 250,000 troops. Pentagon planners had considered an approach that would have used 100,000 or fewer troops, but they settled on a much larger force favored by Gen. Tommy Franks, head of the Central Command that would run any war in Iraq, said officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
--------
Lott Says Senate Could Pass Security Bill Within Days
November 11, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/politics/11CONG.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - Trent Lott, the Senate Republican leader, said today that he hoped the Senate could approve a vast new Homeland Security Department this week, a move that would break a two-month deadlock and begin the long-awaited reorganization of the federal government to prevent terrorism.
"I think we are very close," Mr. Lott said this morning on the NBC program "Meet the Press." "We hope by Tuesday or Wednesday we would have a bill that could be passed by the Senate by a wide margin."
But Mr. Lott, who is not yet the majority leader, did not explain how such a momentous vote could take place so quickly, within the first three days of the lame-duck Congressional session that begins on Tuesday. At least for two weeks, the Republicans still lack a majority to push through the Bush administration's version of the department, which would eliminate many of the Civil Service protections that federal employees have in most other government agencies.
Mr. Lott said he believed his side now had the votes to approve the administration's plan. Before the election recess, Democrats had 51 votes in the Senate for their plan, while Republicans, with 49 votes, were filibustering to prevent it from being approved.
During that period, Senator Paul Wellstone, a staunch supporter of the Democratic plan, was killed in a plane crash, and his temporary replacement, Dean Barkley, has not said which version he plans to support. Mr. Lott said today that he "had the impression" that Mr. Barkley might join the Republicans. Unless he has received a private pledge of Mr. Barkley's vote, the Republicans would have to rely on a Democrat to switch sides, and none have yet publicly stated an intention to do so.
Most of the new Republican senators elected last week will take office next year. The Republicans will gain the Senate majority in about two weeks, when the votes that elected James M. Talent as the new senator from Missouri are certified. (Mr. Talent can take office early because he is filling the last four years of the term of Mel Carnahan, who died two years ago in a plane crash.)
Also on "Meet the Press," the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, repeated his offer from last month to allow the Republicans a straight vote on their version of the domestic security bill, followed by a vote on the Democratic plan. Republicans rejected that offer at the time.
"My offer still holds," he said. "I don't think I should change the rules or change my position on procedure just because we may or may not have the votes now."
He noted that Republicans had used the domestic security issue effectively against two Democratic senators who lost their re-election bids and suggested they might back off their insistence on Civil Service changes now that the issue had served its political purpose.
"They've opposed getting it done before the election so they could blame the Democrats, because they knew the president had the megaphone," Mr. Daschle said. "So we understand that. There were all kinds of political games being played. Now we have got to get the job done. Now the game should be over."
But it appears unlikely that the Republicans will back off their plans, knowing they will control the Senate in a matter of weeks.
Mr. Lott agreed to an accelerated timetable for approving the Homeland Security Department at the insistence of President Bush, who said last week that quick passage of the agency was now the top priority of the White House.
"It's imperative that it pass in the 107th Congress," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, on the same program today. "So that when the 108th Congress convenes we do have a department up and ready to run."
-------- MILITARY
-------- biological weapons
Biological Blame Game: USA in First Place
The politics of biological weapons
Dmitry Litvinovich
PRAVDA.Ru
Translated by Maria Gousseva
2002-11-11
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/11/11/39350.html
Read the original in Russian: http://world.pravda.ru/world/2002/5/16/43/2737_USA.html
The 21st century has inherited a number of unsettled problems from the 20th century: terrorism, which has already gained an incredible scale; the countless number of hot spots on the planet; and the threat of a biological war. The world isn't ready for a biological attack, and the anthrax scare in America was an obvious confirmation of this. The mass media were so focused on the problem, which in its turn caused a mass psychosis among the population. A biological weapon is an instrument for big-scale politics, and the USA openly demonstrates it (Washington thinks that the notorious "axis of evil" countries hold biological weapons.)
No evidence is required; accusations are hurled at a country, and then its up to this country to prove its innocence. This is happening to Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. This phobia is actively exploited not only by the political establishment, as Hollywood is also playing the game. You've probably also heard about the new fashion trends: people have started wearing ties with the biological cultures of anthrax, smallpox, plague, etc.
The threat (or pseudo-threat) of a biological war is actively discussed on the top level. Talks designed to protect the world from the supposed increasing threat of biological war are to be recommenced in Geneva. About a year ago, consultations on the problem were suspended because Americans refused to participate in them. The countries that signed the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention have been trying for several years already to make the convention prohibiting development and production of biological weapons work. The convention signed during the cold war was a mere declaration in fact: no measures for the realization of the convention were mentioned in the document at all. In December 2001, after many efforts spend on making the convention effective, Americans abandoned the negotiations, which shocked the world community. The USA says that the system suggested by the convention for control over enterprises in the biological sphere is ineffective and may entail violations, and these violations in their turn will endanger America's national security, the BBC reports.
