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NUCLEAR
French Framatome rejects German nuclear fault claims
Germany presses ahead with cuts in arms spending
Putin brings offer of nuclear-tipped arms deal to India
Experts visit Iraqi nuclear site - US wants more
Inspectors find only mushrooms amid ruins of bombed reactor
Inspectors Rebuked By U.S. And Iraq
Persistent Or Pushover: Views of Blix's Record Vary
Bush scoffs at U.N. over 'cooperation'
U.N. team sets trap in Baghdad
Pyongyang rejects probes by IAEA
N. Korea Rejects Call for Inspections
U.S. Criticizes North Korea for Rejecting Inspections
Russia Arctic naval base seeks US oil mission
Chechen rebels phoned Gulf during siege
Pentagon Memo Raises Possibility of Nuclear Testing
73 Calvert Cliffs Employees Told They Must Find New Jobs
Unexpected Revenue Boost Cuts Calvert's Budget Deficit
Xcel Energy asks Minnesota to act on waste storage
Uranium Supplier USEC Picks Ohio Site for Test Plant
USEC plans uranium-enrichment facility
A RARE BREAK FOR A REGION IN NEED
The Kissinger Conundrum
Armey leaves House with call for freedom
U.S. set to cite Iraq for breach
Bush the Comedian: Poindexter, Abrams and Now Henry K.
MILITARY
A U.S. Beachhead On Horn of Africa
Bush Meets with Leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia
U.N. Approves More Congo Peacekeepers
U.S. Troops to Remain in S. Korea
Bioterrorism Defense Plan Takes Shape
Tapping your paycheck
Powell Pledges More Support For Colombia's Anti-Rebel War
Powell Says U.S. Will Increase Military Aid for Colombia
Hard-line unit vows war with reformers
Allies blitz Iraq in preparation for all-out war
U.N. Extends Iraq's Oil Rights
Islamic Militants Clash With Kurdish Forces in Northern Iraq
Iraq Official Says Nation Is Armed for War
Israelis kill woman, 95, as she sits in minibus
Five killed in Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza
Sharon Tentatively Backs Plan for Palestinian State
Aid Used as Lever With Pyongyang
Qatar Could Host Command Center For War in Iraq
U.S. Military Planning War Game in Qatar
U.S. eyes strengthened military bases
U.S. Asks NATO Nations to Offer Forces for an Iraq Campaign
Denmark Declines To Extradite Chechen
Truman Battle Group To Sail to Persian Gulf
Pentagon Is Set to Activate Thousands More Reservists
Battle Group Heads to Persian Gulf
World Image of U.S. Declines
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Justice Department can't give first-responders $3.5 billion
Court May Decide on Dirty - Bomb Suspect
Man Can Meet With Lawyer to Challenge Detention as Enemy Plotter
High Court Hears RICO
Justices Ponder the Reach Of Miranda Rights Ruling
Campaign Law Case Brings Debate, Crowds
Judge Grants 'Combatant' Access to an Attorney
Federal Panel Backs Lab Whistleblower
Powell vows aid against narco-terrorists
INS lacks proper checks on aliens
Total Poindexter Awareness: essential information
Port Security Drill Reveals Shortcomings
ENERGY AND OTHER
Dutch raise green energy subsidy after backlash
Ex-trader of energy charged in fraud
Environment likely not to blame for Marin County breast cancer rates
Similarities Found in Mouse Genes and Human's
ACTIVISTS
Anti-war protesters are flowing in from the mainstream
Canadians go to Baghdad as 'human shields'
Peace activists refuse to pay U.S. fines over trips to Iraq
Use of tear gas revives anti-Chavez protest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- germany
French Framatome rejects German nuclear fault claims
REUTERS GERMANY:
December 5, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18895/story.htm
FRANKFURT - French nuclear reactor maker Framatome ANP, facing a German enquiry into problems at the Unterweser power station, said yesterday it did not manufacture a faulty component which caused the closure of the plant.
Last week Germany's state prosecutor launched an enquiry into whether the problem at the Unterweser power station, owned by E.ON (EONG.DE), was caused by defective heat exchangers it said was made by the French company.
Framatome said the faulty equipment was made by one of its subcontractors.
"Framatome had these heat exchangers manufactured by a subcontractor whose qualification had been checked by Framatome prior to the start of production," a company spokesman said.
He said that Framatome had initiated legal action against the subcontractor who he refused to name.
Framatome said that the problem was a one-off and that it had not supplied any other components produced by this manufacturer to other nuclear power plants.
The Lower Saxony environment ministry, which oversees the Unterweser plant, in northern Germany, said last week that the fault involved the welded seams of the heat exchanger.
Unterweser went off line on August 10 for regular maintenance and was recommissioned on September 3. It was shut again the next day when more technical problems were discovered.
German power prices surged yesterday on talk of problems at another, undisclosed, nuclear plant in northern Germany.
--------
Germany presses ahead with cuts in arms spending
From Roger Boyes in Berlin
December 05, 2002
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-503004,00.html
GERMANY will today reject international pressure to increase its defence budget and announce big cuts in spending on key arms projects.
The saving, which is aimed at trimming about €6 billion (£3.8 billion) from an already overstrained defence budget, comes amid a heated national debate about economic management.
Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, yesterday defended his plans to scrap some tax breaks and to introduce more market elements in the state pension and health systems. However, November's unemployment figures again rose above four million, showing the fastest month-on-month rise since unification.
The emergency in defence spending highlights Germany's larger problem: the Government of Herr Schröder is committed to becoming a fully fledged alliance partner able and willing to participate in combat missions abroad (apart from possible war in Iraq). At the recent Nato summit, it pledged to narrow the gap between American and European defence efforts.
However, it cannot finance the changes, the equipment or training needed to turn its conscription army into a flexible, global force.
In spite of its promise, Peter Struck, the Defence Minister, is expected to announce today the reduction of the number of A400M transporter aircraft to be bought from 73 to 60. The price of the Airbus aircraft is likely to increase and Germany, which was contractually bound to 73, will have to compensate its partners. The shortage of a big transport aircraft has been so chronic that German troops have been chartering Antonovs or hitching lifts in allied aircraft to Afghanistan.
Only half of the 200 Tornados scheduled for modernisation will now be re-equipped. The procurement of the Eurofighter, much to the relief of Germany's partners, will stay at 180. According to some leaks, however, only 600, rather than 1,488, Meteor air-to-air missiles will be bought for those Eurofighters. If true, this will hit Britain, the lead nation in the Meteor project. The French are also unlikely to be pleased by the decision to buy 80 instead of 212 Tiger combat helicopters.
The planned defence cuts run deeper than this week's announcement. Various drafts are in circulation in the defence planning establishment, suggesting the scrapping of the navy's 50 Tornado fighter-bombers and its speedboat flotillas. Some strategic as well as housekeeping considerations lurk behind the blueprint. The Tiger helicopter, for example, will now be regarded not so much as an anti-tank weapon as an escort for ground troops. Fewer are therefore needed.
In general, Herr Struck is trying to shift the German Army away from the idea of tank battles. The original calculation was that Germany should be capable of fighting medium-sized operations. The emphasis is now on deployment in several small simultaneous operations. Army troop strength will be maintained at 282,000.
# The number of corporate bankruptcies in Germany is expected to reach a record next year. Creditreform, which collects information on economic research and debt collection, predicted that 40,000 to 42,000 companies would file for insolvency, with 650,000 to 680,000 jobs lost.
-------- india
Putin brings offer of nuclear-tipped arms deal to India
By Phil Reeves in Delhi
05 December 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=358588
Russia and India moved yesterday to forge a strategically important arms deal that could drastically alter the nuclear-tipped balance of power in the subcontinent.
As the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, ended a two-day visit to Delhi, both nations also used the occasion to fulminate about the need to contain terror and to issue a joint declaration against a unilateral US strike against Iraq.
But behind the posturing, efforts were under way to advance the multibillion-dollar arms deal, which could include the acquisition by India of at least one Russian-made Akula-11 class nuclear-powered submarine, capable of carrying a payload of nuclear Cruise missiles.
The deal hinges on a Soviet-built aircraft carrier, the 45,000-tonne Admiral Gorshkov, which has laid up in the Arctic port of Severodvinsk since 1988. India, eager to become the region's maritime heavyweight in the face of competition from China, and harbouring "great power" ambitions, wants to add a big aircraft carrier to its fleet.
The Russians have for years been offering to give the Gorshkov to Delhi as a gift, although with many costly strings attached. These include granting Moscow the contract for the ship's re-fit - estimates of the cost of this vary from $700m (£450m) to more than $1bn - and for the supply of about 40 MiG-29K aircraft which, after some extensive engineering adjustments to the vessel, would fly off its deck.
More than two thirds of the equipment in the hands of India's military, the third largest army in the world, is from Russia or the former Soviet Union. The relationship - which analysts expect to lead to another $8bn worth of military sales over the next decade - has continued in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR, not least because Moscow is not among those who placed sanctions on India after its 1998 nuclear tests.
Russia has long been talking with Delhi about the lease of several Akula-11 class nuclear submarines, but made them conditional on an agreement over the Gorshkov. India has been eager to acquire the Russian submarines to add to its ageing underwater fleet, in line with its long-standing ambition to have a so-called nuclear "triad" - in other words, the capability to deliver nuclear bombs by air, ground-to-ground missile and from the sea.
Submarines offer a particular advantage, because they can be hidden beneath the waves from prying enemy eyes. One western observer said: "There is no doubt that India would like the nuclear subs to have nuclear-tipped warheads, cruise missiles."
Earlier this week, the head of India's navy, Admiral Madhvendra Singh, refused to confirm or deny reports about the possible submarine lease, which would give India a strategic edge in its nuclear rivalry with Islamabad - and is therefore likely to cause unease in Washington, especially given the hostilities between the two south Asian neighbours and the strident US stance against nuclear proliferation elsewhere.
But Admiral Singh made little secret of India's ambition to base nuclear missiles in the ocean, saying that the most powerful part of the "nuclear triad" should be "at sea, preferably under water". He added: "It doesn't make sense to keep nuclear weapons on land. If you keep them on land, they are going to be targeted."
Many of the aspects of the Gorshkov component of the deal appear to be settled, although not the price tag.
-------- inspections
Experts visit Iraqi nuclear site - US wants more
Story by Haitham Haddadin and Carol Giacomo
REUTERS IRAQ:
December 5, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18916/story.htm
BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON - U.N. experts searched Iraq's main nuclear facility and a military base this week, but the United States called for a more aggressive hunt for any banned biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
Starting a second week of inspections, experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) swooped on the al-Tuweitha plant run by Iraq's nuclear power authority in Salman Bak, 20 km (12 miles) south of the capital.
Tuweitha Nuclear Research Center, the main site for Iraq's nuclear programme, had been monitored by the IAEA over the past decade.
Its activities have included several research reactors, plutonium separation and waste processing, uranium metallurgy, neutron initiator development and work on a number of methods of uranium enrichment.
Tuwaitha is the location of the Osiraq reactor bombed by Israel in 1981. Several tonnes of uranium have been under seal by the agency at Tuweitha since 1998.
Inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) drove 75 km (45 miles) north of Baghdad to Muthanna State Establishment military site.
The desert site is alleged to be a chemical agent facility and perhaps once a biological weapons facility, according to a British assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Iraqi soldiers with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols at the gate kept journalists from entering.
In Washington, a U.S. official said the United States had urged chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix to pursue a more intensive multi-pronged operation to "stress" the Iraqi system and make it harder for President Saddam Hussein to conceal his capabilities.
Using a "much bigger inspection force, going on multiple inspections day after day (would put) Iraq to the test around the country", the official told Reuters this week.
Blix had resisted the U.S. recommendations during a meeting at U.N. headquarters on Monday with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the official said. Blix was not immediately available for comment.
