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NUCLEAR
British Energy begs for more government money
Victim blows lid on uranium risk
EU Ministers Pick French Site for Fusion Project
Iran rejoices over nuclear "victory"
Iran: Bring on nuclear inspectors
UN Probes Possible Iran - Pakistan Nuclear Link
UN 'Strongly Deplores' Iran Nuclear Cover-Up
U.N. Atom Agency Gives Iran Both a Slap and a Pass
U.N. Agency Censures Iran Over Secrecy
U.S. to Shift Some Experts From Arms to Antiterror
IAEA chief urges Israel to scrap nuclear weapons
Italy Scraps Nuclear Waste Site Plans After Protest
Japan confident in contest for nuclear fusion project
US BLUEPRINT FOR NORTH KOREA
Pushing Technology And Fighting Skeptics
Russia Praises IAEA Iran Resolution
DOE predicts nuke reactions in casks
Nuclear Energy, Senator Hillary Clinton and Ostrichism
Senator: Military must review vaccine use
Broad Bills Stuffed With Lawmakers' Pet Items
On Secret Iraq Trip, Bush Pays Holiday Visit to G.I.'s
MILITARY
Fate of Idle Ex-Fighters Poses Challenge for Liberia
Bombing Anywhere On Earth In Less Than Two Hours
Consultant on Iraq contracts employed president's brother
Boeing could face widening crisis over ethics breakdown
Northrop Grumman Takes Aim At Hypersonic Weapon Delivery System
Lockheed Martin Wins $600 Million Air Force IT Contract
China Warns Taiwan Again On Issue of Independence
Taiwan Passes Independence Referendum Law
Taiwan Passes Independence Referendum Law
Iraq Road Map to Be Changed to Mollify Shi'ites
Attacks on G.I.'s in Mosul Rise as Good Will Fades
U.S. Plan in Iraq to Shift Control Hits Major Snag
Top Cleric Faults U.S. Blueprint For Iraq
U.S. Wanted to Avoid 'Occupier' Label
Israeli Soldiers Kill 3 Palestinians in Gaza Strip
An Uphill Road for Bold Mideast Peace Plans
Turkish Town's Despair Breeds Terrorists, Residents Fear
NATO chief Robertson fires parting shots in Balkans
US to brief NATO allies on worldwide troop levels
Bulgaria, US to discuss setting up NATO bases in Bulgaria
Officer 'leaked email to save lives'
Countries ready to agree on UN accord
U.S. May Slow Push for U.N. Plan
US looking for small flexible troop bases in Europe: US official
3 Marine Battalions Are Called to Iraq
Cooperation on Iran shows US can work with others: Powell
Mexico Orders First Arrests in 'Dirty War'
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel May Seek Extension
ENERGY AND OTHER
Wind Power Tax Credit Expires in December
U.S. products to carry new "made with renewable energy" logo
Without Energy Legislation, Grid, Power Policy in Limbo
Billions of people may suffer severe water shortages as glaciers melt
H.I.V. Infections Continue Rise, Study Says
AIDS Resurging Among Gay Men, CDC Data Show
Chronic Hunger Is Increasing
ACTIVISTS
Italy backtracks on nuclear waste decision after mass protests
Group Wants Investigation of Police Tactics at Miami Trade Talks
Smithsonian extends its reach
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
British Energy begs for more government money
Story by Andrew Callus
REUTERS UK:
November 27, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22953/story.htm
LONDON - Britain's biggest power producer, British Energy, has begged the government for more credit as problems at two of its atomic reactors and volatile power prices tip it back into financial crisis.
Rescued from insolvency last year by a state bail-out, the loss-making nuclear producer of a fifth of Britain's power said yesterday it had asked for more cash on top of its existing 200 million-pound emergency loan.
British Energy BGY.L hit a crisis last August after deregulation of an oversupplied UK power market forced prices below its cost of production.
The government and private sector creditors agreed a debt forgiveness package just seven weeks ago. But European Union competition officials are still checking whether the package violates rules limiting state aid, and ministers have warned they may renationalise the firm if the rescue plan collapses.
A government spokeswoman confirmed that the stricken firm had its hand out once more, but said talks were continuing.
"No agreement has not been reached," she said.
A 650 million-pound state loan was paid off in full in March through the sale of assets. Ministers nevertheless provided a reduced 200 million-pound facility to be repaid "as soon as the company is in a position to do so".
Three weeks ago, British Energy said it had already used about half of this. Although prices have risen in recent months, price volatility has forced it to pay extra collateral for trading, while temporary plant shutdowns are costing it more as well.
This week the projected cost of two reactor closures - at Heysham on the Lancashire coast, and Sizewell on the Suffolk coast - rose to 50 million pounds from 30 million.
Heysham 1 has been shut since late October for work on cooling pipes. Sizewell B was restarted last week, getting a clean bill of health after a six-week outage to check for cracks in pipework. "Unplanned" outages like these are set to cost about three million terawatt hours this year, over four percent of expected annual production, British Energy has said.
CAN'T MANAGE
Anti-nuclear campaigners who want the bail-out declared illegal seized on the renewed crisis.
"It seems they can't manage their plants effectively and they've managed to use up 200 million pounds in less than eight months," said Greenpeace campaigner Jim Footner.
"How are they going to pay back this increased loan bearing in mind they are making a loss at the moment?"
Under the bail-out plan, state-owned fuel and reprocessing firm British Nuclear Fuels has agreed to accept a lower price for reprocessing British Energy's fuel, a cost that feeds directly back to the taxpayer.
Taxpayers will also pick up the bill for nuclear clean-up. Together these burdens will cost 200 million pounds a year, a bill that could stretch for over a generation into the future.
Bondholders and other creditors owed about 1.3 billion pounds will forgive about 65 percent of their debt in exchange for a 97.5-percent equity stake in a relaunched firm.
Existing bonds were trading little changed yesterday at about 90 percent of face value.
Shareholders, at the bottom of the credit pile, have lost almost everything. Many are private individuals who bought into nuclear privatisation in 1996.
The EU Commission opened a complex probe in July and is expected to decide next year. Rules aimed at preventing state aid from distorting competition may clash with the Euratom treaty, a nuclear deal allowing special nuclear investments.