The USA won't sign the convention because it would have to open its laboratories to inspection, which very undesirable for America. Instead, Washington follows the trite principle that the best defense is an offense and accuses other countries of holding biological weapons. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday with reference to sources in the US special services that Iraq, North Korea, Russia, and France hold secret smallpox viruses.
The American military is developing new-generation bacteriological weapons, which is a serious violation of international agreements on the prohibition of these kind of weapons. The Guardian informs that the statement was made by respected experts on both sides of the Atlantic. Professor Malcolm Dando, from the University of Bradford, and microbiologist Mark Wheelis, from the University of California, are sure that the USA is continuing to develop cluster bombs with biological components, with anthrax cultures for instance. The Guardian reports that the scientists point out the obvious contradictions in the domestic and foreign policies of the USA, which is ready to wage a war with Iraq with the supposed goal of stopping the production of the very same kinds of weapons that it is developing itself. Professor Dando says that secret military laboratories are working on the following.
1. Attempts are being made to develop a bacteriological weapon using bacteriological materials open to all; this is being done to prove that terrorists might also do this as well.
2. Research projects are be conducted with the goal of genetically engineering dangerous cultures, including an anthrax resistant to modern antibiotics.
3. These laboratories are also working on the production of dry anthrax spores. However, the scale of these research projects disagrees with the declared goals; it is impossible to find out how the spore surplus is being used.
Specialists in biological and chemical weapons also say that the USA is developing so-called "non-deadly" kinds of weapons, similar to the narcotic gas used during the storm of the theater in Moscow occupied by Chechen terrorists. The American military is also developing new generation biological weapons, which is a serious violation of international agreements prohibiting the production of these kind of weapons.
The US's double-dealing in the production and usage of biological weapons brings to nothing to all the efforts of the world community to gain control over the usage of such deadly weapons. Moreover, currently, members of the 1972 convention don't speak in support of international inspections. They just hope that countries that had signed the document 30 years ago will agree to hold annual, non-committal discussions. The main objective they pursue is to constantly remind the world about the necessity to be on the look-out. Isn't this funny? It's obvious that the USA is laughing at the whole of the world: Washington wants to postpone the talks on the 1972 convention until 2006. Observers say that new suggestions are ineffective and are unlikely to be approved of by the White House. The principle often used by the USA, " Quod liced Jovi non liced bovi," is still in force.
-------- business
Defense stocks rise on election news
By Tim Lemke
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 11, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20021111-46449556.htm
Republican victories on Election Day triggered a four-day rally among defense stocks last week, as investors anticipated quicker resolution on homeland security, and more congressional support for a bigger Pentagon budget and programs such as missile defense.
The Standard & Poor's Aerospace and Defense Index rose more than 11 points, or 6.1 percent, from Tuesday to Friday. Shares of Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor, rose $6.20, or 12 percent, to close the week at $56.43. Shares of Falls Church-based General Dynamics rose $4.10, or 5.3 percent, to close the week at $81.60. Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman all saw sizable gains.
The rally last week restored defense stocks to levels not seen since early October. They had fallen gradually in the past month as some investors shifted their money to less-expensive stocks and others remained cautious, waiting to see whether Republicans would take control of Congress. Speculation that Democrats would remain in power caused some stocks to dip in the days before the elections.
To some analysts, a surge in defense stocks came as no surprise, given the strong support defense funding traditionally has received from Republicans.
"A GOP House and Senate is likely to make it easier for [President] Bush to push through higher defense spending," Banc of America Securities defense analyst Nick Fothergill said in a written recap of a conference call held Thursday. "Pet projects like missile defense should get an easier ride."
Mr. Fothergill said more Democratic victories on Election Day might have caused some second-guessing of congressional approval of action against Iraq.
"A Democrat win might have made the administration reconsider their hard-line stance on Saddam [Hussein]," he said.
Mr. Bush signed a $355.1 billion defense bill last month, which included the largest defense spending increase since 1982. He is expected to ask for as much as $400 billion for the 2004 budget.
But some analysts cautioned against getting too excited over the prospect of a defense buildup.
In a report released last week, Standard & Poor's senior analyst Robert Friedman argued that Congress is not likely to increase spending dramatically over the long term. He said a 2 percent to 4 percent annual defense budget increase is more realistic than the Pentagon's projection of a 5.9 percent annual increase over the next seven years. Furthermore, he said, defense stocks underperformed the S&P 500 during the 1980s, a decade that featured a hefty defense buildup.
"Many in the investment community are counting on a combination of big, sustainable hikes in defense spending and the war on terror and possible strike on Iraq, and military weapons procurement reforms, to dramatically improve the industry's earnings and return on equity," Mr. Friedman wrote. "But we believe those optimists will ultimately be disappointed."
Mr. Friedman said that while most people view the 1980s as a decade of major defense buildup, spending grew significantly only during 1981 and 1982. After that, increases in defense spending were incrementally smaller, and defense budgets fell after 1985. He said other economic concerns could divert money from defense.