On a visit to Turkey, a U.S. ally neighbouring Iraq, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said this week that Washington was ready to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in air bases that might be used in a war against Baghdad.
He said Washington would start talks on such investment with Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis said the NATO ally would open its bases to the United States for military operations authorised by the United Nations.
Turkey's foreign ministry later said there was no final decision on opening up air bases.
The United States already uses Turkish air bases to patrol a so-called "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq that U.S. and British planes have enforced since the end of the 1991 Gulf War.
SEARCH OF SADDAM'S PALACE
This week, U.N. inspectors searched one of Saddam's lavish palaces in the biggest test of cooperation since the inspections resumed on November 27 after a four-year break.
The inspection of the al-Sojoud palace in Baghdad, with its statues, marble fountains and rose gardens, went smoothly. Palace visits were often scenes of friction between Iraq and U.N. inspectors in the 1990s.
Complying with a new U.N. Security Council resolution, Iraq said this week it would issue a statement on its arms programmes on Saturday - a day before a U.N. deadline - and dismissed Washington's accusations that it possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said: "Of course the declaration will have new elements but these new elements will not, shall we say, necessarily include a declaration of the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
"We are a country devoid of weapons of mass destruction."
U.S. President George W. Bush repeated this week that Iraq did have banned weapons and had to disarm peacefully or face force.
A White House spokesman said U.S. officials would take an "appropriate time" to respond to the Iraqi declaration, after studying what is likely to be a huge document in Arabic.
In new reminders that a low-intensity conflict is already being waged in the region, Iraq said it opened fire on Western warplanes and Kuwait said an Iraqi boat shot at its coastguards but there were no serious casualties.
A GOOD START?
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week that U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq had made a good start and that a final judgment on their effectiveness could take weeks.
"We will have to be cautious and see what happens in the days and weeks ahead but I think they're off to a good start," he said en route to Colombia.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Iraqi cooperation had been good so far and praised the inspectors for using their authority to visit the palace.
"There is a good indication that the Iraqis are cooperating but this is only the beginning," he said.
A day earlier, Bush gave a gloomier assessment, saying: "So far the signs are not encouraging."
This week, Bush told cheering supporters at a political rally: "(Saddam) says he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. He's got 'em. He's not only got 'em he's used them.
"The choice is his. And if he does not disarm, the United States of America will lead a coalition and disarm him, in the name of peace."
----
Inspectors find only mushrooms amid ruins of bombed reactor
By Kim Sengupta in Tuwaitha
05 December 2002
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=358616
Twisted pieces of metal rise from the rubble, rainwater lies in craters gouged into the earth, a scorched chimney leans into a jagged wall - reminders of how Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions were destroyed.
United Nations inspectors revisited the old Osirak site yesterday to check whether Iraq has once again embarked on a nuclear programme, as Washington and London claim. Tony Blair recently made public satellite photographs which, he maintained showed that the Iraqis were engaged in secret new construction.
The remains of the three reactors destroyed in 1981 by the Israelis, and then a decade later in the Gulf War, by the Americans, have been left by the Iraqis. Around it is the vast, sprawling al-Tuwaitha complex, with dozens of buildings, artificial hills with foxholes for anti-aircraft guns, and cars and buses lined up to transport workers around the plant.
The Iraqis insist the site is now used for medical and pharmaceutical products. Officials were keen to show the supposedly clandestine construction which so alarmed Mr Blair. They appeared to be no more than a few sheds. Nor were there overt signs of the infrastructure needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at 8.55am and spent four hours and 48 minutes at Iraq's biggest suspected nuclear site, poring over equipment and computers, before leaving with samples.
Faiz al-Barkhdar, the director of al-Tuwaitha and an adviser to President Saddam, professed to be bewildered by the visit. Nothing nuclear had been tested at the site since 1991, he insisted, and the gun emplacements were empty.
One of the new sheds was being used to grow mushrooms, Mr al-Barkhdar said. Observers comments about nuclear bombs and mushroom clouds were lost on him. "It is to help us produce better quality mushrooms, that is all," he insisted. "I know this is not strictly medical and pharmaceutical, but are Bush and Blair going to say this is a material breach?
"The truth is even the harmless work we do is very difficult, because of the UN sanctions. We cannot get spare parts, and around 70 per cent of the equipment cannot be used. We keep applying to the UN to get more supplies in, but we only get refusals."
For a plant running at a fraction of its capacity, there appeared to be a huge number of people present. Twenty-eight buses were lined up to take workers back to Baghdad in the afternoon as work finished early for Ramadan. Mr al-Barkhdar said about 2,500 people were employed, in a variety of jobs, "but none of them nuclear".
The inspectors had been particularly interested in a furnace in the physics laboratory, said Mr al-Barkhdar. It was made by the Degusse company of Germany and has been at the plant for over 10 years. "It does not even work, again because of lack of spare parts," he complained. "But the inspectors still took swabs from inside, I think to see whether we are using it for uranium. They will not find anything, I guarantee."
Osirak, is never far from the mind of the people working at the plant. Pointing at the wreckage, Mr al-Barkhdar recalled: "The Israelis hit with missiles early in the evening, a Frenchman and a number of Iraqis were killed, they hit the reactors. Then the Americans bombed the new facility during the war in the middle of the night, all that work was lost. Now they are just seeking an excuse to attack again."
Another group of UN inspectors visited al-Muthanna, 60 miles north west of Baghdad, once the nucleus of Iraq's chemicals production. But the facility was severely damaged in the Gulf War by more than 30 Tomahawk missiles and 2000lb laser-guided bombs
The inspectors discovered mustard gas shells in the derelict buildings of the complex. The Iraqis claimed they intended to destroy the shells - of the type used to gas to death 5,000 people in Halabjah - but were waiting for discussions with the UN first.
----
Inspectors Rebuked By U.S. And Iraq
U.N. Officials Defend First Week's Efforts
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11132-2002Dec4?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 4 -- A week after arriving to assess whether Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, the small team of U.N. inspectors came under harsh criticism today from both Baghdad and Washington, with officials in each capital questioning the mission's motives, impartiality and determination.
Caught in the middle, a senior field inspector broke with protocol and launched into an impassioned defense of his team's progress, insisting that U.N. experts have been "getting results" in their first week on the job. "The Iraq side would have liked us to be very light and the U.S. side . . . would like us to be extremely severe," said Demetrius Perricos, who is responsible for uncovering chemical and biological weapons. "I think what we're doing is proper, proper work. We're still doing a good job."
The impatience in Washington and Baghdad over the pace and character of the inspections did not appear serious enough for the Bush administration or the government of President Saddam Hussein to walk away from the process. But it dramatized the intense political pressure facing the U.N. inspectors, whose work has become what amounts to a tripwire for possible U.S. military action to destroy Hussein's three-decade rule.
President Bush dismissed assessments that the inspections have started off well, including one from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday. Bush told reporters at the White House that Hussein "is not somebody who looks like he's interested in complying" with the Nov. 8 Security Council resolution that calls for Iraq to relinquish any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and authorizes unannounced searches of any site in the country.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer urged the United Nations to conduct even more inspections. "Not just the United States, but the international community wants to make sure that they have a sufficient number [of inspectors], that they are able to do multiple inspections at the same time, that they can have a vigorous inspection regime," he said.
Fleischer said U.S. officials also are concerned whether the inspectors will be "aggressive enough to be able to ascertain the facts in the face of an adversary who in the past did everything in his power to hide the facts."
At the same time, Iraq's Foreign Ministry and a top presidential aide lashed out against an inspection Tuesday in one of Hussein's presidential palaces, saying it was carried out under U.S. and Israeli pressure to goad Iraq into a confrontation. He said that if the inspectors, who were dressed in ordinary clothes, were expecting to find banned weapons, they would have worn protective gear.
Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, Iraq's chief liaison with the inspectors, called the visit "unjustified and unnecessary." He added: "Their objective was only to do harm to Iraq's sovereignty and dignity. Their objective was political."
Amin's statements marked the first time Iraq has directly criticized the inspectors since they began their work last week. The government has, however, heaped contempt on previous inspection teams, calling them spies, political hacks and ill-trained opportunists.
Despite the display of official displeasure, Amin said Iraq plans to cooperate with the inspectors. "We are satisfied with the inspections and we hope that they will continue their professional work regardless of the pressures placed on them," he said.
Seventeen inspectors -- including nuclear, chemical and biological weapons specialists as well as missile experts -- began the U.N.-mandated inspections on Nov. 27 after a nearly four-year hiatus, and they have visited 16 sites, often searching two locations simultaneously.
The inspectors today visited two sprawling facilities near Baghdad that have long been associated with Iraq's efforts to build weapons of mass destruction. One group examined what used to be Iraq's primary nuclear complex while another scoured a government factory that played a key role in producing biological and chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin and VX.
A senior U.N. official said inspectors accounted for several artillery shells containing mustard gas that previous inspectors had uncovered but never destroyed.
Speaking to reporters, Perricos bristled at suggestions that the inspectors have not been sufficiently forceful. He said he would not alter the searches because of political pressure. "We're not serving the U.S. We're not serving the U.K. We're not serving any individual nation," he said. "We're here for the implementation of the resolution."
He suggested that if the U.S. government wants him to focus on other sites, it should provide him more detailed intelligence reports. "What we're getting and what President Bush may be getting is very different, to put it mildly," he said.
Although the inspectors have not provided the Iraqi government with advance warning, they have started by visiting places already searched by U.N. experts in the 1990s to determine whether any new weapons-related activities have occurred there since the previous inspectors left in 1998. U.N. officials said they will not be able to conduct more than two or three simultaneous inspections until next week, when 35 additional inspectors are scheduled to arrive in Iraq.
The special U.N. commission that is coordinating the inspections with the International Atomic Energy Agency plans to have about 100 experts in Iraq by the end of the year. The inspectors, drawn from governments and industry around the world, cannot arrive sooner, U.N. officials said, because they received word they would be dispatched to Iraq only after the Security Council resolution was passed, and they needed several weeks to prepare.
Under the U.N. resolution, Iraq must submit to the Security Council by Sunday a declaration detailing all its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, programs to develop them and civilian facilities with the capacity to build them. Amin said Iraq will submit its report Saturday, but he did not explain how or where the report would be delivered.
U.N. officials said one copy may be given to inspectors here on Saturday and one copy flown to U.N. headquarters in New York for delivery Sunday afternoon.
"It will be a huge declaration," Amin said. He said it would include "new elements with regards to new sites and new activities which have been conducted during the absence of the inspectors."
In today's inspections, a team from the IAEA went to the vast Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 15 miles southeast of Baghdad. The site, regarded for years as Iraq's preeminent nuclear facility, has long been a subject of international concern.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor on the site in 1981. Airstrikes during the 1991 Persian Gulf War destroyed much of the rest of the complex. But in recent months, U.S. and British officials have voiced concern about construction of new buildings there.
U.N. chemical and biological weapons specialists went to the Muthanna State Establishment, a research plant about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad. In the late 1990s, inspectors demolished much of the facility after concluding that it played a central role in Iraq's biological and chemical arms programs.
Perricos called Muthanna "a very important place for the chemical warfare program they were building in the past." He said inspectors wanted to ensure damaged equipment had not been repaired and that the mustard gas artillery shells that had not been destroyed before the inspectors left in 1998 still were there.
They were, he said, "well stored." He said the inspectors hoped to "proceed with the destruction" of the shells soon.
----
Persistent Or Pushover: Views of Blix's Record Vary
By Michael Dobbs and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11266-2002Dec4?language=printer
Hans Blix, the man responsible for hunting down Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, remembers an incident that occurred during his first visit to Iraq four months after the Persian Gulf War ended that sums up the challenges his inspectors face every day.
He was driving through the desert with the head of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission to search for materials that could be used to make an atomic bomb. At one point, the Iraqi looked the veteran Swedish diplomat in the eye and told him: "Mr. Blix, we do not have a uranium enrichment program."
