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NUCLEAR
Nuclear controls: Not just in Iran
CONGO - Opposition sold uranium to al Qaeda
CIA cannot rule out China-Pakistan nuke links
Germany Starts Historic Nuclear Shutdown
Germany's Retreat from Nuclear Energy Begins
EU big 3 draft tough U.N. nuke resolution on Iran
EU to take step closer to creation of weapons agency
Iran pursues plans for heavy water reactor
Annan urges continued cooperation between Iran, UN nukes watchdog
Recipe for Disaster
Pakistan insists it gave no nuclear help to Iran
Iran urged to ratify nuclear test ban treaty
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Pakistan Insists It Gave No Nuclear Help to Iran
EU Big 3 Draft Tough U.N. Nuke Resolution on Iran
Clinton calls for nonaggression pact with North Korea
N. Korea offers to give up nukes
CIA sounds new warning on North Korea missile that could hit US
U.S., S. Korea to Prepare for Nuke Talks
Nuclear power plants warned
New Indian Pt. Cooling System: Years in the Making, and More to Come
Change at Indian Point
Fuel factory plans might be postponed
Hanford downwinders claims have fallen to 1,816
Rumsfeld will restructure U.S. military forces in Asia
Song For Things That Never Were - America 2003
MILITARY
China, India Hold Historic Naval Exercise
Belgrade apologizes for war atrocities
Science Panel Warns of Bioweapons Future
IBM debuts 73rd fastest machine in the world
U.S. negotiators meet resistance in seeking exemptions to chemical treaty
Shake-Up Spoils Colombia's Effort to Cast Stable Image
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Contractors' Deaths Add to Iraq Toll
Guerrillas Posing More Danger, Says U.S.
Air Raid Sends Iraqis Message, but What Is It?
New Urgency, New Risks in 'Iraqification'
Iraqi Shiites Move to Fill Security Role
U.S. Intensifies Strikes at Guerrillas in Iraq
U.S. bases in Okinawa remain a divisive issue
U.S. to Reopen Saudi Diplomatic Missions
A Curtain Lifts on the Life of Spies
Pollard Denied Appeal, Chance to Review Papers
Antibiotics provided to combat blindness
Rumsfeld, on Asia Tour, Hints of Shifts in U.S. Forces There
Army National Guard Pay Problems Cited
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Partisan Sniping on Iraqi Review Halts Work on Senate Panel
Deal on 9/11 Briefings Lets White House Edit Papers
Bipartisan Debate on Patriot Act Is Urged
TSA Ponders Cargo Inspection Requirements
Study Calls California Parole System a $1 Billion Failure
U.N. experts warn of al-Qaeda using WMD in the future
ENERGY AND OTHER
DON'T LET THE WHITE HOUSE MISLEAD THE WORLD ABOUT SAFE, CLEAN ENERGY!
House and Senate Said to Reach Deal on Broad Energy Bill
Researchers Create Virus in Record Time Organism Not Dangerous to Humans
Treated Wood Poses Cancer Risk to Kids
ACTIVISTS
NRC seeks to weaken EJ policy, deter public involvement
Opposition to Enola Gay Exhibit Gaining Steam
London cancels police leave to handle Bush protesters
SUDAN - Students protest strike by teachers
Georgia Protests Rattle Shevardnadze
Forum challenges the value of war, Veterans Day
Physicist to speak on uranium threat
Antiwar activist says law on his side
GCHQ whistleblower charged
Sixth day of protests staged in Georgia
1000 demonstrate against Israeli barrier in West Bank
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear controls: Not just in Iran
Friday November 14, 2003
The Guardian
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1084783,00.html
Iran's agreement at last to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the monitoring of its nuclear programme is an encouraging sign in a region otherwise short of good news. The threat of nuclear proliferation is even more worrying in a world which is now much less secure than it appeared at the end of the cold war. The mounting evidence of Iranian non-compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), coupled with President Bush's wildly exaggerated inclusion of Tehran in his "axis of evil", seemed to presage a new crisis with the potential for a new war. Partly through the sensible intervention of the EU - with Britain playing a positive role alongside France and Germany - that crisis has now been defused. The renewed assurances of the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that Britain, at any rate, would never support war against Iran, are doubly welcome.
Yet the Iranian case also illustrates the fragility of the international understandings which restrain the world from nuclear proliferation, and any gain which has been achieved may soon dissipate unless much more attention is focused on the need to strengthen them. There is no hard evidence that Iran was actually working on an atomic bomb, in spite of Washington's claims, but it does seem fairly obvious that it was keeping its options open by experimental research in the secret programme which has now been revealed. The argument for doing so, favoured by hardliners in Tehran, included reference to the Israeli nuclear arsenal (notably free from western censure) and to the emerging US doctrine of preventive war.
We need to remind ourselves that the agreement in 1995 of the non-nuclear powers - including Iran - to the indefinite extension of the NPT was only secured in return for specific assurances given by the nuclear powers. These included a clear pledge by those powers "to exert their utmost efforts" to establish a nuclear-free Middle East. There has been mounting frustration even from US allies like Egypt that this pledge has never been followed through. Now that the supposed threat of Iraq is out of the way, there is even less excuse for ignoring it. The other pledge given by the major nuclear powers - to seek "effective measures relating to (their own) nuclear disarmament" is better known - but has been equally ignored.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of IAEA, has recently added his weight to a proposal which might go a long way towards giving the non-nuclear community more confidence in the good intent of the nuclear powers, while specifically addressing the problem of proliferation raised by the cases of Iran and North Korea. This idea is for an agreement to restrict the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium and its processing "exclusively to facilities under multi-national control". This would require an international control regime which has not been seriously contemplated since the abortive post-war Baruch Plan. It would reduce the risk of terrorist acquisition but, crucially, would apply to all facilities in all countries including those of the nuclear powers.
It may sound a tall order to expect the US and the other powers to submit to such controls. But it is the only realistic way by which parity can be restored to the unequal relationship between the nuclear haves and have-nots. The proliferation of the last decade of nuclear weapons in South Asia already shows that non-nuclear restraint can no longer be guaranteed. As Sir Joseph Rotblat, veteran campaigner for disarmament, told the Pugwash Conference in July, the possession of nuclear weapons is "equally unacceptable, whether by 'rogue' or benevolent regimes". With attention again focused on the problem, it is time to grasp this nuclear nettle.
-------- africa
CONGO - Opposition sold uranium to al Qaeda
November 14, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
LYON, France - A representative of al Qaeda bought enriched uranium capable of being used in a so-called dirty bomb from the Congolese opposition in 2000, according to sworn testimony quoted in a French newspaper yesterday.
An unnamed former soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo has told investigators looking into the murders of two Congolese opposition figures in France in December 2000 that he had attended a meeting earlier that year at which the uranium was sold, the Lyon-based Le Progres reported.
The man "described a meeting which took place on March 3 in [the German city of] Hamburg between some Congolese men and an Egyptian by the name of Ibrahim Abdul," the newspaper said.
It quoted the man as saying, "I realized it was al Qaeda."
-------- china
CIA cannot rule out China-Pakistan nuke links
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031114173637.bwta1jnv.html
The CIA says in a new report that it cannot rule out links between Chinese firms and Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, despite Beijing's assurances that it will provide no such help.
The Central Intelligence Agency also cautions that Chinese entities continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic-missile-related projects during the first six months of this year.
Despite a warming of relations in recent years, the United States and China frequently find themselves at odds over proliferation.
Washington has slapped sanctions on a long list of Chinese firms accused of links to nations including Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.
The unclassified report to Congress notes that Beijing promised Washington in May 1996 not to provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities.
"We cannot rule out, however, some continued contacts subsequent to the pledge between Chinese entities and entities associated with Pakistan's nuclear weapons program," the report says.
The report notes that Beijing had taken some steps to educate individuals and firms on new missile-related export control regulations.
But it concludes that "Chinese entities continued to work with Pakistan and Iran on ballistic-missile-related projects during the first half of 2003."
Chinese assistance has helped Pakistan move toward serial production of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. It has also aided Iran's move to become self-sufficient in terms of producing ballistic missiles, the report said.
"In addition, firms in China provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and/or assistance to several other countries of proliferation concern -- such as Iran, Libya and North Korea," the report said.
China typically reacts angrily to US criticisms of its proliferation record.
In September, Beijing registered "strong opposition" after the US government imposed sanctions on the Chinese government and a state-run military firm for allegedly selling advanced missile technology to an unnamed country -- thought to be Iran.
In July, Paula DeSutter, a senior State Department official, said Beijing had failed to take serious steps requested by Washington to limit proliferation.
As a result, she argued that gaps in China's proliferation controls and a lax attitude by the government on enforcement were permitting Chinese firms to funnel illegal missile exports out of the country.
-------- europe
Germany Starts Historic Nuclear Shutdown
By TONY CZUCZKA
Associated Press Writer
Nov 14, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GERMANY_NUCLEAR_SHUTDOWN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BERLIN (AP) -- Germany began phasing out nuclear power Friday when a 32-year-old power plant was switched off forever, the first step toward a historic shift in the energy supply of Europe's biggest economy.
Eighteen remaining plants are to be closed over the next two decades under an accord between utilities and the government that bears the stamp of the environmentalist Greens party, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's junior partner.
Germany's second-oldest nuclear plant at Stade in northern Germany, operated by the E.On Kernkraft utility, was powered down at about 8:30 a.m., the Lower Saxony state environment ministry said.
Plans call for the 660-megawatt plant to be torn down starting in 2005, after spent nuclear fuel rods are removed and sent to France for reprocessing. Demolition work is expected to take up to 12 years.
Germany is the largest industrial nation to willingly forego nuclear power, which currently provides nearly one-third of the country's electricity. Alternative energy sources such as gas, but also wind and solar power, are supposed to make up the shortfall.
Schroeder pledged to phase out Germany's 19 nuclear plants during his first election campaign in 1998, which brought his Social Democrats and the Greens to power.
After lengthy and tough bargaining, the deal with power companies was sealed in 2001. Legislation passed by parliament to back up the accord includes a ban on the building of new nuclear power plants.
The shutdown was a key demand of the Greens, a party that grew out of Germany's strong anti-nuclear movement.
Spent fuel from German power plants is sent to France and Britain for reprocessing but returns to Germany for storage, triggering regular protests by anti-nuclear activists when the shipments come back to a disputed storage site.
----
Germany's Retreat from Nuclear Energy Begins
November 14, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-energy-germany-nuclear.html
STADE, Germany (Reuters) - Germany switched off the first of its 19 nuclear power stations on Friday, launching what it calls the world's fastest withdrawal from atomic energy but a policy that may still be reversed if the opposition takes power.
Germany's center-left government struck a deal with industry in 2000 to close all nuclear power plants by about 2025, the Greens making a phase-out a condition for forming a coalition with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats in 1998.
However, it is still unclear if Germany can meet the deadline and how it will replace atomic power, which provides a third of its electricity, while also meeting commitments to cap its emissions of greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels.
With little fanfare inside the control room, the Stade plant, Germany's second oldest, ceased operations on Friday morning with the simple pressing of two buttons.
``All rods are engaged. We are now out,'' said shift leader Bernd Schroeder as the reactor near Hamburg shut off.
Greens Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said Friday's closure showed nuclear power had no future in Germany.
``No country is pulling out as quickly as Germany. Up until 2020 one nuclear power plant will be closed on average every year in Germany,'' he said in a speech
The Greens held a party in Berlin to celebrate, but operator E.ON said its 32-year-old reactor would have closed anyway on purely economic grounds without government pressure.