-------- depleted uranium
Victim blows lid on uranium risk
By Lawrence Smallman
Thursday 27 November 2003
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/7C50EB84-1D75-43FD-832D-C44F2DE01CDA.htm
A British man is suing a civilian company over radiological contamination allegedly suffered while unknowingly working with depleted uranium.
Richard David was an engineer and machinist from 1985 to 1995 in an aerospace firm based in England.
His job required him to fine finish metal components with a scouring pad, producing a dust resembling talcum power.
David now believes this powder was an alloy which included depleted uranium - a material of which ordinary workers had no knowledge.
His throat caused him immense pain even after the first few months of work, but when he eventually left for health reasons - his lungs and wind-pipe had suffered irreparable damage.
Toll on health
Fifty-year-old David has seen his health deteriorate over the last 15 years and has watched former middle-aged work-mates die of all types of cancers and disease.
His manager died within months of retiring - a victim of throat cancer.
The daily breakfast routine includes pain killers, a steroid inhaler, medication for lowered potassium, and diuretic tablets.
By 2000, he was also faced with chronic fatigue, various lumps growing upon his skull and a rare kidney disorder called Gitlemans syndrome.
But as news of depleted uranium and its effects on Iraqis and veterans of the first Gulf War began to seep out, the engineer began to suspect what may have happened to him.
No doctors had been able to explain his breathing problems, his joint pain, muscular spasms and lung scarring, despite consultations with London specialists.
But no one had considered radiological contamination.
Proving his case
Now, independent testing from the Uranium Medical Research Centre in Canada, run under the auspices of Professor Durakovic, has proven undisputedly that his body was contaminated with depleted uranium.
Further testing in Berlin shows chromosomal damage - which can only occur through exposure to radiation.
But as David sought compensation, he stumbled across the much bigger picture.
DU is not only a military concern. The stark reality is this waste material is a danger to the general public and surrounds them in places they do not even know.
Many unsuspecting victims have been contaminated without realising.
DU for civilian use
After the El Al plane (with still unknown cargo) crashed in Amsterdam in 1992, over 800 families and many clean up workers reported similar symptoms to those of Iraqis and Gulf veterans.
Hundreds of kilograms of DU counterweights in the plane burned in the crash, contaminating the neighbourhood with deadly uranium oxide smoke.
The aerospace industry still uses this heavy metal, but this is only the tip of the ice-burg.
Uranium based metals are increasingly used within civilian life.
In the US, some advocates of recycling DU have hinted that such metals could be used in everyday house-hold products, with DU reportedly having been used some years ago in the dental industry, and within the building industry also.
In the UK, this concern is already being realised with some union representatives claiming these metals have already proliferated into a vast array of various products such as flywheels and car clutches.
Effects
No amount of exposure to radiation is too small to cause damage. DU is an alpha-particle emitter that remains radioactive for hundreds of millions of years.
The findings and case studies from Afghanistan, the Balkans, and Iraq - where DU and uranium weapons were and are used - fully illustrate that the long term prognosis is very bleak indeed.
Use of depleted uranium in weapons is illegal according to the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
In particular, the 2002 and 2003 reports prepared by Chief Justice Yueng Sik Yuen clearly indicate that weapons with depleted uranium are necessarily indiscriminate and cause superfluous and unnecessary suffering.
This makes their use incompatible with existing rules of armed combat.
But no matter if DU is vaporised in the heat of battle, or when metal is drilled or sanded in a factory, or when aircraft crash into residential areas - the physical effects are the same.
Richard David's body is failing him now, he describes how he exists rather than lives - robbed of the joys of being a husband, father and friend. Aljazeera
-------- europe
EU Ministers Pick French Site for Fusion Project
REUTERS BELGIUM:
November 27, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22952/story.htm
BRUSSELS - European Union ministers chose a French site yesterday as their candidate for the world's biggest nuclear fusion reactor.
"There has been an agreement between all member states to promote the site at Cadarache," a diplomatic source said. Cadarache is near Marseille in southern France.
Spain dropped out of the contest to build the project to strengthen the European position against contenders Canada and Japan, the source added.
The mayor of Marseille, Jean-Claude Gaudin, announced the news of the choice of Cadarache to journalists in the city.
"Today's good news is that we have ITER," he said.
The 10 billion euro ITER project aims to create the world's first sustained nuclear fusion reaction, which would last for several minutes, in an attempt to harness the source of the sun's power and tame it for the benefit of humanity.
Fusion is low in pollution, has a virtually limitless supply of fuel in the form of sea water and is less prone to weather conditions than sea or solar power.
(Additional reporting by Tom Heneghan)
-------- iran
Iran rejoices over nuclear "victory", despite warnings of trouble ahead
TEHRAN (AFP)
Nov 27, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031127150426.v27tkd8v.html
Iran has gleefully welcomed a UN nuclear watchdog's resolution on its atomic programme as a victory over arch-foe Washington, ignoring warnings that international pressure on Tehran may have only just begun.
"The United States did not achieve a single one of its objectives concerning Iran's nuclear activities," said Hassan Rowhani, who as secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council handles the country's nuclear affairs.
Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said: "What has taken place these past few days is the failure of unilateral policies ... and a victory for cooperation, politics and dialogue."
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Wednesday condemned Iran for 18 years of covert nuclear activities but stopped short of taking Tehran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, as Washington had previously hoped.
The resolution was a compromise between the US call to censure Iran and demands from Britain, France and Germany that Iran be rewarded for cooperating since October with the IAEA.
But while voices both inside and outside Iran warned that Tehran has only earned a temporary breathing space, officials in the Islamic republic rushed to claim a diplomatic coup against the United States.
"The United States wanted to send the Iranian nuclear issue to the UN Security Council ... and wanted to say in the resolution that Iran had turned its nuclear activities towards making an atomic weapon," said Rowhani.
"But they were forced to see their isolation and understood that they could not prevent the adoption of this resolution," he added.
Washington accuses Iran of using its nuclear energy programme as cover for plans to build atomic weapons which could be directed at Israel, claims fiercely denied by Tehran.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has also said in a report that there is so far no evidence that Iran has been developing nuclear weapons, a claim disputed by Washington as "simply impossible to believe".
