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NUCLEAR
Nuclear war risk grows as states race to acquire bomb
Australia's first nuclear dump
Defence firms call on EU to close gap with America
Co. Pleads Guilty to Pakistan Exports
UN urges swift postwar Iraq environment probe
U.S. expands health screening of returning troops
After the battle, toxicity abounds
Iraq's cancer children overlooked in war
Chirac, Schroeder back Euro defense union
Report: India tests medium-range missile
India Tests Nuclear - Capable Prithvi Missile
Top Iraqi Prisoners Deny Saddam Had WMDs
Iraqi Scientist Says U.S. Unlikely to Find Biological Weapons
U.S. Accuses Iran of Cheating on Nuclear Arms Pact
North Korea said to offer to scrap nuclear program
N.Korea Says Talks Useless Without U.S. Concessions
China Puts North Korea Talks in Brighter Light
North Korea offers new peace deal
North Korea Said to Offer Small Nuclear Steps, at a Price
N. Korea offers to dismantle nukes
U.S. Rejects North Korea Proposal on Nuclear Weapons
NASA Chief Touts Nuclear - Powered Craft
U.S. Beefs Up Atomic Power Plant Security Rules
Fire Shuts Controversial N.Y. Nuke Plant
Two Entergy Nuclear Units Shut
KUCINICH ON MILITARY SPENDING:
MILITARY
Forces chief questioned war legality
Avoid war for two years, says defence chief
Plans to set up UK military base near Basra - Jane's
Trade Accords Become a U.S. Foreign Policy Tool
Blair fears new Cold War over EU rift with US
'Old Europe' leaders to meet
American troops shoot children in Iraqi demo
Top Iraqi prisoners all denying Saddam had weapons of mass destruction
Iraqis agree to form government within weeks
American Forces Reach Cease-Fire With Terror Group
When war seemed worthwhile
U.S. Considering 'Odious Debt' Doctrine for Iraq
Russia questions whether Iraq did have banned weapons
Palestinian Parliament Confirms Prime Minister
Helicopter Attack in Gaza Kills One
Administration hails confirmation of new Palestinian leadership
Landmines make spinsters of young Afghan girls
Central America seeks U.S. engagement
U.S. to Withdraw All Combat Forces From Saudi Arabia
Why the U.S. Is Pulling Out of Saudi Arabia
Chirac: U.N. Must OK NATO Peacekeeping
Pakistan Peace Call Said An 'Icebreaker'
Camp Delta at 'Gitmo,' Afghanistan worlds apart
3 teens detained at Guantanamo
PIP request Vieques be included in Federal Superfund
U.S. Navy finished letter for the Vieques land transfer
Russia, ex-Soviet republics set up rapid reaction force
Bigger US presence in Africa?
U.S. Military Plans New Bases in Eastern Europe
Missteps by Press Color Iraqi Perceptions
U.S. voices concern about Belgian law
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Bush Names Former CIA Official as New Homeland Security Adviser
Patriot Raid
Report: Fewer Wiretaps Sought in 2002
Court Says Legal Immigrants Can Be Held Without Bail
ENERGY AND OTHER
U.S. to propose international partnership to develop hydrogen energy
Energy Developments (ENE.AX) falls 11 percent
Winter Lettuce May Come With Rocket Fuel
California Lawmakers Move to Fight U.S. Pollution Rules
Bush Urges Passage of Bill to Provide $15 Billion for AIDS
ACTIVISTS
Small commemorations mark Chernobyl disaster
U.S. fires on Iraqi protesters
Annual G8 summit shaping up as megameeting
Demonstrators Take Their Principles on the Road
D.C. Council Probing Police Conduct in Protests
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear war risk grows as states race to acquire bomb
By Peter Popham
29 April 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=401443
A conference on nuclear non-proliferation began in Geneva yesterday, in the shadow of North Korea's departure from the global treaty and with the bleakest prospects for progress in the pact's 33-year history.
John Wolf, US Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Non-proliferation told a news conference on the first day of the meeting that Iran has "an alarming, clandestine programme" to get hold of nuclear technology. "Iran is going down the same path of denial and deception that handicapped international inspections in North Korea and Iraq," he said.
But disarmament experts said that American lack of commitment to non-proliferation was as damaging as the behaviour of the proliferators.
Representatives of 187 countries are attending the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is the second of three sessions that will be held before the Review Conference in 2005.
North Korea became the first state ever to defect from the process - Israel, India and Pakistan, all known nuclear states, have never been members - when it announced its departure in January. More defections are feared.
This was the Treaty that was supposed to lead to a non-nuclear world, but experts say the risks of proliferation are worse now than for 50 years. In the past two years the multilateral effort to contain and reduce the nuclear risk has unravelled. At the last NPT review conference in 2000 all member states signed a 13-point programme that included an undertaking by the five declared nuclear-weapon states to nuclear disarmament.
"That agreement is now gathering dust on some filing cabinet somewhere," said Dan Plesch, senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute. "For the first time since the 1950s there isn't a global framework ... to get rid of nuclear weapons."
Pyongyang's off-the-record announcement last week that it already had the bomb was a further blow. "Everyone is at a loss as to how to move forward on North Korea," said Kathryn Crandall of the British American Security Information Council, a research organisation. It is expected that the meeting will try to agree on a statement - but given the low morale it is more likely to be an invitation to return to the fold than a blast of brimstone.
At least as damaging as North Korea's departure have been successive moves by Washington to distance itself from nuclear disarmament.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, the US President, George Bush, signed National Security Presidential Directive 17, which said: "The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force - including potentially nuclear weapons - to the use of [weapons of mass destruction] against the United States ..."
This assertion, analysts say, undermined an important prop of the NPT process: the so-called "negative security assurances", initially made in 1978 and strengthened by the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 984 in 1995, not to use nuclear weapons against the non-nuclear weapon states.
The assurances were considered vital in discouraging states from developing their own nuclear weapons. Now people wonder if they are worth the paper it they are written on.
The popularising of the term Weapons of Mass Destructionhas blurred the formerly stark distinction between nuclear and other weapons, and has paved the way for this change, claims Ms Crandall. She said: "Such terminology reduces the understanding of the unparalleled destructive capacity of nuclear weapons compared to the less destructive effects of chemical and biological weapons."
More and more states are likely to buy the argument that the only way to be secure in a unipolar world is to go down the nuclear road - "to pre-empt pre-emption", one analyst said. "People look at the different ways that the 'Axis of Evil' states - Iraq and North Korea - have been treated and they draw their own conclusions."
"What other countries are going to sit around after dinner saying, if Pakistan's got the bomb why haven't we?" said Mr Plesch. On the list of those likely to be holding such conversations, he said, are Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and perhaps pre-eminently Japan, North Korea's uneasy neighbour.
No long-term ill consequences threaten those that go down such a route. After India, then Pakistan, tested nuclear weapons in 1998, sanctions were clamped and both countries widely condemned. But all that changed after 11 September 2001, when the US needed Pakistan's co-operation.
Last week, America's outgoing Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, spoke of India as "a rising great power of the 21st century" and of how the US and India "have made enormous strides" in the past two years towards "forging concentrated strategic collaboration". "Two years ago, there were economic sanctions ... against India related to its 1998 nuclear tests," Blackwill said. "Today, those sanctions are long gone." India congratulates itself that its stock in the world is higher now than before it got the bomb.
"It's a double hit," said Mr Plesch. "A failure to disarm the world at the end of the Cold War. And now proliferating countries and the United States all deciding that they are not interested in this or other treaties any more ... the whole future of the treaty is up for grabs."
ATOMIC NATIONS
ISRAEL
Believed to have between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, but has never acknowledged them. Refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and does not allow United Nations weapons inspectors into the country. Has around 90 Jericho 1 surface-to-surface medium-range (311 miles) missiles, and Jericho 2 long-range (1,000 miles) missiles, and 100 aircraft that could deliver nuclear devices.
IRAN
Development of nuclear power facilities at Busheher using Russian expertise has stoked US fears that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, despite an agreement that spent fuel rods will be disposed of in Russia. Recent tests of a new generation of Shihab 3 medium-range rockets has added to US concerns, and a Shihab 4 rocket capable of reaching Western Europe is believed to be near to testing.
INDIA
In 1974, India exploded what the government described as a "peaceful nuclear device", and has expanded its capability ever since, bringing nuclear-capable Agni (Fire) II surface-to-surface long-range (1,242 miles) missiles into service last year. Also has short-range Agni I missiles, and 40 or more aircraft capable of delivering nuclear devices. Has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
PAKISTAN
When hundreds of thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops amassed on either side of the line of control in Kashmir last May, Pakistan test-fired Ghauri, Ghaznazi (Hatf 3) and the Abdali (Hatf 2) missiles to show it was ready and capable of using short and medium-range nuclear warheads. It also has 40 or so aircraft capable of delivering nuclear devices. Has not signed the non-proliferation treaty.
NORTH KOREA
Signed the non-proliferation treaty in 1985 and pulled out in January this year. This followed a US-led decision to halt oil shipments over Pyongyang's admission it was restarting its nuclear programme. Believed to have one or two nuclear weapons, and testing of the long-range Pekodosan 1 (formerly the Taepodong 1) missile continues. Has two or more aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
-------- australia
Australia's first nuclear dump - and it's welcomed by site's neighbours
Aborigines outraged but miners say yes, put it in our backyard
David Fickling in Andamooka
Tuesday April 29, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,945331,00.html
The Australian government is completing its examination of two outback sites, 25 miles apart, for its first nuclear waste repository.
The news, released this week, has dismayed politicians, environmentalists and Aboriginal groups.
Oddly, however, the people of the South Australian opal mining settlement of Andamooka are ready to welcome it on a spot 12 miles out of town.
"It's not going to hurt anything," says Max Franklin, a 55-year-old retired miner. "Everybody talks about uranium, but I've worked underground.
"I worked [in the uranium mines] at Radium Hill. It didn't do me any harm."
"We should have it," says Bev Bagley, 57, enjoying a Sunday bush barbecue at Bill's Ettamogah pub.
"Everyone just thinks: 'Not in my backyard,' but if you've got to put it somewhere, this is a great backyard for it."
The government agrees. After more than a 10 years of deliberation it has decided on Andamooka and Arcoona, 37 miles to the south, as the prime candidates for the repository.
But the proposal has been vigorously opposed by a coalition of environmental, community and indigenous groups, local politicians, and even a uranium mining company.
Most of them are exercised by the feeling that South Australia is the Cinderella state, expected to shoulder the problems of the rest of the country.
"We're happy to deal with our own material, but we don't want to be the bunny again for everyone else's waste," the state's Labor premier, Mike Rann, says.
He has threatened to hold a referendum if Canberra tries to foist another dump on the state. "The [John] Howard government will not want to fly in the face of a vote of South Australians telling them where they can stick their nuclear waste dump," he says.
Little more than a well-appointed shanty-town scattered among the tailings from the opal mines, Andamooka has long attracted misfits and chancers who have little truck with the views of those they call do-gooders and greenies.
Their casual attitude towards a nuclear dump is perhaps not as surprising as it at first seems: the north of the state has had a long association with nuclear technology.
The British government carried out nine atom bomb tests at Maralinga and Emu Plains, to the north-west of Andamooka, between 1954 and 1957, and the world's biggest deposit of uranium ore lies less about 30 miles away at the Olympic Dam mine.
The mine produced nearly 5,000 tonnes of uranium oxide in 2000, but even its owners, the Western Mining Corporation, are opposed to siting the dump at Andamooka, on land it jointly owns.