"We believe Congress will restrain such spending to take into account other budgetary concerns, such as sluggish growth in tax receipts, pressure for balanced budgets, social spending and homeland-defense initiatives," Mr. Friedman said.
----
Iraqi oil, American bonanza?
In a post-war Iraq, U.S. companies could be major players
By John W. Schoen
MSNBC,
Nov. 11, 2002
http://www.msnbc.com/news/824407.asp
NEW YORK - The most visible dogfight over Iraq's future is playing out in diplomatic circles, as the U.S. tries to convince its skeptical allies that a "regime change" is imperative and military action inevitable. But another high-stakes, much less visible struggle is also quietly taking shape. Once U.N. economic sanctions on Iraq are lifted, who will develop - and control - Iraq's vast oil reserves?
SINCE U.N. SANCTIONS choked off the flow of Iraqi oil a decade ago, Baghdad's role in world energy markets has been severely curtailed. Iraq's oil output is so low that many analysts believe that even a complete shut-off of Iraqi supplies would easily be made up by other oil producing countries. In fact, they may already have. Led by Saudi Arabia, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries quietly boosted production in September, raising output some 10 percent above official quotas, according to the latest figures from the International Energy Agency.
But Iraq's vast oil reserves remain a powerful prize for global oil companies. Iraq is sitting on an estimated 112 billion barrels of crude, a pool of oil second in size only to Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels. (By way of comparison, proven U.S. reserves total about 22 billion barrels; the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve holds about 600 million barrels.)
Development of those Iraqi reserves will be no small project. After years of decay, Iraq's oil infrastructure will require years of work and billions of dollars in investment, according to Nathaniel Kern, a Middle East analyst at Foreign Reports, Inc. in Washington.
"It's in terrible shape," he said. "The pipelines are leaking lakes (of oil), refineries are dumping toxic waste. It is a broken down industry."
POTENTIAL WINDFALL
Such a massive rebuilding effort represents a huge opportunity for the companies chosen to tackle it. As the Bush administration has been working to rally support among its allies for a military strike, Saddam Hussein has been using the promise of lucrative oil contracts to weaken that U.S. effort and boost opposition to tougher U.N. resolutions.
Some major deals are already in place. In 1997, Russia's LUKOIL signed contracts to develop Iraq's West Qurna oil field. The same year, the China National Petroleum Corporation bought a 50 percent stake in the al-Ahdab oil field. (Both have been barred from developing those reserves by U.N. sanctions.) More recently, France's TotalFinaElf has reportedly negotiated agreements to develop the much larger Majnoon field, but has not yet signed firm contracts to do so.
Over the years, those deals complicated U.S. efforts to win support for tough action against Baghdad in the U.N. Security Council, where France, Russia and China are permanent members.
WAITING THEIR CHANCE
So far, U.S. oil companies have been stuck on the sidelines of the Iraqi oil rush. Even if Saddam wanted to enlist U.S. firms in the rebuilding of Iraq's oil infrastructure, U.N. sanctions - as well as U.S. laws - have barred American oil companies from dealing with Baghdad.
But some analysts say it's unlikely that American firms will be left empty-handed if the U.S. follows through on threats of military action.
"If you turn up and it's your tanks that dislodged the regime and you have 50,000 troops in the country and they're in your tanks, then you're going to get the best deals," said Credit Suisse First Boston oil analyst Mark Flannery. "That's the way it works. The French will have three men and a 1950s tank. That's just not going to work."
American oil companies are also hoping to benefit from the industry's unusually strong ties to the White House. President Bush, himself the former head of a Texas oil company, has pursued an national energy policy that relies on aggressively expanding new sources of oil. Vice President Dick Cheney is the former CEO of oil services giant Halliburton. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron.
So far, U.S. oil companies have been mum on the subject of the potential spoils of war. A spokesman for ChevronTexaco would say only that "we don't speculate and we don't comment on speculation." Officials at ExxonMobil did not respond to calls for comment.
NOT SO FAST
It's anyone's guess just who will decide how Iraq's oil resources are developed. But some analysts say it's likely those decisions will be made by Iraqis.
"Iraqis are pretty nationalistic," said James Placke, a Middle East analyst at Cambridge Energy Research. "The assumption that the U.S. will just walk in and call the shots - I think that's simplistic. Unless we behave like a colonialist occupier, we're not going to call the shots."
Some analysts note that a large-scale, occupying army would further inflame anti-American sentiment in the region and destabilize Iraq's oil-rich neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia.
So a lot depends on just what kind of government is in power when U.N. sanctions are lifted. Even if the U.S. ousts Saddam, say analysts, any new government would face the daunting task of unifying rival ethnic groups and keeping a lid on political infighting.
"Ruling Iraq will be an absolute nightmare," said Bill O'Grady, a commodities analyst at A.G. Edwards in St Louis.
A regime change could also dramatically reshuffle the deck for global oil giants trying to make the most of the cards they've been dealt. The Iraqi National Congress, an exiled opposition group that might have a role in any new government, has said it would review all oil contracts negotiated by Saddam Hussein. New contracts might offer less attractive terms, according to Placke.