But the text of the resolution also contained harsh words for Iran, in particular a passage warning that any further Iranian breaches of non-proliferation would be met by stern action from the IAEA's board of governors using "all options at its disposal."
Rowhani played down the significance of the warning, saying it contained "nothing new and did not worry Iran" as Tehran would continue to insist on the peaceful nature of its nuclear activities.
But his confidence was not shared by other observers.
Western analysts said the United States would pounce on the discovery of any further secret nuclear facility as a chance to bring up the subject again and take Tehran to the Security Council.
And at home the Jomhuri Eslami daily -- which had been against any concession by Tehran to the international pressure -- went as far as to describe the resolution as a "sword of Damocles" for Iran.
"The very frank relations between the United States and Europe and the introduction of the White House's positions into the resolution has transformed this into a sword of Damocles over Iran's nuclear activities," it said.
It said the resolution in effect warned Iran that it would be brought before the Security Council if any further nuclear infringements were discovered.
"Iran is in a difficult position as the situation is such that ... the conditions required by the Americans to pressure Iran could be fulfilled very easily," it said.
----
Iran: Bring on nuclear inspectors
November 27, 2003
(UPI)
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031127-092644-5263r.htm
TEHRAN, Iran, Nov. 27 -- Iran's national security chief said Thursday he is not worried at all about a United Nations threat of tougher nuclear inspections.
Iran's supreme national security council chief, Hassan Rohani, was quoted by Iran's official news agency, IRNA, as saying Iran has no fear about tougher inspections of its nuclear facilities.
His remarks came on the heels of Wednesday's vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency warning Iran it would not tolerate any future violations of its rules, Voice of America reported.
Rohani said such inspections would prove its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes.
On Wednesday the IAEA condemned Iran for what it called an 18-year cover-up of nuclear research that included uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, both of which are needed for the development of nuclear weapons.
Washington had been pushing for the issue to be sent to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions against Tehran for failing to meet its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
----
UN Probes Possible Iran - Pakistan Nuclear Link
November 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear-designs.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear agency is probing a possible link between Iran and Pakistan after Tehran acknowledged using centrifuge designs that appear identical to ones used in Pakistan's quest for an atom bomb, diplomats say.
Diplomats said the agency was trying to determine whether the drawings had come from someone in Pakistan or elsewhere. Tehran, accused by Washington of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, told the U.N. nuclear agency it got the blueprints from a ``middleman'' whose identity the agency had not determined, a Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
It was unclear where the ``middleman'' got the drawings. The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said in a report Iran told the IAEA it got centrifuge drawings ``from a foreign intermediary around 1987.''
Centrifuges are used to purify uranium for use as fuel or in weapons. Experts say the ability to produce such material is crucial for an arms program and the biggest hurdle any country with ambitions to build a bomb must overcome.
Several diplomats familiar with the IAEA said the blueprints were of a machine by the Dutch enrichment unit of the British-Dutch-German consortium Urenco -- a leader in the field of centrifuges.
Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters he had no knowledge a Urenco design had been used by Iran. ``This is new information to me,'' he said.
In a statement to Reuters, Urenco said it had not supplied any centrifuge know-how or machinery to Iran.
``Urenco would like to strongly affirm that they have never supplied any technology or components to Iran at any time,'' it said.
PAKISTAN, IRAN DENY NUCLEAR COOPERATION
Pakistan, which non-proliferation experts and diplomats say used the Urenco blueprint, and Iran have repeatedly denied any cooperation in the nuclear field.
Iran had long insisted its centrifuge program was purely indigenous and that it had received no outside help whatsoever -- not from Pakistan or anywhere else.
The father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, worked at the Urenco uranium enrichment facility in the Dutch city of Almelo in the 1970s.
After his return to Pakistan he was convicted in absentia of nuclear espionage by an Amsterdam court, but the verdict was overturned on appeal. He has acknowledged he did take advantage of his experience of many years of working on similar projects in Europe and his contacts with various manufacturing firms.
But David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Institute for Science and International Security think-tank, said: ``Khan is widely believed to have taken these drawings and developed them.''
Khan is known to have visited Iran, but the diplomats said there was no proof of a link involving him and his laboratories in Pakistan.
The United States accuses Iran of using its nuclear power program, parts of which it kept hidden from the IAEA for 18 years, as a front to build an atom bomb. Tehran denies this.
On Wednesday, the IAEA Board of Governors unanimously approved a resolution that ``strongly deplores'' Iran's two-decade concealment of its centrifuge enrichment program, while praising its promises to be transparent from now on.
The IAEA is still investigating Iran's enrichment program in order to identify the origin of traces of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) inspectors found at the Natanz enrichment plant and the Kalaye Electric Co.
But when IAEA experts visited Iran's pilot enrichment plant at Natanz earlier this year, they saw it bore the marks of the centrifuges outlined in the Urenco designs, diplomats said.
They said Tehran later acknowledged it had used the Urenco designs and recently showed them to the IAEA. Iran also admitted to a massive procurement effort to get centrifuge components.
Iran says some of these components, purchased through ``middlemen'' in the middle of 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, were contaminated with HEU. This, the Iranians say, is why the IAEA found HEU traces at Natanz and Kalaye, where centrifuge parts were tested and manufactured.
Diplomats and non-proliferation experts say Iran's centrifuge program based on the Urenco design appears to have been more successful than Pakistan's. They say Pakistan eventually abandoned the Urenco model and chose another one.
----
UN 'Strongly Deplores' Iran Nuclear Cover-Up
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
November 27, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22954/story.htm
VIENNA, Austria - The United Nations nuclear watchdog condemned Iran Wednesday over an 18-year cover-up of sensitive atomic research and said any future breach of nonproliferation obligations would not be tolerated.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency stopped short of reporting Iran to the Security Council, which could have imposed sanctions. However, some countries think Tehran has more secrets and will eventually face the U.N.'s supreme body.
The IAEA governing board adopted a resolution that "strongly deplores" Iran's cover-up over the past 18 years of a program that involves uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing - both of which could be pointers to a nuclear arms program.