"We already have to spend a lot of money on security because of protesters targeting the mine site," its spokesman Richard Yeeles says.
"We don't need to be dealing with the same problems somewhere else."
By international standards, Australia's nuclear industry is small. France generates more than three quarters of its energy by atomic power: Australia's only nuclear pile is at Lucas Heights in southern Sydney, which is used mostly to generate isotopes for x-ray machinery, sterilisation equipment and smoke alarms.
The government says there is 3,500 cubic metres of nuclear waste to dispose of, compared with 25,000 cubic metres of comparable waste produced by Britain or France in an average year.
Most of it will consist of low-level waste contaminated by contact with nuclear material: protective clothing, glassware, instruments and soil.
But if that has left some older Andamooka residents indifferent to the prospect of a waste dump, it has galvanised others into opposition to the site.
Irati Wanti, an anti-nuclear group set up by Aboriginal women affected by the Maralinga and Emu Plains tests, now dedicates most of its time and resources to fighting the repository plans.
Eileen Unkari Crombie, an Irati Wanti member and Aborigine elder who experienced the Maralinga tests, said: "We've got water and bush tucker and bush medicine out on the land. It would poison our country.
"We don't want this stuff: we had enough at Maralinga. Wherever they make the poison, they should keep it there. If they make this poison in Sydney [at Lucas Heights] they should keep it in their own communities."
In particular, environmental groups object to the government's decision to bury the waste in trenches up to 20m below the ground, saying that it will risk contaminating the groundwater in the great artesian basin, a vast water catchment covering 680,000 square miles.
But the government says the site was specifically chosen because of its low water table, high ground stability and scanty rainfall: 20cm (8 inches) a year.
A decision on which site to use is expected in a fortnight.
-------- business
Defence firms call on EU to close gap with America
David Gow
Tuesday April 29, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,945588,00.html
Europe's three leading defence contractors - BAE Systems, EADS and Thales - yesterday joined forces to demand increased EU military spending to close the technological gap with the US.
The British, French and German groups, responding to the political divisions unleashed by the war in Iraq which underlined America's military superiority, urged greater consolidation of Europe's defence industry in land and naval systems.
In an open letter to EU governments on the eve of today's "old" Europe defence summit in Brussels, their chief executives backed a drive for a European armaments and strategic research agency.
They called on governments, especially the Germans, to increase defence spending as the gap between European military procurement, now $40bn (£27.6bn), and that of the US, $125bn and rising, widens.
The chief executives said: "We need to address the gap between the two sides of the Atlantic in order for Europe to be seen as a credible player on the international stage and a reliable partner of the US."
But they courted controversy by demanding "protection" of Europe's defence technological and industrial base in future procurement decisions - on American lines.
Daniel Keohane, defence research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said: "The European defence industry is facing a crisis, and both it and taxpayers need a more open market."
----
Co. Pleads Guilty to Pakistan Exports
April 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Illegal-Exports.html
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- An engineering company and its chief financial officer pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally shipping equipment to Pakistan that U.S. officials feared could be used for nuclear devices.
OMEGA Engineering Inc. and chief financial officer Ralph Michel, 53, of Stamford, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Hartford to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Administration Act.
OMEGA has agreed to pay a $313,000 fine to the U.S. government. Michel faces up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine when he is sentenced on July 16.
Michel did not immediately return calls left at his office and home Tuesday afternoon.
The U.S. attorney's office said the U.S. Department of Commerce in 1997 rejected Omega's request for an export license to ship $187,000 worth of technological equipment to Pakistan.
Authorities were concerned the equipment would be used in nuclear explosive devices or nuclear fuel activities, prosecutors said, but the company shipped them anyway.
In its license application OMEGA said the equipment, including various laboratory components, was destined for the National Development Centre, which prosecutors said was controlled by the Pakistani government. But an investigation was unable to determine the exact destination of the equipment, and regulators denied the export license.
Michel sought reconsideration, but officials again denied the license. He then arranged for shipment of the equipment to OMEGA's subsidiary in Germany for ultimate shipment to Pakistan, the U.S. attorney's office said. Federal investigators confirmed that the materials reached Pakistan in the fall of 1997, but it was not clear what happened to the equipment after that.
The Commerce Department and U.S. Customs officials were notified about the shipment by an anonymous letter sent immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The writer cited the attacks as the reason for notifying federal officials, prosecutors said.
-------- depleted uranium
UN urges swift postwar Iraq environment probe
Story by Jon Boyle
REUTERS FRANCE:
April 29, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20612/newsDate/29-Apr-2003/story.htm
PARIS - The United Nations must be allowed into Iraq right away to assess environmental threats posed by weapons packed with toxic chemicals or depleted uranium, a senior U.N. official said.
The health of Iraqis could be at risk from tank-busting shells containing depleted uranium used in the 1991 Gulf War and the war that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) head Klaus Toepfer said.
Chemical weapons used in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war may have poisoned farmland, he added.
A UNEP report said about 290 tonnes of depleted uranium arms were fired in the 1991 war and an unknown quantity in the war that began on March 20, threatening Iraq's water supply and creating potentially dangerous radioactive dust.
Previous UNEP studies have highlighted risk of depleted uranium - a toxic and weakly radioactive substance which can attack the kidneys if ingested or cause lung cancer if inhaled - finding its way into the water supply.
"The main signal of this study is that we have to go as soon as possible into the field," Toepfer told a news conference.
"There is a field mission ready to go as soon as we have the chance. We recommend a solid assessment," he said, citing the precedent of previous UNEP weapons-risk studies in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.
Toepfer made the call after presenting the 98-page UNEP report on the issue to environment ministers from the Group of Eight countries - the world's traditional economic powers as well as Russia.
U.S. RESPONSE
UNEP's hopes of entering Iraq depend on the United States, which swiftly seized power in Iraq and has opposed any quick return of the U.N. arms inspectors whose pre-war work Washington considered ineffective.
Christine Todd Whitman, head of the U.S. Environment Protection Agency, did not attend the final joint press conference, saying she had to catch a plane home.
British Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said London welcomed the UNEP study but declined to comment further as she had only just seen the document. Britain sent some 40,000 troops to fight in Iraq.
Toepfer was keen to stress that the U.N. body, which gets a large share of its funding from the United States, did not have a political agenda and its main goal was humanitarian.
"Our group is absolutely unbiased we are going not with any political topic," he said. The possible dispatch of a UNEP team to Iraq would be raised at the United Nations during a meeting yesterday in New York.
"But our (U.S. and British) colleagues are very, very open towards our work. Needless to say we are trying to do what ever is possible to try and contact the coalition," Toepfer said.
As well as the effects of depleted uranium munitions, experts would study chemical and other hazardous waste, the torching of oil-filled trenches and the damage to sewage systems in the latest war.
UNEP teams would also investigate the impact of chemical weapons used during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s which Toepfer said could have "very severe repercussions for agriculture".
----
U.S. expands health screening of returning troops
By Will Dunham
29 Apr 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N29230734.htm
WASHINGTON, April 29 - U.S. troops serving in the Iraq war will be required to give a blood sample and complete a detailed medical questionnaire after coming home, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, in an acknowledgment that too little was done after the 1991 Gulf War to track the health of veterans.
Many veterans of the 1991 war suffered a variety of illnesses after returning home that have been labeled Gulf War Syndrome, with experts inside and outside the U.S. government struggling to produce an explanation. Some theories include exposure to chemical agents, tropical infections or stress.
Critics have argued that the lack of detailed medical information about the veterans contributed to the difficulty of solving the mystery.
"There were some things that were not done in 1991 that made it much more difficult to determine what an individual might or might not have been exposed to," said Barbara Goodno, an official with the Defense Department's Deployment Health Support Directorate.
"It's a fair assessment to say that when it comes to individual health records, that often there was important information that was missing. And that's one of the reasons that there has been a focus on improving medical record-keeping," Goodno added.
Faced with concern in Congress and among veterans' groups, the Pentagon said it was taking steps to improve its process for assessing the health of troops after their deployment.
Troops returning from the war will be required to give blood samples within 30 days of leaving the Gulf region, officials said. These can be compared to blood samples given by the troops before the war, they added.
Returning troops will meet with health care providers -- although not necessarily doctors -- and will complete an expanded, four-page questionnaire detailing any symptoms experienced during their deployment to the Gulf region, officials said.
It asks about possible exposure to chemical or biological weapons, pesticides, smoke, radiation, lasers, depleted uranium and other substances, as well as any nightmares or symptoms of depression. It also asks where troops served during the war.
A Pentagon statement said the changes will "better assist medical personnel in evaluating the health of returning service members."
James Turner, a Defense Department spokesman, said Pentagon officials "want to have a much better picture of what might have happened, health-wise" to troops in this war than in the 1991 war.
"We saw illness in veterans when they came back from the war. After all the research, we still today haven't seen any one cause or series of causes," Turner said. "It's not a single syndrome. We've seen illnesses, and our first priority is to treat those illnesses. And then we've gone out and learned some lessons, one of which is keeping better records."
----
After the battle, toxicity abounds
By THOMAS WITHINGTON
Special to Newsday,
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Opinion&oid=21772
Withington is an independent defense analyst based at King's College, London.
War is a dirty business, and if Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was a precedent, then the battlefields of Operation Iraqi Freedom could be strewn with environmental hazards.
During the previous Persian Gulf War, the skies of Kuwait were blackened by more than 600 oil-well fires started by Iraq. This time around, the Anglo-American coalition took no chances. US Special Forces secured the northern Iraqi oilfields around Kirkuk, and regular troops moved right into the southern fields.
These efforts were successful, and crude oil vandalism was averted. Yet other hazards might be waiting for the Iraqi population. "Smart" bombs might have mercifully rendered the World War I fields of twisted tree stumps and endless quagmires of the Somme an anachronism, but the high-tech designs of modern weapons bring their own hazards.
Depleted uranium, which hardens shells and armor, was used in Iraq, Kosovo and Afghanistan and is highly controversial. Its high density allows it to burrow through tanks' armor, cooking their interiors and occupants -- "crispy critters" in soldier parlance.
Studies in America after the 1991 Gulf War show that when depleted uranium burns, as much as 20 percent of it is released into the atmosphere as radioactive particles. Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.5 billion years, although it is only 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium.
Despite this, birth-defect rates for Iraqi children have soared since 1991, along with a 262-percent rise in leukemia and lymphoma. Meanwhile, reports in the United States and Britain talk of "Gulf War syndrome," a malady affecting some Desert Storm veterans.
Yet the jury is deadlocked over how deadly depleted uranium might be. The World Health Organization stated in January that "No reproductive or developmental effects have been reported in humans (that are attributable to depleted uranium)." Some medical experts believe that the oil pollution following the 1991 war, together with malnutrition caused by years of sanctions and Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons could be a more likely cause.
But the WHO adds that: "Where justified and possible, cleanup operations in impact zones should be undertaken if there are substantial numbers of radioactive projectiles remaining."
During the offensive, US forces used several weapons systems, including A-10 warplanes and AH-64 helicopters, which use depleted uranium shells. Given the dispersal of the particles, cleanup efforts could be difficult and expensive. The price for cleaning the closed 500-acre Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana -- a firing range that might contain one-fifth of the depleted uranium used in Desert Storm -- could be between $4 billion and $5 billion.