Opposition parties have threatened to reverse the withdrawal. Within government, Trittin is at odds with SPD Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement over how much to promote renewable energy as coal subsidies are phased out as Germany seeks alternatives to make up the nuclear power shortfall.
EUROPEAN LEADER
Like Germany, Belgium and Sweden have also announced nuclear phase-out plans. Sweden closed one reactor but postponed further closures after protests from energy-intensive industry.
France, which relies on nuclear power for 80 percent of its electricity, and Britain are keeping their options open to build new nuclear plants to replace aging ones.
Finland, the only country in western Europe expanding its atomic energy production, is soon to start building its fifth nuclear reactor.
``There's little sign of Europe following Germany. If anything it's going more in the opposite direction,'' said Berthold Hannes, analyst at consultancy A.T. Kearney.
``Germany's conservatives could also reverse the decision if they came to power. I don't think there will be any new nuclear plants, but the present ones could have their lives extended from 32 years to, say 50 years, or even 60 years as in the United States,'' he added.
Germany's VDEW electricity association urged the government to extend the lives of nuclear power plants, saying it would help the country keep to greenhouse gas limits. It called Stade's shutdown a routine closure, not an ecological triumph.
German Friends of the Earth was also not celebrating, saying some of Stade's output had been shifted to other nuclear plants.
Despite winning the pledge of an end to atomic power, anti-nuclear protesters are still a force to be reckoned with in Germany, with thousands earlier this week disrupting a shipment of nuclear waste returning to a German storage site.
The reprocessed fuel did complete its journey from France with the help of 13,000 police, but protesters secured extensive media coverage and ensured the nuclear industry remains a costly burden -- at least for the state which footed the policing bill.
Work on dismantling the 672-megawatt Stade nuclear reactor is due to begin in 2005, once its fuel has been removed.
----
EU big 3 draft tough U.N. nuke resolution on Iran
14.11.2003
(Reuters/BGNES)
http://www.bgnewsnet.com/story.asp?st=1969
VIENNA - France, Germany and Britain are preparing a toughly worded resolution criticizing Iran for concealing sensitive nuclear technology for decades from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, diplomats said Friday.
On Nov. 20, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors meets to discuss an IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, detailing 18 years of failures by Iran to inform the agency of all its atomic activities and facilities
The United States wants the board to declare Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would require it to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.
A Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Europe, Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), who make up a majority of the 35-member board, have "a more or less common opinion" against reporting Iran to the council.
"It would be extremely difficult, or simply impossible to reach a consensus on non-compliance (with the NPT)," the diplomat said, adding most board members favored a "strongly worded resolution that sends a very strong message" to Iran.
Diplomats said France, Germany and Britain had indicated they were already working on such a draft resolution, though they said nothing had been circulated yet.
It was unclear whether the proposal would be enough to satisfy the United States and its allies taking a similarly tough line on the Iran issue -- Canada and Australia.
Tehran warned Thursday that the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program could escalate if the IAEA finds it in breach of its NPT obligations and reports it to the Security Council.
"I hope we do not reach such a stage because then things could very easily get out of control," Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters in an interview.
"And then it could lead to unpredictable consequences. We don't even want to think about such a situation," he added, without elaborating.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters on Friday during a visit to Japan: "We are strongly determined on complete transparency. We have cooperated even more than the IAEA expected."
The IAEA's latest report on Iran concluded there was "no evidence" to date that Iran's nuclear program was for anything but peaceful purposes, but said the jury was still out.
It said Iran hid a centrifuge uranium enrichment program for 18 years and produced small amounts of plutonium, useable in a bomb and with scant civilian uses.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters, said Thursday the report made clear the Iranians had not been truthful about their nuclear activities.
"And I think the issue now is are they going to be truthful in the future? Are they going to come clean about what had been going on Iran, what is going on in Iran?"
These comments were much softer than those of Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who said Wednesday the IAEA report confirmed the U.S. view that "the massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program."
Bolton also said the IAEA's statement that there was no evidence of a weapons program was "impossible to believe."
The IAEA rejected Bolton's comment. "We stand by the report," spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said. Referring to a deal struck by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain on October 21 in Tehran, Salehi said the three countries should keep their word and not support any U.S.-backed IAEA board resolution.
"We are testing how far we can trust the words of the Europeans on this particular issue. We have taken action on our words. We hope that the Europeans also take action on their words," Salehi said.
Iran had agreed with the Europeans to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program and sign the NPT Additional Protocol permitting the IAEA to perform more intrusive, short-notice inspections of all its nuclear sites.
Monday, Tehran suspended enrichment and sent an official letter of intent to sign the protocol, as it had promised.
----
EU to take step closer to creation of weapons agency
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
The European Union is set to approve Monday the establishment of a team to oversee the creation of a European weapons agency in 2004, diplomatic sources said.
European foreign affairs and defence ministers meeting in Brussels will likely approve the creation of this team before taking a final decision on the agency itself "when the time comes".
"They will agree in principle on the creation of this agency in 2004," one diplomatic source said.
A European weapons agency was proposed in the draft EU constitution agreed in June, which is now the basis of the constitutional talks being held between EU governments.
EU governments are currently grappling with the proposals to create an EU-wide arms agency which would help boost the bloc's military muscle.
It would notably coordinate purchasing and drum up contributions from member states.
Occar, the current European arms procurement agency formed by Britain, France, Germany and Italy for the management of collaborative armament programmes, has had a limited role, another diplomat said.
"This time we want to give (the EU weapons agency) every chance for success," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity, talking of a "logic of growth in progressive power."
The agency would be managed by the secretariat of the EU council of ministers, with EU defence ministers sitting on its board.
-------- iran
Iran pursues plans for heavy water reactor
By Jack Boureston and Charles Mahaffey,
14 November 2003
Janes
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir031114_1_n.shtml
Iran has admitted it is in the final phase of designing a 40MW heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak. Officials have said that the basic design of the reactor, called the IR-40, has already been completed, and that work has started on a more detailed design. Construction work is due to begin in early 2004. If this is the case, past historical data on the construction of heavy water reactors suggests that the IR-40 could be completed by 2009.
Although the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran has provided technical specifications of the reactor to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for review, the international community remains deeply concerned over the intended purpose of IR-40, its possible configuration and its capabilities.
Iran has stated that the IR-40 will be used for research and development, radioisotope production, and training. One main advantage of a heavy water reactor is the high absorption factor of heavy water (D2O) over other moderators. This translates into a larger number of isotopes being produced to satisfy the increasing isotope requirements in the medical and agricultural industries.
However, a heavy water reactor is among the most dangerous in existence from a proliferation perspective. One reason is that the low neutron cross section of heavy water allows a high number of U238 (uranium-238 isotope) atoms to absorb neutrons, resulting in the production of a greater quantity and better quality of plutonium product from a heavy water reactor compared to a light water reactor. According to David Albright, Director of the Institute for Science and International Security, the IR-40 will be able to produce 8-10kg of plutonium per year - approximately one to two bombs' worth of nuclear material. The IAEA holds that 8kg of plutonium constitutes a "significant quantity" - enough to build a nuclear weapon.
However, such estimates of yield assume that the IR-40 will be running at full power throughout the year and the total amount of spent fuel will be used for plutonium production. Also, such estimates of plutonium yield are not realistic unless the Iranians construct a plutonium separation (reprocessing) facility of sufficient size and capacity to support a plutonium-based weapons programme. That facility, if properly designed, might also accommodate the irradiated fuel from the Bushehr reactor, should Iran decide not to return it to Russia.
It is also possible that the Iranians could separate the spent fuel from the IR-40 and clandestinely hide portions of separated plutonium for use in a weapon at a later date. In this case, it would take longer to finally get to a "significant quantity" of plutonium. Either way, this reactor is a cause for concern, given the fact that similar reactors have been used to produce plutonium in other countries in the past; Israel and India used reactors of comparable design to the IR-40 that were capable of generating similar levels of thermal power to produce their first fission bombs.
----
Annan urges continued cooperation between Iran, UN nukes watchdog
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031114180257.cjq7vna8.html
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday urged the UN's nuclear watchdog and Iran to keep working together amid a row over Tehran's nuclear programme.
In a statement from his spokesman, Annan said he "encourages the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), the government of Iran and the other governments that have been working with Iran...to continue their efforts."
He also welcomed Iran's announcement that it has stopped enriching nuclear materials, the spokesman said.
Iran is trying to keep its nuclear programme from being taken up by the UN Security Council, which could impose punitive sanctions on Tehran.
The IAEA board meets next week in Vienna to consider the agency's report on Iran and if it finds the country in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it could refer the matter to the council.
The report was the result of eight months of investigations, including dozens of trips by inspectors to Iran and intensive laboratory analyses of samples, since IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei visited Iran to check out reports of undeclared nuclear facilities.
In it, ElBaradei accuses Iran of covert nuclear activities over the past 20 years, including producing plutonium and enriching uranium, but says there is not yet evidence Tehran is trying to produce an atomic weapon.
The United States accuses the Islamic republic of trying to build an atomic weapon and called the report "impossible to believe."
----
Recipe for Disaster
Asking the right Iran questions.
By Amir Taheri
November 14, 2003
National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/taheri200311140918.asp
Is Iran producing nuclear weapons?
Tehran says: No.
Washington says: Yes
The European Union says: Maybe. And next week the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected to say: Maybe yes, maybe not!
Why are there such divergent views on an issue that, given the wealth of data now at the disposal of the IAEA, should not be so hard to handle?
Part of the confusion is because the wrong question is asked.
Iran is right in saying that it is not producing nuclear weapons. What Iran is doing is to set up all the technical, industrial, and materiel means needed to produce such weapons, if and when it decides to do so.
In other words, while not producing nuclear weapons right now, Iran has a nuclear program designed to make such weapons within 18 months. It is like a chef who brings in all that is needed for making a soup but does not actually start the cooking until he knows when the guests will be coming.
With a brief interruption in the post-Revolution era, this has been Iran's policy since 1970.
In the past three decades Iran has trained and mobilized the scientists and technicians needed, built the research centers required, and set up structures for a complete nuclear cycle, from raw materials to the finished product. In that sense Iran's nuclear program maybe better structured than those of several countries, including Pakistan, Ukraine, Serbia, and Brazil that helped with the various stages of its development. Iran has its own uranium reserves, regarded as among the richest in the world, and has a history of nuclear research that dates back to 1955.
Part of the Iranian national defense doctrine is based on the capacity to produce and deploy nuclear weapons within a brief time span.
Before the revolution Iran regarded its northern neighbor, the Soviet Union, as the sole serious threat to its national security. The Iranian war strategy was based on a scenario in which a Soviet invasion would begin with conventional weapons only. In that case Iran would withdraw its forces from its northern provinces, almost a third of its territory, to regroup them across the Zagross mountain range. After that Iran would threaten to use its nuclear weapons against Soviet occupation forces.
The hope was that Soviet leaders, faced with the high cost of a nuclear exchange would agree to withdraw their troops from the occupied provinces.
That scenario was based on the 1945-46 fight between Tehran and Moscow over the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan that had been under Soviet occupation since 1941. At that time the Soviets did not yet have nuclear weapons, and a threat from the Truman administration in Washington was sufficient to persuade Stalin that it was prudent to withdraw from Iran.
After the revolution, Iran's national defense doctrine has been based on the assumption that it will, one day, fight a war with the United States plus its Arab allies and Israel.