"(Existing contracts) were done on a production sharing basis, which some Iraqis regard as too generous," he said. "They would prefer to go back to a straight service contract. That's not of much interest to most larger oil companies."
Interactive: Conflict with Iraq - A look at the ongoing standoff with Saddam
FEAR INSIDE OPEC
No matter who ends up developing Iraq's reserves, a revitalized Iraqi oil industry poses new problems for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose 10 members carved up Iraq's production quotas when U.N. sanction took hold in 1991. By some estimates, a rebuilt Iraqi oil industry could produce as much as six million barrels a day, second only to Saudi Arabia as top OPEC producer. As Iraqi production rises, say analysts, oil prices would likely fall unless OPEC cuts back elsewhere. But it's not at all clear how closely Iraq will cooperate with OPEC once sanctions are lifted.
Russia's role in developing Iraqi oil production also strengthens it's threat to OPEC's grip on oil prices. Now second to Saudi Arabia in output, Russian oil companies would benefit from increasing output and boosting market share - even if oil prices fall. And Iraqi oil is cheaper to produce than Russian reserves buried deep below the Western Siberian permafrost.
The Russian government, though, may be less enthusiastic about boosting Iraqi production if it sends oil prices falling too far. Moscow is heavily dependent on oil as a critical source of foreign exchange, and the loss of all those petrodollars could send the fragile Russian economy back into a deep recession.
Russian oil companies have been pressing for guarantees that their deals won't be jeopardized by any U.S.-led move to oust Saddam - so far, those pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Russia's relationship with Iraq is further complicated by an estimated $7-$9 billion in loans owed by Baghdad to Moscow. Russia is also a major supplier of manufactured goods to Iraq.
-------- iraq
Saddam tells MPs to decide
November 11 2002
By Caroline Overington New York Correspondent
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/11/1036308630599.html
The Iraqi parliament has been told by Saddam Hussein to meet early today to discuss the United Nations Security Council's latest resolution on Iraq.
The move is considered an attempt by President Saddam to avoid having to personally accept the resolution and make a humbling concession to the international community.
News agencies reported yesterday that President Saddam had told parliament to debate the resolution and then decide whether to send it to a committee for a formal decision.
No one with any knowledge of Iraq's decision-making processes believes parliament will actually decide how to respond to the UN, but President Saddam appears to want to avoid making the announcement himself.
In reality, Iraq has no choice other than to accept the terms laid out in the resolution, at least in principle, since the resolution says there will be "serious consequences" if Iraq tries to avoid its obligation to disarm.
This is generally accepted to mean that the United States will lead an attack on Baghdad.
Arab neighbours have encouraged President Saddam to accept the inspections, saying they offer his best chance of avoiding war.
Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo welcomed the resolution, but suggested some improvements. For example, Arab nations would like more Arabs among the inspectors.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri told Iraqi television yesterday that the number of Arab experts on the team "don't exceed the fingers on one hand".
Arab League members were particularly blunt with Dr Sabri at the Cairo meeting.
"We're telling Iraq the Americans are really serious and this time we're not with you," said a senior adviser to one delegation. "If you reject the resolution, you're on your own."
The 22 members of the Arab League issued an eight-point statement that called on inspectors to "carry out their mission with professionalism, complete neutrality and objectivity and that they do not carry out provocative acts so as to ensure their credibility".
This is an apparent reference to President Saddam's belief that weapons inspectors worked as spies the last time they were in Baghdad.
President George Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told US television yesterday that she did not want to "waste the world's time with another game of cat and mouse" with President Saddam.
She said she was amazed by his decision to seek advice from his parliament.
"Saddam Hussein is an absolute dictator and tyrant and the idea that he somehow expects the Iraqi Parliament to debate this, well, they've never debated anything else," she said.
Arab nations apparently believe that Iraq will accept the new resolution.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said yesterday that the "indications are positive".
- with agencies
----
U.S. Warplanes Strike Iraq Targets
By Matthew Rosenberg
Associated Press Writer
Monday, November 11, 2002; 3:15 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37539-2002Nov11?language=printer
ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN -- U.S. warplanes flying from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf struck missile sites in southern Iraq in response to hostile acts, the U.S. military said Monday.
The attack took place Sunday by fighter jets patrolling the no-fly zone in southern Iraq, Capt. Kendall L. Card, the commander of the USS Abraham Lincoln, told crew in announcement over the ship's public address system. He did not provide any details of the attack.
The U.S. Central Command said in a statement on its Web site that coalition aircraft used precision-guided weapons to target two surface-to-air missile sites near Talil, 175 miles southeast of Baghdad, in response to Iraqi hostile acts. There was no word from Baghdad on the strike.
The Central Command said damage assessment was ongoing. The airstrike came after Iraq moved the missiles into the no-fly zone, the statement said.
Iraq considers allied air patrols, set up to protect Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north, a violation of its sovereignty and frequently shoots at U.S. and British aircraft. Patrols are run in the southern zone by the Central Command and in the northern no-fly zone by the U.S. European Command. In response, coalition pilots try to bomb Iraqi air defenses.