It was a blatant lie, which became obvious when U.N. inspectors discovered secret Iraqi blueprints for a weapon equivalent in size to "Little Boy," the U.S. atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. The question is how the man who has now become the chief United Nations weapons inspector on Iraq -- whose investigations could determine whether there will be war or peace in the Middle East -- reacted to that lie.
To hear Blix tell the story, he used the incident to push for a more stringent inspection regime -- including access to undeclared nuclear sites previously off-limits to inspectors -- that has made it much more difficult for countries such as Iraq and North Korea to build a nuclear weapon. To listen to his critics, he was far too timid about challenging the claims of sovereign governments whose cooperation he needed to do his job.
A little-known international bureaucrat thrust into the limelight by the Bush administration's war on terrorism, Blix, 74, has become a flashpoint in a heated debate about the effectiveness of U.N. weapons inspections. Much of the controversy revolves around his record between 1981 and 1997 when he was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with responsibility for combating the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It was the political springboard to his present post.
"Blix is the ideal man for the job," said John Ritch, who worked closely with the Swede as U.S. ambassador to the Vienna-based nuclear agency during the Clinton administration. "The Iraqis have to fear Blix precisely because he is very polite and very careful. If they hide anything, he will report it in a way that is accurate, judicious and ultimately very dangerous for the Iraqis."
Richard Perle, who is chairman of a Pentagon advisory body, said, "He was outwitted, outsmarted and outmaneuvered by Saddam Hussein." Perle voiced the the private criticisms of Defense Department hawks: "The relationship between the IAEA and countries like Iraq is far too cozy. . . . You have to be brain dead to assume that Saddam Hussein is not going to hide things."
There is another, competing version of Blix's journey into the Iraqi desert in May 1991 that encapsulates the views of critics who argue that he is too accommodating to stand up effectively to a ruthless and secretive regime bent on acquiring doomsday weapons. It comes from one of his former subordinates, an American nuclear inspector named David Kay, who was the third passenger in the car, sitting next to the driver.
All three men -- the Iraqi, the Swede and the American -- had taken a three-hour car ride to inspect a pile of garbage suspected of containing nuclear isotopes. The Iraqi expert said it was scientifically impossible to detect a uranium enrichment program by examining the trash. Kay disagreed, and they had an argument. By Kay's account, Blix later reprimanded him for contradicting "the government of a member state."
"I was flabbergasted," Kay said. "Blix has had a hard time learning that people who wear coats and ties can make baldfaced lies, and not be ashamed of doing it. The essence of dealing with the Iraqis is that they are perfectly happy to go from one lie to another. Blix has had a hard time accepting that."
Blix said Kay's version of the conversation is "totally ludicrous."
In a wide-ranging interview, Blix depicted himself as the servant of an international monitoring system that has been strengthened enormously over the past decade in response to violations by countries such as Iraq and North Korea. Until 1991, he said, it was politically infeasible to strengthen the inspection regime because of opposition from U.N. member states, including some Western countries. As a result of the Iraqi "debacle" -- the discovery that Hussein had a secret nuclear weapons program going back at least a decade -- everything changed.
Blix said that, after returning from Baghdad, he went to the IAEA's board of governors to demand much greater access to nuclear weapons sites and more intelligence sharing by member governments to back up the work of his inspectors. He was granted broader powers, which he was able to use effectively the following year, when the agency discovered that North Korea was separating plutonium in violation of international agreements. The North Korean plutonium program was subsequently frozen.
Blix's interest in nuclear issues dates to the 1970s when, as a leader of the small Swedish Liberal Party, he campaigned in favor of nuclear energy in a fiercely contested referendum. He served briefly as Swedish foreign minister. "He was obsessed with treaty law, the United Nations and laws governing . . . the use of weapons such as napalm," recalled Jan Eliasson, the current Swedish ambassador to Washington and a longtime colleague.
During the early part of Blix's tenure as head of the IAEA, Iraq was a member of the board of directors and, therefore, in a position to block an effective inspection regime. Inspectors were permitted to visit only declared nuclear sites, meaning that it was difficult to detect cheating by a country like Iraq, which took elaborate steps to hide its weapons program from international supervision.
"There were severe constraints" on what the atomic agency was allowed to inspect before 1991, Blix acknowledged. Even so, he noted, his agency was not the only organization that failed to detect signs of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program. "Neither the CIA nor [the Israeli intelligence service] Mossad knew what was going on, and they were not as constrained as we were."
Blix's critics argue that he was too willing, on the basis of partial evidence, to give the Iraqis a clean bill of health. Indeed, throughout the 1980s, he went out of his way to praise the Baghdad government for its cooperation, and to emphasize that there was no evidence Iraq was trying to build a nuclear bomb.
By several accounts, Blix remained reluctant to criticize Iraq in the weeks immediately after the Persian Gulf War, when his inspectors began to suspect large-scale Iraqi cheating. According to Bill Nelson, an American scientist from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who was a member of the first nuclear inspection team to visit Iraq after the war, the prevailing culture at the atomic agency was to assume that member governments were telling the truth until they were caught in a flagrant lie.
Blix had "a nonaggressive approach," said Rolf Ekeus, a fellow Swede who headed the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the first U.N. effort to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. According to Ekeus, Blix believed he was receiving "good cooperation" when the Iraqis permitted his inspectors to visit nuclear facilities and showed them documents. "For me, it is not cooperation if they have lied and haven't told you everything," Ekeus said. "We come from two different cultures."
Ekeus's former deputy, U.S. diplomat Robert Gallucci, recalls loud arguments in Swedish over how to deal with Hussein. Gallucci, who now heads the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, said he found Blix "entirely too sympathetic to the Iraqi position and Iraqi explanations" in the immediate aftermath of the war.
Nevertheless, Gallucci and others give Blix great credit for strengthening the mandate of the atomic energy agency once he received incontrovertible evidence that the Iraqis had been cheating. "It was a watershed moment," said Gallucci, referring to an IAEA board meeting in February 1992, when Blix argued persuasively for greater powers. "He brought the agency along with him."
Blix himself attributes his conflict with Ekeus mainly to bureaucratic turf issues. He says UNSCOM treated the nuclear agency like "a watchdog on a leash," telling it where it should go and inspect. At the same time, he concedes that he remains allergic to words such as "aggressive" in describing how his inspectors should operate in Iraq and prefers words such as "tough" and "dynamic."
"We can neither shoot nor should we need to shout. The power that we have at the present time is very considerable," he said. The Iraqis "know that we have a big stick. Everybody knows that."
As the former head of UNSCOM, Ekeus was the first choice of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to head the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, as the successor agency is known. But both the Russians and the French vetoed Ekeus's candidacy, believing he is too tough to be acceptable to the Iraqis. The French proposed Blix, instead.
When Annan called him with the news, Blix was hiking in southern Patagonia with his wife. It was January 2000. His initial instinct was to turn down the job, a friend said. Blix, who was 72 and retired, felt there was little chance of getting back into Baghdad, as the Iraqis were adamantly opposed to allowing the inspectors to return. But after thinking over Annan's offer, he agreed to accept it.
Blix sees the latest round of inspections as a chance to prove the effectiveness of the international monitoring system. He says UNMOVIC has several advantages over its predecessor, including a tougher U.N. mandate and greater independence. UNSCOM experts were on the payroll of U.N. member governments, including the United States. Blix's inspectors, by contrast, receive their salaries directly from UNMOVIC, which is funded out of confiscated Iraqi oil revenue.
A key issue for Blix's Pentagon critics will be how effectively he uses a provision in the U.N. resolution setting up UNMOVIC that permits him to take Iraqi scientists and their families outside the country if they have vital information on Hussein's secret weapons programs. Blix has raised practical objections to a large-scale defector program, saying that the inspectors are not running "an abduction agency" and cannot force scientists to leave Iraq.
Pentagon officials, by contrast, believe that defectors are likely to provide the key to tracking down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The "reality" of inspections, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday, is that "things have been found [in Iraq] not by discovery, but through defectors."
White House officials, meanwhile, are still expressing confidence in Blix. "We believe Dr. Blix is a man of integrity with a very difficult job," said National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack.
Blix said "it is vitally important that we do not overstate what can be achieved by inspections." He conceded it will be "very difficult" to find convincing evidence of Iraqi biological and chemical weapons programs in the absence of "extremely fresh intelligence." At the same time, he noted that the alternative to inspections is war and the deaths of thousands of people.
For the moment, even the harshest critics seem to be willing to allow Blix to continue with his inspections. "We are giving Saddam Hussein a last chance," said Perle, the unofficial spokesman for Pentagon hawks. "We should be willing to give Hans Blix a last chance as well."
----
Bush scoffs at U.N. over 'cooperation'
By Bill Sammon and Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 5, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021205-65466320.htm
President Bush yesterday shrugged off U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's assertion of Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspectors, saying Saddam Hussein appears uninterested in "complying with disarmament."
When a reporter pointed out that "Annan says Iraq is cooperating," Mr. Bush shot back: "Well, we've been at this - what? - five days. This is after 11 years of deceit and defiance."
Summing up the first days of inspections by U.N. weapons officials, Mr. Annan said Tuesday that Iraqi "cooperation seems to be good."
"There is a good indication that the Iraqis are cooperating, but this is only the beginning," he said.
But Mr. Bush sounded more pessimistic while talking about Saddam's true intentions.
"One of my concerns is that in the past, he has shot at our airplanes," the president told reporters at the White House. "Anybody shoots at U.S. airplanes or British airplanes is not somebody who looks like he's interested in complying with disarmament.
"He wrote letters, stinging rebukes to what the U.N. did; he was very critical of the U.S. and Britain," Mr. Bush added. "That doesn't appear to be somebody who is that anxious to comply."
Iraq continued to insist yesterday that it has no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and that it would say so in a report to be delivered to the United Nations on Saturday, a day ahead of the world body's deadline.
"Soon he'll be making a declaration of whether he has any weapons," Mr. Bush said. "For years, he said he didn't have any weapons. And now we'll see whether or not he does.
"And if he does, we expect them to be completely destroyed and a full accounting," he added. "The world will determine soon whether or not Saddam Hussein is going to do what we've asked, which is, in the name of peace, fully disarm."
A few hours after Mr. Bush spoke, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan accused U.N. inspectors of gathering intelligence for the United States and Israel.
"Their work is to spy to serve the CIA and Mossad," Mr. Ramadan said, using language that harkened back to animosities over the previous U.N. inspection effort that ended in 1998.
Although the president was more downbeat compared to Mr. Annan in assessing Iraqi compliance, he sought to minimize the disagreement. Mr. Bush emphasized that the U.N. Security Council unanimously supported a U.S.-sponsored resolution demanding that Saddam give up his weapons.
"I remind our citizens that the U.N. Security Council voted overwhelmingly, 15 to nothing, for this approach we've taken," he said. "Our NATO allies have joined us. And we all expect Saddam Hussein to disarm."
He added: "This is our attempt to work with the world community to create peace."
But diplomats at the United Nations privately fretted that ill will between Washington and Baghdad was undercutting the council's glow of unanimity over the Nov. 8 resolution that returned the weapons inspectors to Baghdad.
The disagreement between Mr. Bush and Mr. Annan reflected a fragile consensus within the council, where many of the other 14 members always have been queasy over U.S. threats to depose Saddam and disarm Iraq by force.
The resolution followed two months of painstaking negotiations that pitted the United States and Britain against France and Russia, with the latter seeking to send inspectors without threatening Iraq.
In the end, the resolution threatened Iraq with "serious consequences" - a diplomatic term of art meaning war - if it did not disarm. In exchange, the United States agreed to discuss any military action with the council.
"France welcomes the lack of 'automaticity' in the final resolution," said Jean-David Levitte, the country's former ambassador, who also praised a provision giving the council the right "to meet immediately to decide on a course of action."