The central assumption of Iranian strategists is that the U.S. cannot sustain a long war. It is, therefore, necessary to pin down its forces and raise the kill-die ratio to levels unacceptable by the American public. In the meantime, Iran would put its nuclear-weapons program in high gear, and brandish the threat of nuclear war as a means of forcing the U.S. to accept a ceasefire and withdraw its forces from whatever chunk of Iranian territory they may have seized.
Former President Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly evoked the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Washington's regional allies, especially Israel.
"In a nuclear duel in the region, Israel may kill 100 million Muslims," Rafsanjani said in a speech in Tehran in October 2000. "Muslims can sustain such casualties, knowing that, in exchange, there would be no Israel on the map."
Iran's top military commander, General Rahim Safavi, and Defence Minister Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhani have also spoken about a military clash with the United States as the only serious threat to the Khomeinist regime in Tehran.
They believe they have three trump cards to play.
The first is that Iran has a demographic reserve of some 20 million people and is thus capable of sustaining levels of casualties unthinkable for Americans.
The second is that Iran is already the missile superpower of the Middle East and could target all of Washington's allies in the region.
"We have enough missiles for a rain of death the kind of which no one has imagined in this part of the world," Shamkhani claimed in a speech in Tehran in 1999.
Iran's third trump card is its nuclear program. Without it the other two cards will not have the effect desired, especially if the U.S. could unleash its new generation of low-grade nuclear weapons designed for battlefield use.
Hamid Zomorrodi, an Iranian strategy expert says it is unlikely that Iran will cripple its national defence doctrine by abandoning its nuclear aspect.
The real issue is not the bomb," he says. "Regardless of who rules in Tehran, Iran is sure to have nuclear weapons whenever its leaders decide to have them. The real issue is who will be in control of those weapons and who will be their target."
The view is echoed by Gary Samore, the nuclear expert in the Institute for International Strategic Studies in London.
"There is no doubt that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme," he says. "No amount of diplomatic manoeuvring and political pressure is likely to persuade Iran to drop what has become a top national priority."
Washington hawks believe that the only realistic policy towards Iran is one of regime change before the Khomeinists produce their nuclear arsenal. They believe this could be achieved with a mixture of military and diplomatic pressure combined with moral and material support for the pro-democracy movement in Iran.
The Europeans, however, fear that any attempt even at soft regime change may push the Khomeinists on the offensive in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, the Caucasus, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories.
"The Americans are right in asserting that Iran is the world's terrorism superpower," says Zomorrodi. "Strangely, however, they believe that Iran would not use its terrorism resources if and when its back is to the wall. That is a dangerous assumption. "
Olivier Roy, a French specialist on Iran, agrees.
He says it is wrong to believe that the tactic used against Saddam Hussein could also be employed against the Khomeinists in Tehran.
Saddam had no network of support in the region whereas the Iranian regime does and is thus in a position to make a great deal of trouble for the US and its allies.
On November 20, the International Atomic Energy Agency will submit its report on Iran to the United Nations' Security Council. An internal IAEA report on the subject, however, shows that Iran will almost certainly be charged with violating aspects of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it signed in 1970. The accumulation of detail in the report and in two previous assessments from Dr ElBaradei this year paints a picture of a long-term, sophisticated program running since the mid-1980s. Only this year did the rest of the world obtain a glimpse of the Iranian projects.
"Iran has now acknowledged that it has been developing, for 18 years, a uranium centrifuge enrichment programme, and, for 12 years, a laser enrichment programme," the report said.
Four unnamed foreign countries had helped the Iranians with know-how and equipment. Other sources have identified the countries as Pakistan, Serbia, Ukraine, and North Korea.
ElBaradei also said his inspectors had not yet resolved the origin of the weapons-grade uranium traces found at a Tehran plant and the Natanz enrichment complex. He insisted that to settle the plethora of open questions about the Iranian programmes, the IAEA would need "a particularly robust verification system," requiring "full transparency and openness on the part of Iran".
At first Iran said it had kept Natanz secret because it had developed the entire project with domestic technology which it feared might be "stolen" by others. But when traces of highly enriched uranium were found, Iran claimed that the machines installed at Natanz had been bought second-hand from abroad, and may have been used to produce weapons' grade materiel in their country of origin. IAEA inspectors also found the following:
Plutonium: Manufactured at a Tehran laboratory between 1988 and 1992, despite previous denials from Iran. Very small quantity extracted, not enough for a bomb. But Iranian scientists now know how to manufacture bomb-grade plutonium. If Iran does not plan to make any bombs there is no reason why it should produce any plutonium.
Laser uranium enrichment: Under U.N. questioning in October, Iran admitted it had built a pilot laser-enrichment facility at Lashkar Abad, northwest of Tehran in 1999. Four unnamed countries have been involved in supplying equipment and know-how for 20 years. The Iranians admit banned experiments there until this year. They say the facility was dismantled in May. Last month U.N. inspectors' requests to examine equipment and talk to the scientists were "deferred by Iran."
Uranium metal conversion: Uranium metal is most commonly used for nuclear missiles. Earlier discoveries of metal conversion work were explained away by the Iranians as "shielding material." In October they said the uranium metal was for use in the previously undisclosed laser-enrichment project.
Weapons' grade uranium: The IAEA's previous report disclosed traces of two types of weapons-grade uranium at the underground centrifuge enrichment plant at Natanz. The IAEA then reported traces of weapons-grade uranium at the Kalaye electric company in Tehran.
Heavy water: Iran has been working on heavy water, needed to manufacture plutonium, at a secret facility in Arak, west of Tehran since 1995. Having denied the existence of the facility, Iran admitted it last month but has refused to allow IAEA inspectors to visit it.
The real question is: Can the world accept the present Iranian regime with nuclear weapons?
It is clear that the answer cannot come from the IAEA.
- Amir Taheri, an NRO contributor, is an Iranian author of ten books on the Middle East and Islam. He's available through www.benadorassociates.com.
----
Pakistan insists it gave no nuclear help to Iran
14 Nov 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL3994.htm
ISLAMABAD, Nov 14 - Pakistan on Friday reiterated its denial of reports that it had assisted neighbouring Iran's nuclear programme, calling them a reflection of "anti-Muslim bias".
A foreign ministry statement issued after a meeting in Islamabad on Thursday between Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Gulam Ali Khoshroo and Pakistan's Acting Foreign Secretary Tariq Osmal Hyder said both sides had rejected a report in that day's London Times as "totally baseless".
"These unsubstantiated reports occur periodically in some sections of the Western media and they reflect their long-standing anti-Muslim bias," the statement said.
The statement said that in Islamabad, Khoshroo had detailed Iran's efforts to resolve outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. Pakistan said it hoped these would be amicably resolved.
Earlier this week, Iran brushed off an IAEA report that it had engaged in activities linked to atom bomb making, saying that violations it was accused of by the U.N. agency were "insignificant".
The IAEA said no evidence had so far been found of a bomb programme in Iran, but Tehran had dabbled in possibly linked activities like plutonium production and uranium enrichment.
The Times report quoted unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations as saying that Iran had told the IAEA in the past two weeks that it received crucial help from Pakistan for its controversial nuclear programme.
It said Iran had named Pakistan and several other countries as the source of components and advice used to make centrifuges to enrich uranium, the most controversial part of its research.
It said the IAEA was now trying to confirm exactly when the assistance was given and and whether it came from scientists acting on their own or on behalf of their governments.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has denied reports that it supplied nuclear technology to North Korea, a country the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency says appears to have built one or two nuclear weapons.
Visiting South Korea earlier this month, President Pervez Musharraf said a reported visit by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's bomb, was connected with the purchase of conventional short-range missiles, not sales of nuclear technology.
A Pakistani firm Khan once headed was slapped with sanctions in March after Washington accused it of transferring nuclear capable missiles from North Korea to Pakistan.
----
Iran urged to ratify nuclear test ban treaty
Friday, November 14 , 2003
(AFP)
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=19701&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
VIENNA, Nov 13 - A United Nations commission on Thursday urged Iran, which has been accused by the United States of seeking atomic weapons, to ratify without delay a 1996 treaty banning nuclear testing.
Thomas Selzer, the president of the UN preparatory commission on the implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), said it would be a logical step as Iran appeared ready to heed other calls on its nuclear programme.
"Iran, which now appears ready to sign an additional protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), should ratify the CTBT. It is logical," he said.
Iran, which denies that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, signed the CTBT in September 1996, but has so far failed to ratify the treaty.
The treaty commits countries who have ratified to refrain from any kind of nuclear weapons testing.
The treaty appears likely to collapse as all the countries with nuclear capabilities must ratify it in order for it to come into force, and the United States has indicated that it has no plans to ratify it.
Under strong international pressure Iran recently announced that it was prepared to sign an additional protocol to the NPT that would allow surprise inspections of its nuclear sites.
It is expected to do so after a meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna on November20 .
The IAEA this week in a report accused Tehran of two decades of covert nuclear activities, including making plutonium and enriched uranium, but said it had found no evidence that the Islamic Republic was pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
----
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
November 14, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US-Democracy.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's supreme leader said Friday that America's military occupation of Iraq was failing and criticized President Bush's call for greater democracy in the Middle East.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose hard-line Islamic establishment has been accused by the United States of not doing enough to prevent anti-American forces from entering neighboring Iraq, said U.S. troops ``are being slapped in the face every day by Iraqis.''
``They (the United States) invaded Iraq with a promise to free its people but they have created a deplorable situation there,'' Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshippers at Tehran's Grand Mosque during a Friday prayer sermon.
U.S. forces are coming under increased resistance from forces inside Iraq, with more than 50 coalition soldiers killed this month.
Khamenei said the Americans ``overthrew an Iraqi dictator (Saddam Hussein) and installed a foreign dictator (U.S. provisional authority chief L. Paul Bremer) in his place.''
Khamenei's comments come as Iran tries to disprove U.S. claims that it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The dispute has further aggravated longstanding tensions in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Khamenei also assailed Bush's recent appeal to Middle Eastern states, particularly Iran, to do more to promote democratic reform.
``People who so openly disregard the rights of nations and views are ... mistaken to regard themselves as the custodians of democracy,'' the Iranian leader said.
Khamenei also used his mosque sermon to defend Iranian hard-line authorities who have cracked down on reformist publications, saying U.S. backers in Iran are seeking to use the country's press to bring down the ruling Islamic establishment.
The crackdown has put nearly 100 publications out of operation over the last 3 1/2 years for criticizing the rule of Iran's unelected hard-liners.
``Anybody provoking a psychological war against the (Iranian) establishment works for the U.S., no matter (if) he receives money for this or works (for) free,'' the leader said.
Unelected hard-liners control the levers of power in Iran and have blocked most attempts by the elected government to reform the country's Islamic regime. Khamenei has final say in all matters.
----
Pakistan Insists It Gave No Nuclear Help to Iran
November 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-pakistan-iran.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan Friday reiterated its denial of reports that it had assisted neighboring Iran's nuclear program, calling them a reflection of ``anti-Muslim bias.''
A foreign ministry statement issued after a meeting in Islamabad Thursday between Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Gulam Ali Khoshroo and Pakistan's Acting Foreign Secretary Tariq Osmal Hyder said both sides had rejected a report in that day's London Times as ``totally baseless.''
``These unsubstantiated reports occur periodically in some sections of the Western media and they reflect their long-standing anti-Muslim bias,'' the statement said.