The hostilities have been going on for years but are being watched more closely since the U.S. administration has vowed to oust Saddam Hussein's regime. The Pentagon has also changed its targeting in recent months, not necessarily hitting back at facilities from which the hostilities originate, but rather planning strikes that will do the most to cripple Iraq air defenses.
Two aircraft carrier battle groups, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS George Washington and each with about 10,000 sailors and Marines, are within striking distance of Iraq, and two more could join them by the year's end. The U.S. Navy has accelerated training schedules for other warships.
--------
Lawmakers in Baghdad Meet on Response to U.N. Resolution
November 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-UN.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi lawmakers denounced a tough, new U.N. resolution on weapons inspections Monday as dishonest, provocative and worthy of rejection -- despite the risk of war. But parliament said it ultimately will trust whatever President Saddam Hussein decides.
One after the other, senior lawmakers rejected the resolution, the latest in a long effort to ensure Iraq scraps its weapons of mass destruction. This time, however, the United States and Britain have made clear they will attack Iraq if it does not fully comply.
Parliament speaker Saadoun Hamadi said the resolution was stacked with ``ill intentions'', ``falsehood'', ``lies'' and ``dishonesty.'' Salim al-Koubaisi, head of parliament's foreign relations committee, recommended rejecting the resolution but also advised deferring to the ``wise Iraqi leadership'' to act as it sees fit to defend Iraq's people and dignity.
``The committee advises ... the rejection of Security Council Resolution 1441, and to not agree to it in response to the opinions of our people, who put their trust in us,'' al-Koubaisi told fellow lawmakers.
Saddam has used parliament's action as cover for difficult decisions in the past, and harsh rhetoric does not necessarily mean parliament will reject the proposal. Saddam ordered parliament to recommend a formal response, and lawmakers were expected to vote on recommendations for the Iraqi leadership Tuesday.
Iraq has until Friday to accept or reject the resolution, approved unanimously last week by the U.N. Security Council. Exactly when on Friday was left intentionally vague in the resolution, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
There are numerous interpretations for the deadline -- the minute the resolution was adopted, the minute Iraq was notified, the end of business Friday, or midnight on Friday. It is up to the Security Council to interpret its own resolution, Eckhard said.
If Saddam fails to follow through, a Pentagon plan calls for more than 200,000 troops to invade Iraq.
Parliament's advice on the new U.N. resolution, which demands Iraq cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors or face ``serious consequences,'' will go to the Revolutionary Command Council, Iraq's ruling body headed by Saddam.
Should parliament recommend acceptance, it would allow Saddam to claim the decision was the will of the Iraqi people and more smoothly retreat from previous objections to any new resolution governing weapons inspections.
In Washington, President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, rejected the legitimacy of the parliament debate.
``One has to be a bit skeptical of the independence of the Iraqi parliament from Saddam Hussein,'' she said. ``I don't think anyone believes this is anything but an absolute dictatorship and this decision is up to Saddam Hussein.''
She also said Iraq has no right to accept or reject the resolution. ``They are obligated to accept, but the U.N. thought it best to ask for return-receipt requested,'' Rice said.
On Sunday, Arab League foreign ministers ended meetings in Cairo, Egypt, with a final communique urging cooperation between Iraq and the United Nations. The Arab ministers also called on the United States to commit to pledges Syria said it received that the resolution could not be used to justify military action. They also put forward a united position of ``absolute rejection'' of military action.
Parliament is stacked with Saddam's allies. During opening speeches aired live on Iraqi television. lawmakers applauded every mention of Saddam's name in speeches praising ``His Excellency Mr. President, the holy warrior leader Saddam Hussein.''
Wafa Samir, a 30-year-old teacher, watched the speeches on television at a Baghdad shopping center. ``For how long will they keep issuing resolutions and expect Iraq to implement them?'' she asked. ``They have to stop some time for the Iraqis' sake.''
On convening the session, Hamadi, the parliament speaker, told lawmakers the resolution ``does not have the minimum of fairness, objectivity and balance,'' and violates international law.
``The ill intentions in this resolution are flagrant and loud in ignoring all the work that has been achieved in past years ... and takes the issue back to square one,'' Hamadi said. ``This resolution includes many impossible demands that can't be executed.'' Iraq maintains it no longer has any weapons of mass destruction. Lawmaker Ismail Nasif Jassim called the 30-day period for Iraq to provide documents on its weapons programs ``illogical and a way to provoke Iraq.''
The U.N. resolution gives inspectors unrestricted access to any suspected weapons site and the right to interview Iraqi scientists outside the country and without Iraqi officials present -- both issues that could become points of dispute.
Jassim called the provision for interviewing scientists ``a violation of human rights because it demands of any Iraqi they want to interview to travel abroad with their family.''
Iraq has insisted on respect for its sovereignty, an argument it has used in the past to restrict access to Saddam's palaces.