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a joint declaration, during a visit to India, urging Iraq to cooperate with the inspectors and adding a caveat directed at Washington.
"Both sides strongly oppose unilateral use or threat of use of force in violation of the U.N. Charter, as well as interference in the internal affairs of other states," said the declaration by Mr. Putin and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
In their public remarks after the Nov. 8 vote, ambassadors from China, Russia, Mexico and Ireland said that their nations had accepted the resolution only because it takes the question of war back to the council for further discussion.
However, Richard Grenell, a spokesman for John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that the consensus achieved Nov. 8 remained firm.
"The council was united in voting for Resolution 1441, which gives the Iraqis one final chance to comply," he said. "The council has been united in saying this is the final opportunity. We're all united, we're still united, no one has backed away from it."
Mr. Bush was not the only member of his administration with tough words about Saddam's reliability. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell scoffed at contentions by Iraqi officials that Baghdad has no weapons of mass destruction.
"The Iraqis are always making statements that contradict each other, day after day," Mr. Powell told reporters in Bogota, Colombia. "We're sure they have in their possession weapons of mass destruction.
"And the burden is on them to prove that they don't," he added. "And if they do have [weapons], they better acknowledge it and make those programs accessible to the U.N. inspections teams."
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was more blunt.
"We've heard Iraqi lies before," the spokesman said. "The last time the Iraqis said they had no weapons of mass destruction, they turned out to be liars."
He hinted that the administration would wait until Iraq presents its report Saturday and then check it against U.S. intelligence on weapons sites.
"Whether the inspectors ultimately will be able to disprove any lie by the Iraqis remains to be determined," Mr. Fleischer said. "The administration will review the information that we receive from the Iraqis. We have our own ways of determining whether something seems to be accurate or not."
Although Mr. Bush kept up his aggressive rhetoric against Iraq, he seemed to suggest that war was not imminent even if Baghdad fails to comply by this weekend.
"We've just started the process," he said. "The process is just beginning."
Mr. Fleischer cautioned that many more inspections must be done to gauge Iraqi compliance.
----
U.N. team sets trap in Baghdad
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 5, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021205-17714170.htm
The innocuous initial U.N. inspections in Iraq are part of a strategy designed to catch Baghdad if it is lying about its weapons stockpile, former inspectors and arms control analysts said yesterday.
The team currently in Iraq has been visiting known sites so far, to no surprise of President Saddam Hussein. As expected, the U.N. experts have found nothing that constitutes "material breach," the term used in Security Council Resolution 1441.
But after Baghdad declares its warfare capabilities this weekend, the inspectors will most likely target facilities that Western intelligence has detected without Iraq's knowledge, which would expose any omissions in Saddam's list.
"After the declaration, the inspectors will be comparing notes - from intelligence, from what they see on the ground and what they are hearing in interviews with Iraqi scientists who have been involved in the weapons programs - and look for discrepancies," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
Iraq is required by Resolution 1441 to present a full account of its exotic arms capabilities by Sunday. It said this week it would do so a day earlier, but insisted again that it does not have weapons of mass destruction.
"The declaration will be critical, and if they really maintain that they have no weapons, it will not be credible," said Jonathan Tucker, a former inspector in Iraq, now a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Raymond Zilinskas, another ex-inspector, said there is no point in visiting undeclared sites before the list is made available, because the Iraqis "will have time to put in the declaration." The "serious stage" of the inspections will begin after the list is analyzed, noted Mr. Zilinskas, who currently directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
The Iraqi government yesterday began to sense the U.N. team's strategy, accusing its members of being U.S. and Israeli spies and helping Washington prepare for war.
"The inspectors have come to provide better circumstances and more precise information for a coming aggression," said Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. "From Day One, their foremost work was spying. Their work was spying for the CIA and [Israel´s intelligence service] Mossad together."
But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, echoing comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday, said the United States was absolutely sure Iraq does possess weapons of mass destruction and has continued to develop them.
"The burden is on them to prove that they don't have," he said during a visit to Colombia. "If they do have, they had better acknowledge it and make those programs accessible to the U.N. inspection teams."
The White House called on the United Nations yesterday to send more inspectors to Iraq so they can start multiple and more intensive searches at more than one site at a time.
While not disputing the need to increase the inspectors' number, Mr. Zilinskas said they have been remarkably productive in the week they have been on the ground. He pointed out that they have visited seven suspected nuclear sites and five missile sites, as well as two suspected biological and two chemical facilities. They also have been to a presidential palace and the sensitive headquarters of a defense unit, which were off limits during previous inspections.
Mr. Tucker conceded the team has done a good job and said he has been pleasantly surprised by the level of Iraq's cooperation. But he warned that the "real test" is yet to come, as the first several days have been "a training exercise," so the inspectors can adjust to the conditions in Iraq and the behavior of the locals they are dealing with.
"My experience was that the Iraqis were very polite and superficially cooperative when we were visiting sites they had nothing to hide in, but their behavior changed once we went to a sensitive site," he said.
Mr. Zilinskas said the team this time is different. Its members are U.N. employees rather than working for a national government, so their primary loyalty is to an international organization. They have no experience in Iraq, although he said they were trained by some of the toughest former inspectors there.
In terms of technical capabilities, the current team is still limited, Mr. Zilinskas said. Its predecessor had a U-2 spy aircraft that helped keep an eye on the ground, in case the Iraqis tried to move hardware from one facility to another.
"They don't have these capabilities yet, but they will when the serious inspections start," he said.
Mr. Tucker said another difference is that last time there were monitoring and visiting teams. The former would spend several months in Iraq, while the latter would go in for much shorter periods. In addition, separate groups of specialists in different fields would make inspections. "Now the teams are integrated with experts in different disciplines to create appearance of greater objectivity," he said.
In their search, Mr. Kimball said, the inspectors are "unlikely to find a smoking gun in the near term, but more likely a pattern of evidence that suggests Iraq is not in compliance."
-------- korea
Pyongyang rejects probes by IAEA
From combined dispatches
December 5, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021205-4489243.htm
SEOUL - North Korea said yesterday it has rejected a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to open its nuclear weapons program to inspections, saying the United Nations nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North.
The IAEA called on North Korea last week to open its atomic weapons program to inspections and said it "deplored" Pyongyang's assertion it had a right to possess the weapons.
Closing off an avenue North Korea's neighbors had hoped might pre-empt a crisis, Pyongyang's Communist government spurned the IAEA call as "an extremely unilateral resolution."
"The DPRK government cannot accept the November 29 resolution of the IAEA Board of Governors in any case and there is no change in its principled stand on the nuclear issue," Pyongyang's official Korea Central News Agency said.
The report - using North Korea's official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) - quoted a Dec. 2 letter from Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun to IAEA Director Mohammed El Baradei.
"I was disappointed at the IAEA Board of Governors still acting under the manipulation of the United States while following its policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK," Mr. Paek wrote.
The White House denounced the North Korean decision and said it would work with other countries in the region to find a peaceful solution.
"The rejection of the IAEA resolution to open its facilities to inspections is another disappointing example of North Korea's isolation that will only hurt the people of North Korea," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday.
"We will continue to apply this pressure to North Korea by working in partnership with Russia and China as well as Japan and South Korea. The region has a peaceful interest in working together so North Korea comes into compliance with international norms," he said.
China and Russia made a strong appeal to North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program on Monday during a Beijing visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. Paek's letter didn't respond to requests that North Korea "clarify reports of its having an undeclared uranium enrichment program," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
North Korea also left unanswered the IAEA's request for high-level talks in Vienna, Austria, on Oct. 18, she said.
"Dr. El Baradei is reiterating his deep concern about the situation, his readiness to discuss all nuclear-related matters" with North Korea, Miss Fleming said.
U.S. diplomats say North Korea revealed in October it had a nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States. The accord called for the country to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power plants.
The United States, with backing from Japan, South Korea and the European Union, decided to punish North Korea by suspending free fuel-oil shipments beginning in December.
Little is known about North Korea's nuclear program. The IAEA has inspectors in the country, but their activities are limited to monitoring an old nuclear complex north of Pyongyang and a reactor at another site.
----
N. Korea Rejects Call for Inspections
Nation Blames U.S. for 'Nuclear Crisis'
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10673-2002Dec4?language=printer
The North Korean government has refused a request by the International Atomic Energy Agency to halt its nuclear weapons program and admit inspectors, blaming the United States for a "nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula."
Two months after North Korea revealed its secret uranium enrichment project, Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun replied to the IAEA by saying the United States had "destroyed" a 1994 nuclear freeze agreement, in part by naming North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil."
The IAEA, which considers North Korea to be in violation of a wide array of international rules, countered that the Pyongyang government had refused the agency's proposal to discuss recent events. The agency's director reiterated his "deep concern" and said the organization would persevere in trying to apply atomic safeguards to the communist regime. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer called North Korea's defiance of the IAEA "another disappointing example of North Korea's isolationism, which will only hurt the people of North Korea."
The United States has halted shipments of fuel oil to the energy-poor country while searching for leverage among North Korea's neighbors to change the behavior of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's unpredictable president.
The dispute began in early October, when U.S. envoys confronted North Korean officials with evidence that the Pyongyang government was developing the ability to enrich uranium for use in a nuclear weapon. To the diplomats' astonishment, North Korean officials admitted the existence of a secret program.
The Bush administration quickly made clear that a political and economic opening sought by Kim would be impossible until he reveals everything about the nuclear program and permits international monitoring. But U.S. officials worked the wheels of diplomacy and did not impose sanctions.
Among the recent leaders to call on North Korea to give up its nuclear program were the presidents of China and Russia -- North Korea's closest allies -- who issued a joint statement Monday. They also urged further talks between the United States and North Korea. Paek, the North Korean foreign minister, criticized the Bush administration in his letter to the IAEA, whose 35-member governing board adopted a resolution Friday deploring North Korea's self-proclaimed right to have nuclear weapons. He said North Korea needs to reserve a nuclear option in self-defense, saying the United States considers North Korea a potential target for a preemptive strike.
The North Korean also cited the fuel oil cutoff and President Bush's "axis of evil" statement as evidence of "hostile" U.S. policy. Paek said the IAEA "unfairly" sided with the United States in adopting the resolution. Left unmentioned were two October letters from the IAEA seeking cooperation and clarification of the uranium enrichment project.
A State Department official said yesterday that any attempt by North Korea to win inducements for better behavior will fail. But that the door to cooperation remains open if North Korea addresses concerns over its military posture and other issues, the official said.
"We are waiting for action from them," the official said. "We have told them they need to visibly and verifiably dismantle their nuclear program."
--------
ASIAN ARENA
U.S. Criticizes North Korea for Rejecting Inspections
December 5, 2002
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/international/asia/05KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 - The White House issued a muted criticism of North Korea today, saying it was "disappointing" that North Korea had rejected a demand for inspections of its newly revealed program to develop nuclear weapons from highly enriched uranium.
The demand came from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear inspection and regulatory organization linked to the United Nations.
The White House comments appeared to be part of a strategy to defuse any sense of imminent confrontation with North Korea, which the Central Intelligence Agency believes is still a few years away from producing a nuclear weapon from its uranium program.
President Bush issued a statement last month assuring North Korea that the United States had no intention of invading it, and saying he was seeking a "diplomatic solution" to the situation caused by its nuclear revelations.
Nonetheless, the White House statement today was in sharp contrast to its responses about the inspection of Iraq's suspected weapons sites. At a briefing with reporters, Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, insisted that the United States did not employ a double standard in dealing with countries developing weapons of mass destruction.
"Not every policy needs to be put into a photocopier," Mr. Fleischer said today. He argued that Iraq had repeatedly defied United Nations Security Council resolutions, and said "that is not the case in North Korea."