The resolution, which passed after more than a week of tough negotiations between its sponsors France, Germany and Britain, and Washington over how to balance encouragement and condemnation, also praises Iran's promises of "active cooperation and openness."
The United States has described Iran as part of an international "axis of evil" - together with North Korea and prewar Iraq - and believes it has been using a secretive atomic energy program to hide development of nuclear arms, which Tehran denies.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference he was pleased with the resolution, but added: "The board is sending a very serious and ominous message that failures in the future will not be tolerated and that the board will use all options available to it to deal with these failures."
Iran's Foreign Ministry hailed the resolution as an "achievement" for Tehran.
However, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA was disappointed the text left out the IAEA's conclusion in a recent report on Iran that there was "no evidence" of a weapons program.
IRAN SAYS KEY POINT OMITTED
"The most important conclusion of the report ... was not incorporated in the resolution," Ali Akbar Salehi said.
The IAEA report, however, had also said the jury was still out on whether there was a nuclear arms program.
Washington, which was infuriated by the IAEA's "no evidence" conclusion, saw the resolution as both a clear rejection of Iran's nuclear cover-up and a U.S. victory. "Iran today is at a crossroads," U.S. ambassador to the IAEA Kenneth Brill said in a statement.
"They can ... continue down the well worn path of the past almost 20 years of denial, deception, deceit, or they can turn toward the path of a new chapter wherein they really do come clean and meet their commitments in a verifiable way."
The United States had hoped to send Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions for "non-compliance" with its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Europeans opposed this and Washington finally acquiesced.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, traveling with reporters in Texas where President Bush has a ranch, said the United States welcomed the resolution.
"We welcome that resolution and believe that it underscores the international community's serious concerns with Iran's nuclear activities and the urgent requirement of Iran to come into full compliance with nuclear nonproliferation obligations.
"We feel that this is a strong resolution. We welcome it and there is no doubt that it means referral to the United Nations ...to be dealt with."
BRITAIN WELCOMES RESOLUTION
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw issued a statement welcoming the adoption of the resolution as "an important step forward in the international community's efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons."
The French Foreign Ministry said of the resolution: "Its content is balanced, it makes a very firm judgment on Iran's past activities in the nuclear area and encourages it to continue and confirm its move toward a new policy of transparency and cooperation with the international community."
Russia also welcomed the resolution, saying it was pleased the matter would not be taken up by the Security Council.
But the Council threat is strongly implied. The resolution contains a so-called trigger clause; if further breaches are uncovered, the IAEA board will meet immediately to consider "all options," one of which is the Security Council.
Some disarmament experts think Iran still has some secrets.
"It's very likely that Iran has more skeletons in its closet," said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S.-based think-tank. (Additional reporting by Francois Murphy and Marcus Kabel and the Warsaw, Tehran and London bureaux)
----
U.N. Atom Agency Gives Iran Both a Slap and a Pass
November 27, 2003
New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/international/europe/27IRAN.html
VIENNA, Nov. 26 - The International Atomic Energy Agency passed a much-debated resolution on Wednesday that condemns Iran for covering up its nuclear program for nearly two decades but stops short of urging action by the United Nations Security Council.
The resolution, drafted by Britain, France and Germany, sets the stage for a verification process that could be every bit as contentious as the tussle this past week over the wording of the declaration.
The resolution warns of unspecified action against Iran if the agency's inspectors uncover "further serious failures" in its disclosures about nuclear activities.
While the United States and Britain say further deception would prompt a referral to the Security Council, the wording is vague. What constitutes a serious failure is also open to debate, though the agency said it planned to hold Iran to a strict standard.
"The board is sending a very serious and ominous message that failure in the future will not be tolerated," Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, said after the measure was adopted by consensus by the 35 nations on the board. "Our work in the next few weeks will be very intensive."
Noting that the agency wanted to do that work without interference, Dr. ElBaradei said in an interview at his Vienna headquarters, "I would like to ask the member states to sit back and relax."
But the United States had pushed unsuccessfully for a much stronger resolution, and diplomats said Washington would track the inspections closely, seizing on any evidence of Iranian deception as a way to step up the pressure on Tehran.
"There must be a very robust verification," said Kenneth C. Brill, the United States ambassador to the agency. "The international community rejects 18 years of Iran's denial, deceit and deception."
Privately, American officials say they expect further disclosures of hidden nuclear activity by Iran, pointing to unexplored areas in Iran's recently disclosed use of laser technology to enrich uranium.
Iran reacted calmly to the resolution, but said it was disappointed that it left out what it called the most important conclusion of a recent agency report on Iran: that there is "no evidence" of an arms program.
For the United States, which had wanted matters referred to the Security Council, the resolution capped a frustrating week in which it found itself again at odds with Germany and France, as well as with its usually stalwart ally, Britain.
In talks over the weekend, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was able to win a tougher condemnation of Iran. The resolution "strongly deplores Iran's past failures and breaches of its obligation" under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Mr. Powell, however, could not persuade the foreign ministers - Jack Straw of Britain, Dominique de Villepin of France and Joschka Fischer of Germany - to include an explicit threat to go to the Council.
A senior European diplomat said Iran had put heavy pressure on the three nations to leave out such a warning. The Europeans, he said, did not want to jeopardize the diplomatic overture they made in October to Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, which resulted in a pledge to suspend enrichment of uranium, which is crucial in the manufacturing of nuclear weapons.
The main beneficiary of the trans-Atlantic haggling appeared to be Dr. ElBaradei, who had appealed for a strongly worded resolution that nevertheless did not elevate the Iran dispute to the Security Council.
An Egyptian diplomat with a methodical manner, Dr. ElBaradei has often had tense relations with the Bush administration. Some Bush officials believe that he was not aggressive enough in hunting down evidence of a weapons program in Iraq in the months before the war.
With no illicit weapons having been uncovered in Iraq so far, however, Dr. ElBaradei's cautious approach has been vindicated, in the opinion of some delegates here. He regularly invokes the Iraq example.
"Iraq has been a very sobering experience," he said. "Everybody is learning from that experience."