Other "war trash" might litter the battlefield. For example, cluster bombs -- also highly controversial -- were used by coalition forces. These weapons release "bomblets" in midair to destroy lightly armored vehicles and troops. Experience in Kosovo showed that not all of the bomblets explode, and many lie dormant until they are disturbed -- often by inquisitive children -- and explode. Nato believes that during the Kosovo conflict, 8 to 12 percent of the bomblets detonated well after being dropped, eventually killing or injuring more than 200 people after hostilities.
Fortunately, there are organizations that specialize in the dangerous work of destroying unexploded ordnance. But it is not just the cluster bombs or depleted uranium that could plague Basra or Baghdad. A report to Congress on Gulf War syndrome described the Desert Storm battlefield as: "not just a war zone: [but] a cesspool of toxic substances."
Patriot antiaircraft missiles use perchlorate as a fuel, which leaves hydrochloric acid in the exhaust. Crews have to wash down the missile launcher after use. Artillery pieces use ammonia, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen cyanide to fire their shells. Oxides of lead, sulphur and hydrogen sulphide can also waft around the battlefield. Once again, it is a matter of cleaning up the battlefields of toxic residues, so that areas used by civilians for farming and living can be made safe as soon as possible.
While the air might hang heavy with the scent of battle, it might also buzz with electronic radiation. As exalted by the pundits, modern weaponry is connected to a complex web of command-and-control electronics.
Antiaircraft radars use intense beams of radiation, while powerful radios connect troops and lasers "paint" targets. Design works to ensure that radiation does not leak out of equipment, although there are concerns that so-called radio-frequency leakage could cause long-term health damage.
One warning carried in a Jane's Information Group survey spoke of: "radiation which can heat the body internally causing damage to internal organs such as the liver and kidneys: literally cooking living human flesh." Fortunately, most of this radiation will disappear with the departure of coalition troops and their equipment.
These hazards leave troops with a stark choice: environmental preservation versus the need to destroy the enemy quickly and at little cost to friendly troops. Discussing the Kosovo conflict, one US military spokesman said: "[the military] do a risk-benefit analysis, and blowing holes in tanks wins." Yet the people of Iraq might also hope that despite this calculation, the coalition will keep their country tidy and take out the trash.
Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com
--------
Iraq's cancer children overlooked in war
By Jonathan Duffy
BBC News Online, in Nasiriya
Tuesday, 29 April, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2982609.stm
With Iraq's hospitals in disarray, the long-term sick are being passed over in a frantic effort to treat emergency cases. For the thousands of young leukaemia victims, the outlook is bleaker than ever.
There are countless children ahead of Munther in the queue for medical help in Iraq.
The seven-year-old is not suffering from one of the conditions associated with the war, such as gastroenteritis, pneumonia or shrapnel wounds. He has acute lymphatic anaemia, also known as leukaemia.
It is a deadly disease - a cancer of the white blood cells - and if Munther is not treated he will die but the war has dealt a potentially fatal blow to the young boy, from Nasiriya, in southern Iraq.
Munther has been unable to travel the 230 miles to Baghdad for his monthly treatment session at a specialist cancer care hospital, where he receives chemotherapy drugs injected into the spine and intravenously.
Safety has been a concern for Munther's father, Yahia al-Abbas, who has always gone with his son on trips to the capital. While there is still lawlessness, Mr Abbas is reluctant to venture far from home, although he believes the security situation is starting to ease.
More critical is that the hospital in Baghdad which looks after Munther was pillaged by looters in the wake of the fighting and is today barely functioning. Also, supplies of some cancer-treatment drugs have run out in recent weeks as Iraqi border controls have tightened and distribution networks have seized up.
Munther's medicine dried up a week ago and no-one knows if, or when, new supplies will be available.
"I've been to the American [military] hospital in Nasiriya and the Red Cross for help but they only handle first aid and they can't do anything," says Mr Abbas.
"My son's in bad health at the moment. He has vomiting, fever, anaemia and a suppressed immunity.
"I'm praying that the Americans and British and other countries will help Iraq's sufferers of chronic disease. My worry is that my son could die because of what happened. Because of this, I see a dark future for my family."
It's a story that is being repeated across Iraq, as cancer sufferers and others who are critically ill and in need of regular treatment, are passed over in the post-war rush to treat medical emergencies. Mothers with drips for children Hospitals are directing resources at emergency cases
"People come up to me many times a day asking for cancer drugs," says Dr Mary McLoughlin, based in Nasiriya with the humanitarian agency Goal. "I'm aware that many of these people will die because the emphasis at the moment is on primary healthcare."
Leukaemia, which affects blood and bone marrow, used to be relatively rare in Iraq. According to the former health ministry, cases of the cancer increased fourfold after the first Gulf War and many have blamed the use of depleted uranium munitions used by the allied forces in that conflict.
Even before the war, cancer patients had to rely on black market supplies to bolster medicines available through the state.
After Munther was diagnosed with leukaemia 14 months ago, Mr Abbas started to secure some drugs through unofficial channels, mostly with lorry drivers going to Jordan or Syria.
At up to $100, the price was prohibitive for Mr Abbas, who used to earn $40 a month as a department head at Nasiriya's technical college, until the war started. He has not been paid in two months.
Family, friends and religious associates used to help out with the cost, and Munther always received the treatment he needed, says his father.
At Nasiriya's Women's and Paediatric hospital, which is functioning at quarter capacity after an artillery round hit a wing of the hospital, doctors feel powerless to help such cases.
Last week, when a six-year-old girl called Zahra was diagnosed with acute lympoblastic leukaemia at the hospital, Dr Nima Altemimi told her to go south, to Basra.
His reasoning - that by sending her to a bigger city, her case might come to the attention of the Kuwaiti government, which has airlifted a handful of severely sick children from Iraq.
"We can't treat these people in Iraq now. The specialist hospitals in Baghdad and Basra have been looted. We're doing all we can just to concentrate on infections and some curable diseases," says the hospital's Dr Abdul Ghaffar al-Shadood.
A few minutes later he finds another case. By now, the facts are all too familiar. Mustafa Arif Hameed, eight, was diagnosed last August with acute lymphocytic leukaemia. He had been making progress but has been brought to the hospital by his father because his medicine has run out.
"If the treatment is discontinued now," says Dr Shadood, "his improvement will be reversed."
-------- europe
Chirac, Schroeder back Euro defense union
4/29/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-04-29-euro-defense_x.htm
BRUSSELS (AP) - The leaders of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - all critics of the U.S.-led war on Iraq - agreed Tuesday to beef up their military cooperation in an effort to make Europe's defense less reliant on the United States.
However, they insisted their plans were not aimed at weakening the Atlantic alliance and would instead strengthen NATO by sharpening Europe's military edge.
"With a strong European defense we contribute to a strong NATO," French President Jacques Chirac said after the meeting. "This is in the best interest of Europe. It's also clearly in the interest of the Atlantic alliance."
Britain, Spain, Italy and other European nations who supported the war in Iraq opposed the meeting, fearing it would aggravate the divisions the war opened within NATO and the European Union.
Seeking to ease their concerns, Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude Juncker issued a statement after their two-hour meeting stressing "the trans-Atlantic partnership remains an essential strategic priority for Europe."
However, their plans included setting up a military planning "nucleus" based in Brussels "for operational planning and command of EU-led operations without recourse to NATO assets."
NATO officials warned that could lead to a wasteful duplication of the work of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Belgium and erode alliance cohesion.
Chirac insisted there would be no unnecessary overlap. "We have not decided to create a European SHAPE," he told reporters. "This is not about duplicating SHAPE, but eliminating duplication by national headquarters."
Other proposals they agreed to:
- A rapid reaction unit based around an existing Franco-German brigade, with Belgian commandos and a Luxembourg reconnaissance team. The unit will integrate into NATO and EU response forces.
- A European command for strategic air transport, with shared planes to fly troops to trouble spots, plugging a gap in Europe's military capacity.
- A joint European unit to counter chemical, biological or nuclear threats.
- A disaster response system able to deploy civil and military assets within 24 hours.
- European military training centers.
- A procurement agency to coordinate arms purchases.
The plans will be presented to the 11 other EU nations at a meeting of foreign ministers this weekend in Greece, where criticism is likely.
"European security and defense policy cannot become an exclusive project," Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio said Tuesday. Speaking to lawmakers in Madrid, she said any "adventure" that sought to build a defense policy outside the EU "would have no right to call itself European."
Analysts said the four country's strong commitment to NATO may encourage other EU nations to go along with the plans.
Germany's Schroeder said any of the 15 EU nations, or the 10 mostly eastern European countries due to join the bloc next year, would be able to sign up for a proposed European Security and Defense Union bound by a pledge of mutual assistance in the face of external threats.
France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg also said they would increase their military capabilities, although without making any specific spending commitments.
Apart from France, they are among those in NATO who spend the lowest proportion of national wealth on defense.
According to NATO data, France spent 2.5% of gross domestic product on the military last year above the European average of 1.9%. However Germany spent just 1.5%, Belgium 1.3% and Luxembourg 0.9%.
The United States spent 3% of GDP on defense in 2002, its $350 billion almost doubling the total spent by all 18 other alliance members.
-------- india / pakistan
Report: India tests medium-range missile
4/29/2003
(AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-04-29-india-missile-test_x.htm
NEW DELHI, India - India successfully tested its most sophisticated medium-range Prithvi missile in eastern India on Tuesday, Press Trust of India news agency said. It was the second test in the past month and part of what the Indian government says is a routine series of weapons testing. The Prithvi is capable of carrying a nuclear payload.
The test-firing occurred a day after the first substantive talk between leaders of India and Pakistan in almost two years.
Pakistani Prime Minstar Zafarullah Khan Jamali's call to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajapayee on Monday evening was called a critical "icebreaker" in the standoff between the South Asian nuclear rivals.
No further details were available on Tuesday's testing of the Prithvi missile, which has a range of 95 miles.
In March, India also test-fired the Prithvi, from its Chandipur testing range in the eastern state of Orissa.
Pakistan tested a similar missile the same day.
Each missile was capable of reaching cities in the other country.
----
India Tests Nuclear - Capable Prithvi Missile
April 29, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-southasia-missile.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India tested on Tuesday a nuclear-capable short-range missile able to hit targets in Pakistan, a day after it held its first high-level contact with Islamabad since last year's military standoff.
A defense ministry spokesman said the test of the 90-mile range surface-to-surface Prithvi missile was routine.
``It has already been inducted into the army. This was a user trial. There is nothing big about it,'' he told Reuters.
Pakistan responded calmly to the test, saying it had been informed in advance.
``This was simply a reconfirmation that missiles are now a reality in South Asia,'' a Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman said.
The firing of the Prithvi from a launch site in the Bay of Bengal came after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, discussed ways to improve relations in a telephone conversation on Monday night.
It was the first such high-level talks since the nuclear-armed neighbors came to the brink of war last year after India blamed Pakistan-based militants for a raid on its parliament in December 2001. Pakistan denied involvement.
Analysts say the Prithvi, which means earth in Hindi, is mainly intended to reach targets in Pakistan. A 150-mile version is also being developed.
Last month, India also test fired a Prithvi missile.
The move triggered a tit-for-tat reply by Pakistan, which tested its locally made surface-to-surface Abdalimissile with a range of 110 miles.
Those tests came a day after New Delhi accused Islamabad of stoking violence in disputed Indian Kashmir where 24 Hindus, including women and children, were shot dead by suspected Muslim rebels.
India announced in January it planned to test the Prithvi, along with a range of other missiles.
-------- inspections
Top Iraqi Prisoners Deny Saddam Had WMDs
April 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Search.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- High-ranking Iraqi prisoners are uniformly denying Saddam Hussein's government had any weapons of mass destruction before the war, U.S. officials familiar with their interrogations said Tuesday.