In 1994, North Korea engaged in a lengthy struggle with the Security Council over a previous nuclear project, and the Council threatened to impose penalities on it. But the Council never formally voted on a resolution because the confrontation, which led President Bill Clinton to reinforce American troops in South Korea, was averted with an agreement that North Korea would freeze its nuclear activity.
North Korea's statement today was in response to a resolution passed last month by the atomic energy agency, urging the country to "give up any nuclear weapons programs expeditiously" and open "all relevant facilities to I.A.E.A. inspection and safeguards." American intelligence officials say they are still uncertain where those facilities are.
In a response today, North Korea's foreign minister, Paek Nam Sun, called the resolution "extremely unilateral," and added, that "the government cannot accept" it, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
A spokesman for the atomic energy agency said agency officials felt "deep concern" about the North Korean refusal, which appeared to follow the script of the 1994 crisis, when North Korea declined to allow inspectors in until it had won some concessions from the West.
But the White House did not condemn the action, and issued no warnings of the consequences of refusing inspections. "Their rejection of the I.A.E.A. resolution to open its facilities," Mr. Fleischer said, "is another disappointing example of North Korea's isolationism, which will only hurt the people of North Korea."
When asked what steps the United States would take, he said "we are working with our regional partners to try to find a peaceful solution to this issue."
American officials, when speaking with the promise of anonymity, say they have little choice but to pursue a strategy markedly different from the one used with Iraq.
Iraq has little power to strike back at neighboring countries, they point out, while North Korea could cause great damage to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Moreover, the White House appears convinced that North Korea's economic condition has weakened so much that it is vulnerable to economic pressures to a degree that Iraq is not.
Mr. Fleischer offered another reason today. "Iraq, of course, does have a history that North Korea does not have of engaging in war against its neighbors," he said, "in resorting to the deadly use of massive force, including weapons of mass destruction against its neighbors, including the invasion of sovereign nations."
Mr. Fleischer was presumably speaking about North Korea's history in recent decades; it invaded South Korea in 1950.
-------- russia
Russia Arctic naval base seeks US oil mission
Story by Natalia Andreassen
REUTERS RUSSIA:
December 5, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18898/story.htm
MURMANSK, Russia - Russia's Arctic port of Murmansk, a Soviet-era bastion of the Cold War, is becoming a symbol of a new partnership with the U.S., in which oil is set to overshadow nuclear submarines.
Last week, Russia's largest private oil firms agreed to build here by 2007 a multi-billion dollar oil export terminal, designed to open up new markets for their booming oil output and help the United States cut its dependency on the Middle East.
And Murmansk, halfway between Moscow and the North Pole, a place where the sun does not rise for two months of the year, is welcoming the idea as a last hope to escape poverty and unemployment, endemic in this once thriving Red Army naval base since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago.
"We are living in oblivion. Today no one wants to be a naval officer. And because so far there has been nothing else to do in Murmansk, oil is probably a solution. Not for us but for future generations," said Yelena, 46, the wife of a naval officer.
For many in Murmansk, where in Soviet times the city's residents received privileges for enduring a harsh climate to defend the motherland, pride is all they have left.
"Some people believe Russia's north has no chance of surviving and Arctic towns will simply gradually die. I think this is totally wrong," said Vyacheslav Popov, who represents Murmansk in Russia's upper chamber of parliament.
"This oil project will boost Russia's economic security and help to restore our previous glory."
Popov knows all about how quickly glory can turn to shame. A career admiral, he was comander of Russia's Northern Fleet when the nuclear-powered submarine Kursk crashed to the bottom of the Barents Sea with the loss of the entire 118 crew, the worst disaster in modern Russian naval history.
IDEAL LOCATION
Murmansk, near the frontier with Finland and Norway, is a unique port in Russia's north with a vast bay which never ices over even when temperatures plummet to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit).
"I'm so pleased that our natural advantages are finally recognised", Murmansk's regional governor Yuri Yevdokimov told oil executives.
Four Russian majors LUKOIL (LKOH.RTS), YUKOS (YUKO.RTS), Tyumen oil Co (TNK) and Sibneft (SIBN.RTS), which together account for more than half of Russia's eight million barrels per day (bpd) output, promised their project would create more jobs.
It will also serve further the rapprochement of Russia and the United States. The two countries have cosied up to each other, particularly since last year's September 11 attacks on the U.S.
"It is extremely important that the Russia-U.S. relationship is developing in a constructive way. It convinces us that we will secure access to the U.S. oil market and U.S. oil firms will gradually join our production projects," Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Russia's second largest oil firm YUKOS told reporters.
Russia, the world's second largest oil exporter, ships the bulk of its crude to Europe and needs deep water ports to load supertankers and make trans-Atlantic shipments profitable.
Murmansk, the deepest northern port in Russia, is emerging just as the country's output is booming for the fourth straight year and Russia wants to supply more than 10 percent of U.S. crude oil imports, currently dominated by more traditional but politically turbulent Middle East suppliers.
Oil majors say the new port's advantages will be ideal as the sea route to U.S. east coast from Murmansk will be just 5,800 miles (9,334 km), compared to 12,800 miles from the Gulf.
ECOLOGICAL WORRIES
The exact location of the new terminal is to be announced.
"We don't want profiteers rushing to buy land near Murmansk. There is more that 60 km (37 miles) of coast, which perfectly meets our needs, so the terminal can be built anywhere," said the head of LUKOIL Vagit Alekperov.
Yevdokimov says the energy-starved region is eagerly awaiting just a tiny portion of fuel from the export pipeline.
"Unlike other Russia's European regions, Murmansk does not have natural gas supplies nor even a tiny refinery. So it could become a colossal project for us," he said.
The project's image is clouded only by the concerns of environmentalists, who say any leaks from a vast oil terminal or the tankers it serves could further damage the ecology of Murmansk.
The port is already home to an estimated two thirds of Russia's 122 decommissioned nuclear submarines, the reactors of which have never been removed, and radiation reports are frequently read out on the radio station along with the weather forecast.
"When you have an oil spill from a supertanker in the Arctic it takes you decades to restore nature as oil decomposes very slowly," said Oganes Targulyan from Greenpeace in Moscow.
----
Chechen rebels phoned Gulf during siege
Moscow says theatre hostage takers were funded from Saudi Arabia
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Thursday December 5, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/chechnya/Story/0,2763,854004,00.html
Russian security officials suspect that the Chechens who seized a Moscow theatre in October had wealthy Arab sponsors in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and have sought Washington's support in finding the financiers.
Senior officials say they have traced a series of telephone calls from the gunmen to their "sponsors" in the Gulf.
During one call made to an unspecified Gulf state a financier asked for a video of scenes inside the theatre, and was told it could be made for a $1m fee.
"Several long telephone conversations were intercepted to Saudi Arabia, to the Emirates, and to Qatar.
"We can say for sure that the hostage-taking was financed from abroad, and the terrorists maintained permanent contact with their sponsors."
He added that the leader of the hostage-takers, Mosvar Barayev, and several of his fellow Chechens had planned to flee to the Gulf once the crisis was over.
The Chechen rebels seized the theatre on October 23.
After a long siege by Russian troops, 129 hostages and 50 gunmen were killed.
The source declined to name the sponsors and the country from which the video was requested, because the general prosecutor's office is still investigating the event.
The revelation helps to explain the pointed comments President Vladimir Putin made after his recent meeting with George Bush in St Petersburg.
He pointed out that 16 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were Saudi citizens, saying: "We will remember this," and adding:"We should not forget those who provide financing to terrorists."
Russian security officials have been issuing warnings about the threat posed by Islamist extremists funded by wealthy Gulf state benefactors since the mid-90s.
The security source said: "According to [security service] estimates, each month from the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, from £1.3m to £2.5m comes to support terrorism on the territory of the Russian Federation."
The Russian security services were constantly exchanging information on the funding organisations with their American and British counterparts, he said.
Sources in Washington and Moscow confirmed that there was cooperation.
A senior US state department official said that all Russia's concerns about links between the theatre siege and financiers in Gulf, and its fears about the "Saudi connection to international terrorism" would be "evaluated" by the commission on September 11 led by the former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
The official said Washington had offered Russia help in its investigation of the theatre incident, but would not give details.
He added: "The Saudis have said they will look more closely at some charity organisations and we cannot help but believe that this is a direct response to [our] concerns.
"But we are not singling anyone out and are looking at all avenues."
The official would not confirm a report that the state department was considering adding groups linked to Chechen separatists to the treasury blacklist of terrorism financiers, but said they were "constantly evaluating groups".
Russian security officials say there are long-standing links between organisations in Saudi Arabia and "terrorist activity" in Russia.
The official added: "In Saudi Arabia there is a group of NGOs linked to al-Qaida that form an integral system feeding terrorism.
"We count about 20 such organisations there who have accounts and branches in other countries."
He added that the NGOs' purported purpose, international support for Muslims, was a front for funding terrorism.
"We are cooperating with the Saudi Arabian special services, and several Saudi delegations have come to Moscow to discuss this."
But Saudi officials are currently busy denying that their country has become a haven for financiers of terrorism.
On Monday the Saudi embassy in Washington released a report describing a series of measures the kingdom had taken since September 11 against terrorist financiers.
Adel al-Jubeir, a key aide to Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, conceded that some of the hundreds of millions of dollars sent abroad by Saudi charities each year might have gone to al-Qaida .
He added: "We cannot allow our money to be used to murder people."
He insisted that Saudi investigations had led to charity accounts being audited, 2,000 people being questioned and 100 jailed, and 33 accounts, worth £3.5m, being frozen.
He said accusations of terrorism sponsorship had generated unprecedented "anti-Saudi sentiment" in America.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Pentagon Memo Raises Possibility of Nuclear Testing
Christine Kucia
Arms Control Today
December 2002
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2002_12/nuctesting_dec02.asp
A memorandum from a high-level Pentagon official recommending that the United States consider a low-yield nuclear testing program to help maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile surfaced November 15, just two days after Congress delayed an attempt to reduce the time required to prepare a nuclear test.
Edward Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, sent the memorandum October 21 to members of the Nuclear Weapons Council, a consultative body he chairs that is made up of officials from the Departments of Defense and Energy. In the letter, which was obtained by the Arms Control Association and made public in mid-November, he expressed concern about the ability of the Stockpile Stewardship Program to ensure a high level of safety and performance of the current nuclear arsenal. "New findings suggest that we may previously have been overconfident," Aldridge wrote. The Stockpile Stewardship Program combines subcritical testing with computer modeling based on data from previous nuclear weapons tests to verify the safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal.
Among the suggestions offered by Aldridge for assessing the arsenal's safety and reliability is "for the laboratories to readdress the value of a low yield testing program." Aldridge pointed out the difficulty of fully understanding the stockpile's safety without testing and asked, "How might such a program [of low-yield nuclear testing] increase confidence now?"
Deliberations over the resumption of nuclear testing to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile have bubbled beneath the surface of Bush administration policy since January 2001, when the White House indicated that it would not ask the Senate to reconsider ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The administration also hinted at nuclear testing resumption in its January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, a leaked version of which stated, "While the United States is making every effort to maintain the stockpile without additional testing, this may not be possible for the indefinite future." Among other things, the review, as well as a later study by the National Nuclear Security Administration, expressed concern that the United States is losing important expertise as the number of laboratory personnel with nuclear testing experience dwindles.
Other experts within the U.S. government deny the need for resumed testing. Bruce Goodwin, associate director for defense and nuclear technologies at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said, "I don't know of any reason why we can't" maintain the stockpile without testing, according to a November 15 San Jose Mercury News article. Energy Department spokesman Bryan Wilkes said November 22 that there are "no new movements or talk" in the agency about resuming testing, adding, "We see no need to deviate from the Stockpile Stewardship Program right now." In addition, a July 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences noted, "Even in the absence of constraints on nuclear testing, no need was ever identified for a program that would periodically subject the stockpile weapons to nuclear tests."