The statement said that in Islamabad, Khoshroo had detailed Iran's efforts to resolve outstanding issues with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. Pakistan said it hoped these would be amicably resolved.
Earlier this week, Iran brushed off an IAEA report that it had engaged in activities linked to atom bomb making, saying that violations it was accused of by the U.N. agency were ``insignificant.''
The IAEA said no evidence had so far been found of a bomb program in Iran, but Tehran had dabbled in possibly linked activities like plutonium production and uranium enrichment.
The Times report quoted unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations as saying that Iran had told the IAEA in the past two weeks that it received crucial help from Pakistan for its controversial nuclear program.
It said Iran had named Pakistan and several other countries as the source of components and advice used to make centrifuges to enrich uranium, the most controversial part of its research.
It said the IAEA was now trying to confirm exactly when the assistance was given and whether it came from scientists acting on their own or on behalf of their governments.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has denied reports that it supplied nuclear technology to North Korea, a country the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency says appears to have built one or two nuclear weapons.
Visiting South Korea earlier this month, President Pervez Musharraf said a reported visit by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's bomb, was connected with the purchase of conventional short-range missiles, not sales of nuclear technology.
A Pakistani firm Khan once headed was slapped with sanctions in March after Washington accused it of transferring nuclear capable missiles from North Korea to Pakistan.
--------
EU Big 3 Draft Tough U.N. Nuke Resolution on Iran
November 14, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - France, Germany and Britain are preparing a toughly worded resolution criticizing Iran for concealing sensitive nuclear technology for decades from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, diplomats said Friday.
On Nov. 20, the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors meets to discuss an IAEA report on Iran's nuclear program, detailing 18 years of failures by Iran to inform the agency of all its atomic activities and facilities.
The United States wants the board to declare Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which would require it to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.
A Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Europe, Latin America and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), who make up a majority of the 35-member board, have ``a more or less common opinion'' against reporting Iran to the council.
``It would be extremely difficult, or simply impossible to reach a consensus on non-compliance (with the NPT),'' the diplomat said, adding most board members favored a ``strongly worded resolution that sends a very strong message'' to Iran.
Diplomats said France, Germany and Britain had indicated they were already working on such a draft resolution, though they said nothing had been circulated yet.
It was unclear whether the proposal would be enough to satisfy the United States and its allies taking a similarly tough line on the Iran issue -- Canada and Australia.
Tehran warned Thursday that the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program could escalate if the IAEA finds it in breach of its NPT obligations and reports it to the Security Council.
``I hope we do not reach such a stage because then things could very easily get out of control,'' Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters in an interview.
``And then it could lead to unpredictable consequences. We don't even want to think about such a situation,'' he added, without elaborating.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters on Friday during a visit to Japan: ``We are strongly determined on complete transparency. We have cooperated even more than the IAEA expected.''
TWO DECADES OF CONCEALMENT
The IAEA's latest report on Iran concluded there was ``no evidence'' to date that Iran's nuclear program was for anything but peaceful purposes, but said the jury was still out.
It said Iran hid a centrifuge uranium enrichment program for 18 years and produced small amounts of plutonium, useable in a bomb and with scant civilian uses.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, speaking to reporters, said Thursday the report made clear the Iranians had not been truthful about their nuclear activities.
``And I think the issue now is are they going to be truthful in the future? Are they going to come clean about what had been going on Iran, what is going on in Iran?''
These comments were much softer than those of Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who said Wednesday the IAEA report confirmed the U.S. view that ``the massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program.''
Bolton also said the IAEA's statement that there was no evidence of a weapons program was ``impossible to believe.''
The IAEA rejected Bolton's comment. ``We stand by the report,'' spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
Referring to a deal struck by the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Britain on October 21 in Tehran, Salehi said the three countries should keep their word and not support any U.S.-backed IAEA board resolution.
``We are testing how far we can trust the words of the Europeans on this particular issue. We have taken action on our words. We hope that the Europeans also take action on their words,'' Salehi said.
Iran had agreed with the Europeans to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment program and sign the NPT Additional Protocol permitting the IAEA to perform more intrusive, short-notice inspections of all its nuclear sites.
Monday, Tehran suspended enrichment and sent an official letter of intent to sign the protocol, as it had promised.
-------- korea
Clinton calls for nonaggression pact with North Korea
JAE-SUK YOO,
Associated Press Writer (AP)
Friday, November 14, 2003
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/11/14/international0835EST0504.DTL
(11-14) 05:35 PST SEOUL, South Korea -- Former President Bill Clinton urged the Bush administration Friday to sign a nonaggression pact with North Korea to help end a yearlong standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program.
Addressing a crowd of South Korean politicians and celebrities, Clinton expressed hope that six-nation talks on the nuclear crisis -- which China is trying to put together, possibly for December -- would produce a "verifiable" agreement in which impoverished North Korea would give up its nuclear and missile ambitions in return for food, energy and other economic aid.
"And I would include an agreement between the United States and North Korea on nonaggression because I don't think our country will ever be aggressive against anyone who did not violate an agreement first," Clinton said.
"I don't think that we'd lose much by giving them an agreement that requires good conduct on their behalf as well as ours," he added. "That is what I hope and believe can be done."
President Bush has ruled out a nonaggression treaty with Pyongyang, but he has offered to provide North Korea with written security assurances in return for the dismantling of its nuclear program.
While Clinton was in office, the United States and North Korea signed an agreement in which Pyongyang promised to freeze its nuclear activities in exchange for better ties and economic aid. The 1994 accord collapsed last year when U.S. officials said Pyongyang admitted running a secret weapons program.
Washington and its allies later cut off shipments of free fuel oil. North Korea then announced that it was extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods to build more bombs.
"If there is no other way (for North Korea) to make a living, the temptations of selling these bombs and missiles are very great," Clinton said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly plans to meet with Japanese and South Korean officials next week to prepare for a new round of six-nation talks aimed at ending the nuclear crisis.
Kelly arrives in Tokyo Sunday for a three-day stopover before holding three days of talks in Seoul starting Wednesday.
Representatives of the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia held their first six-nation talks in Beijing in August. But the meeting ended without agreeing on when to meet again.
Diplomatic efforts to resume negotiations gained speed after North Korea last month agreed "in principle" to return to the negotiating table.
China, North Korea's major ally, has sent diplomats to North Korea, the United States, South Korea and Japan, to try to jump-start the second round, likely in December.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo pledged Friday to peacefully resolve the standoff and arrange new talks but gave no word on when more negotiations might be held.
Dai, who was in Tokyo to discuss the nuclear dispute, told Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi that China was working to schedule a meeting soon, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
----
N. Korea offers to give up nukes
November 14, 2003
By John Zarocostas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031113-110713-6969r.htm
GENEVA - North Korean diplomats said yesterday the nation was willing to give up its nuclear deterrent, stop testing and exporting missiles and permit annual inspections as part of a grand bargain with its four neighbors and the United States.
In exchange, the diplomats said, the North expected written security guarantees and compensation for economic losses suffered by a decision to halt construction of two South Korean-made nuclear power plants in the North.
In addition, the envoys said the United States must pledge not to hinder the economic development of the North, particularly its dealings with Japan and South Korea.
Two diplomats, in a rare, wide-ranging interview, reiterated Pyongyang's position that it might be prepared to consider President Bush's proposal for written guarantees on security "positively" if they were linked to simultaneous diplomatic actions demanded by the communist regime.
The envoys said there is so far no confirmation of the date, but the six-way talks involving the United States, Russia, China the two Koreas and Japan are expected to continue, and they underscored that Pyongyang "agreed in principle to the next round of talks."
Until now, North Korea has been adamant it wants a nonaggression pact with the United States, which President Bush and his administration have refused.
On Oct. 22, Mr. Bush said "a treaty is not going to happen, but there are other ways to effect, on paper, what I have said publicly: We have no intention of invading. Obviously, any guarantee would be conditional, on Kim Jong-il doing what he hopefully will say he'll do, which is get rid of his nuclear weapons program."
A few days later, Pyongyang signaled its willingness to consider a written guarantee instead of a formal treaty.
When asked whether Pyongyang was still insistent on a North Korea-U.S. nonaggression pact, or could live with an accord signed by the six parties, one of the envoys, Kim Yong-ho, said yesterday:
"If Mr. Bush's proposal on written guarantees of security is based on the principle of simultaneous action which was proposed by the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea], we can consider positively about that."
The envoy said there is a need for simultaneous action between North Korea and the United States because, as he put it, "between the U.S. and the DPRK there is no confidence or mutual trust, so we cannot do first, and the U.S. cannot do first, so we do simultaneously."
Pressed on what he meant by simultaneously, Mr. Kim said "first guarantee the security, and second do not hinder the economic development of my country."
Kim Song-sol, the other senior North Korean diplomat, added that during the first round of six-way talks in Beijing in April, Pyongyang had proposed a nonaggression treaty, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two, and the guarantee of the realization of economic collaboration between its neighbors South Korea and Japan.
The envoy added that the North's demands also include compensation for the electricity loss and to complete construction of the two light water reactors.
As part of the bargain in exchange, Kim Song-sol said, Pyongyang would "not manufacture nuclear weapons, allow annual inspections, dissolve the nuclear facilities, and suspend the testing of missiles or the missile export or such kind of things."
Turning to other issues, the diplomats also urged other governments "including the U.S., to push Japan to respond positively" to a proposal by Pyongyang for bilateral talks to discuss reparations for war crimes and other serious human rights violations inflicted by the Japanese military and imperial government during World War II and the period of occupation and colonial rule of Korea.
"Japan should respond positively in any way. It is a very critical issue to solve before the normalization of the relations between the two countries ... therefore the Japanese government should come to the table, as we proposed," Kim Song-sol said.
"We cannot explore any possibilities if Japan refuses the proposal," said Kim Yong-ho.
The envoys stressed that new evidence disclosing 420,000 victims forcibly drafted during the Japanese occupation has renewed calls for action on the past crimes.
This included about 200 women and girls who were sexually abused by the Japanese forces, and many more who were victims of torture or used as guinea pigs for experiments.
"Over 1 million [Koreans] were massacred by the Japanese and also 8.4 million Korean adults and youth forcefully drafted, kidnapped by the Japanese military and government and used as forced labor.
The last round of North Korea-Japan normalization talks were held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October 2002, just one month after the historic visit to Pyongyang by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The North says the addition of security preconditions by Japan linked to the nuclear issue and missile posturing led to the breakdown of talks.
However, for Japan the North Korean nuclear threat was a top security issue that had to be addressed in the talks.
----
CIA sounds new warning on North Korea missile that could hit US
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 14, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031114165323.6ttbz7ns.html
The CIA is sounding a new alarm that North Korea may be ready to flight test a nuclear capable multi-stage missile capable of reaching parts of the United States.
The assessment in an unclassified report to Congress gels with another recent analysis of Pyongyang's missile programs by the Defense Intelligence Agency, made public last week, and will fuel fears the Stalinist state may end its missile test moratorium.
"The multiple-stage Taepo Dong-2 capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear weapon-sized payload may be ready for flight-testing," the Central Intelligence Agency said in the report, which analyses weapons of mass destruction production for the first six months of 2003.
It is not the first time that the CIA has warned that Pyongyang may have reached the flight-test stage for the Taepo-Dong 2, but concern is growing with the Stalinist state locked into a nuclear showdown with Washington.
The agency said in previous reports that in a regular two-stage set up, the Taepo Dong-2 could deliver a payload of several hundred kilograms to Alaska, Hawaii and parts of the continental United States.