The officials said they believe many of the prisoners are lying to protect themselves.
Still, the denials are hampering U.S. forces' search for evidence of alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq, as the prisoners are not providing locations or other details interrogators are seeking. Advertisement
By denying Iraq had weapons, the prisoners may be trying to distance themselves from Saddam's rule, one official said.
American officials stand by their belief that Iraq possessed prohibited weapons and the means to make more, although none have turned up since the war started on March 19.
The Bush administration has cited intelligence pointing to prohibited Iraqi weapons programs as a justification for war.
Officials now say the weapons are either well hidden or were destroyed in the run-up to the war. There is no firm evidence they were moved to other countries, they say.
Saddam's government denied having any unconventional weapons until the end, saying it had destroyed them years before.
Fears that Saddam's military would use chemical weapons on the battlefield went unrealized, and U.S. officials have not reported any evidence that his military units were equipped with those weapons.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, under questioning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, predicted prisoners would yet help U.S. forces find the alleged weapons.
``They will be found,'' he said.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is among the Iraqis in custody who says his government had no prohibited weapons, officials said. So is Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi, Saddam's alleged point man on chemical and biological agents.
One unidentified scientist cooperating with American interrogators has contended the government destroyed its weapons in the run-up to the war. But his information has not been verified, officials said.
Around Iraq, American forces are finding suspicious chemicals and other possible signs of weapons programs, but nothing conclusive, officials said. So far, thorough testing has not verified any of the chemicals are weapons.
Other signs include burned documents and other evidence of an attempt to destroy evidence, officials said.
After coming up empty, military officials have largely abandoned earlier methods of searching only suspected weapons sites that were noted before the war. Now, defense officials say they are primarily going where Iraqis point them.
Spurning the proposed re-entry of U.N. weapons inspectors, the Bush administration is sending 1,000 experts to join the 200 already searching in Iraq for evidence of weapons programs.
U.S. Central Command, the military authority in Iraq, has confirmed 14 of its 55 most-wanted Iraqi leaders are in custody, including Aziz, al-Saadi and several other key officials, including several alleged weapons scientists.
The latest capture, which took place on Monday, was Amer Mohammed Rashid, Iraq's oil minister and a top missile expert.
Another recent catch, Farouk Hijazi, is an alleged link between the Iraqi government and al-Qaida. But he has denied reports that he traveled to Afghanistan in late 1998 and met with Osama bin Laden, officials familiar with his interrogation said.
Hijazi, Iraq's ambassador to Tunisia and a former senior official in Iraqi intelligence, acknowledged meeting with al-Qaida operatives in 1994 in Sudan, but said the Iraqi government established no ties with bin Laden's network.
Alleged Iraqi ties to terrorism was another of the Bush administration's justifications for the war.
U.S. forces near Baghdad have also captured an alleged midlevel operative working for Abu Musab Zarqawi, a senior associate of bin Laden, a U.S. counterterrorism official said Tuesday.
The at-large Zarqawi has been linked to the death of an American diplomat in Jordan last year. He was in Baghdad for medical treatment in 2002 and represents one of the Bush administration's links between al-Qaida and Saddam's regime.
--------
Iraqi Scientist Says U.S. Unlikely to Find Biological Weapons
April 29, 2003
From CNN.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/international/middleeast/29CNN-GERM.html
Iraq's biological weapons program was shut down by economic sanctions in the 1990s and U.S. search teams are unlikely to find evidence of those efforts now, a leading program scientist said Monday.
The scientist, Nassir Hindawi, left Iraq's bio-weapons program in 1989, and one of his students -- Rihab Taha -- eventually became notorious as Iraq's leading biological weapons expert.
But Hindawi told CNN that Taha -- who was nicknamed "Dr. Germ" in the West -- didn't have the practical capability to advance the program.
Hindawi said economic sanctions imposed after the first Persian Gulf War effectively halted the program, and it probably could not have been reconstituted with whatever materials that remained from the previous years.
Before 1989, Iraqi researchers conducted experiments on animals with botulinum toxin, anthrax and gas gangrene, and managed to test weaponized forms of the toxins, Hindawi said.
The anthrax was developed as a liquid form, not a powder. Hindawi said he alone in Iraq had the knowledge to produce a powdered form of anthrax, but he never did it.
He said he did not believe in the program and therefore intentionally worked only at half his full potential. Scientists were coerced into working for the program, Hindawi said. If they refused, they risked harassment, loss of employment, and prison.
Hindawi's team originally tried to import special drying ovens to make powdered anthrax, but were told by manufacturers of the equipment that they would have to change the specific gravity of their material, and the team was apparently unsuccessful at doing that.
Hindawi said he kept another method for making powered anthrax -- one that does not require using dryers -- to himself.
He rejoined the biological weapons program in 1991 as the director of the Al-Hakam plant, which produced single-cell protein, according to the Iraqi government.
He said he was instructed to lie to United Nations weapons inspectors, who were then in Iraq to enforce terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire.
The cease-fire required Iraq to give up its chemical and biological weapons, long-range missiles and efforts to develop a nuclear bomb.
Hindawi said he was told to say the plant was used only for peaceful purposes, when he knew it was a so-called dual-use facility that been used for weapons research.
The inspectors were not fooled, he said. The plant, which Iraqi officials said was built to provide animal feed, was destroyed under inspectors' supervision in 1996.
The advanced development of the Iraqi program was exposed by the defection of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, to Jordan in 1995.
Though Kamal was nominally the director of the program, Hindawi called him an "idiot" who had only a limited understanding of science.
Hindawi was imprisoned in 1997 and 1998 by Saddam after he was accused of attempting to leave Iraq. At the time, he said, he was trying to go to Libya as a "steppingstone" to get to the United States, where he was educated, and where two of his sons live.
But he has surprisingly benign comments regarding Saddam, calling him "simple, generous, polite and respectful."
He said he met with the Iraqi leader after he left the biological weapons program and returned to a university job. He said Saddam held him by the shoulders and asked him if he was willing to be called back, if needed. Hindawi agreed.
-------- iran
U.S. Accuses Iran of Cheating on Nuclear Arms Pact
Mon April 28, 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2643912
GENEVA - A senior U.S. official on Monday accused Iran -- already under pressure from Washington over events in Iraq -- of cheating on its obligations under a key global pact to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
John Wolf, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Non- Proliferation, said that Iran had an "alarming, clandestine program" to get hold of nuclear technology as part of an illegal weapons effort.
Despite saying it wants nuclear energy only to generate electricity, "Iran is going down the same path of denial and deception that handicapped international inspections in North Korea and Iraq," Wolf declared.
President Bush labeled the three nations members of an "axis of evil" in a landmark speech at the United Nations in New York in September last year, accusing them of aiding terrorism and trying to build nuclear weapons.
Wolf was speaking at the opening of a two-week gathering at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva to prepare for a 2005 conference on reviewing and updating the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"Iran provides perhaps the most fundamental challenge ever faced by the NPT," he declared.
Iran, one of 187 signatories of the treaty, insists that it is working on a legal program based on the peaceful use of nuclear energy for economic development, including mining its own uranium and building plant to enrich it for use in atomic reactors.
But Wolf said recent revelations by private groups and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, "raise profound doubts about Iran's intentions."
Comparing Iran to North Korea and Iraq, which both had international inspections, Wolf said the world had "already seen the pattern of cheat and retreat before -- of begrudging compromises on process but obstinacy on real disclosure."
Iraq, another signatory to the NPT, was also accused by the United States and Britain of developing a secret nuclear program, as well as chemical and biological weapons, before they invaded the country last month and ousted its rulers.
Searches by U.S. and British forces have so far failed to find evidence of such weaponry, though both governments insist they will do so eventually.
In recent days, U.S. officials have suggested that Shi'ite Muslim Iran has been interfering in Iraq by pushing for a political role for Iraq's Shi'ites -- charges Iran has denied.
Wolf said the problem with Iran was not a bilateral one with the United States, which has had no diplomatic relations with Tehran for more than two decades. "This is an issue between Iran and the rest of the world," he said.
Last week France, which opposed the war on Iraq, itself urged Iran to accept stricter international inspections of its nuclear program and open up more sites to the IAEA.
Tehran has yet to sign an IAEA agreement that would give inspectors virtually unlimited access to any site at any time, and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin urged Iran to sign this Additional Protocol during a visit last week.
-------- korea
North Korea said to offer to scrap nuclear program
29 April 2003
By Arshad Mohammed and Benjamin Kang Lim,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-04-29/s_4145.asp
WASHINGTON/BEIJING - The United States and China said Monday North Korea had offered to scrap its nuclear weapons and missile programs, but Washington said the reclusive communist state demanded big concessions in return.
Western diplomats who received a rare briefing by a Chinese Foreign Ministry official in Beijing said North Korea had offered to end its nuclear program and had also offered to suspend ballistic missile tests and stop missile exports.
"They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities, but they of course expect something considerable in return," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Washington when asked about the Beijing briefing. "We are studying that plan."
Neither Powell nor the diplomats in China spelled out what Pyongyang sought in return for its offer, but a senior U.S. official said it included economic exchanges, oil, energy and normal relations with the United States. "It basically listed everything they have ever asked for," said the U.S. official.
The Western diplomats quoted the Chinese official as saying North Korea had warned of "extraordinary measures" if the United States played its "usual tricks."
The offers were made during three-way talks in Beijing last week with the United States and China, at which U.S. sources last week said North Korea admitted that it already had nuclear weapons.
However, the Chinese official, the Foreign Ministry's top North Korea expert, painted a different picture of the talks.
One E.U. diplomat quoted the official as saying North Korean negotiators had told U.S. officials led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly that nuclear inspectors would be allowed into their country if Washington dropped its hostile attitude. He was also quoted as saying that North Korea had retreated from its previous insistence on bilateral talks with the United States and told Kelly it had no preference for any particular format for negotiations.
The Western diplomats present at the briefing said they were told North Korean negotiator Li Gun did not make any threats about "selling, testing, or possessing nuclear weapons" during the formal sessions of the Beijing talks. But there was ample opportunity to do so privately, the diplomats said.
FURTHER DISCUSSION
"The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things that they were doing and, in effect, said these are now up for further discussion," Powell said Monday.
Friday U.S. officials had said North Korea had made proposals but suggested these largely repeated things Pyongyang had demanded in the past. The U.S. officials appeared skeptical of the proposals but said Washington would analyze them.
The North Koreans "talked at some points about giving up nuclear weapons, about doing that in return for extra deals that would not be acceptable," said one official.
This official said the proposals included demands for "everything the North Koreans ever wanted ... There was an element to the talks of attempts to threaten and intimidate and elements of wanting to buy a Rolex."
Powell described last week's talks as "quite useful," and he played down suggestions that North Korea had threatened to test nuclear weapons, saying they never used that exact word. "It was useful to get it all out on the table and see where we go from here," Powell said.
"They've never used the word 'testing.' You suggest that they threatened to test, but they never used the word 'test.' They said that it is a kind of capability that one can display in one way or another, and we are talking all of this (with) seriousness. And now that Assistant Secretary Kelly is back we will be spending quite a bit of time going over his notes and his impressions on what he heard," he said.
Powell thanked China for having been a "full participant" in last week's Beijing talks, a comment that appeared designed in part to play down comments by analysts suggesting that China would largely be a bystander.