Aldridge's memorandum was made public just two days after Congress finished the fiscal year 2003 Defense Authorization Act, passed by the House of Representatives November 12 and the Senate a day later. In the bill, Congress requests a report that will outline plans and costs calculations for nuclear testing readiness periods of 6, 12, 18, and 24 months. The bill also calls for a recommendation from the secretaries of energy and defense on the "optimal readiness posture."
The United States conducted its last nuclear test in 1992, and since 1993 the Energy Department has been required to be able to resume testing within 24-36 months. Whereas in previous years Congress simply authorized funds to maintain readiness without discussion, this year House Republicans unsuccessfully pushed for the adoption of a one-year readiness requirement. The Senate refused to reopen the issue of test readiness to deliberation. Conference committee members compromised by requesting the study, which will postpone congressional debate on whether to shorten the test readiness period.
Calling the House proposal for a one-year readiness posture "unnecessarily aggressive," Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) described the result as an important compromise November 18. Asking the Energy Department to evaluate all of the possible options and propose a posture recommendation was an important achievement, according to Tauscher, who said, "I don't believe Congress should arbitrarily mandate a testing posture that would have significant national security consequences."
Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor.
Arms Control Association, 1726 M Street, NW; Washington, DC; 20036; Tel: (202) 463-8270; Fax: (202) 463-8273
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
73 Calvert Cliffs Employees Told They Must Find New Jobs
By Raymond McCaffrey and Michael Amon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page SM02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6001-2002Dec3?language=printer
The Constellation Energy Group revealed last week that it has eliminated 73 positions at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, though affected employees were told they could apply for other positions within the company.
The move comes as part of an ongoing effort to increase "cost efficiency" as the plant competes in the deregulated utility market, according to Steve Unglesbee, a spokesman for the Constellation Energy Group, owner and operator of the plant near Lusby.
"Seventy-three individuals were told that they did not have jobs at the plant," Unglesbee said.
Unglesbee said the move "was not a job reduction," and that the "final number" of those workers who ultimately lose jobs "will depend on how many will choose to work through the company personnel process."
However, those workers are only assured that "they have employment through the end of this year," according to Unglesbee.
Unglesbee did not specify exactly what kinds of jobs were affected by the move. But he did say the effort would not compromise security or safety at the plant.
"Security and safety are off limits," he said.
In 2000, the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant -- the home of two reactors -- became the first facility of its kind to win relicensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The plant, which has employed roughly 1,285 workers, according to Unglesbee, is the county's top taxpayer. Recently, the plant announced plans to spend about $2 million upgrading emergency sirens within the facility's 10-mile fallout zone. Assistant Sheriff Is a Major
Calvert County Assistant Sheriff Thomas C. Hejl was officially sworn in Monday as a major, a new rank at the department that Sheriff Mike Evans said is his first step toward reorganizing the agency.
Hejl's predecessor as assistant sheriff, Capt. Tilden Garner, will retire early next year. Evans said Garner's captain position will remain unfilled until he can persuade Calvert County commissioners to give him funding for a new command staff position.
"Down the road, I foresee a reorganization of the department where I can get a captain position which can be filled from within," Evans said.
With officials facing a tight county budget, Evans said it may be difficult to get the new position right away.
Evans has spoken publicly of restructuring the sheriff's office to make it more efficient, but the creation of a major was the first concrete step he has taken.
As major, Hejl will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the sheriff's office. Hejl is a former state trooper and investigator for Calvert State's Attorney Robert Riddle, and he played a prominent role in Evans's campaign for sheriff.
----
[Meanwhile....]
Unexpected Revenue Boost Cuts Calvert's Budget Deficit
By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page SM15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5981-2002Dec3?language=printer
Calvert County's budget shortfall for the last fiscal year turned out to be $5.1 million less than projected, auditors told county commissioners on Tuesday.
Calvert had anticipated a $7.9 million budget deficit at the end of fiscal 2002, according to a report presented to the county commissioners. However, because of increased revenue that included taxes related to home sales, the county found itself with a $2.8 million revenue gap when the fiscal year ended June 30, according to Calvert's independent auditors, Wooden and Benson.
"We're in better shape than we thought," Commissioners President David F. Hale (R-Owings) said Tuesday.
However, Hale cautioned that the auditing report will not affect the commissioners' directive that county staff develop a fiscal 2004 operating budget with no spending increases in anticipation of slashed state funding because of Maryland's fiscal crisis. The bulk of the fiscal 2004 budget planning will be done by Dec. 17, when the new Board of Commissioners is sworn in to office. Still, county officials were heartened by the fiscal analysis at a time when projections about the state budget deficit are so grim.
"It is a bit of good news especially with what's being talked about state-wise," said Terry Shannon, the county's director of administration and finance.
Shannon said that "some revenue sources came in stronger than anticipated" in fiscal 2002 and that the county "did not spend 100 percent" of what the budget had projected.
A county memo reported that $2.5 million of the extra revenue was related to home sales. "Recordation taxes were extremely strong due to the continued strength in the housing market and the high volume of refinancing due to low interest rates," the memo said.
The county also realized about $700,000 from the purchase of the Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant by the Williams Co., which has since sold the facility to another energy firm. An additional $600,000 came from what was described as "various revenues." That increased revenue, plus $1.3 million in savings, accounted for the smaller revenue shortfall.
The 2003 budget ultimately was to be balanced through the use of about $7.9 million in reserves, mostly for one-time capital projects such as school renovations and major maintenance. The additional revenue means a boost to the county's "rainy day fund," according to Shannon. "As of the end of June of '02 . . . the rainy day fund is at $17.5 million," Shannon said.
The state budget crunch already is being felt in Calvert. State transportation officials have told the county commissioners that money woes had caused a halt to Calvert's top-priority road project -- improvements at the busy intersection of Routes 2/4 and 231 in Prince Frederick.
Another concern is whether state funding will be cut for building and expanding schools -- Calvert is hoping for help in constructing a new high school in Huntingtown.
And a major worry involves whether the state will continue to reimburse the county for revenues -- an estimated $6.1 million annually -- lost from its biggest taxpayer, Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, because of deregulation.
Maryland State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Prince George's and Calvert) has pledged to protect the county from funding cuts, adding that he plans to take "freshman legislators" on a bus tour of Southern Maryland this month -- one that will include a trip to the plant.
-------- minnesota
Xcel Energy asks Minnesota to act on waste storage
REUTERS USA:
December 5, 2002
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/18892/story.htm
MINNEAPOLIS - Xcel Energy (XEL.N) said it will need to close its two nuclear power plants in Minnesota if the state legislature continues to limit the storage of waste nuclear fuel at the plants.
In a report on future power supplies sent to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission late Monday, the company said a state limit on nuclear fuel storage imposed in 1994 likely will force the closing of the 1,100-megawatt Prairie Island plant in 2007 and the 600-MW Monticello plant in 2010 if additional storage room is not approved.
Xcel Energy's report mapped out a five-year plan to get enough power supplies to meet rising demand in Minnesota, including 500 MW from Canada's Manitoba Hydro utility and purchases of up to 1,000 MW from other suppliers.
The company also proposed taking bids in 2005 for up to 450 MW of electricity and setting up a 500 MW hedge supply against risks.
One megawatt of electricity is roughly enough to power 1,000 homes.
Xcel said it will ask the Minnesota Legislature to take action on the 1994 waste storage limits in the session beginning in January.
In 1994, the company had promised it would not seek more on-site storage capacity, but its new report said continued operation of the nuclear plants is its "most effective resource option."
"If nuclear generation is to remain in the state's energy mix, we need to make decisions soon to keep our two nuclear plants operating in the future," said Dave Sparby, vice president of regulatory and government affairs for Xcel Energy.
"If nuclear generation is not in the mix, action may well be needed during the 2003 session to ensure replacement power is on line, on time," Sparby said in a statement.
State law limits waste-fuel storage at the Prairie Island plant to 17 casks, a limit that will be reached in 2007, according to a company spokeswoman.
The Monticello plant will run out of storage space in 2010 unless more storage is approved, and the plant must decide by 2005 if it wants to extend its operating license, the spokeswoman added.
Xcel Energy does not expect the planned federal Yucca Mountain waste fuel dump in Nevada or a private dump proposed on Indian land in Utah to be ready in time to avoid a closing of the Prairie Island plant in 2007.
Xcel shares were off 8 cents at $10.41 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------- ohio
Uranium Supplier USEC Picks Ohio Site for Test Plant
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 5, 2002; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11384-2002Dec4?language=printer
USEC Inc., the Bethesda-based supplier of uranium fuel for nuclear power plants, yesterday selected its Piketown, Ohio, site as the location of a $50 million test facility for a new uranium-enrichment process.
The pilot plant is a crucial step in USEC's goal of opening a full-scale enrichment facility by the end of the decade, a project slated to cost up to $1.5 billion. The company needs the new plant to replace an older-technology facility in Paducah, Ky., where higher costs have depressed USEC's earnings.
A site for the full-scale plant won't be selected for several years, but USEC's mothballed Portsmouth plant in Piketown is the front-runner, USEC President William H. Timbers indicated yesterday.
USEC is the exclusive U.S. agent for the Megatons to Megawatts agreement with Russia, which turns uranium reprocessed from nuclear missiles into power-plant fuel. Its announcement yesterday was hailed by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham as an important step in ensuring domestic sources of fuel for both domestic energy needs and military requirements.
USEC is in a race with Louisiana Energy Services, an international consortium that wants to build a nuclear enrichment plant in Hartsville, Tenn. The LES partnership includes Urenco, a British-based enrichment firm, Canada's Cameco Corp., British-owned Westinghouse Electric, and three large U.S. utility companies.
Both USEC and LES must win approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for their projects. USEC said it will submit its application for the pilot plant early next year, and in the meantime, has raised the question of whether LES's significant foreign ownership creates security issues. "This is very sensitive technology," Timbers said yesterday.
Uranium market analysts question whether the market will support two separate billion-dollar enrichment plants in the United States.
The selection of Ohio as the pilot plant site was applauded by members of Ohio's congressional delegation and by Gov. Bob Taft (R), whose administration awarded an undisclosed package of incentives to USEC to nail down the project, beating out a competing offer from Kentucky officials.
"This will be the first new nuclear facility to begin operations in the United States in over 10 years," Taft said. In addition to the $50 million direct cost of the facility cited by Taft, other related costs will add $100 million to the project, USEC said. Timbers said the company will fund the project with cash from operations.
USEC's Paducah plant enriches uranium by a gas filtration method, requiring vast amounts of electric power, while the new project would use a far more energy-efficient centrifuge separation process, the company noted. The higher production costs in the current approach is a drain on USEC's earnings and a key reason that leading U.S. power plant operators are supporting the LES project, which also would use a centrifuge process, analysts said.
USEC has projected earnings of $2 million to $4 million this year, and $14 million to $16 million in 2003, after a more favorable contract with Russia begins. USEC's senior unsecured debt was downgraded one step last month by Moody's Investors Service, in part because of high production costs that Moody's said will contribute to weak earnings at USEC for another two years.
----
USEC plans uranium-enrichment facility
By Jeffrey Sparshott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 5, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20021205-7798925.htm
Bethesda-based USEC announced plans yesterday to open a uranium-enrichment test facility in Ohio by 2004.
The facility would be the second uranium-enrichment site in the United States and the first nuclear facility to go on line since 1996, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The facility will test new technology for producing uranium used as fuel in nuclear power plants.
State and federal officials from Kentucky, where USEC operates an enrichment facility at Paducah, and Ohio, where USEC controls a facility in Piketon that had been mothballed, lobbied for the investment. USEC chose to upgrade the old Piketon facility.
USEC President William H. Timbers said that the private company would invest about $150 million toward developing the Ohio site.