In an adapted three-stage configuration, the Taepo Dong-2 could in theory ferry a warhead to anywhere in North America.
North Korea has said it will stick to its missile moratorium until the end of this year, but yet to commit to extending it into next year.
Pyongyang's missile program has long worried the United States, and states like South Korea and Japan which are within range of its short and medium range missile arsenal.
Washington has also warned at North Korea's propensity to export missile technology and other ingredients of weapons of mass destruction.
The administration of president Bill Clinton strove to seal a pact with Pyongyang to end its missile program in the dying days of his administration in 2000, but the deal foundered on how it would be verified.
----
U.S., S. Korea to Prepare for Nuke Talks
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A top U.S. envoy will meet with senior South Korean officials next week to prepare for a fresh round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the foreign ministry said.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will meet officials from South Korea's presidential office and the foreign ministry during his three-day visit starting next Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement.
Kelly, who led the American delegation during the first round of multination talks on the nuclear crisis, is expected to visit Tokyo and Beijing before arriving in Seoul.
Earlier this week, South Korea and China expressed optimism that more talks would be held before the end of the year.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo vowed Friday to peacefully resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions and arrange the new talks, but gave no word on when more negotiations might be held.
Dai, who was in Tokyo to discuss the nuclear dispute, told Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi that China was working to schedule a meeting soon, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Kawaguchi pushed China to include North Korea's past practice of abducting Japanese nationals on the agenda of upcoming talks. The ministry spokesman would not comment on Dai's response.
China hosted the first round of talks -- which also involved the United States, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia -- in Beijing in August. That meeting ended without an agreement on when to resume talks.
China, North Korea's leading ally, has been trying to jump-start the second round. Last month, it helped persuade Pyongyang to agree ``in principle'' to return to the negotiating table.
The nuclear dispute began a year ago when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
The communist North is believed to already have built one or two atomic bombs and recently said it extracted plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to build more.
Separately, North Korea on Friday berated South Korea for planning to deploy U.S.-made missiles near the border, calling them part of a U.S. plot to trigger a ``nuclear holocaust'' on the peninsula.
Early this month, South Korea said it would start deploying the Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles next month near the border with the North. The missile, which has a range of 186 miles, can reach Pyongyang and targets further north, including North Korea's main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, where the country says it is using spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic bombs.
The deployment would exacerbate military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, said KCNA, Pyongyang's official news agency.
North Korea, which often issues such belligerent statements, has deployed missiles capable of covering all South Korea and parts of Japan. It alarmed the region in 1998 by firing a new long-range missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.
The North also urged South Koreans to resist Washington's request for troops to bolster U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.
Officials said Friday that South Korea has ordered its troops in southern Iraq to suspend their operations outside coalition bases, following Wednesday's deadly suicide truck bombing in Nasiriyah.
Last month, South Korea agreed to send additional troops to help U.S. forces rebuild the war-torn Arab nation but said Thursday it will not send more than 3,000.
The Koreas were divided in 1945. Since the 1950-53 Korean War, their border remains sealed and heavily armed.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- massachusetts
Nuclear power plants warned
By Suzanne Colonna,
MPG Newspapers
http://oldcolony.southofboston.com/articles/2003/11/14/news/news05.txt
PLYMOUTH (Nov. 12) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has notified all nuclear power plants, including Pilgrim, of its concerns for an increased threat potential during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Pilgrim spokesman David Tarantino said the Plymouth plant received a lengthy document from the NRC which outlined the commission's concerns about al Qaeda's intentions during Ramadan, which started at the end of October.
The NRC's concern is that al Qaeda members might seek to attack U.S. interests during Ramadan, which is Oct. 26 to Nov. 24, Tarantino said.
"They're telling us to be aware," Tarantino said. "We certainly take all these things seriously."
Tarantino said he could not give any specifics about changes in security protocol at the plant, which is owned by Entergy.
Duxbury resident Mary Lampert, of the group Massachusetts Citizens for Safe Energy, said she believes it was prudent for the NRC to alert plant operators.
"I'm very happy they're concerned and I'm very happy that they told Entergy they're concerned. The reality is they have to do something," she said.
During Ramadan or any other time of the year, Lampert said she believes the plant is vulnerable to attacks by land, air and water. As a "voiced target by the bad guys" the nuclear plant should be carefully protected, she said.
"We know we're highly vulnerable," she said. Many people have cited the fact that Pilgrim could be a potentially symbolic target for terrorist groups, and would have significant consequences. With that in mind, Lampert said she does not believe the proper precautions have been taken to protect the plant.
The issue, she said, is not one of opposing nuclear power plants. "It doesn't matter how I feel, it's there," she said. Ensuring public safety is the primary concern, she said.
Lampert said she would like to see experts from the nuclear industry meet with independent nuclear energy experts to discuss ways to address the potential for terrorist threats against nculear reactors - a threat that she believes exists.
But Tarantino said despite the heightened concern, the Plymouth plant is functioning at normal capacity. Plant security proceedures are designed to protect the plant from terrorist threats by land, air or water, he said.
He added that the public does not need to do anything different other than keeping their eyes and ears open.
"You have to be aware of suspicious activity and don't hestitate to report suspicious activity to the police," he said.
-------- new york
New Indian Pt. Cooling System: Years in the Making, and More to Come
November 14, 2003
By LISA W. FODERARO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/nyregion/14NUKE.html
A day after New York State laid out rigorous requirements for the Indian Point nuclear plant that were intended to reduce fish kills, environmentalists and other critics disputed the plant owner's claims that a new cooling system would cost more than $1 billion.
Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the owner of the plant in Westchester County, said a "closed-cycle" cooling system, which would reduce fish mortality by 97 percent, could be so expensive as to cause it to close the plant.
On one level, that is precisely what plant opponents would like to see. But the environmental groups and the state legislator who sued the State Department of Environmental Conservation to compel the installation of a new cooling system say that they were not motivated by a desire to see the plant shut down.
Rather, long before Sept. 11, 2001, and the concerns about the plant's vulnerability to terrorism, environmental groups were pushing the federal government and then the state to force Indian Point to install a new cooling system. Such a system would use recycled water and avoid sucking in up to 2.5 billion gallons of water a day from the Hudson River, killing millions of fish and their eggs and larvae each year.
The environmental group Riverkeeper - a party to the lawsuit against the state brought last year by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, the singer Pete Seeger and others - said that over a year, Indian Point's current cooling system withdrew the equivalent of the entire volume of the river from Battery Park to Troy, N.Y.
Riverkeeper's predecessor, the Hudson River Fishermen's Association, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Scenic Hudson, have worked for 30 years to get Indian Point and other nonnuclear power plants along the Hudson to adopt closed cooling systems.
In fact, the Environmental Protection Agency, in its enforcement of the Clean Water Act, issued a similar draft permit in 1975 calling for the same kind of cooling technology the state recommended on Wednesday.
Years of hearings followed that draft permit; then the issue was formally delayed for 10 years, beginning in 1981. That was the year the groups signed a landmark agreement with several utilities and state and federal agencies that, among other things, stopped a fiercely contested pumped storage plant that Con Edison wanted to build on Storm King Mountain north of West Point, N.Y.
In exchange for the withdrawal of that proposal, the environmental groups and the regulators agreed that the utilities did not have to install the newer cooling technology for 10 years. After 1991 came more studies and negotiations but no action, and Indian Point was allowed to operate its present cooling system even after its permit expired.
So while environmental groups and Mr. Brodsky applauded the state's move this week, they focused even more on what they saw as a lax timetable for implementation, possibly as long as a decade.
Under the draft permit, which will enter a 90-day comment period, Entergy would not have to build a cooling system until it received a license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The license for one of the plant's reactors expires in 2013, while the other expires in 2015. Entergy bought the reactors in 2000 and 2001.
A spokesman for the N.R.C., Neil A. Sheehan, said that nuclear operators must apply for renewal at least five years before the license is to expire. The agency then typically takes two years to grant or deny the license, which in Entergy's case, would bring the process to 2010. The new cooling system would then undergo an environmental review, a process that could take months.
"We've had 30 years of delay," said Warren P. Reiss, general counsel for Scenic Hudson. "This is the last ecological insult to the river. There is a remedy that is known and available, and Entergy should be obliged to implement it at the soonest possible time."
Entergy says the new cooling system would be so costly to build - $1.6 billion by its estimate - that it may opt not to renew its license. Jim Steets, an Entergy spokesman, said the figure included about $600 million in lost revenues from a nine-month shutdown of the plant during construction. "We may or may not apply for it," Mr. Steets said of the license renewal. "An order to install cooling towers may preclude it."
But a consultant hired by environmental groups said such a system would cost far less, $200 million to $360 million, said David K. Gordon, a senior lawyer for Riverkeeper. And the groups argue that a long shutdown would not be necessary.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, Riverkeeper has been a forceful advocate of Indian Point's closing. While the group says it is not using fish mortality as another weapon against the plant, it does acknowledge a link.
"They have no right to kill over a billion fish each year," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper. "If a new cooling system helps make Entergy's enterprise unprofitable and forces them to shut down the plant, all the better."
--------
Change at Indian Point
November 14, 2003
NY Journal News
http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/111403/14eddec.html
The state Department of Environmental Conservation, weighing in on the future of the Indian Point nuclear power plants, spoke Wednesday for the silent denizens of the Hudson River - assorted minnow and anchovies, microorganisms and other aquatic life. The DEC told the facilities' human owners that their years-long free ride on environmental controls was over - sort of.
The agency ordered the embattled plants (1) to stop siphoning billions of gallons of Hudson water for cooling, in the process killing all manner of aquatic life, and instead to spend millions on new, more environment friendly technology, or (2) elect to make no changes, but halt operations in the next decade, when current operating licenses expire.
In other words, barring a major financial investment by owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast, Indian Point may continue its environmentally unfriendly ways on the Hudson until 2013 and 2015 - when the licenses for plants I and II expire, respectively - whereupon it would be forced to close. Either way, welcome change seems unavoidable at the plants in Buchanan, even if change is delayed.
The determination is "an enormous step to finally stop Indian Point from raping the river, which they have been doing for the past 25 years," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, who has been pressing the DEC to act.
Plant foes said yesterday they would mount a legal challenge to the DEC's 10-year grace period as a concession warranted by neither the law nor the facts. But even non-action will cost Entergy: The DEC said it would fine the owners $24 million annually and use the proceeds to fund estuary-restoration efforts. Given the impracticality of simply closing the plants tomorrow, the fines seem sensible and proper.
The DEC orders come on the heels of other not-so-good news for Indian Point. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-Harrison, said earlier this week that her congressional colleagues were poised to approve spending $1 million for a study on how to replace energy produced by a shuttered Indian Point. Last week, 50 local elected officials filed an appeal asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to overturn its laughable conclusion that emergency evacuation plans for the region surrounding the plants can effectively protect the public in an emergency.
But nobody's picking on Indian Point, which has enjoyed a long winning streak against the ecosystem of the Hudson, long stretches of which have been vanquished by Entergy's practice of siphoning river water for cooling, then discharging it into the river in super-heated, life-choking form. Under the federal Clean Water law, Congress requires polluters like Indian Point to utilize the "best technology available to minimize" the deleterious effects of their businesses on the environment. The trouble: Today's "best technology" easily surpasses the antiquated environmental controls employed at Indian Point, which first came on line in the early 1970s, back when mood rings were in vogue. The state has been looking the other way for years, while the plants dodged responsibility. Their state permits expired in 1997.