Powell did not repeat the U.S. position ruling out offering North Korea inducements to give up its nuclear programs, which Washington fears could be used to threaten South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops based there as well as other nations in the region.
However, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher ruled out offering such carrots and said, "We've made clear we're not going to pay for elimination of nuclear weapons programs that never should have been there in the first place."
President Bush last week said North Korea was "back to the old blackmail game," and he and other U.S. officials stressed that the United States would not be threatened or intimidated by North Korea.
In other developments, U.S. officials said they were discussing the possibility of a three-way meeting among U.S., Japanese, and South Korean officials widely expected to focus on North Korea but that nothing was scheduled.
U.S. officials have said they pressed during last week's meetings for Japan and South Korea to be included in the talks on North Korea, a view echoed Monday by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi while on a visit to Spain.
"It is essential that South Korea and Japan should participate," he told a news conference in Madrid. "Both the United States and South Korea must act with caution. We want to act in collaboration with the countries involved. This is different from Iraq."
In Seoul, a South Korean pool report from Pyongyang said North Korea had told South Korea it would discuss its suspected nuclear weapons program only with the United States but was happy to talk about boosting North-South economic cooperation and staging festivals together.
(Additional reporting by Carol Giacomo in Washington and Martin Nesirky in Seoul)
----
N.Korea Says Talks Useless Without U.S. Concessions
Reuters
April 29, 2003
By Martin Nesirky and Arshad Mohammed
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20030429_32.html
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea said on Tuesday more U.S.-North Korea talks would be pointless if Washington insisted Pyongyang disarm and rejected the North's offer to scrap its atomic arms in return for concessions.
U.S. officials in Washington and Western diplomats in Beijing said on Monday North Korea had offered at talks in China last week to give up its nuclear weapons and missile exports but wanted a shopping list of concessions in return.
A senior U.S. official called those concessions unacceptable.
"We're not going to pay for elimination of nuclear weapons programs that never should have been there in the first place," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher in Washington.
South Korean financial markets interpreted the North Korean offer as a step forward. Shares ended up five percent. But, predictably, the U.S. response did not go down well in Pyongyang.
"It is quite obvious that as long as the U.S. maintains such a stand, the two sides will only waste time no matter how frequently they negotiate," said Minju Joson, a newspaper published by the North Korean cabinet.
North Korea's KCNA news agency went further, saying Washington's stance that it will not "reward" Pyongyang was a mark of ignorance among Bush administration policymakers.
"This cannot be construed otherwise than ridiculous jargons of political imbeciles," it said.
The State Department said on Monday North Korea told U.S. officials in Beijing during three days of talks last week, that included China, that Pyongyang had nuclear arms. North Korea has yet to repeat this publicly.
NORTH EXPECTS CONCESSIONS
Western diplomats briefed by a Chinese Foreign Ministry official in Beijing said North Korea had warned of "extraordinary measures" if the United States played its "usual tricks."
Asked about the briefing, Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities but they of course expect something considerable in return."
A senior U.S. official said the concessions included oil, energy, economic exchanges and normal relations.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan confirmed in parliament on Tuesday North Korea had offered to resolve the nuclear crisis on condition Washington guarantees the survival of Pyongyang's communist system. He did not comment on the offer.
Yoon and Unification Ministry officials were briefing foreign diplomats. They will be keen to gauge whether Seoul leans toward Beijing's assessment of the outcome or Washington's. China now faces its own dilemma -- whether to back long-time ally North Korea or the U.S. line on dismantling Pyongyang's arsenal.
South Korea has a high-stakes interest in a peaceful solution to the crisis as it borders the heavily armed communist North.
South Korean National Security Adviser Ra Jong-yil left for Washington on Tuesday to prepare for President Roh Moo-hyun's visit next month. Ra told reporters: "We clearly state we will not accept a nuclearized North Korea."
South and North Korea were holding a third day of talks in Pyongyang and still differed over whether to mention the crisis in a joint statement, pool media reports from Pyongyang said.
German activist Nobert Vollertsen, who worked as a doctor in the North before being expelled, said in an email food shortages were getting worse in North Korea. He said high-ranking party members were eager to defect. Vollertsen is well connected in the North but gave no sources for his information. (Additional reporting by Carol Giacomo in Washington, Benjamin Kang Lim in Beijing and Samuel Len and Song Jung-a in Seoul)
----
China Puts North Korea Talks in Brighter Light
Unusual Briefing Suggests Beijing Is Eager to Keep Talks Between Washington, Pyongyang on Track
By John Pomfret and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48359-2003Apr28?language=printer
BEIJING, April 28 -- After four days of negative commentary about talks here last week between North Korea, the United States and China, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official conducted an unusual briefing for 20 Western diplomats that left a far more positive picture of the meeting, diplomats said tonight.
The Chinese official suggested that North Korea offered last week to work out a deal with the United States that included dismantling its nuclear program if the United States would change its antagonistic attitude toward North Korea. North Korea also offered to suspend ballistic missile tests and halt missile exports, said the diplomats, who asked not to be identified.
While U.S. officials had previously disclosed the North Korea offer, they had characterized it in far more negative terms. According to U.S. officials, North Korea had said it would only give up its nuclear weapons and missiles after the United States fulfilled a long list of conditions, including full diplomatic relations with both the United States and Japan and completion of light-water nuclear reactors. As the United States met its obligations, North Korea offered only to announce its intention to give up its nuclear programs, officials said.
"It basically listed everything they have ever asked for," a senior State Department official said in Washington.
At the talks, U.S. officials have said, North Korea also asserted it possessed nuclear weapons and might conduct "a physical demonstration or transfer" the weapons. President Bush last week labeled the talks as "blackmail" and said he looked forward to hearing how the Chinese felt about being rebuffed by the North Koreans.
U.S. officials are now debating whether to proceed to another meeting with North Korea. But tonight's briefing suggested that China, demonstrating a newly assertive role in the issue, was eager to keep discussions between North Korea and the United States on track.
"The Chinese seemed to think this was a significant offer," said one diplomat who said he agreed with Beijing's views. "The briefing certainly gave us the impression that North Korea came to the table with a pretty significant proposal."
Diplomats said that while the briefing was not rare, it was unusual for China to give such a detailed account of the talks to almost two dozen diplomats from the European Union. One diplomat speculated that China gave such a detailed briefing to counter reports in the United States that the talks, the first between North Korea and the United States in six months, had been a failure.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, asked about the Chinese briefing in Washington, acknowledged that North Korea had made a proposal. "The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things that they were doing and, in effect, said these are now up for further discussion," Powell told reporters. "They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities, but they, of course, expect something considerable in return."
U.S. officials said that while the North Korean proposal might offer some basis for further discussion, it was unacceptable in its current form. "We've made clear we're not going to pay for elimination of the nuclear weapons programs that never should have begun in the first place," State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said. "That remains our policy, a very clear policy that we've taken."
The North Koreans also told U.S. negotiators that nuclear inspectors would be allowed back into their country if the Bush administration -- which has labeled North Korea part of the "axis of evil" -- changed its "attitude" toward North Korea, one diplomat said. In exchange, diplomats said, North Korea was seeking a security assurance from the United States, moves toward diplomatic recognition and money.
The diplomats said North Korea believes it should be compensated for delay in the completion of light-water reactors under a 1994 pact in which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear program.
Last week, U.S. officials leaked word that Li Gun, the senior North Korean at the talks, claimed North Korea has a nuclear arsenal.
But the Western diplomats today quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry official as saying that publicly Li made no such statements during talks with Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly.
Last week, U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, reported that Li had made the remarks when he pulled Kelly aside during a break. At the time, Boucher, the State Department spokesman, refused to confirm the reports.
But today, after the Chinese remarks to the diplomats were publicized by news services, Boucher asserted that at the talks North Korea claimed to possess nuclear weapons. "They said they had nuclear weapons," Boucher said. "They said they were reprocessing [spent fuel rods]."
The diplomats quoted the Chinese Foreign Ministry official as saying North Korea backed down from its previous insistence on bilateral talks with the United States and told Kelly it had no preference for any particular format for negotiations. But, according to the Reuters news agency, which also cited diplomats, North Korea warned of extraordinary measures if the United States played its "usual tricks."
Kessler reported from Washington. Correspondent Doug Struck in Tokyo contributed to this report.
----
North Korea offers new peace deal
US to study nuclear weapons proposal
Julian Borger in Washington and Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Tuesday April 29, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0,2763,945543,00.html
North Korea has offered to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, stop missile exports and readmit foreign inspectors in return for a US pledge not to attack, it was revealed last night.
The offer, announced yesterday by the Chinese foreign ministry, represents the first clear sign since the Iraq war that Pyongyang could be interested in negotiating away its nuclear ambitions.
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said America was examining the proposals, which were apparently made at a Chinese-brokered meeting in Beijing last week. But US officials cautioned against over-optimism, saying that North Korea had a history of sending out confusing signals, mixing conciliation with apocalyptic threats.
In the aftermath of the war in Iraq there has been intense speculation that the Bush administration would now turn to North Korea.
The Pyongyang government had earlier declared that the Iraq war demonstrated the need for a powerful deterrent to American aggression. It also told the US delegation at the Beijing meeting that it already had nuclear warheads and was ready to prove it, which was widely interpreted as a possible threat to test its bombs.
However, the latest details of that meeting show that North Korea also offered significant concessions. Alongside its longstanding offer to halt its nuclear programme in return for a non-aggression pact, it promised to stop exporting missiles and allow nuclear inspectors into the country.
Pyongyang expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency late last year, but it was not immediately clear whether it was prepared to readmit IAEA staff.
The offer that it would not sell missiles to any other country addresses one of the key anxieties of the Bush administration: that North Korea, as a so-called "rogue state" and member of the "axis of evil", would not only become a nuclear threat in its own right but would act as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
It is known that Pyongyang has traded ballistic missile technology with Pakistan in return for nuclear secrets.
A European diplomat also said yesterday that North Korea is prepared to consider multilateral talks with its neighbours, as demanded by the US, dropping an earlier insistence on two-way talks with Washington.
"The initial reports from the talks focused on the negative," said Eric Heginbotham, the director of the Korea task force at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "This news at least indicates the North may still be interested in an agreement. Of course it's hard to tell if they are serious or not."
The Chinese foreign ministry revealed the North Korean offer in a briefing for western diplomats in Beijing, possibly in an effort to counter the downbeat assessment of last week's trilateral talks by the world's press.
In response, Mr Powell told reporters: "The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things that they were doing and, in effect, said these are now up for further discussion.
"They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities," the secretary of state added. "But they, of course, expect something considerable in return."
Most importantly, the North Korean offer is contingent on the US signing a formal non-aggression treaty, something the Bush administration has so far been reluctant to do, arguing that Pyongyang broke a 1994 agreement, and that the US Congress would not ratify a formal pact. However, US officials have said that other forms of assurance could be negotiated.
"The North Koreans have said a lot of contradictory things in the past. We are going to have to look at what they have said this time and determine what it means," a US official said, adding that the bottom line in Washington's position remains unaltered.
"They need to verifiably and irreversibly end their nuclear weapons programme. That's the outcome we're seeking."
During the formal periods of discussion last week, Chinese representatives said North Korea had made no admission of its nuclear weapons programme, though they conceded there were plenty of opportunities for off-the-record talks between the two sides.
Although still unconfirmed, last week's reports that the North has declared itself a member of the nuclear club caused shockwaves in Asia and increased the likelihood of a reprimand and sanctions by the UN security council.