About 50 jobs would be created initially, he said.
Depending on results from the test facility and the world market for enriched uranium, company officials will decide in 2004 whether and where to put a commercial plant. The commercial facility would represent a $1 billion to $1.5 billion investment, Mr. Timbers said.
USEC operates the only uranium-enrichment facility in the United States at Paducah. Enrichment is a step in the production of uranium fuel, used by nuclear power plants to generate electricity.
USEC said it would submit an application for the test enrichment facility to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in early 2003. The facility should be fully on line by 2005, though portions will be operating in 2004, a company spokesman said.
The new USEC site would upgrade technology and keep the company a step ahead of competitors, Mr. Timbers said.
"We will have test equipment up and running prior to any other player," Mr. Timbers said.
Louisiana Energy Services, a private consortium of energy firms, plans to build a new plant that would be operational in 2006. It would be USEC's only domestic competitor.
USEC's announcement will not affect LES's plans, said Peter Lenny, president of Urenco Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.K.'s Urenco Group and a member of the consortium.
The firm's plant, to be situated near Hartsville, Tenn., will cost about $1.1 billion and is modeled on a similar facility that is "substantially complete" in the Netherlands, he said.
"I don't see there is a race to get a facility up and running," Mr. Lenny said. "Our technology is proven" while USEC's is "anything but" proven for commercial use, he said.
USEC uses technology from the 1950s to produce enriched uranium at its Kentucky facility. The new USEC facility will use technology based on Department of Energy equipment from the 1980s.
The worldwide enriched-uranium market is worth about $3 billion, Mr. Timbers said. USEC supplies about one-third of the world market and 70 percent of the U.S. market.
USEC also is the executive agent for the U.S. government's "megatons to megawatts" program, an 8-year-old program to convert Russian nuclear weapons to nuclear fuel. USEC purchases the nuclear fuel from Russia and sells it to customers to power their electricity-generating stations.
The U.S. and Russian governments in June approved pricing terms for the remaining 12 years of the program.
Russian bomb-grade material capable of making more than 6,000 warheads has been converted to commercial nuclear reactor fuel since the program started in 1993, the company said. USEC has paid Russia nearly $3 billion for the fuel.
USEC was created in 1998 through the privatization of the United States Enrichment Corp., a government monopoly in charge of manufacturing nuclear fuel.
--------
[Unfortunate that this is seen as a boon. et]
A RARE BREAK FOR A REGION IN NEED
New uranium plant at Piketon to bring jobs, maybe more later
Thursday, December 5, 2002
By Jonathan Riskind and Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH NEWS 01A
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
Buffeted by economic woes for years, southern Ohio received some good news yesterday with the announcement that a $50 million test enrichment plant will be built in Piketon instead of Kentucky.
Even better, winning the experimental plant means Piketon is the front-runner to land a planned $1.5 billion permanent advanced technology plant employing 500 to 600 people that USEC, the company in charge of the site, wants to be operational by about 2010.
At the existing uranium-enrichment facility in Piketon -- where a few hundred employees still perform cleanup operations and keep the plant on "cold standby'' -- workers clapped and cheered when general manager Patrick Musser announced the decision over the public address system around 9:30 a.m.
Nearby at Piketon Village Hall, Mayor Carl Irvine also cheered.
"It means a lot to the community,'' he said. "We've been hit hard.''
Gov. Bob Taft called the announcement "a true boost for an economy that certainly needs a shot in the arm. This decision . . . means jobs: construction jobs and permanent jobs.''
State and local financial and tax incentives played a significant role in the decision, said William H. Timbers, president and chief executive officer of USEC, the privatized federal corporation that last year ceased enrichment operations at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.
"This is an offer we couldn't refuse,'' Timbers said at a Statehouse news conference with Taft.
The package includes a state loan of up to $7 million for equipment purchases, a training grant of up to $1 million, a job-creation tax credit of about $755,000 and a research-and-development tax credit of less than $1 million. In addition, Ohio law permits a sales-tax exemption on research-and-development equipment purchases worth an estimated $1 million.
Local incentives would come from Pike County, two local school districts and Scioto Township, which have offered roughly 60 percent in real- and personal-property tax abatements for 10 years or longer if the full-scale project goes forward.
The Piketon package beat out a rival proposal to build the new facility at a sister enrichment plant in Paducah, Ky.
"Local leaders in Ohio just made a better offer than Kentucky's officials back in Frankfort as far as incentive packages are concerned,'' said U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky.
USEC will spend $150 million -- $50 million in Piketon -- to open the test plant by 2005 and employ 50 people to run it. It says a decision on where to build the permanent plant will be made in 2004.
USEC ceased enrichment operations at Piketon in favor of the Paducah plant, but both facilities are equipped with expensive, decades-old gaseous diffusion technology to manufacture the enriched uranium used as fuel for nuclear power plants.
The Paducah plant will continue to operate while USEC tests centrifuge technology.
In centrifuge processing, which is used in several other countries, uranium molecules are separated by gravity in tall, spinning cylinders, allowing technicians to extract enriched uranium and waste. The method uses 10 percent of the power needed for the 1940s-era gaseous diffusion process and produces much less waste.
Taft, Sens. George V. Voinovich and Mike DeWine, and Rep. Rob Portman, R-Cincinnati, were among the officials who lobbied USEC to locate the test plant in Ohio. Although the news is cause for optimism, some officials urged caution.
"This is the beginning of another long road,'' Voinovich said.
A potential roadblock is a consortium of U.S. nuclear power utilities and a European enrichment company called Urenco that plans its own advanced technology enrichment plant in Tennessee by 2007, three years ahead of USEC. Industry observers have said it could be tough for USEC to finance its $1.5 billion permanent plant if the Urenco consortium appears to be succeeding.
USEC officials have raised concerns about the consortium's plans, citing as one problem the consortium's partial foreign ownership. However, the U.S. Department of Energy stated in a recent letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it would regard the consortium's plant as a "means of maintaining a reliable and economical U.S. uranium enrichment industry.''
Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, said if the competing enrichment consortium succeeds, that could prove another crippling blow to southern Ohio.
"It's maybe a race against time,'' Strickland said.
The southern Ohio site was selected in large part because the Piketon plant houses centrifuge facilities built and then abandoned in the 1980s by the federal government in favor of a laser-based technology that never bore fruit.
In addition to the incentives and plant site, Timbers cited other factors that tilted the decision to Piketon, including "less regulatory risk'' at the Ohio site and "greater seismic risk'' at Paducah.
Dan Minter, president of the local chapter of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union representing 600 workers at the plant, said the announcement "gives us a foundation to move forward.''
Minter and Timbers hinted at revised labor agreements that might result from the project announcement, but no details were announced.
Irvine noted that as workers return to the plant in Piketon, so do their dollars. Money spent at local gas stations and businesses helps fill government coffers, he said.
The new project will create high-paying jobs that will benefit the community for years to come, said Blaine Beekman, executive director of the Pike County Chamber of Commerce.
"This is a chance for a generation of long-term jobs.''
Dispatch reporter Melissa Kossler and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
jriskind@dispatch.com
ajohnson@dispatch.com
-------- us politics
The Kissinger Conundrum
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 4, 2002; 8:38 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7518-2002Dec4?language=printer
The Kissinger wars have never really vanished, much like the wounds of Vietnam have never fully healed.
The sound and fury over the tapping of Dr. K for the 9/11 commission must seem somewhat puzzling for those who didn't live through the cultural upheavals of the Nixon era.
It was clear from the start that Kissinger would be a controversial choice - and an odd one, considering that one of the main goals of the Sept. 11 panel is to reassure a country shaken by the worst terrorist attack in history. Why, then, would the president pick someone who used to be one of the most divisive figures in public life? Wouldn't a younger, more vigorous Rudy type have been a better choice?
The continuing debate over Kissinger is another rerun of the clashes of the '60s, like the arguments over Great Society programs and the root causes of crime and social and sexual permissiveness. For boomers of a certain age, there's a knee-jerk reaction to hearing that guttural, German-accented voice.
How else to explain the impassioned debate over events of three decades ago? Kissinger is 79. In the view of many critics, he did some terrible things, from involvement in Watergate wiretapping to the secret bombing of Cambodia, and has no business being in such a high-profile position. Even his successes, such as the opening to China, were shrouded in his trademark secrecy.
On the surface, Kissinger is an elder statesman who writes long foreign policy op-eds that appear in The Washington Post and other papers. But the storm over his appointment is such that he felt compelled to go on CNN last weekend to deny any conflict over his corporate clients.
When Wolf Blitzer asked about the New York Times saying it is "tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed," the former secretary of state said: "I think The New York Times will apologize for this editorial when our report is submitted."
Not too likely. And this is a can't-win situation. Anyone who's unhappy with the commission's findings can blame it on Henry.
One defense came from Kissinger's old Nixon White House colleague William Safire, who was careful to note that they've been at odds in the past, especially over the tapping of Safire's phone in those bygone days. From the New York Times:
"The hate-Henry industry within the aging liberal establishment is having a hissy fit over President Bush's appointment of Henry Kissinger. . . .
"He is neither an extinct volcano nor an erupting one; rather, he oozes a lava of foreign-policy judgment. Unlike John Poindexter, he has learned from his egregious mistakes and may even differentiate government secrecy from personal privacy. Approaching octogenarianhood, Kissinger has become a foreign-policy resource, capable of reassessing his earlier disdain for Wilsonian idealism.
"Does that qualify him for chief 9/11 inquisitor? If the main object is to find the sinners of commission, no; if to discover the sins of omission, probably; if to recommend strategic changes in our approach to the war on terror, certainly."
The Safire column drew a prickly response from the New Republic:
"Of all the idiotic thoughts William Safire cobbles together in his tortured defense of Henry Kissinger's selection to head the government's 9/11 commission, this one stands out: Just as F.D.R. appointed Joseph P. Kennedy as first chairman of the S.E.C. because that predator knew all the manipulative tricks, Bush chose Kissinger because the old operator can see through the secret obfuscations he mastered long ago.
"Ignore the fact that this is the point apologists always make when a conflict-of-interest-ridden candidate is asked to perform some function in the public interest. In this case it doesn't even make sense. That is, a shady financier like Joe Kennedy probably did know a lot about the shady financial practices the SEC was created to crack down on. Whether or not he was especially eager to blow the whistle on them is another matter. But in this case it's not 'secret obfuscations' that the 9/11 commission is supposed to be rooting out. (If it was, God knows Kissinger would be the right man for the job.) It's general incompetence on the part of the nation's intelligence apparatus. (Though there is the possibility of intentional oversights by the administration with respect to the Saudi government, which would be closer to Kissinger's area of expertise.) For getting to the bottom of these matters, Kissinger's record of obfuscation (some would say lies)--not to mention his desperate need to be liked by those in power--are, needless to say, the exact opposite of what you'd want."
Salon's Joe Conason faults journalists for not being more apoplectic:
"The mainstream press has performed poorly, as predicted, in the face of Henry Kissinger's outrageous appointment to chair the 'independent' commission on 9/11. Although a few mildly worded editorials have questioned Kissinger's past record and present conflicts of interest, notably in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, the media's investigation of the investigator has been noticeably limp.
"In response to the very mildest questions about his private clients, the old reprobate spouts his usual non sequiturs: 'No law firm discloses its clients,' he declares in the New York Times today. Of course, that's false on two counts: His firm doesn't practice law, and law firms are required to disclose their lobbying clients on Capitol Hill, in every state capital and in most city halls. He also noted that he 'had no clients in the government of Saudi Arabia,' but he represents no governments at all - just corporations that want favors from governments. (I'm familiar with this phony routine because I investigated Kissinger's ties to the U.S. Iraq-Business Forum, a Washington lobby that fronted for Saddam, before the Gulf War. My editors at the New Republic received a furious letter from Henry that addressed none of the facts in the article.)"