It took a lawsuit, filed by Brodsky, folk singer Pete Seeger and the environmental group Clearwater to get Albany to do its job. Supreme Court Justice Thomas Keegan had ordered the state to determine by today whether to issue so-called discharge permits for Indian Point, the Bowline Point Steam Electric Generating Station in West Haverstraw and the Roseton Generating Station in Newburgh.
What happens next is unclear. The changes sought by the DEC could cost Entergy $1.4 billion, according to the plants' owners; environmentalists contend the tab would be significantly less. In any event, change is coming to Indian Point and the Hudson River. On behalf of the humans and the fish and all living things, that's very good news.
[Yeah, if the owners opt not to build cooling towers and shut the plant down instead, the local residents can look forward to more frequent power outages, or higher energy bills and more CO2, NOx, So2, heavy metals, particulates, children's asthma attacks and premature deaths from the elderly. Oh, and similar water "use", and even more radiation, but nothing to worry about. References available. - JH]
-------- south carolina
Fuel factory plans might be postponed
The State: Columbia, SC
November 14, 2003
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/7261656.htm
Three antinuclear groups say a recent federal decision could delay plans to build a multibillion-dollar mixed oxide fuel factory at the Savannah River Site, where much of the nation¹s surplus weapons-grade plutonium is being stockpiled for conversion to fuel.
But while acknowledging a recent change in the program, a federal official said Thursday it should not delay construction of the plant or drive up costs, as anti-nuclear activists contend. The fuel program is expected to cost about $4 billion, with construction starting next year.
In a Nov. 3 letter, the U.S. Department of Energy said it wants its chief contractor to move a radiation boundary closer to the site of the mixed oxide fuel plant. That means contractor Duke, COGEMA, Stone and Webster must evaluate how the change will affect design and costs of the plant, the letter said.
Spokespeople for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Georgians Against Nuclear Energy and Greenpeace said Thursday the DOE decision is a major blow to the mixed oxide fuel program. They believe the re-examination will cause delays in the program and higher costs, but they did not have estimates on how long or how much.
-------- washington
Hanford downwinders claims have fallen to 1,816
Friday, November 14th, 2003
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4375838p-4384048c.html
SPOKANE -- The number of people suing because they believe Hanford radiation emissions damaged their health continues to drop.
On Thursday, defense attorneys told Judge William Fremming Nielsen in federal court in Spokane that what they initially believed would be 5,500 claims has dropped to 1,816.
That's a decrease of about 300 claims from the last status conference before the judge in September.
However, plaintiff attorneys said after the court proceedings that the 5,500 estimate was inflated and the claims never have totaled more than about 3,500.
Plaintiff attorneys are now interviewing individual clients to assess their claims, some of which were filed 12 years ago.
Many clients have been moved to an inactive list because the science doesn't exist to show that radiation from Hanford could have caused their illness, or because they received too little radiation for a strong case to be made.
At least half of the people still in the suit are seeking compensation for hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroids, which they believe was caused by radiation released from the Hanford nuclear reservation.
During World War II and part of the Cold War, radioactive iodine was released into the air as plutonium was made at Hanford.
It drifted downwind to contaminate food and the milk of cows that grazed on contaminated grass. In humans, radioactive iodine concentrates in the thyroid.
Some other claims are tied to eating fish from the Columbia River that may have been contaminated by Hanford releases into the water.
Difficulty in sorting out the claims also is affecting attorneys' efforts to come up with 15 claims each that would be narrowed to 12 total for a bellwether trial.
Nielsen is hoping that by taking a few of the claims to trial in March 2005, the two sides would have enough information to settle other claims.
The plaintiff attorneys withdrew one of their bellwether claims Thursday, saying it appeared their client was not willing to cooperate.
The defense said it would have to replace several claims because the downwinders have died as the case has dragged on and apparently have no relative continuing the claim.
As work toward a bellwether trial continues, Nielsen also has ordered mediation to start in early 2004.
Defense attorney Kevin Van Wart of Chicago said mediation would be premature before the defense knows what claims will be included in the case. Not only are some claims being withdrawn, but new claims also continue to be added.
However, Nielsen said the case has dragged on so long that mediation will start without delay.
Although past Hanford contractors are the focus of the suit, under the Price-Anderson Act that indemnifies nuclear contractors, the federal government is expected to be responsible for any judgments and is paying defense costs.
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld will restructure U.S. military forces in Asia
November 14, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031113-110658-6964r.htm
TUMON, Guam - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday he is planning a major restructuring of U.S. forces in Asia and elsewhere to meet changing threats.
The defense secretary told reporters aboard an Air Force KC-10 aircraft on the way here that "we are very systematically reviewing our arrangements in the world." No final decisions on how the new U.S. military force posture will be structured and based have been made, he said.
"But it's been a big effort for the United States and it's something that I believe will undoubtedly take a period of years to complete," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the restructuring will be part of a global adjustment of U.S. forces that will "considerably better position the United States than we have been" since the end of the Cold War.
The defense secretary believes that the static defensive positions implemented by Washington and many of its allies during the Cold War are not well suited to deal with the changing security threats of the 21st century, including terrorism.
In remarks today to troops at Anderson Air Force Base, he reiterated that view while thanking troops for their sacrifice and vigilance.
"It is really a choice between freedom and fear. Free people cannot live in fear," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The terrorists can attack at any time, in any location and it's not possible to defend everywhere. That's just not doable.
"The thought that you can just kind of defend against and hide is unfortunately invalid, which is why your country, our country, is ... taking the battle to the terrorists."
During a helicopter tour today of Guam, Mr. Rumsfeld visited the U.S. Navy base, several hundred miles northeast of the Philippines and the base for two Los Angeles-class attack submarines. He also ate lunch with a group of airmen and sailors at Anderson.
Mr. Rumsfeld's seven-day visit to Asia, his first since becoming defense secretary in January 2001, also will include visits to Japan and South Korea.
The visit comes amid tensions over North Korea's nuclear arms program, to which Mr. Rumsfeld said the Bush administration is pursuing a diplomatic approach. "That is the path we are on," he said.
But when asked today about the threat from North Korea, Mr. Rumseld said Pyongyang has a million-troop army, ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, but may be seeing its military strength sapped by its poverty.
"Is it a threat? You bet. It is a danger? You bet," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"It is not a democracy," he noted, adding that democracies tend to be less warlike.
He called North Korea a "tragedy" because of the repressive communist system.
"It is a country where many of the people starve, many people are trying to leave that country ... there are large concentration camps where people are imprisoned."
The North Korean military recently lowered the height and weight requirements for soldiers because of the starvation around the country made it harder to find qualified recruits, he said.
Also, soldiers appear to be 14 or 15 years old when they join, instead of at least 17 or 18, he said, a sign the military is having trouble.
A U.S. official on the plane to Guam said Pyongyang's communist regime has been trying to limit the talks to a two-way U.S.-North Korea discussion.
"We have to resist attempts by North Korea to bilateralize it, which continues to this day," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to discuss the repositioning of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea during his visit to Seoul. The U.S. relocation plan calls for pulling back troops farther from the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the end of the Cold War requires changing a "static defense" that successfully deterred the Soviet Union and its allies.
"The Soviet Union is gone and we're moving worldwide from a static defense to a different footprint, a footprint that recognizes that it's not possible today to predict with precision where a threat may come from, or exactly what kind of threat it might be," he said.
Meanwhile, the Air Force's senior military officer told Reuters news agency yesterday that the United States intends to rotate B/A-22 Raptor fighters, which enter service in 2005, to Guam as part of the increasing U.S. military presence in the Pacific.
----
Song For Things That Never Were - America 2003
November 14, 2003
Democratic Underground
By Michael Arvey
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/11/14_song.html
"Over the years, an understanding of what America really stands for is going to count far more than missiles, aircraft carriers, and supersonic bombers." - Robert F. Kennedy
A November again, 2003 - a chill laces the air, brief snow flurries punctuate diminished days, leaves crab over one another as wind sweeps them down the streets, and the moon is a puff of smoke adrift in the sky. Across the nation, soup kitchens overflow, and the homeless haunt the streets along with the leaves. In Iraq, U.S. soldiers, most of them in their early twenties, get picked off one by one by Iraqi resistance fighters. Excuse me, insurgents.
November 24, 1963. I'm huddled with tens of thousands of other mourners thronged along Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C. A horse-drawn carriage rolls John F. John F. Kennedy's flag-draped casket toward the U.S. Capitol Rotunda where he will lay in state, prior to his burial service in Arlington National Cemetery. It is colder than we all know; we are miserable, and look to family and strangers for solace. We are united in our great, national, silent wail of grief. The bullets, at least, accomplished that. Whence, if ever, a unity in joy of community, sans pain? Jackie walks behind the casket with the brothers. She dons a black veil, walks toward a veiled future. Was it really only 40 years ago?
November 2003. A man who claims God speaks to him occupies the White House. Not that God doesn't whisper quietly to men and women in moments of stillness, but George W. Bush's claims are plain phony. False in one thing, false in everything. He and the coterie of officials who encircle him appear to be public waiters serving up buffets of deception. His rhetoric declares love and concern for America. He's not a skillful liar - I don't believe a word he says. His tone, his physical rigidity, belie convincement. He represents the dark side of America that exists solely for its narcissistic self.
June 3, 1968. I am flushed - I have just shook the hand of Robert F. Kennedy at a local mall in Stockton, California - a stump speech before he heads down to Los Angeles. Heads down toward a veiled future. He is charming, dashing, glowing, his eyes are blue as robin's eggs - if I were a woman I could fall for him. He is shorter than I imagined. Now I can't remember what he said, only the mood, the expansive spirit of the moment - tall as the moon.
June 4, 1968. The moon has fallen, as well as the sky. "Bobby" has just been shot at the Ambassador Hotel in L.A. after having won the California primary. Surrealism has just dreamt its macabre masterpiece. I think now of Langston Hughes's poem, "A Dream Deferred." A nightmare incurred. Odd, this month is the fortieth anniversary of JFK's death, yet it is RFK my mind broods over.
November, 2003. George W. Bush sat out the Vietnam war in the Texas Air Guard, and for much of that time he was AWOL. Not long ago he snookered the nation by playing a pilot in a Navy flight suit and landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln to declare, "Mission Accomplished." Mission: Oil and geopolitical control of the Middle East. As president, his policies are those of corporatism and militarism run amok with greed and fascistic overtones, and of bowing to the comfortable, the upper crust. Our president, right or wrong? At least one thing from the 60s hasn't changed - whether Vietnam or Iraq, the poorest members of our society are the ones who do the invading, killing and dying.
1968. RFK speaks on the subject of poverty and violence: "There is another kind of of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions: indifference and inaction and slow decay...This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter."
2002. A General Accounting Office report faults the Bush administration for diverting funds for programs serving poor children. God has blessed America with yet another guns-over-butter president, who oversees America's poaching law of capital accumulation in the Middle East.
May 19, 1968. RFK says in a press release, "If we cannot feed the children of our nation, there is very little we will be able to succeed in doing to live up to the principles which our founders set out nearly two hundred years ago."
November 3, 2003. Three million workers have lost their jobs since January 2001. According to a report by Julian Borger in The Guardian, in 2002, "1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty line, bringing the total to 34.6 million." And, "The U.S. has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the industrialized countries, and the plight of the poor is worsening."