White House officials have been pushing for such tough measures since North Korea kicked out the IAEA inspectors. Pyongyang says it would treat sanctions as an act of war - a threat China, South Korea, Japan and Russia have taken seriously enough to try to block US moves to increase pressure on the North.
China's disclosure of Pyongyang's compromise offer could be aimed at forestalling a fresh attempt by the US to tighten the economic blockade.
Pyongyang is concerned that Washington's real intention is regime change. Without a non-aggression treaty guaranteeing the country's sovereignty, it fears an inspection process could increase its vulnerability, as was the case in Iraq.
----
DIPLOMACY - North Korea Said to Offer Small Nuclear Steps, at a Price
April 29, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/international/worldspecial/29KORE.html
WASHINGTON, April 28 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that North Korea had put forward a plan in its meeting with American and Chinese envoys last week under which it would "deal with" its nuclear programs but would "expect something considerable in return."
Speaking to reporters at the State Department, Mr. Powell seemed to be softening the administration's tough talk over North Korea, saying that the North Korean offer would be discussed with other Asian nations and could possibly lead to further negotiations to defuse the crisis.
Mr. Powell declined to provide other details of North Korea's offer, but other administration officials said North Korea had asked for a step-by-step package under which it would receive oil shipments, food aid, security guarantees, energy assistance, economic benefits and construction of a light-water nuclear reactor. In return, they said, North Korea had offered to take very small steps.
The officials said that under its proposal North Korea would dismantle its nuclear weapons only at the end of the process. Moreover, they said, it was not clear that this would affect both its plutonium weapons program, frozen in 1994, and the highly enriched uranium program disclosed last year.
American officials said that North Korea's offer was seen throughout the Bush administration as almost absurdly unacceptable. They said this was the view of both hard-liners, who oppose negotiations with North Korea, and moderates, who favor continued diplomatic contact.
To underscore that view, administration officials described themselves last Thursday as angry and disappointed after it was disclosed that North Korea acknowledged in Beijing earlier in the week that it possessed nuclear weapons and had begun making bomb-grade plutonium.
President Bush, reflecting his own tough view, accused North Korea of going "back to the old blackmail game."
Today the tone was somewhat different. Asian diplomats and American officials said that after the disclosures last week, Mr. Powell was seeking today to present a more positive face because of pressure from China, South Korea and Japan, all of which favor further dialogue with North Korea.
Responding to reporters' questions after a meeting with the Jordanian foreign minister, Mr. Powell said the Beijing session actually "turned out to be quite useful," adding that North Korea "acknowledged a number of things that they were doing and, in effect, said these are now up for further discussion."
The changed tone also reflected the continuing divisions in the administration over how to handle North Korea, with hard-liners favoring more economic, diplomatic and possibly military pressure, and moderates advocating a continuation of diplomatic contacts and a possible negotiated solution.
On the need for future talks, however, a self-described hard-liner said today that all sides actually favored continued efforts to talk, at least for now - if only because they felt that if North Korea continued its intransigence, a tougher approach would be more acceptable down the road.
"There are some people in this administration who argue that there's little point in talking to the North Koreans because they are always going to cheat," one official said. But he added that North Korea's latest proposal was such a "nonstarter" that it was worth pursuing in order to show the futility of negotiating with the North.
Another official said that since the Beijing meeting last week there had been nothing but negative publicity about how unacceptable the North's proposals were. Disclosures that North Korea had effectively ended the three-part discussions on the first day fed an atmosphere of disappointment and dismay.
Mr. Powell, this official said, sought to balance the reporting of the meeting by suggesting that the situation was dire but not hopeless. An Asian diplomat familiar with the administration's thinking echoed that view.
"Like any meeting, the Beijing meeting contained good news and bad news," the Asian official said. "The bad news is that they said they had nuclear weapons. But the good news is that they came with their own bold approach, so to speak, and we didn't have enough time to clarify what they meant."
He added that the "bad news" was disclosed last week, whereas the details of the North Korean proposals had only circulated over the weekend, with the return of James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, who had been the senior American envoy to meet with the North.
An administration official added, "There was so much bad news in the last five days that it was decided to tone things down a little."
Administration officials said all three negotiating partners - China, Japan and South Korea - were disappointed by North Korea's response last week. But all three favored a more conciliatory tone and continued discussions to get more details of North Korea's thinking.
The next step in the process, they said, would be for more discussions among the three, possibly meeting together as Secretary Powell did with his Asian counterparts in Mexico last year.
China, several officials said, was embarrassed by the failure of the Beijing meeting, since Chinese leaders had worked hard to set it up and had high hopes. On the other hand, China was described today as still eager to keep the conversation going.
President Bush is known to be highly skeptical of negotiating with North Korea. He has said he loathes its leader, Kim Jong Il, a mercurial and reclusive dictator of a country that is enduring widespread deprivation and starvation. But American officials say that after the Iraq war, they are reluctant to embark on any more confrontations, at least for a while.
Hard-liners, for now, are not pressing for penalties against North Korea, though some in the Pentagon had sought to discourage the last round of talks in Beijing - or, alternatively, to select the envoys or control the agenda.
Should diplomacy fail, Defense Department officials are ready to try to persuade Mr. Bush to seek economic penalties against the North, but Washington has little leverage. It would have to persuade Japan, China and South Korea to cut their considerable ties to the North, which is likely to be an uphill battle by all accounts.
----
N. Korea offers to dismantle nukes
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 29, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030429-562595.htm
North Korea has offered to dismantle its nuclear weapons and missile programs in exchange for "considerable" concessions from the United States, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said later that the North Koreans laid out a long list of demands during talks last week in Beijing, where Pyongyang acknowledged for the first time that it had nuclear weapons. These were the first direct talks between the United States and North Korea in six months.
The demands list, which a senior State Department official called so extensive as to defy a "concise description," included resumption of free heavy-fuel oil shipments, security guarantees, and the normalization of relations with the United States.
"The North Koreans acknowledged a number of things that they were doing and, in effect, said these are now up for further discussion," Mr. Powell told reporters after a meeting with visiting Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Jamil Al-Muasher.
"They did put forward a plan that would ultimately deal with their nuclear capability and their missile activities," the secretary said. "But they, of course, expect something considerable in return."
He said the Bush administration was "studying" the North's proposal and "examining it with our friends and allies," including South Korea, Japan, Russia and Australia.
"It was useful to get it all out on the table and see where we go from here," he said of the April 23-25 talks in Beijing.
Today, North Korea said future nuclear talks with the United States would be useless if Washington sticks to its demand that Pyongyang disarm, without considering the North's offer to scrap its atomic arms for concessions.
"If the U.S. stance is left as it is, future talks would be a waste of time and it is as clear as fire that such talks would offer no help in resolving the nuclear problem," said Minju Joson, a newspaper published by the North Korean Cabinet.
Yesterday, Mr. Powell dismissed as "nonsense" reports that North Korea had informed the State Department on March 31 that it had begun reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods and that the rest of the Bush administration was kept in the dark about it. "Our intelligence community still cannot give us any validation or confirmation of what North Korea has said at various times and in various places with respect to reprocessing," he said.
"What we were told on the 31st was shared within the administration. I'm not sure if everybody in the administration got it, but it isn't relevant because it didn't seem to be anything that was terribly new or different from what we had been told on a regular basis over the last several months. It was not, in our judgment, anything that was particularly new or newsworthy."
On April 18, North Korea issued a statement saying: "As we have already declared, we are successfully reprocessing more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase."
The statement, which prompted some Bush administration officials to call for canceling the Beijing talks, led to confusion in Washington, where intelligence sources said there was no indication that reprocessing had actually begun.
The State Department blamed the confusion on a bad translation from Korean to English by the North's Korean Central News Agency. According to the department, the statement said Pyongyang was in the final stages of preparing to start reprocessing.
Three days later, the KCNA published a different and ungrammatical translation, saying: "As we have already declared, we are successfully going forward to reprocess work more than 8,000 spent fuel rods at the final phase."
Pyongyang's admission that it has nuclear weapons came on the first day of the Beijing talks. Some U.S. officials say the North fears that the quick military victory in Iraq might embolden Washington to use force against Pyongyang. North Korea, with Iran and prewar Iraq, constitute President Bush's "axis of evil."
U.S. intelligence agencies estimated years ago that North Korea had one or two nuclear weapons. But Pyongyang's admission is significant in terms of how the rest of the world views the North Korean threat, diplomats and arms-control analysts said.
The United States wanted South Korea and Japan to participate in the meetings with North Korea, but Pyongyang insisted on direct dialogue with Washington. The three-way meeting hosted by China was a compromise.
The head of the U.S. delegation, James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, is the highest-ranking Bush administration official to visit Pyongyang. During a trip there in early October, he confronted the North with intelligence that it had developed a secret uranium-enrichment program, violating a 1994 nuclear deal known as the Agreed Framework.
The North, which then reportedly admitted to having the program, reopened its nuclear complex in December and expelled weapons inspectors from the United Nations. In January, it withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
----
U.S. Rejects North Korea Proposal on Nuclear Weapons
April 29, 2003
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/international/asia/29CND-KOREA.html
WASHINGTON, April 29 - The White House today rejected North Korea's proposal to abandon its nuclear arms program and to stop selling its ballistic missiles, if the United offered aid and recognition to Pyongyang.
``We will not provide them with inducements for doing what they always said they were going to do,'' said the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer. ``What we seek is North Korea's irrevocable and verifiable dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program.''
Administration officials said that during talks in Beijing last week North Korea had asked for a step-by-step package under which it would receive oil shipments, food aid, security guarantees, energy assistance, and economic benefits, among other requests. In return, they said, North Korea had offered to dismantle its nuclear weapons, but only at the end of the process.
Separately, North Korea and South Korea issued a joint statement today in which they agreed to hold more bilateral talks in July. The two countries did not say what would be on the agenda for the cabinet-level talks in Seoul, but the joint statement did say ``the two Koreas will discuss each other's position earnestly over the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and continue to cooperate in resolving the nuclear standoff peacefully through a dialogue,'' the joint statement said.
After offering more measured remarks on Monday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also criticized North Korea today, saying that Pyongyang's proposed deal ``is not going to take us in the right direction.''
Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Powell added: ``We will not be intimidated by their claims and threats. As the president has said, we will not be blackmailed.''
Last week, President Bush, accused North Korea of going ``back to the old blackmail game.''
Administration officials said North Korea's offer was seen by practically everyone in the Bush administration as almost wholly unacceptable. They said this was the view of both hard-liners, who oppose negotiations with North Korea, and moderates, who favor continued diplomatic contact. Still, Fleischer said the United States will continue talking to North Korea.
``This is the diplomatic process,'' he said, ``and the diplomatic process is a long one. The president is going to pursue it at length. And so if it takes time, it will take time.'' Senior administration officials are planning to meet early next week to decide how to proceed.
North Korea acknowledged last October that it had restarted its nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang demanded bilateral negotiations with the United States. The Bush administration insisted that any talks ought to include other countries, and North Korea finally agreed to multi-lateral talks earlier this month shortly after the United States-led military victory in Iraq.
The talks last week, where James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, represented the United States, collapsed after North Korea told Kelly that it already had nuclear weapons.
Mr. Bush called the leaders of both Japan and South Korea this morning to tell them the United States would continue pushing for an ``irreversible and verifiable'' end to north Korea's nuclear weapons program, the White House said.
-------- space
NASA Chief Touts Nuclear - Powered Craft
April 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Shuttle-OKeefe.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The ability to explore planets beyond our solar system will require the use of space vehicles with nuclear-powered propulsion systems, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Tuesday.