Among the lessons, he said, is that people should not jump to the conclusion that having an atomic research program is proof that Iran is seeking a bomb. Another lesson is that "inspections take time," he said.
"Even if you have 1,200 people and $1 billion, it can take over a year," Dr. ElBaradei added, referring to the weapons search the American-led alliance is conducting in Iraq. He said he would send no more than 10 inspectors to Iran for the next phase of the verification process.
----
U.N. Agency Censures Iran Over Secrecy
Associated Press
Thursday, November 27, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16618-2003Nov26.html
VIENNA, Nov. 26 -- The U.N. atomic agency censured Iran for 18 years of secrecy, issuing a resolution Wednesday that its director said gave him greater authority to monitor the country for evidence of nuclear weapons ambitions.
Director General Mohamed ElBaradei of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said the measure sent an "ominous message that failures in the future will not be tolerated."
The resolution, adopted by consensus by the 35-nation IAEA board of governors, did not directly threaten Iran with U.N. sanctions, as the United States had initially sought. Key European powers opposed a direct threat, worried that Tehran would stop cooperating.
The final resolution was a compromise, containing a more implicit threat. It says that if "further serious Iranian failures" occur, the IAEA board would meet to consider actions allowed by its statute -- which include U.N. Security Council action.
A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington was "pretty happy" with the compromise text. The source added that the U.S. is skeptical that Iran has stopped it covert nuclear weapons program.
-------- iraq / inspections
INTELLIGENCE
U.S. to Shift Some Experts From Arms to Antiterror
November 27, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/politics/27WEAP.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - Dozens of the American intelligence experts and linguists sent to Iraq to search for illicit weapons have been reassigned to an expanding effort to learn more about the insurgents attacking United States troops, senior government officials said Wednesday.
The shift in the last two weeks appears to reflect a decision that the hunt for insurgents is becoming a more urgent task than the quest for chemical and biological weapons, which has so far proved unsuccessful despite the involvement of hundreds of people in the search.
In recent weeks as many as 40 attacks a day have been conducted against American troops in Iraq, and American commanders have acknowledged that they know relatively little about the attackers.
The question of whether to assign some of the intelligence experts to counterinsurgency has been debated for weeks within the Bush administration. Government officials say the work for now is being carried out informally, with no decision yet on whether to make the reassignment official or permanent.
But they said the switch meant that some of the linguists, intelligence analysts and other experts on the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group were now reporting only to Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, a top official of the Defense Intelligence Agency who heads the survey group.
Previously they reported further up the chain of command to David Kay, the civilian American official who oversees the weapons hunt as a special adviser to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
A Defense Department official said the group had been reinforced in recent weeks with "additional assets" focused on counterinsurgency.
The group's main focus until now has been the search for illicit weapons, but its members have been told in the last two weeks to "broaden their perspective and not to stay so focused on weapons that they miss the counterinsurgency stuff."
A large portion of the Iraq Survey Group is made up of support and security personnel, so the reassignment of even a relatively small number of people directly involved in intelligence work was described by the officials as significant. At least several dozen people could be affected, and perhaps several hundred, one government official said.
American commanders have said they believe that there are about 5,000 Iraqi insurgents, nearly all of them former members of the Iraqi intelligence service and other organizations loyal to Saddam Hussein. But nearly seven months after President Bush declared an end to major combat, American intelligence officials say they know little about how they are organized and directed.
The officials have acknowledged that their resources, particularly in terms of Arabic speakers, were stretched thin by the demands of the weapons search and other intelligence priorities.
In an interim report to Congress in early October, Dr. Kay acknowledged that his team had failed to find evidence in Iraq of the chemical and biological weapons and the reconstituted nuclear weapons program that the Bush administration cited as a principal reason for going to war.
Dr. Kay, whose work has been conducted in secret, said at the time that the search might take another six to nine months. But although Dr. Kay provides regular updates by videoconference to Mr. Tenet, a senior United States official said Dr. Kay did not plan to issue any further update to Congress soon.
Dr. Kay and other administration officials have defended continuing the weapons hunt. They say they have found evidence that Iraq put in place an infrastructure that could produce chemical and biological weapons on short notice, and that the lethality of the substances makes it imperative that they uncover even small quantities of hidden weapons or weapons material.
But while Congress has appropriated an additional $600 million to continue the weapons hunt into next year, some on Capitol Hill are losing patience.
Even in advance of Dr. Kay's next report, the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, at the direction of Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the panel's Republican chairman, is planning to draft a report next month critical of American intelligence agencies for misreading the threat posed by illicit Iraqi weapons, Congressional officials said this week.
Senior military officers have argued that the immediate threat to American troops makes the counterinsurgency campaign the most urgent effort, according to government officials. But the Central Intelligence Agency has argued that it would be dangerous to abandon the search while highly lethal illicit weapons might still be hidden in Iraq.
-------- israel
IAEA chief urges Israel to scrap nuclear weapons
Thursday, November 27, 2003
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-11-27/s_10834.asp
VIENNA, Austria - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Wednesday he wanted Israel to dismantle its nuclear weapons arsenal and he believed all Middle Eastern states would benefit from ridding the region of nuclear weapons.
Israel has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has never officially admitted to having the bomb. But nonproliferation analysts estimate Israel has between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons.
Asked about a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom last week, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei hinted Israel should sign the NPT, the global pact designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
"We obviously discussed ... efforts to try to move forward toward application of safeguards (on) all nuclear activities in the Middle East, including in Israel, and the possibility of moving forward toward establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East," he told reporters.
The U.N. General Assembly and IAEA General Conference have adopted 13 resolutions since 1987 appealing to Israel to sign the NPT and all have been ignored.
"In my view every country in the Middle East, including Israel, will benefit from establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East as part and parcel of a comprehensive peace in the region," ElBaradei said.
Since the 1991 discovery and later dismantling of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program, Iran is the only Middle Eastern country suspected of developing nuclear weapons - apart from Israel.
Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons and have not signed the NPT. North Korea is suspected of having built at least one atom bomb and withdrew from the NPT on New Year's Eve last year.
-------- italy
Italy Scraps Nuclear Waste Site Plans After Protest
November 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-environment-italy.html
ROME (Reuters) - Italy on Thursday scrapped plans to dump nuclear waste near a southern town in one of the country's poorest regions, bowing to weeks of pressure from protesters.