Furthermore, he points out that 31 million Americans are "food insecure" - and are experiencing serious hunger. Apparently it's noble and patriotic to invade other countries to snatch their resources and secure U.S strategic military interests, but it's not noble or patriotic for the government to help the homeland. Instead, we are saddled with faith-based charities, which have no money. Patriotism is reserved for killing and stealing, as long as democratic appearances and illusions are maintained.
The president in his State of the Union address unveiled a part of his vision for the future: "Our goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job." He means a minimum wage job, since manufacturers have fled the country and other businesses are outsourcing. Meanwhile, rampant illegal immigration occurs, taking up the few labor jobs left that U.S. citizens can't now fall back on even if they wanted. Unemployment is 6.1%. Bush's main goal was always clear - tax breaks for the already well-cologned. This is a man beholden not to the principles of law and democracy, or to the American public, but to the forces of corporatism and privatization.
I live in a vortex of time where persons on the political right act like terrorist hopefuls, saying they would like to kill liberals and Democratic presidential contenders. And this is a sivilized country, as Mark Twain might say?
June, 1966. RFK writes in a speech, "The essential humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government must answer - not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people."
1968. Asked how he would want to be remembered, RFK said, "I hope it will be because I made some contribution...to those who are less well off." He had joked, "I'm the only candidate who has ever united business, labor, liberals and southerners, party bosses and intellectuals. They're all against me."
October 2001. According to George Bush, "Oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America." By eating cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and vacuous rhetoric. Which America does Bush stand for - the one that rains bombs across the globe, or the one committed to moral idealism and its application? Vera et falsa.
November, 2003. President George W. Bush sees wrong and tries to worsen it; sees suffering and tries to privatize it; sees war and tries to extend it. From my standpoint, America feels vastly impoverished, its hope and dreams not just deferred, but lost on the wings of an ill-wind that blows out of Bush's Washington. The mood is brutal, overwhelmed by negative reality. The bright Quixotism of Robert F. Kennedy has long since evaporated and recycled as cynicism, which is what I suspect certain elements in the government hoped for.
Granted, the Kennedys were elites with their particular shortcomings, but they distinguished themselves by caring for the nation as a whole. I can't help but think that this one-dimensional character ensconced in the White House is only there to grab power and treasures for those that, as Molly Ivins might say, brung him there, and whose only luminescence is what gleams off from his dress shoes. As the looting of the national Treasury whisks forward, so, too, the looting of Iraq.
This is a president who has united nearly the entire planet against the U.S. Conversely, the country itself is a study in angered polarization, each side grinding against the other. What oracle, what oracle, will unveil the future?
It's another gloomy November.
Sources
On His Own, RFK. vanden Heuvel, William J., and Gwirtsman, Milton. 1970. Doubleday & Co.
Make Gentle the Life of this World. Kennedy, Maxwell Taylor. 1998. Harcourt Brace & Co.
"Long Queue at drive-in soup kitchens," Borger, Julian. The Guardian. November 3, 2003.
The Lies of George W. Bush. Corn, David. 2003. Crown Publishers.
-------- MILITARY
-------- asia
China, India Hold Historic Naval Exercise
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press Writer
Nov 14, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_INDIA_NAVAL_EXERCISES?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- China and India held their first-ever joint naval exercises Friday off Shanghai's coast, the boldest step yet in the steadily improving relationship between the giant neighbors and former foes.
The guided-missile destroyer INS Ranjit and guided-missile corvette INS Kulish staged maritime safety and search-and-rescue exercises in the East China Sea with the Chinese frigate Jiaxing and tanker Feng Chang, according to a statement from the Indian Embassy in Beijing.
"The joint exercises were conducted successfully," the embassy said.
The embassy said drills included a simulated fire aboard the Chinese tanker that was fought jointly by the Chinese frigate and Indian ships. A helicopter from the Ranjit also practiced evacuating injured. An Indian supply tanker visiting Shanghai remained in port.
The exercises highlighted the commitment of the two countries for increasing trust and understanding, India said. China's navy made no immediate comment on the exercises and foreign media were not permitted to view them. However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters Thursday at a briefing that China believed they would "further enhance friendly relations and improve further understanding between the two sides."
The day of drills followed similar exercises off Shanghai last month involving the Chinese navy and warships from Pakistan, China's longtime ally and India's nuclear neighbor and rival. Those exercises marked the first joint naval exercises between Chinese ships and the navy of another nation since the founding of the communist People's Republic of China in 1949.
The earlier exercises may have been aimed at reassuring Pakistan that improvements in Beijing's ties with India won't undermine long-standing close relations with Islamabad.
"China has normal state-to-state relations with Pakistan, and this exercise will not affect relations with Pakistan," Liu, the Chinese spokesman, said.
Those exercises were nearly identical to the China-India exercises, involving two Pakistani ships and about 700 sailors and men in a simulated joint search-and-rescue and anti-terror operation.
Underscoring the closeness of ties, Chinese officials met with Pakistan's deputy defense minister on Friday for talks in Islamabad on expanding military equipment purchases.
India and China fought a brief, bloody war along their Himalayan border in 1962. But in recent years, they have worked to increase political and economic ties. Negotiators have met several times to discuss the border dispute, and top officials of the two nations have exchanged numerous visits.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee agreed to the naval exercises during a visit to Beijing earlier this year. The sides also have pledged to open a highway to facilitate trade across the border in northeastern India's Sikkim region.
That new pragmatism reflects both countries' desire to focus on economic development and maintain peace and stability with their neighbors, said Zhao Gancheng, director of South Asia studies at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.
The Indian ships arrived in Shanghai on Monday and have been docked off the Bund, Shanghai's riverfront financial district. Indian naval vessels have visited Shanghai four times in all since 1949.
-------- balkans
Belgrade apologizes for war atrocities
November 14, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031113-073234-3392r.htm
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, Nov. 13 -- The president of Serbia-Montenegro has apologized to the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina for atrocities committed during the 1992-1995 war.
The BBC said Svetozar Marovic issued the apology -- the first by a Belgrade official -- during a Thursday visit to the Bosnian capital.
Bosnian atrocities form part of the genocide charges at the trial in The Hague of former Serbian and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic is alleged to have helped the Bosnian Serbs in the war, but he has denied the charge.
Bosnia is suing Belgrade at the International Court of Justice over the war that killed at least 250,000 Bosnian citizens and more than 7,000 in a single incident at Srebrenica.
Marovic -- a Montenegrin -- and his Croatian counterpart both apologized for the actions of their citizens in the 1991-95 war between the two countries.
During the first post-war visit to Sarajevo three years ago, Marovic's predecessor, Vojislav Kostunica, a Serb, had refused to issue a similar apology to Bosnia.
-------- biological weapons
Science Panel Warns of Bioweapons Future
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Bioweapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Advances in biotechnology could lead to a generation of biological weapons far more dangerous than those currently known, scientists have told the CIA.
The life sciences experts, convened by the agency's Office of Transnational Issues, raised fears of genetically engineered diseases that ``could be worse than any disease known to man,'' according to the CIA's unclassified report on their conference.
The report, ``The Darker Bioweapons Future,'' speaks only generally of the dangers of newly created diseases and does not specify countries that could use them to threaten the United States.
``The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world's most frightening weapons,'' the report says.
The report, dated Nov. 3, was posted this week on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, a government watchdog group. The group said the scientists met with the CIA in January.
Some advanced bioweapons already are possible to make, the scientists noted. They pointed to researchers in Australia who accidentally enhanced the mousepox virus by adding an immunoregulator gene, using a technique that could be applied to anthrax or smallpox, two diseases potentially capable of conversion into biological weapons.
The report also speaks of the possibility of designer diseases that would be immune to treatment, or that linger would inactivated in the body until the passage of a certain amount of time passes or until a specified second substance had entered the body.
Part of the danger of biological weapons, unlike conventional bombs or nuclear weapons, is their use might not be immediately obvious. Without a claim of responsibility or a lucky break by law enforcers, only when medical experts had traced an outbreak to its source would authorities learn that an attack had taken place.
``One panelist cited the possibility of a stealth virus attack that could cripple a large portion of people in their forties with severe arthritis, concealing its hostile origin and leaving a country with massive health and economic problems,'' the report says.
With so many potential threats, the experts proposed developing defenses aimed at strengthening the body's resistance to all disease, rather than creating treatments for individual diseases.
On the Net:
``The Darker Bioweapons Future'':
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/bw1103.pdf
-------- business
IBM debuts 73rd fastest machine in the world
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Tri-Valley Herald
Friday, November 14, 2003
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~1766059,00.html
For scientists to conquer the toughest calculations -- weather forecasting, the knotting of proteins and the detonation of H-bombs -- the merely big supercomputers of today's design will become monstrous.
They will devour acres of offices, need giant cooling towers and consume power enough for more than 11,000 homes -- by some estimates, 60,000. The machine price alone could break $1 billion.
Stung by Japan's sudden rise to the top of the supercomputing world, U.S. researchers are trying leaner, more energy-efficient designs as an alternative to today's Big Iron on the path to astounding computational speed.
Today, IBM is rolling out the first arrival, a TV-sized supercomputer that already has leap-frogged to 73rd fastest machine in the world.
At peak, it runs at two teraflops -- two trillion calculations a second. For an idea of what that's like, consider almost 48,000 people punching calculators tirelessly for a year to match its sustained performance in that second.
It is the first of 128 modules of Blue Gene/L, an experimental speed machine that IBM is building for weapons scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, historically a test bed for the nation's fastest computers.
"We've shown some hardware to people already, and their reaction is it's looking really cool," said Mark Seager, the lab's lead scientist for the Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative.
When fully installed in early 2005 at the lab's TeraScale Simulation Facility, the machine is expected to topple the Earth Simulator, a Japanese machine that has dominated supercomputer rankings since June 2002.
"From where we sit, this is a stunning achievement -- to get so much power in such a small box," said Al Gara, Blue Gene/L's chief architect at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. "We would be shocked if anyone else came close."
IBM workers are hauling a piece of the machine in a briefcase to Phoenix for debut at SC2003, the showcase conference of supercomputing. Hook-ed to a plasma screen, IBM's computer in a briefcase will simulate a protein folding itself into a knot, one of most computationally intensive problems in science today.
The full Blue Gene/L will cover the space of half a tennis court and is expected to reach a peak speed of 360 teraflops, roughly 10 times the power of the Earth Simulator in roughly a fifteenth of the space and less than a third of the cost.
"It's a significant step forward in terms of delivered performance per megawatt of power. It's a step forward in delivered power per square foot of floor space, and it's a step forward in terms of performance per dollar spent," Seager said.
In the pricey world of supercomputing, the innards of Blue Gene/L are fairly blue collar: The wiring is copper, not optical fiber, and the chips are cousins of the low-power microcontrollers essential to cell phones and automobiles.
"What's really unique is a focus on getting very power-efficient, cost-efficient computing," Gara said. "Our basic idea is really to build a supercomputer that had a price comparable to a bargain-basement computer but with supercomputer functionality."
Today, most of the U.S. government's high-end classified supercomputers look like the server farms of Silicon Valley, but can act as a single unit of hundreds of processing nodes. That's the essence of IBM's ASCI White, a 12.3-teraflop machine running at Livermore today, and its successor, ASCI Purple. They're huge, powerful machines, very reliable at running general-purpose scientific simulations. They can run software on 1,000 or more microprocessors at a time for two weeks.