Using nuclear power on future spacecraft could cut the time it takes to reach the edge of our solar system from 15 years to five years, O'Keefe told several hundred people attending Space Congress, an annual space industry conference in Cape Canaveral.
NASA's past efforts to use nuclear power in space has met opposition from environmentalists. In 1997, hundreds of people protested the launching of the Cassini interplanetary robot craft, which was powered by plutonium.
Developing the new propulsion system has been allotted $3 billion over five years in NASA's budget and given the name Project Prometheus. Besides making space trips speedier, it would also ``enhance the ability of our robotic spacecraft to perform scientific investigations of planets,'' O'Keefe said.
If used on manned spacecraft, nuclear propulsion would mean astronauts spend less time in space, reducing the amount of radiation exposure and bone and muscle loss they experience, he said.
``We could do these kinds of things safely,'' O'Keefe added.
Although he doesn't know details about Project Prometheus, Frank Jackalone, Florida staff director of the Sierra Club, said NASA has shown that the space program isn't risk-free.
Jackalone's group opposed the Cassini launch. ``There is no way NASA can say for certain that something is 100 percent safe.''
NASA has previously used nuclear energy to power spacecraft but never in a propulsion system. Currently, space ships are launched with rocket power, but once in space they rely on momentum to carry them to their goal, since they cannot carry enough heavy rocket fuel to continue accelerating through space.
Development of nuclear fusion or fission engines would enable a space vehicle to continue increasing its speed once away from Earth, shortening the time needed to reach distant planets. These engines also could provide electrical power instead of relying on solar cells or batteries, making it possible to operate more scientific instruments.
During his speech to the Space Congress, O'Keefe reiterated his goal to have space shuttles flying by the end of the year.
www.nasa.gov
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
U.S. Beefs Up Atomic Power Plant Security Rules
April 29, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-utilities-security.html
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday ordered atomic power plant operators to further tighten security at the nation's 103 nuclear reactors to better thwart attacks or sabotage. The changes are part of the NRC's effort to beef up security at nuclear reactors in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
The NRC said it had approved three security orders, including changes in the so-called design basis threat that private security forces protecting the power plants must be prepared to meet.
Details of the changes will not be made public, the NRC said.
The other two orders specify work schedules, training and qualifications required of plant security guards who are hired by utilities to protect their facilities.
The orders are effective immediately, the NRC said.
Some U.S. lawmakers and activist groups are concerned that a Sept. 11-type attack against a nuclear plant could penetrate the reactor or pool where used fuel is stored and spread deadly radioactive materials for miles.
``With the completion of these complementary orders, the public should be reassured that the nation's nuclear power plants are well-secured against potential threats,'' said NRC Chairman Nils Diaz in a statement.
The commission intends to continue to work closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, as well and state and local law enforcement and emergency planning officials to ensure an integrated approach to the security of nuclear plants, Diaz said.
Since the attacks, the nuclear power industry has worked to enhance security in several ways, among them more employee training, hiring more guards, increasing security coordination with law enforcement agencies, extending security boundaries and adding more barriers around the plants.
In January, the NRC ordered plant operators to tighten security screening of anyone trying to get access to the plants, including new employees and contractors.
-------- new york
Fire Shuts Controversial N.Y. Nuke Plant
April 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Plant-Fire.html
BUCHANAN, N.Y. (AP) -- A fire early Tuesday damaged equipment in a non-nuclear section of the Indian Point 3 power plant and forced the shutdown of the reactor, a spokesman said.
The cause was unknown but there were no signs of sabotage or terrorist acts, and no radioactive material was released, said Jim Steets of Entergy Corp., the plant's owner.
The other plant on the site, Indian Point 2, was already out of service, having shut down automatically because of an unrelated electrical outage Monday evening. The twin shutdowns completely remove Indian Point, the region's top producer of electrical energy, from the power grid.
Since the terror attacks of 2001, many people living nearby have focused their fears on the Indian Point complex, 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan, as a possible target. Critics who want the two plants shut down say the densely populated area could not be protected if radiation were released in a major accident or attack.
The fire was classified as an ``unusual event,'' the lowest of four levels of alert on a scale used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Indian Point 3 was shut down within minutes after the fire was discovered in the insulation around piping for the main steam-powered turbine around 3 a.m. The fire was extinguished within the hour and no one was injured.
Damage was visible on part of the turbine as well as the insulation, Steets said. He did not know how long it would take for the plant to resume operations.
``We're not going to bring it back until we understand the cause of the fire and check out all the equipment,'' he said.
Indian Point 2 shut down ``as it's designed to do'' when the electrical outage occurred outside the plant at about 5 p.m. Monday, Steets said. Con Edison said the power failure, which lasted several minutes and affected 51,000 customers, happened when feeder cables malfunctioned.
On the Net:
Entergy Corp: http://www.entergy.com
Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov
--------
Two Entergy Nuclear Units Shut
April 29, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-utilities-entergy-indianpoint.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Both units at Entergy Nuclear's 1,978 megawatt (MW) Indian Point nuclear plant in New York were shut by early Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in its power reactor status report.
The company told the NRC in an events report the 951 MW unit 2 automatically tripped ``possibly due to the loss of output breakers'' at about 4:45 p.m. EDT time on Monday, while the company manually tripped the 1,027 MW unit 3 due to a fire in the high pressure turbine at about 3:13 a.m. Tuesday morning. Advertisement
The company said the fire in unit 3 was at a height 53 feet in the turbine building and lasted about 47 minutes. No additional information was available on what damage the fire might have caused.
Unit 2 was operating at full power when it tripped and unit 3 was operating at 60 percent of capacity when it was shut.
The Indian Point station is located 24 miles north of New York City.
-------- us politics
KUCINICH ON MILITARY SPENDING:
"They're Both Wrong" (Please circulate)
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003
From: Kucinich Campaign <info@kucinich.us>
FROM THE KUCINICH FOR PRESIDENT CAMPAIGN
A debate recently erupted between two rival Democratic campaigns, with one candidate quoted as saying "We won't always have the strongest military," and a rival campaign attacking the candidate for implying he'd compromise "America's military supremacy."
In response, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich [http://kucinich.us], the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform subcommittee that monitors the Pentagon, issued the following statement:
"They're both wrong. The U.S. military is the strongest in the world by far, and will remain so. But Democrats cannot lead the nation without being strong enough to confront the bloat and waste in the Pentagon budget."
"Our military budget is almost as big as that of all other countries combined. While we have unchallenged superiority in military strength, we also have more people without healthcare than any other advanced industrial country -- and Democrats must be bold enough to say the two issues are linked."
"I don't agree with other Democrats that we can continue to increase military spending, and still deliver on our domestic agenda for middle class and working Americans. We can't. That's voodoo budgeting.
"In this campaign, I plan to make a major issue of hometown security -- healthcare, jobs and education for all -- and misspent Pentagon dollars, even as other Democratic candidates join President Bush in pressing for still more exorbitant military budgets."
-------- MILITARY
-------- britain
Forces chief questioned war legality
By Michael Smith
29/04/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/29/nirq29.xml/
The head of the Armed Forces said yesterday that he had at first questioned the legality of invading Iraq before being satisfied by the Attorney General's ruling that the war would be legal.
Adml Sir Michael Boyce
Adml Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff, counselled against a rush to join the US in any further wars against rogue nations, saying that the Armed Forces were too over-stretched to do so for up to a year.
He also suggested that a victory parade for returning troops might "seem arrogant or patronising about the Iraqi people".
Speaking on his retirement, he said it would have been irresponsible if he had not questioned the war's legality.
"But I was satisfied before we went in," he said, referring to the Attorney General's ruling. "I could say to our people, 'Yes,you have a legal basis for what you are going to do.' "
Questioning whether there should be a victory parade, he said the "excellence" of the forces should be recognised, but the war had been different from the 1991 Gulf war and the Falklands conflict when victory parades were held.
"In 1991 we were liberating Kuwait. In the Falklands we relieved the Falkland islanders. I would have some difficulty saying the same thing for Iraq. If you are an Iraqi person, is that how you see it? We do not want to seem arrogant or patronising about the Iraqi people."
Senior ministers, including Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, backed Tony Blair's belief that a war would be legal long before the Attorney General ruled.
The Prime Minister, strongly defended his war aims yesterday, warning those who had opposed war against "crowing" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. He said there was "no doubt" that such weapons existed.
Adml Boyce, who once described the American approach to the war on terrorism as like "a high-tech posse in the Wild West", said that early British involvement in any new wars could not be achieved without "serious pain" to the Services.
"The Government would have to be pretty convinced it was important," he said.
The forces, which still have 19,000 troops committed to covering for firemen's strikes and substantial numbers in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Northern Ireland, needed "to draw breath".
With more men and women expected to leave, the forces would be more over-stretched than ever.
Service chiefs were concerned that the Treasury might use an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland to seek "a peace dividend", Adml Boyce said. The Services had to maintain manning levels and hoped to use any of the 14,500 troops in Northern Ireland who were released for other duties to "bail us out".
Adml Boyce introduced women into the front line in the Royal Navy but ultimately ruled against such a move for infantry forces.
He confirmed that the Ministry of Defence was examining the need for all 232 Eurofighters ordered for the RAF. Some will be converted to ground attack aircraft, but the third tranche of 88 Eurofighters is expected to be axed.
Adml Boyce said that Britain should not be drawn into any expansion of the European defence initiative.
Speaking on the eve of a a meeting of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg to discuss its expansion, he said that the forces must remain closely aligned with the US.
"They have the technological lead. There are areas where we are better, but they are the most powerful country in the world."
While Britain had to work with its EU partners as well, it could not "have its cake and eat it".
"What we do not need to see are structures set up that duplicate Nato and what we certainly do not need to have is things done that are simply designed to cause friction."
----
Avoid war for two years, says defence chief
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
April 29, 2003
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-662978,00.html
BRITAIN'S Armed Forces should not pursue another war until at least 2005, the Government's top military commander said yesterday.
Forces were overstretched and both troops and equipment needed time to recover from the Iraqi campaign, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, who retires as Chief of the Defence Staff at the end of this week, said.
He said that British Forces could not engage in another war between now and the end of next year without "serious pain", even if the Americans asked for help.
He also announced that the Ministry of Defence was conducting a major "lessons learnt" exercise, which might lead to some cuts in orders for equipment, including the huge £18 billion Eurofighter order.
The focus will be on "reshaping" the forces and the equipment bought for them to ensure they can engage in similar types of warfare in the future. Although fundamental restructuring has already taken place since the end of the Cold War, Admiral Boyce made clear he wanted further changes to try to match America's high-tech military prowess.
He also said that he favours a memorial service this autumn to mark the achievements of the British troops in the war, rather than a victory parade.
The "blitzkrieg" against Iraq will send a message to other rogue states, he said, and he hoped that British forces would not be "marching off to war again in a couple of years".
The admiral's message came as Tony Blair made plain that there were no plans to extend military action to countries such as Syria and Iran, whose actions have been criticised by Washington.
Admiral Boyce said that the Forces were overstretched because of the campaign in Iraq, which had involved 45,000 British military personnel out of the total manpower of 210,000. Both troops and equipment needed time to recuperate.
He admitted that if the Northern Ireland peace process were resolved it could mean reducing troops in Ulster to 5,000 from 13,000. But he warned the Treasury not to regard this as a "peace dividend" and force manpower cuts. The soldiers from the Province would be needed to fill gaps elsewhere, he said.