The government had intended to store the waste in a specially built underground vault near Scanzano Jonico in the southern region of Basilicata, saying years of geological surveys showed it was the safest place in Italy to dump it.
But residents said the waste was being palmed off onto the poorer south and that such a decision would not have been tolerated in the wealthier north.
``This is the happiest day of my life. They just consider us sheep not capable of fighting. But we have shown how tough we are and that local pride is unbeatable,'' Carlo Carlucci, a resident, told Italian news agency Ansa.
Italian government officials urged a speedy resolution to the issue, saying things were much more dangerous as they were.
``We have this terrible situation with more than one hundred sites that are a danger to the population. There's even talk of radioactive waste in hospital waste tips,'' said Carlo Giovanardi, minister for relations with parliament.
At a Thursday cabinet meeting the government decided to drop Scanzano Jonico from a decree concerning nuclear waste storage and charged a team of experts with investigating alternatives.
But later Giovanardi did not rule out the possibility that the Scanzano Jonico site might be resurrected.
``The team of experts ... will evaluate all the options, including Scanzano,'' the minister said in a statement.
-------- japan
Japan confident in contest for nuclear fusion project
TOKYO (AFP)
Nov 27, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031127052050.ty54caqt.html
Japan said Thursday it remained confident of winning the race to host a multi-billion dollar new-generation power project a day after EU ministers chose France as Europe's sole challenger.
Japan's northern town of Rokkasho-mura is widely seen as the only serious contender against Europe for the 4.5 billion-dollar (5.3-billion-euro) scheme designed to replicate the sun's nuclear fusion.
The site for the planned International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is due to be decided before the end of the year. Japan's main challenger is the southern French town of Cadarache since funding problems are seen to be a major flaw in a Canadian bid.
The project aims to replicate the kind of nuclear fusion seen in the sun to deliver clean energy from hydrogen.
"We want to compete fairly and squarely to the best of our ability," said Hidekazu Tanaka, an official with the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry.
"As this is very important for the energy of the future, we want to make sure our country succeeds," he said.
Tanaka said the Japanese site was closer to a port, the rocky ground was better for the scheme with services already in place for foreign scientists, Tanaka said.
Japan is also willing to pay a hefty portion of the construction cost with 8.6 billion yen (79 million dollars) earmarked for the first year in a 10-year construction plan.
"If our site is chosen, Japan will cover the costs that are needed," he said.
France has so far pledged to invest 400 million euros of state funding to the project, backed by the EU, Japan, the US, Canada, Russia and South Korea.
Paris saw off a rival bid by Spain's Vandellos in the northeastern Catalonia region, after experts decided the French site had better infrastructure. The final decision on the site is expected to be announced next month.
Hydrogen, which is in virtually limitless supply, is seen as a crucial next step in developing nuclear power because of the limited reserves of plutonium and uranium used in current reactors, Tanaka said.
-------- korea
US BLUEPRINT FOR NORTH KOREA
27.11.2003.
Special Broadcasting Service
http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=73899®ion=2
The United States has prepared a comprehensive plan for the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, according to Japanese media reports.
Kyodo news and a the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported that Washington is seeking the aid of the world's five declared nuclear powers to monitor the process.
Britain, China, France, Russia and the US would collectively work to verify its completion.
The plan is based on a similar initiative undertaken to end South Africa's nuclear program a decade ago.
Unnamed sources, a senior US official and a diplomat, were said to have revealed the plan that will be put to the Communist regime at the next round of six-party talks.
Should an agreement follow, the US hopes that all North Korean nuclear activities would be declared.
This would then clear the way for UN inspectors to enter the country, and for the transfer of spent fuel and plutonium for external monitoring.
The US government has said that it is prepared to put into words a verbal promise not to attack North Korea in return for a commitment to scrap its nuclear weapons program
-------- missile defense
Pushing Technology And Fighting Skeptics
Missile Defense to Be Deployed in Election Year
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17459-2003Nov27?language=printer
On his desk in a spacious corner office looking down on the Pentagon from a nearby hill, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish keeps a model of the plane the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
It reminds him of the skepticism the brothers confronted, a parallel that he sees with his own circumstance as director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
"The Wright brothers faced the same problem that we face with missile defense," he said in a recent interview. "They had eminent scientists of the day saying that man would never fly, and they were proving them wrong."
Kadish has been overseeing the controversial program since June 1999, having survived the change in administration from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. He is on track to becoming, after April, the longest-serving head of the missile defense program since President Ronald Reagan set up a separate Pentagon organization to manage the effort nearly 20 years ago.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has extended Kadish's tenure twice, keeping the general in place to prepare for the planned deployment in September 2004 of antimissile interceptors in Alaska and California.
"The secretary is interested in longevity in key positions," Kadish said. "And I think this is one area that he pays particular attention to."
Low-key and genial, with a round face and stocky build, Kadish came into the job with a reputation as a kind of Mr. Fix-It. He had turned around the Air Force's troubled C-17 cargo jet program, impressing Rumsfeld's predecessor, former senator William S. Cohen (R-Maine), who picked Kadish for missile defense.
The assignment has presented Kadish with what he describes as his most difficult career challenge.
"We know how to operate tanks and airplanes, but handing a long-range missile defense system to the services to operate requires a whole new set of thinking," he said.
The system that the Pentagon plans to deploy next year will rely on interceptor missiles launched from silos to chase down enemy warheads in space, a concept known as "hit to kill." Technical glitches and quality control problems in designing new boosters for the interceptors have slowed development and resulted in more than a year's delay in flight intercept tests.
Nonetheless, Kadish remains confident that President Bush's deployment deadline can be met. The timetable has the system starting as the 2004 presidential campaign enters its final weeks, although Kadish and other defense officials insist politics was not a factor in determining the schedule.
Critics in Congress, scientific circles and the arms control community continue to warn that the administration is rushing ahead with an approach that has yet to be adequately tested and is likely to prove unworkable or quickly become obsolete.