Safire's New York Times colleague, Maureen Dowd, is also no Kissinger fan:
"It's an inspired choice. Bold, counterintuitive, edgy, outside the box.
"Who better to investigate an unwarranted attack on America than the man who used to instigate America's unwarranted attacks?
"Who better to ferret out government duplicity and manipulation than the man who engineered secret wars, secret bombings, secret wiretaps and secret coups, and still ended up as a Pillar of the Establishment and Nobel Peace Prize winner?
"It was Dick Cheney's brainstorm, naturally. Only someone as pathologically opaque as the vice president could appreciate the sublime translucency of Henry Kissinger."
The Wall Street Journal editorial page scoffs at the criticism:
"In yet another sign that American liberalism has lost its bearings, we are now being told that Henry Kissinger is unfit to be President Bush's choice to lead a probe into government actions prior to September 11, 2001. What did he do, lie under oath in a legal deposition?
"Well, no. Under recent liberal standards, that would be a qualification. The former Secretary of State instead stands accused of consulting for corporate clients and of being part of foreign-policy 'power circles.' These apparently are an incentive for him to cover up embarrassing details and protect the powers-that-be, maybe even Mr. Bush. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who wants to be president himself, has averred that Mr. Kissinger should sever all ties with his clients.
"Now, we remember when it was some conservatives who worried about the Trilateral Commission and other supposed establishment conspiracies. Liberals were the folks who defended experience in government and foreign-policy judgment, both of which Mr. Kissinger has in abundance and would seem to be useful for such an investigation. He has served six Presidents in one capacity or another, and while we've tangled with him on the merits more than once, we find it preposterous to suggest he'd sell out his country for a fee.
"As for protecting Republicans, Mr. Kissinger's vice chairman will be George Mitchell, the former Democratic Senate majority leader. The other eight commissioners, half to be appointed by Democrats, aren't likely to be conned into a coverup."
Speaking of voices from the past, Bill Clinton is back, and offering advice to his down-in-the-dumps party. From the New York Times:
"Former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that the Democratic Party had lost the midterm elections because its candidates had failed to offer a convincing case that the party could manage national security during dangerous times.
"In his most public and extensive analysis of the state of the Democratic Party since it lost control of the Senate last month, Mr. Clinton told Democrats in New York City that they could break through to the American public only if they directly confronted the issue of national security. He said the party should challenge Republicans on what he suggested was the administration's failure to spot signs of an impending attack before Sept. 11, and what he called a muddled response to the terrorism threat over the last year.
"Mr. Clinton said that his party's candidates were too often perceived as weak in the face of the continuing threat from abroad.
"The former president, in a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, the organization of moderate Democrats that helped send him to the White House in 1992, brushed aside the argument by some Democrats that the party needed to return to its liberal roots to regain power. Several of Mr. Clinton's ideological allies have argued in recent days that such an approach was a recipe for electoral disaster in 2004.
"Sounding a bit like a cheerleader stepping out of retirement, Mr. Clinton cautioned Democrats about being too discouraged over the setback in November as he offered suggestions on how to proceed. 'We don't have to be more liberal,' he said. 'But we do have to be more relevant in a progressive way. We have to have a clear and strong national security stand.'"
Just when the party's consensus seems to be that it does have to be more liberal.
"Mr. Clinton, second-guessing the strategy employed by Congressional leaders, said that to many Democrats and independent voters, 'we were missing in action on national security and we had no positive plan for America's domestic future.'"
Which is pretty much what the critics have been saying for weeks now. But it carries extra weight coming from the only two-term Democratic president since FDR.
Here's the Philadelphia Inquirer's take:
"Bill Clinton played Knute Rockne yesterday, exhorting demoralized Democrats to storm the playing field and kick some Republican butt.
"The loquacious ex-president, looking fit and ruddy, told several hundred party colleagues in a meeting at New York University that the Bush administration and GOP humiliated Democrats in the Nov. 5 congressional elections for one big reason: Republicans had a coherent message, especially on national security, and Democrats did not"
Did you catch that rarest of events - a Saudi press conference - on the tube?
"Saudi Arabia yesterday intensified a public relations campaign to defend itself against charges of supporting terrorism," says USA Today, "listing steps it has taken to crack down on terrorist financing and accusing U.S. critics of engaging in a 'feeding frenzy' against a long-time ally.
"At a packed news conference at the Saudi embassy, Adel al-Jubeir, an adviser to the acting Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, said the Saudis had frozen 33 bank accounts worth $5.5 million, begun auditing all its charities, questioned more than 2,000 Saudis and was still detaining more than 100. 'We will be vigilant, determined and merciless,' in combating the al-Qaeda terrorist network, al-Jubeir said. The full-scale media campaign demonstrated how worried Saudis are about the deterioration in U.S. attitudes toward a country many Americans regarded as an important ally before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States."
As a follow-up to our column on John Kerry yesterday, Josh Marshall smells a conservative campaign to discredit him:
"Look how quickly the right-wing-agitprop take-down of John Kerry gets underway. It begins with an admittedly sophomoric routine by Matt Drudge about an over-priced haircut, with an assist from an anonymous source at Fox News. But soon enough this will all become a talking point for Matthews, Russert, et.al. Watch how it happens. . . . Which other normally reasonable commentators will get pulled in?"
Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam takes issue with Joe Klein's Kerry piece, discussed here last week:
"There was one curious gap in Joe Klein's earnest and worshipful profile of Senator John Kerry that appeared in last week's New Yorker. Although Klein published characterizations of Kerry's first wife, Julia Thorne, as a depressed, dysfunctional spouse and an unreliable mother, he never bothered to call her.
"The drive-by journalistic sliming is a source of much concern in Kerry's family, which is experiencing considerable emotional pressure as he prepares to run for president. Kerry's two daughters, for whom Thorne was the primary caregiver for many years, have written a letter of protest to The New Yorker.
"Kerry himself wrote an anguished letter to the magazine, contesting two of Klein's contentions about his first marriage. Kerry challenges the quoted assertion of his 'friend,' former Senator Tim Wirth, that Thorne 'was not reliable' as a mother during Kerry's early years in the Senate. Kerry also argues that, contrary to what is claimed in the article ('Julia's mental condition was precarious'), Thorne's battle with depression did not cause their breakup. By all accounts, including Kerry's, he and his first wife grew apart during the course of their 12-year marriage. It happens. . . .
"Klein sees nothing wrong with his treatment of Thorne. 'If there was any implication that she was less than a good person, it was entirely accidental,' he says. Although he quoted three people about Thorne, he says he didn't call her 'because it didn't seem like that big a deal. I doubt this quote will end up in your story, but I think you're making a tremendous mountain out of a molehill.'"
National Review's Robert George rips into New York's mayor over the budget crisis:
"It's very tough times in the Big Apple these days. The Big Apple faces a $1 billion gap in the current budget and another $6 billion deficit in next year's.
"Still, the largest property-tax hike in the history of New York City was passed last Monday - with phantom spending cuts, if any. At 18 percent, the tax hike was dropped on New Yorkers with no public debate. Mayor Michael Bloomberg simply cut a weekend deal with City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, which was then rubber-stamped it, 41-6.
"As a measure of the Politburo-like aspect of raw political muscle, the New York Times reported that the six council members voting against the deal - three Republicans and three Democrats - were likely to face retribution from Bloomberg and Miller, up to and including leaving them in more vulnerable districts during the next round of city redistricting.
"Meanwhile, a Manhattan Institute study estimates that the city will lose 68,000 private-sector jobs because of the tax increase. In a word, this is madness.
"Unfortunately, it is something that is becoming all-too-familiar in Michael Bloomberg's New York. It is a world where petty squabbles and personal tiffs seem to crowd out the very important questions of how to keep the world's greatest city from falling apart during a national recession exacerbated by the hangover of the 9/11 attacks.
"Conservatives can't truly be said to be disappointed by Michael Bloomberg considering he was never one of them to begin with. Bloomberg had been a lifelong Democrat until switching parties shortly before he announced his candidacy."
On the other hand, the city is broke and the money has to come from somewhere.
Finally, Al Gore's role model, says Slate, should be Andrew Jackson, who won a rematch in 1828 against a president's son (John Quincy Adams) who had narrowly defeated him four years earlier.
Hey, it could happen once every 176 years.
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Armey leaves House with call for freedom
Conservative from Texas says Americans must not sacrifice liberty for security
Carolyn Lochhead, Washington Bureau
Thursday, December 5, 2002
San Francisco Chronicle. , Page A - 1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/12/05/MN178933.DTL
Washington -- Departing House Majority Leader Dick Armey warned that the nation must guard against the "awful, dangerous seduction" of sacrificing freedom for safety in the fight against terrorism.
It is no small irony that this Republican conservative firebrand is ending his 18-year House career as Washington's premier defender of individual freedom against alleged incursions by the Bush administration.
And no less ironic, perhaps, is his praise for the San Francisco woman he battled in many a floor fight -- Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- who now assumes the leadership of House Democrats.
In a Capitol all but deserted on a cloudy and cold Wednesday, Armey reflected for The Chronicle on the trade-off between security and liberty, the rise of partisanship, and Pelosi's advantages and challenges as the prominent face of her party now that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has been temporarily eclipsed by the Democrats' loss of the Senate.
"Personal liberty is critically important, and it should be important to all of us, irrespective of party affiliation, or even philosophy," Armey said, explaining his battles with Bush over the USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the new Homeland Security department. "That's the essence of America to me, more than any other thing. What makes us unique in the history of the world is our devotion to personal liberty."
Armey said it was his belief that personal liberty must be protected -- even as the nation wages its fight against terrorists -- that caused him to insist that many of the surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act expire, unless Congress votes again to allow them. And that belief spurred him to fight -- often successfully -- Attorney General John Ashcroft's controversial efforts to increase domestic spying of American citizens.
ACLU JOB OFFER
Armey has a job offer from the American Civil Liberties Union but has had not yet decided to accept it.
Armey calls it the duty of Congress to protect Americans from government incursions into personal freedom, whether from red-light traffic cameras he has fought, or the Justice Department's Operation TIPS proposal, since withdrawn, which would have enlisted bus drivers, truckers and other workers as citizen spies.
"It falls under the category of, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, " Armey said. "I am charged with the protection of the liberty of my constituents. Maybe the Justice Department doesn't have that charge that I have."
The Department of Justice, no less than the Environmental Protection Agency,
he said, has a natural inclination to "bureaucratic zealousness," and congressional oversight is the only way to keep them in check.
Noting his "long and colorful career" scrutinizing government agencies, Armey said the only way to keep them in line is to force them to come back to Congress for reauthorization. Hence his insistence on sunsetting the Patriot Act surveillance provisions, which will die unless Congress votes for them again in the future.
THOUGHTS ON PELOSI
Retiring as majority leader with his reputation as a combative ideologue firmly intact, Armey dismissed critics who call the equally ideological Pelosi too liberal to lead her party.
"Too liberal for whom?" he retorted. "My theory is a party leader must embrace the central, core values of the party. I believe Nancy does that for her party.
"Why did Nancy walk away with that election on her side of the aisle?" he asked. "Because a clear majority of the Democratic Party is liberal."
Armey noted that Pelosi's opponent, Texas Rep. Martin Frost, "spent an entire weekend pretending to be Dick Armey," instead of a Democrat.
Scorning efforts by Clintonian Democrats to move to the middle, Armey praised Pelosi as an unapologetic liberal, just as he is unapologetic conservative.
Pelosi makes clear, he said, that " 'This is who I am. These are my values. I fight for them. I make no pretense about that. I have no reservations about that.' And that allows her to be a leader."
That is not to say Armey agrees with Pelosi's philosophy.
"I have had the luxury in my life of living by the slogan, 'Good policy makes good politics.' " he said. "Nancy's problem is that she can't come up with the first part of the s