``Whoever formulated the text of that resolution deliberately chose what opposes with Iraq's sovereignty and conflicts with the dignity of the people,'' Hamadi said.
Saeed Mousawi, a senior official at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, noted the resolution had changed the rules by expanding the inspectors' powers to decide where to go and whom to interview. ``This decision creates a wide ground for upcoming crises, and not for a solution,'' he told the parliament.
On the Net:
http://www0.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID5298&Criraq&Cr1
----
Leaking plans for a rolling war
Monday, 11 November, 2002,
By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2441269.stm
The Pentagon has drawn up plans for an invasion of Iraq which are based on a concept of "rolling war".
The idea would be to seize three areas of Iraq - the south, the north and the west - and use them as staging points to threaten Baghdad in the hope that this would precipitate an internal collapse of the Iraqi regime.
In this way Washington would avoid a major assault on the capital.
The battle plan was extensively leaked and discussed by both the New York Times and the Washington Post on Sunday. The accounts are similar.
Psychological campaign
It would be a very different operation from the Gulf War to remove Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
Elements of the lessons learned in Afghanistan, where the US forces set up a base in Kandahar outside the capital Kabul, would be used.
However, enough armoured forces would be on hand to launch a ground attack on Baghdad if necessary. About 250,000 American and 15,000 British troops would be deployed.
Major Charles Heyman, a former British army officer who now edits Jane's World Armies said that there would be a "tightening of the noose" around Saddam Hussein.
Major Heyman said that the leaks were part of a psychological campaign against Saddam Hussein which is already underway.
"Saddam Hussein is hearing all the things he doesn't want to hear", he said "And he is beginning to wobble".
It is unusual in war for plans to be disclosed in advance. This time, however, the thinking is that the more Saddam Hussein knows of the very real threats against him, the sooner he will back down.
Eliminating options
"His options are being closed down" said Major Heyman. "He is being told that he and his military face destruction if he doesn't comply with the Security Council demands."
The psychological campaign - or "PsyOps" - would be stepped up before and during a conflict, encouraging local uprisings and a coup against Saddam Hussein himself.
A military campaign itself would start with an extensive air attack in which the proportion of "smart bombs" used would be as high as 60%, compared with only 9%during the Gulf War, according to the New York Times.
The targets would be what are being called "pillars of the regime" - air defences, weapons sites and facilities, presidential sites. This time, bridges in the centre of Baghdad and other cities would be hit only when necessary.
The idea would be to try to avoid civilian casualties and damage to civilian structures. This, it is felt, would help convince the Arab world that it is regime-change which is being sought, not the punishment of the population.
Ground operations would probably start - perhaps at the same time as the air attack - with the airlifting of troops into the so-called "Scud box" in Western Iraq.
This would prevent Iraq from launching any Scud missiles towards Israel, if it has any left which are working.
Special forces would activate "out of the box", or unconventional, plans by attacking sites which might contain weapons of mass destruction - chemical and biological.
Target Basra
The city of Basra in the south would also be an early target, according to Major Heyman.
This would provide the allied forces with a port and two airfields. But the Shatt al-Arab waterway would have to be cleared of mines first and this is why four British minesweepers are on their way to the Gulf.
There are also reports that cargo ships have been taking mobile bridges to the region, equipment essential for fast-moving warfare.
In the North, troops could be helicoptered in from Turkey to secure the area already held by Kurds and block any retreat for Saddam Hussein's army. They could also threaten Saddam Hussein's home city of Takrit north of Baghdad to which he might retreat.
By seizing key positions inside Iraq, the Americans and British would not need to rely on Saudi Arabia and other reluctant neighbours of Iraq to provide bases, though Kuwait would be a willing partner and so, too, would be the Gulf state of Qatar.
As with all plans, they no doubt contain many more secret elements and might not survive contact with the other side. But the broad outline is clear enough.
----
Destination Iraq for UK soldiers
Monday, 11 November, 2002,
By Paul Adams
BBC Defence Correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2444651.stm
Across the Atlantic, another rush of publicity surrounding the Pentagon's military plans for Iraq.
But in Whitehall? Nothing. A resounding silence about a deployment that could be just around the corner.
"No political decisions have been made," is the standard response to queries regarding Britain's military preparations.
There is plenty of talk about "contingency plans" but little else.
On the ground, with US men and armour converging on the region, there is little sign of British movement or preparation.
But if and when the war comes, there is no doubt UK forces will be involved, probably in substantial numbers.
British Royal Marines landing in Afghanistan Royal Marines would play a key role In strictly military terms, American forces do not need British help; they are more than capable of taking on Iraq single-handed.
But senior Whitehall sources say Britain's involvement is "a political matter."
An announcement could come next week. Officials say it is unlikely any decisions will be made public before Saddam Hussein accepts or rejects UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
It is likely elements of the UK's 1st Armoured Division, based in Germany, will form the backbone of the British force.
This could include the 7th Armoured Brigade (the famous "Desert Rats"), based at Bergen, Norway, and the 4th Armoured Brigade, based in Osnabruck, Germany.