They complain that the administration has lowered the threshold for what is technologically acceptable, justifying its plan on grounds, as Rumsfeld has said, that something is better than nothing. They also accuse Kadish of pulling a veil over the program since last year.
"The program is not at all transparent," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. "I think General Kadish has instructions to be as minimally cooperative as he can be."
Kadish said the program must be cloaked in greater secrecy as it moves toward deployment to avoid revealing too much to potential enemies. But he insisted that members of Congress continue to receive ample information. "When it comes to the Hill, we bend over backwards," he said.
Kadish is widely credited, by opponents as well as proponents of the program, with showing care in public statements not to overstate what the planned system will be able to do. He has stressed that the initial setup will have very limited ability -- enough to shoot down only a handful of relatively simple warheads.
But while acknowledging technical limitations, Kadish has declared that the basic hit-to-kill approach is sound and ready for deployment. His detractors accuse him of adjusting his views to suit the administration's political aim of erecting some kind of system after decades of research and billions of dollars. The fiscal 2004 defense budget sets aside $9.1 billion for missile defense.
Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, likens Kadish's willingness to endorse the administration's missile defense goal to CIA Director George J. Tenet's readiness, before the Iraq war, to support the view that Iraq's weapons programs posed an imminent threat to U.S. interests.
"Kadish has an obligation to be technically and scientifically honest about what the program can do, just as Tenet had an obligation to present honest assessments before the war," Kimball said.
Kadish said he has come under no pressure from the administration to shade judgments about system capabilities.
A source familiar with internal Pentagon deliberations on missile defense said some on Kadish's staff had shown "cultural resistance" to moving toward an operational system next year, preferring to stay focused on research. But Kadish favored turning a planned new test site in Alaska into an operational facility while continuing to use the site to test and improve the system.
Since the early months of the Bush administration, Kadish has worked closely with Rumsfeld to widen the range of technological options being explored, from ground- and sea-launched interceptors to airborne lasers and space-based weapons. At Kadish's urging, Rumsfeld last year freed the missile defense program from the detailed requirements that usually govern the development of major weapons.
The current plan calls essentially for Kadish and his team to build the best system they can in the near term, then improve on it in phases, or developmental "blocks," spaced in two-year intervals. No ultimate system architecture is specified. Instead, Kadish and other defense officials speak in broad terms of erecting a multilayered network of land-, sea- and air-based weapons that would target enemy missiles in all phases of flight.
Kadish said he reads as much history as he can -- biographies, military stories, accounts of past scientific and technological programs -- looking for ideas. But one of his biggest frustrations remains finding a way to avoid production quality problems.
The last attempted intercept test, for instance, failed because of a broken metal pin connecting a computer chip in the interceptor built by Raytheon Corp. More recently, the mixing of rocket propellants at a Pratt & Whitney facility triggered two accidental explosions, one killing an employee in September. This interrupted development of a new booster by Lockheed Martin Corp., leaving the Pentagon to proceed with an alternative rocket designed by Orbital Sciences Corp.
"What's been frustrating to me is that we've been failing on the quality side of technologies we've used before," Kadish said. "That I find totally unacceptable. . . . We'll just have to keep after it."
-------- russia
Russia Praises IAEA Iran Resolution
November 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Iran.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's Nuclear Energy Ministry said Thursday the resolution adopted by the U.N. nuclear agency this week on Iran should foster closer cooperation between Russia and Iran on nuclear power.
Russia is building a nuclear reactor for power in the Iranian city of Bushehr under a $800 million contract the United States has said would help Iran develop nuclear weapons.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted ministry spokesman Nikolai Shingaryov as saying that Wednesday's resolution from the International Atomic Energy Agency ``provides an opportunity to step up Russian-Iranian cooperation in nuclear power engineering.''
But the prospect of increased cooperation is likely to raise further concern in the United States, which is skeptical that Iran has stopped its covert nuclear weapons program.
Shingaryov said the resolution ``gives all grounds to believe that no problems will arise between the IAEA and Iran, and the U.N. Security Council will not have to consider the question of the Iranian nuclear problem,'' according to ITAR-Tass.
Facing U.S. pressure, Russia has said it will not ship nuclear fuel to Iran until the two countries sign an agreement under which all spent fuel would be returned to Russia -- a measure aimed to prevent it from being used for weapons -- and that deal has been bogged down by disagreements.
Russian Nuclear Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev is expected to visit Tehran in January for talks on the completion of the first reactor at Bushehr and prospects for further cooperation, Shingaryov said. Rumyantsev said earlier in November that it could take months to finalize the nuclear fuel return agreement.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
DOE predicts nuke reactions in casks
Nevadans worry about danger at Yucca
By Suzanne Struglinski
LAS VEGAS SUN
November 26, 2003
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archives/2003/nov/26/515926524.html?Suzanne+Struglinski
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department predicts up to 60 uncontrolled nuclear reactions would take place inside nuclear waste casks stored at power plant sites should the casks corrode, according to a department study obtained by Nevada officials.
After a review of the documents, state officials say they believe the same thing would happen at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The state wants the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent board set up by Congress to review the potential dump, to look into the matter.
"We were amazed to learn, after finally obtaining some of the pertinent documents from the Department of Energy through the Freedom of Information Act, that DOE's own studies anticipate that, if the repository operates as is now planned, up to 60 nuclear criticalities may plausibly occur inside the mountain, and that (the) conditional probability of occurrence may be greater than one in 1,000 per year," Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects wrote to board Chairman Michael Corradini.
Criticalities are uncontrolled nuclear reactions that could occur if water -- or other liquids -- got inside the casks. It could start a mininuclear reaction inside the casks and cause a steam explosion, said Washington attorney Joe Egan, who represents the state on Yucca matters.
The issue of water seepage at Yucca Mountain has been a critical point of debate over the planned nuclear waste repository. Scientists are still studying how water moves through the mountain. With or without water, the casks are eventually expected to corrode over a period of thousands of years.
State officials expressed surprise that the report wasn't disclosed as part of the Yucca Mountain debate.
They say Energy officials have said that the issue won't affect Yucca Mountain and state officials say this study shows that it does.