Admiral Boyce said that the Armed Forces could not handle another "discretionary" war, a conflict waged "by choice", if it were launched in 2004. Speaking to defence journalists as part of his farewell, Admiral Boyce said that if the United Kingdom were threatened, every man and woman in the Services would fight to defend the country.
However, a war in the style of the Iraqi campaign was not something that could be repeated again and again.
Did this mean Britain would not be ready to act with America if President Bush decided to pursue a military option in dealing with the other "rogue" nations in the so-called "axis of evil"? "I don't think, if we were asked to do another largescale operation in 2004, that we could do it without serious pain. We need to draw breath," Admiral Boyce said. "If it was to be something of the scale that we have done this time, it would have to be something that the Government is convinced is pretty important."
The Iraq campaign had already had a "moderating" impact on Syria, he said. "North Korea is behaving in its own way, they are having a blink test with the Americans," Admiral Boyce said. He added: "I hope that we might have a better world rather than marching off to war again in a couple of years."
The Tories welcomed the admiral's remarks. Bernard Jenkin, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said: "Once again, Sir Michael Boyce bluntly tells the truth about the sorry state of the British Armed Forces. The fact is that it is only our Armed Forces' supreme professionalism that makes up for all the shortcomings in training, manpower and equipment."
Sir Michael also indicated his personal view that a "victory parade" through the streets of London for the returned troops might not be appropriate. However, he did not rule it out and suggested that a parade could not be held until at least September. He questioned whether the Iraqi people might view a parade as "arrogant or patronising". He said: "I'm all for honouring the troops with a memorial service. I'm neutral about a parade, but this is a different situation from the 1991 Gulf War and the Falklands in 1982."
In emphasising the difficulties the Services were facing with manpower shortages, he said there was a risk some military personnel returning from Iraq might decide that "they have had their war and will leave the Services". There could be a problem with retention, he said. After the 1991 Gulf War, several hundred troops are believed to have left the Services. Sir Michael said that he anticipated cutbacks in some "legacy weapons" - systems developed for the Cold War. He praised the role of tanks in the war in Iraq but he said it was clear that the Government's commitment to ordering 232 Eurofighters would have to be re-examined. The full order would cost taxpayers £18 billion.
Admiral Boyce also gave warning to France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, which are holding a joint defence summit today in Brussels, not to take any action that would undermine Nato.He said: "We certainly don't need duplicate structures. We don't need to have things that cause friction between Nato members."
Admiral Boyce acknowledged that during his 26 months in the top military post he had spoken his mind in public when he felt the need to. He said that he had "a good and friendly working relationship" with Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary.
-------- britain
Plans to set up UK military base near Basra - Jane's
Apr. 29, 2003,
IRNA
http://www.irna.com/en/world/030429173117.ewo.shtml
London -- Like the US military, the UK is also planning to construct its own major base in Iraq near Basra to support its troop presence in the country, according to Jane's Defence Weekly.
Plans were being developed to turn Basra International Airport into a major logistics and helicopter base, the magazine quoted senior UK officers saying.
Elements of the UK's Joint Helicopter Force, including Chinooks and Pumas, were reported to be already moving to the airport in support of Armoured Division troops operating in and around Iraq's second biggest city.
Jane's said that it was not yet clear if the UK will establish a fully fledged airbase in Iraq, but that in the meantime, Air Force Harrier GR7 ground attack aircraft were remaining in Kuwait to provide air support for British forces.
It suggested that the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr was also likely to be increasingly used by shipping supporting the UK forces, replacing Kuwaiti ports.
The British plans follows reports that the US were intending to build four air bases inside Iraq that would become the logistic hubs for ground troops in much the same way as Bagram air base was used in Afghanistan and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
Jane's believed that the estimated 150,000 US and 30,000 UK troops operating in Iraq will be able to reduce as the security situation improves and local police and security forces evolve.
But it said that while political uncertainty clouds US military planning, it was clear the Pentagon did not envisage an early end to its troop presence either inside Iraq or the Persian Gulf.
-------- business
Trade Accords Become a U.S. Foreign Policy Tool
Pact With War Supporter Singapore Gets Expedited, but Deal With Opponent Chile Is Delayed
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51389-2003Apr28?language=printer
Here's a benefit a country gets for supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq: Its trade agreement with Washington moves ahead lickety-split. And here's a drawback a country suffers for opposing the war: Its trade deal gets stalled.
That is what is happening with Singapore and Chile. Both countries shook hands with Bush administration negotiators around the same time late last year to establish free-trade accords with the United States. But while Singapore backed Operation Iraqi Freedom, Chile demurred.
For students of diplomacy as practiced by the Bush White House, the disparity in timing the two trade pacts are experiencing should come as no surprise.
President Bush is scheduled to take part next week in a ceremony in which the U.S.-Singapore free-trade agreement is signed, with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong getting the red-carpet treatment. Once signed, the accord will be submitted to Congress for approval. But no date has been set for signing Chile's free-trade deal, even though the negotiations for it were completed before Singapore's.
One of the official explanations of the delay -- which draws hoots of derision from trade experts -- is that translations of legalese into Spanish, and back into English take time. More candidly, U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick told reporters recently that "people are disappointed" in Chile for having opposed the U.S. stance during debates in the U.N. Security Council.
"We hoped for their support in a time that we felt was very important," Zoellick said, adding, "I have no doubt that ultimately we'll proceed" with the U.S.-Chile agreement because "it's good for both countries." His deputy, Peter Allgeier, noted in a separate appearance: "We simply follow the direction of the State Department and the National Security Council" on such matters, because they set foreign policy.
The administration's use of the pacts to reward and punish countries for their foreign policy positions is drawing sharp criticism from business groups, trade experts and some members of Congress. They contend that the White House is endangering its effort to persuade countries to lower trade barriers, especially its efforts to strike a deal that would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement beyond Mexico to the rest of Latin America.
"If it looks like we're backing away from negotiated commitments with one of our staunchest and most supportive trading partners, it will give pause to other countries in the hemisphere," said Jeffrey Schott, a scholar at the Institute for International Economics. "They'll say, 'Maybe we shouldn't be so forthcoming in negotiating with [the United States] because they'll back away and leave us hanging high and dry.' "
A group of eight pro-trade Democratic senators and congressmen has sent Bush a letter warning that holding up the Chile agreement "would undermine our longer-term objectives by announcing to the world the U.S. is not serious about steering the global economy back onto the path of greater integration and truly free markets."
Business lobbyists are fuming, too. The trade representative's office was made separate from the State Department decades ago because of the need to keep trade from being used as a chit in foreign policy, said Calman Cohen, head of the Emergency Committee on American Trade, an organization of multinational firms.Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell hinted that the administration's freeze on Chile might be nearing an end, speaking warmly of the U.S.-Chile trade accord during a speech. Chilean Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear, who was in the audience, said in an interview, "we have no indication when it will be signed," but she added that she remains hopeful it will be before the U.S. electoral season begins to distract Congress. [Story, Page A17.]
Another recent administration trade decision that has aroused suspicion of foreign policy influence came Friday evening when the White House announced its rejection of a recommendation to slap tariffs on wire hangers made in China. The administration is hoping that Beijing will play a crucial role in defusing the crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Although the action involves a tiny market, the decision has potentially major importance as a precedent. Trade experts said it may signal that the administration is unlikely to approve other requests for tariffs on Chinese products that some U.S. industries are hoping to obtain under a new legal provision to guard against "surges" of Chinese imports.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said the decision was made strictly on economic, not foreign policy grounds. But Fred Waite, a lawyer who represented the U.S. hanger companies, noted that the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent body, recommended the tariffs.
"Exercising a little gallows humor, I suppose if this had gone to the White House the week our surveillance aircraft was forced down, we might have seen a different result," Waite said.
Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
-------- europe
Blair fears new Cold War over EU rift with US
By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent
29/04/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/29/weur29.xml/
Tony Blair issued a warning yesterday that the world would be plunged back into an era of insecurity and tension reminiscent of the Cold War unless Europe and America quickly repaired the transatlantic relationship.
On the eve of talks in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, who strongly opposed the war in Iraq, Mr Blair said there was a real danger that the advanced world would split into rival power blocs.
"My fear is that if we do not deal with the world on the basis of a partnership between Europe and America, then we will in a sense put back into the world the divisions that we wanted to get rid of when the Cold War finished.
"I think that would be just a disaster for the world."
The Iraq war split the European Union between those countries that backed Washington, led by Britain and Spain, and those that opposed military action, headed by France and Germany.
Mr Blair fears that the bad feeling caused by the war will exacerbate anti-Americanism in Europe, leading to a permanent rift.
Aiming his comments mainly at President Jacques Chirac, he said European leaders were facing a crucial time that would shape the future of global diplomacy. If they saw themselves as competitors to America, the dangers for world security and the global economy would be profound.
"I think it is a fundamental decision as to whether the world breaks into different centres of power that I think would very quickly become rival centres of power, or whether we see our task as trying to construct a partnership with America that others can join," he said.
"If you end up with two rival centres of power, you find a very, very difficult situation."
Mr Blair dismissed suggestions that he was being snubbed by France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, which meet in Brussels today to discuss their vision of European defence.
The four nations are expected to lay out plans for common defence forces that are as independent as possible of Nato.
Mr Blair, who developed the idea of a European defence with M Chirac early in his first term as Prime Minister, rejected suggestions that he was losing control of EU defence planning.
He said Britain would "not accept anything that undermines Nato or conflicts with the basis of European defence we have set out".
In a strong defence of his war aims, Mr Blair cautioned those who had opposed war against "crowing" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said there was "no doubt that weapons of mass destruction existed".
He said 1,000 sites in Iraq were being examined but most had not yet been analysed and no announcements would be made until they had.
The Prime Minister said it was clear that before military action began there had been a six-month programme of concealment by the Iraqis. One benefit of this for the allies was that it had made the weapons much more difficult to use during the conflict.
Urging rapprochement with France, he said it remained an "important ally" of Britain.
The two countries were the leading defence nations in Europe, had extensive interests in Africa and shared positions on most leading security and political institutions.
Negotiations on world trade would be one of the most important issues over the next six months, he added.
"Are Europe and America going to fight each other or come to a common position and drive that through?"
Mr Blair said he hoped that today's talks with Mr Putin would mark a turning point in relations between Europe and Washington. "My contacts with other European leaders and President Putin lead me to believe that a better atmosphere is developing."
They will discuss sanctions on Iraq and the role of the United Nations in achieving a stable government there.
----
'Old Europe' leaders to meet
By Philip Delves Broughton
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
April 29, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030429-12664027.htm
PARIS - Leaders from the four European countries most hostile to the war in Iraq meet in Brussels today to rekindle plans for a European defense force to rival NATO and show America that "old Europe" is down but not out.
France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, dubbed "old Europe" by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld before the war began, invited other European Union countries to attend, but found no takers. Critics have dubbed the gathering the "praline summit."
Britain and many of the EU's other powers are too concerned with the aftermath of the Iraq conflict, the future of NATO and the damage wrought to Europe's trans-Atlantic relationship by the war to go chest-beating for a European army that has long been pushed by Paris. The summit was called by the Belgians months ago when France and Germany still believed they could pressure Washington to delay the invasion of Iraq.
The summit's length and agenda have been pared down, but it still reflects an ambition to establish Europe as a diplomatic and military counterweight to the United States. That ambition has been fueled rather than sapped by the war.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who declined an invitation to attend, told the Reuters news agency that the gathering could be worthwhile if it gave fresh impetus to existing plans for European defense