Both are designed for rapid reaction operations.
The force would come with about 100 Challenger main battle tanks, as well as armoured personnel carriers and mobile artillery.
But the heavy armour designed for use in northern Europe needs to be "desertised" before it can be used.
Senior military sources say it will take more than two months to transport the tanks to the Gulf and prepare them for action. Challenger Tank Armoured divisions will form the backbone of UK forces
Other units, including 16 Air Assault and the Royal Marines, will be pushing to participate.
Special forces
The role of special forces will be crucial and the SAS and SBS can expect to play an important part in a campaign.
Other key contributions are likely to include air-to-air refuelling tankers and specialist de-mining operations in the waters of the Gulf.
Some US reports have suggested British troops will be involved in establishing a presence in Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq - part of a strategy to of take over parts of the country and apply pressure on the rest.
Other British forces could perform a similar function in the south, where the city of Basra is regarded as a likely early target.
Once they are there, how long do British troops stay in Iraq? In the words of a senior official: "It's inconceivable there won't be a long term commitment."
-------- israel / palestine
INTERVIEW WITH THE LEADER OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY YASSER ARAFAT TO MELHEM KARAM
Monday Morning (Lebanon),
November 11, 2002
http://www.mmorning.com/article.asp?Article=4673&CategoryID=3
FOR A REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
On what basis have you formed the new government?
Do you consider it to be more representative than the previous one? I have always wanted, and I continue to hope that the new government will include all sections of the political spectrum. I made wide contacts and consultations with our Legislative Council and with political forces to set up the new cabinet team, which is based on the principle of continuity, of renewal and of pursuing action dedicated to protecting our sacred Christian and Muslim shrines in our blessed land, and to be in the vanguard of the defense of our Arab nation.
What is the administrative and security plan of the new Palestinian cabinet? How will it deal with Israel?
The new government has three priorities: to put an end to the occupation; prepare for the elections; and persevere in the reform process. We are carrying on this battle for the defense of our existence and our national independence. These missions require the new cabinet to build a more solid basis for the various administrations of the national Authority so that they can deal with the tasks before them in these difficult circumstances.
In the first place, it is important to restructure the security organizations, giving them the potentialities required, after they have been the targets of Israeli aggression, which has had the aim of sowing chaos and instability in Palestinian society.
In fact, this pernicious objective has not been achieved thanks to the awareness of the Palestinian people, their faith in their cause and their firmness in resistance, despite the Israeli military escalation against our masses and the blockades imposed on our cities, camps and villages, most of which are occupied, in addition to the stifling blockade imposed on our people, the requisition of our funds over a period of 26 months, the ongoing crimes committed by the settlers, the takeover of our land and the destruction of our infrastructures.
OUR WHOLE NATION IS THREATENED
Sharon's new government, in which Binyamin Eliezer has been replaced by Shaul Mofaz as defense minister, threatens to have the Israeli army reoccupy the whole Gaza Strip. Do you expect it to put this threat into action?
Our entire nation is threatened and is subjected to daily attacks by the Israeli army, its tanks, planes, bulldozers, bombs and rockets, to which Rafah and Jenin, among others, are exposed.
As for the possible reoccupation of the whole Gaza Strip, this sector is already being subjected to constant aggression, division and invasions. The settlers have been mobilized for this purpose by the military forces stationed in the Strip.
INDEPENDENCE OR MARTYRDOM
You have said that Sharon's plan is to kidnap you and exile you to Lebanon or Morocco in order to impose an alternative leadership led by a purely symbolic president...
I am a believer and God has said: "Nothing will happen to you, save what is willed for you by the Almighty". Thus, we are determined to continue in the defense of our land, our holy places and our masses until the end of time.
I have affirmed in the first, second, third and the current blockade that our only two options were independence or martyrdom. Is there a third option?
I am a president who was democratically elected. Palestine is not a number in Sharon's pocket or anyone else's, nor are we pawns in a chess game. What is happening in other places will not apply to Palestine because the Palestinian people will never bend the knee or capitulate. Threats and killings will not sway or intimidate us. We are all potential martyrs.
FOR A PEACE OF THE WARRIORS
How do you see Palestinian-Israeli relations during the rest of Sharon's mandate?
Sharon's government has endangered the peace process. Indeed, he has openly declared the end of the Oslo accord, which was signed at the White House in September 1993. Further, he has attacked us with all the military force he possesses, even with weapons prohibited by international law. But our people will never submit to the arrogance of the occupation, and a military solution will bring no peace, security or stability so long as our land is occupied, as long as our people are besieged and settlements are maintained on our soil.
We support the peace of the warriors I signed with my departed partner Yitzhak Rabin, who gave up his life because extremist Israeli forces did not, do not, want a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region.
What is the financial condition of the Palestinian Authority? How would you reassure those who accuse some of its members of corruption on both the administrative and financial levels?