Blue Gene/L is a specially designed machine with more than 65,000 processing nodes, and scientists expect to run a few jobs at a time on it. That means rewriting the big software codes that simulate the physics of a nuclear explosion -- from high-explosive burn to the turbulence of semi-molten plutonium and gases to the behavior of ultra-hot radiation. The lab's software writers will have to learn how to juggle those problems among more processors than ever before and to minimize the kinds of physics that bog down the machine.
Meanwhile, the way Blue Gene/L handles each kind of physics simulation will tell IBM's designers how to rejigger the architectures of more mainstream machines for the U.S. military, intelligence and scientific community.
Beyond unclassified pieces of Livermore's bomb codes, Seager says scientists are itching to put the machine through its paces on climate models, building fire predictions, models of biological molecules such as proteins and supernova simulations.
"Part of what we want to do with this machine is not only make it look good but make it look bad," he said. "So we view this machine as a research vehicle, both for the applications and for software and hardware designers in order to explore this new design space with an eye to going to a petaflop later."
The federal government is hedging its bets. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S Department of Energy and other government funders are financing research into several ideas to reach 1,000 teraflops, known as a petaflop, the goal of Blue Gene/P and several research projects at Stanford, Notre Dame and Caltech. All are aiming beyond a petaflop, perhaps as far as exaflop -- a trillion trillion calculations a second.
Caltech's Sterling says Blue Gene/L's experiment in putting memory so close to processors is "a good incremental step" but computer scientists also are trying custom-design chips and packing them closer together.
"The question is, what is the long-term solution?" he said. "We need more unconventional architectures to do that."
-------- chemical weapons
U.S. negotiators meet resistance in seeking exemptions to chemical treaty
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
By Chris Tomlinson,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-11-12/s_10332.asp
NAIROBI, Kenya - U.S. negotiators met tough opposition Tuesday from both European and poor countries in seeking exemptions to a global treaty requiring nations to stop using chemicals that destroy the ozone layer.
The U.S. delegation was defending a request not only to be exempted from phasing out the insecticide methyl bromide but also to seek permission to increase production of the known carcinogen by nearly 30 percent.
The request was made at the 15th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, a normally routine annual event where politicians and scientists make adjustments to what is considered the most successful international environmental treaty.
The protocol established a system by which nations would gradually eliminate chemicals that destroy the ozone layer, which prevents ultraviolet light from reaching the Earth and harming living things. Methyl bromide is one of the last of the major chemicals to be phased out.
Under the protocol, wealthy nations are required to cut production of methyl bromide by 70 percent in 2003 and eliminate it completely by 2005.
Delegates meeting this week must decide on exemptions for countries that say they have a critical need for methyl bromide and have no alternatives.
The United States has so far complied with the protocol by cutting production to 30 percent of 1991 levels. But in its request for exemptions, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration asked to increase production to 38.2 percent in 2005 and 37 percent in 2006. If the exemption is approved by the meeting, the United States would produce 9,777 tons of methyl bromide in 2005.
"The request was based on our government's survey of the growing community in America and what their needs were and for them to analyze where they use methyl bromide and where they can use alternatives," said Claudia MacMurray, leader of the U.S. delegation. "We went through a substantial review of that ... and our government knocked the number way down."
The U.S. request was reviewed by a technical committee, which recommended that delegates approve one-third of the U.S. request, but it offered only qualified support for the other two-thirds. MacMurray said she would seek approval of the entire request, which she said was critical to American farmers.
During the meeting, the leader of the European Union delegation objected to the size of the exemption, saying that it should not exceed the 30 percent level. While European Union countries have asked to produce 4,154 tons of methyl bromide in 2005, only Italy's exemption exceeds the 30 percent level, and Rome has agreed to scale it back.
Delegates from Japan, Norway, Mexico, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic also criticized the U.S. requests. The head of the Japanese delegation told the meeting that even the 30 percent level was too high.
The chairwoman of the meeting asked the U.S. and E.U. delegations to propose solutions to the impasse. The meeting has until Friday to come up with a compromise.
David Doniger, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, roundly attacked the U.S. position as a major step backward. As a U.S. delegate under then-President Bill Clinton's administration, he helped negotiate the methyl bromide rules, and he described the U.S. position as part of an ongoing effort to subvert environmental protections.
"The Bush administration is catering once again to a powerful industry," he said. "It's the power companies one day, the oil companies another day, and agribusiness here."
-------- colombia
Shake-Up Spoils Colombia's Effort to Cast Stable Image
November 14, 2003
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/international/americas/14COLO.html
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 13 - After taking office 15 months ago, President Álvaro Uribe said his ministers would remain with him throughout his four-year term, a pledge aimed at casting an image of stability and purpose in a nation where governments are usually scorned.
But in the last seven days, Mr. Uribe's reputation has been tarnished with the resignations, in quick succession, of three cabinet ministers, the armed forces commander and the chief of the Colombian National Police.
Cabinet shake-ups are common here and elsewhere in Latin America after political setbacks, and Mr. Uribe's first political defeat came last month when voters rejected a referendum that would have handed him new powers over state spending.
But the resignations here, announced one day after the other in dour news conferences without explanation, have led many in Colombia to question Mr. Uribe's right-leaning administration.
"The change in ministers, little by little, leaves the image that fires are being put out in an improvised manner," Rodrigo Pardo said in his column on Thursday in El Tiempo, the nation's top newspaper.
Fernando Cepeda, a former interior minister, said the changes will rejuvenate the cabinet and clear out government officials who had become a liability. But Mr. Cepeda said Mr. Uribe should have accepted all the resignations the same day, a tradition that sits well with voters, and offered an explanation.
"It's not a crisis, but the way this is happening - instead of coming naturally in a way that strengthens the government - gives the sensation of crisis," he said.
Officials in Mr. Uribe's administration, which enjoys strong backing from the Bush administration in its war against three insurgencies, said that Mr. Uribe, in his drive to break with the past, did not want to carry out the traditional one-day house cleaning of the cabinet.
They said that the departure of Interior and Justice Minister Fernando Londoño on Nov. 6 was necessary because he failed to win approval of the referendum in an Oct. 25 election. Mr. Londoño's relationship with Congress was also dismal.
The loss of the referendum means Mr. Uribe must try to obtain the fiscal controls he seeks by pushing legislation through Congress, which has been emboldened by the failure of the referendum and is now more likely to challenge his policies.
Mr. Uribe also welcomed the resignation of Defense Minister Marta Lucía Ramírez, whose clashes with several generals and outspoken manner were seen as counterproductive, a government official said.
"I think what the president has done is remove the two most controversial people from the government, people who were creating problems for the government," the official said.
Supporters of the shake-up in the security forces - the resignations of General Jorge Mora, the armed forces commander, and Teodoro Campo, who headed the police - say it will help invigorate the armed forces, particularly a police force scarred by recent scandals.
The cabinet replacements could not have been more at odds with those who left. Sabas Pretelt, the amiable director of the National Federation of Retailers, is taking over the Interior and Justice Ministry from Mr. Londoño, who was seen as arrogant and difficult. The new defense minister is Jorge Alberto Uribe, 63, a respected, American-trained economist and businessman who is a close friend of Mr. Uribe.
-------- iran
Iran Leader Rips U.S. Occupation of Iraq
November 14, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US-Democracy.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's supreme leader said Friday that America's military occupation of Iraq was failing and criticized President Bush's call for greater democracy in the Middle East.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose hard-line Islamic establishment has been accused by the United States of not doing enough to prevent anti-American forces from entering neighboring Iraq, said U.S. troops ``are being slapped in the face every day by Iraqis.''
``They (the United States) invaded Iraq with a promise to free its people but they have created a deplorable situation there,'' Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshippers at Tehran's Grand Mosque during a Friday prayer sermon.
U.S. forces are coming under increased resistance from forces inside Iraq, with more than 50 coalition soldiers killed this month.
Khamenei said the Americans ``overthrew an Iraqi dictator (Saddam Hussein) and installed a foreign dictator (U.S. provisional authority chief L. Paul Bremer) in his place.''
Khamenei's comments come as Iran tries to disprove U.S. claims that it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The dispute has further aggravated longstanding tensions in U.S.-Iranian relations.
Khamenei also assailed Bush's recent appeal to Middle Eastern states, particularly Iran, to do more to promote democratic reform.
``People who so openly disregard the rights of nations and views are ... mistaken to regard themselves as the custodians of democracy,'' the Iranian leader said.
Khamenei also used his mosque sermon to defend Iranian hard-line authorities who have cracked down on reformist publications, saying U.S. backers in Iran are seeking to use the country's press to bring down the ruling Islamic establishment.
The crackdown has put nearly 100 publications out of operation over the last 3 1/2 years for criticizing the rule of Iran's unelected hard-liners.
``Anybody provoking a psychological war against the (Iranian) establishment works for the U.S., no matter (if) he receives money for this or works (for) free,'' the leader said.
Unelected hard-liners control the levers of power in Iran and have blocked most attempts by the elected government to reform the country's Islamic regime. Khamenei has final say in all matters.
-------- iraq
Contractors' Deaths Add to Iraq Toll
UPDATED: Civilians Killed, Wounded in Rebuilding
By Seth Porges
NOVEMBER 14, 2003
Editor & Publisher Online
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2028500
NEW YORK -- Although the total number of American troops killed in Iraq is 397, as of Nov. 13, the overall American death count is higher. One group whose deaths often go unreported are independent contractors from American corporations working in the war-torn country. These fatalities, often from mines and ambushes, are rarely reported by newspapers and are not listed in the Pentagon's official death toll.
"I know contractors are not reported there," Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Joe Yoswa said about the official Operation Iraqi Freedom death toll. "I can tell you the contractors' names are not listed in the roll-up."
The Washington Post reported Friday that nine civilians working for the government have died in attacks in Iraq since the war began. Another 29 have been wounded and dozens have had close calls.
As of Thursday afternoon, three employees of Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton and the largest military contractor in Iraq, have been killed in Iraq since the war began. The contractor deaths were the results of a vehicle accident, an anti-tank mine, and a gunshot wound.
"On 10 July 2003 a KBR employee died as a result of injuries sustained in a single-vehicle accident near the city of Basra in southern Iraq," Halliburton spokesperson Patrice Mingo told E&P Online via e-mail.
The second KBR death occurred on Aug. 5 "as a result of injuries sustained when his truck hit an anti-tank mine," Mingo said. The third KBR employee died on Sept. 3 after being "fatally shot in Baghdad while driving a vehicle that was escorted by military personnel."
"KBR's primary concern is for the safety and security of all personnel, especially those working in such challenging environments and conditions," Mingo said. "We are proud of our many employees who are currently working in the Middle East in support of the U.S. military. These men and women are working hard in the midst of a difficult situation, and are doing a great job."
As a result of cutbacks in personnel, the military has increasingly relied on contractors to perform a wide range of tasks. The size of the United States standing army has shrunk from 2.1 million in 1990 to 1.4 million in 2003, according to an Oct. 30 Associated Press report. In an effort to free up more troops for combat, the military hires independent contractors for just about every other imaginable task.
The total number of contractors killed in Iraq is not known, nor is the number of contractors currently working in Iraq, according to the Oct. 30 AP article. "Estimates range from under 10,000 to more than 20,000 -- which could make private contractors the largest U.S. coalition partner ahead of Britain's 11,000 troops," the AP reported.
On Friday morning, The Associated Press reported that suspected insurgents raked a convoy with automatic gunfire, killing a U.S. civilian contractor and wounding another American.
The attack happened Nov. 13 west of Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman of the 4th Infantry Division.
The vi