Sharon's government has suspended for 26 months the payment of funds owed to us from customs dues. These sums amount to between 1.5 and 1.9 billion dollars. This is action violating all international laws and conventions. The result of this has been the disruption of our plans and programs, not to mention the fact that we have no money to pay for rehabilitation of institutions, for the rebuilding of houses destroyed by the army; no money to deal with the consequences of the loss of life and the injuries, the killing of harmless women and children, the assassination of our officials... Without Arab and international support, added to the solidarity of our people, the resistance would not have been possible in the face of the occupation, the blockade and the Israeli war machine. Our human losses have risen to 68,000 martyrs and injured. In addition, 70 percent of our people live below the poverty line.
In regard to the alleged financial corruption, I can certify that there is exaggeration. Israel is leading a campaign with this purpose in the framework of its general plan directed against our people and our national program.
I do not deny that there have been certain irregularities here or there for personal ends, but we apply the law and act with transparency in order to prevent any violation; we do this in the national interest. We have always given a favorable reception to any Arab or international approaches by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund aimed at examining the veracity or otherwise of the Israeli accusations.
Here, I would like to ask a question: The funds owed to us have been frozen by Israel for the last two years. In the light of this, is it possible to speak of corruption and corrupters since the money we do have is hardly sufficient to cover the needs of our people, our institutions and our civil servants?
THANKS TO OUR ARAB BROTHERS FOR THEIR SUPPORT
Syria made a donation of half a million dollars towards reconstruction of the camps at Jenin and Balata. How do you evaluate Syro-Palestinian relations at this point?
Our relations are solid with President Bashar Assad and the Syrian leadership. We thank them for this donation and for their assistance with UNRWA for the rebuilding of the camps at Jenin, Rafah, Balata and other camps. We're working together to consolidate Arab solidarity and recover our occupied Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian land, and also to do whatever we can to protect fraternal Iraq and the region from the perils that would threaten them if war broke out.
And Palestinian relations with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Lebanon? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, under the leadership of the Servant of the Two Sanctuaries, King Fahd, of Crown Prince Abdallah and of Prince Sultan, second deputy prime minister, has been exposed to a fierce campaign of denigration because of its honorable and principled stands regarding the cause of our people and of our holy places, particularly Jerusalem. The initiative of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Abdallah, which the Beirut Arab League summit adopted, has become the powerful instrument of a unified Arab policy, agreed by the world as the basis for an equitable peace in the Middle East.
I'm not forgetting the assistance and support given us by Saudi Arabia and all our brothers in the Gulf: the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Kuwait, the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Emirate of Qatar, in addition to other donations from Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan and others to our Palestinian people in their struggle for independence and freedom.
As for Lebanon, which is dear to the Palestinian people, we are keen to establish the most solid relations with its president, its government and its people. Lebanon supports the struggle of our people, their revolution and their refugees. That is why we seek the strongest relations with this fraternal country and hope there will be a revision of certain laws which limits the work of Palestinian refugees to enable them to support their famiies, the more so since circumstances have changed after the transfer of the Palestinian cause and struggle into the interior of the territory of Palestine.
And this, in addition to Egypt, which has never failed to stand by our side on all levels, and the help we do not forget from President Hosni Mubarak, as from our brothers in Jordan, of King Abdallah II and the Jordanian people, side by side with all our brothers, the Arab leaders and peoples.
AMERICA AND THE ZIONIST LOBBY
What of your relations with the United States?
We desire the best possible relations with the United States, since no contradictions exist to hamper such relations. More than half a million Palestinians live in the United States, but unfortunately the American policy, despite its talk of peace and its initiatives, successive American Administrations, under the pressure of the Zionist lobby, have for years provided Israel with every form of support, material, military and political. This gives extremist Israeli forces the means of torpedo the peace process and perpetuate the occupation and the stifling blockade of our people.
This also encourages Israel not to comply with the resolutions of international legality. See how many resolutions have been adopted by the UN Security Council but have never been applied by the Jewish state, including the one calling for an inquiry into the massacre perpetrated in the Jenin camp. In the same way, American documents reveal the use by Israel of arms prohibited under international law, such as depleted uranium and other weapons. We have often mentioned this.
How long will it be until an independent Palestinian state is created and the sufferings of the Palestinians end?
The Palestinian people have no choice other than to continue their national resistance in Palestine until the creation of an independent Palestinian state and a settlement of the cause of the Palestinian refugees in conformity with UN Resolution 194.
You now understand with me that a unanimity has been seen throughout the world on the fact that security, peace and stability in the Middle East are linked to creation of an independent State of Palestine having Jerusalem as its capital.
As I have said many times, we stand a stone's throw from the state and from Jerusalem. We're in the last 10 meters of the race, especially after the Security Council's Resolution 1436, President Bush's speech and the "road map" jointly proposed by the European Union, the United States and Russia.
-------- mideast
Arab Diplomats Say Iraq to Abide By Resolution
Hussein Orders Assembly To Hold Special Session
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 11, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36738-2002Nov10?language=printer
CAIRO, Nov. 10 -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein intends to accept a recen