But Allen Benson, a Yucca Mountain project spokesman in Nevada, said the documents the state received do not relate to Yucca Mountain but are from a 4-year-old report looking at on-site waste storage facilities at nuclear power plants.
Benson said the department was glad Loux sent the letter to the board since it can now choose to review the matter, but that on-site storage and storage inside Yucca "are two different things."
Benson said that since the report shows that criticalities can take place inside above-ground storage containers at the 103 nuclear power plants throughout the country, especially if water gets in them, it makes even more sense to store the waste in Yucca, which is in the desert.
But state officials say the fact that the Energy Department acknowledges in this report that criticality is an issue is a huge threat.
Egan and Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval filed petitions with the U.S. Court Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asking the court to include the FOIA documents in the court record. The state's major court arguments on the site will take place there on Jan. 14.
Loux said the department only predicated an "extremely low probability of occurrence" of such reactions in the Final Environmental Impact Statement issued last year. He quotes the document's specific text to that effect in his letter to Corradini.
State officials had Michael Thorne, a criticality expert, review the report and found that an expected 60 chain reaction events would occur throughout the lifetime of the repository since the department anticipates the waste packages will degrade over time.
"A criticality occurring in the repository could severely compromise the entire facility, vastly increasing radionuclide releases and making waste packages irretrievable," Loux wrote.
The department documents do not have a timeline for the events to occur, according to the letter.
"These are not nuclear explosions," Egan said. "We are not trying to scare anyone ... we are not saying this is going to happen, but DOE's own analysis notes it was a nonspeculative scenario."
But if the casks were to burst, the radioactive material would go with it. "It's literally a dirty bomb, a conventional explosion with radioactive materials," Egan said.
"Their maximum accident scenario in transport is $18 billion in clean-up (costs) and 44 early fatalities, and that's with a small puff of radiation not an explosion -- they call it a 'violent event' which is a euphemism for explosion," Egan said.
-------- us politics
Nuclear Energy, Senator Hillary Clinton and Ostrichism
by Mina Hamilton
November 27, 2003
Dissident Voice
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Hamilton_Hillary-Nukes-Ostrichism.htm
Something to be happy about this Thanksgiving: The billion dollar give-away to the nuclear, oil, and gas industry that was the Energy Bill bit the dust on November 24.
To the dismay of the Bush administration this disastrous legislation crafted in secret committee meetings by Senators Pete Domenici and Congressman "Billy" Tauzin was at the last minute knocked out by a Democrat-led filibuster. As Paul Gunter of the Nuclear Information and Energy Service says, the bill's supporters "were bitterly disappointed not to have this turkey for Thanksgiving."
The bill - long coveted by huge donors to the Republican Party -- is not dead. It will be back to haunt us in 2004.
Come the New Year the US Congress will be poised to pass the bill and dole out taxpayer money to needy corporations. Each section of the bill is more egregious than the last, but the insanity of Section 45L that calls for a first-ever $6 billion tax break for operating NEW nuclear reactors takes one's breath away.
The lunacy is stunning. As the US government supports policies that are generating more and more terrorists, it also wants to build more nukes, one of the forms of energy most vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Just how vulnerable is embodied in the three words: spent fuel pool. These are the virtually unprotected pools in which tons and tons of unimaginably toxic irradiated fuel sits at reactors across the land.
Yet our politicians remain blithely oblivious to the terrorist threat to spent fuel pools. Or they support weak, half-measures to address the threat.
An example: On November 12th Senator Hillary Clinton asked the Federal Government to consider flying air patrols over New York State's nuclear power plants. In a letter to Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Clinton listed Indian Point (the reactors only 24 miles north of New York City), Nine Mile Point and Ginna as the plants that need protection.
Along with many legislators, Senator Clinton is guilty of ostrichism.
Ostrichism. This word was coined by the military theorist and Rand think tanker, Herman Kahn, when he, in 1962, wrote the book, Thinking about the Unthinkable. At the time the unthinkable was the actual use (as opposed to threatened use) of nuclear weapons in a war. Thinking about the Unthinkable was vigorously attacked, as had been Kahn's earlier book, On Thermonuclear War.
In his books Kahn dared to open and examine the Pandora's box of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear warfare. At the time many critics claimed that plumbing this unpleasant topic was callous and would breed indifference. They argued only military strategists should focus on the topic -- in secret.
For those critics who opposed his books, Kahn counter-attacked saying they suffered from ostrichism.
Whatever one thought of Kahn's original work he broke through an information barrier. Soon subsequent studies by Jonathan Schell and Helen Caldicott spread the word about such depressing topics as nuclear winter and radiation poisoning. These studies - and the activist movements they helped to spawn -- generated support for nuclear test moratoriums and opposition to the use of nuclear bombs. These, in turn, have helped to control hawks in the Pentagon who ever since the murderous quagmire of Vietnam have yearned to use nukes.
Today much of the American public is too terrified to think about another unthinkable: a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant. The notion of a nuke going up in flames sends shivers down our spines. It's almost unbearable to imagine a radiation-drenched cloud rising up into the sky and then blowing contamination towards nearby cities, towns, water reservoirs, rivers and farms.
The reaction of a lot of folks: "Don't tell me about it. There's only so much bad news I can handle."
This proverbial ostrich head-in-the-sand technique is very dangerous. It leaves policy decisions up to the uninformed or to those unwilling to confront powerful electrical utilities. It leaves us with the absurdity of a few extra flights by the US Air Force over nuclear power plants.
Kyle Rabin, Senior Policy Analyst for the Riverkeeper, an environmental organization fighting to close down Indian Point politely says over flights represents "an important first step." He quickly adds, "It should be coupled with hardening of the spent fuel pools."
Why "harden" a pool? Here's the problem: Spent fuel pools are virtually unprotected against a ground attack. Why? Because the pools are not located inside those reassuringly thick concrete containment domes we've all seen pictures of. Only simple corrugated metal roofs cover the pools. (Some reactors have pools located inside the reactor containment building, but this construction poses a separate set of risks.)
In the case where spent fuel pools are outside the reactor domes, they were built as temporary and therefore quite shoddy structures. In fact, according to one expert, the roofs on these pools are a "step above a metal shack."
Hold it. Wait a minute. "A step above a metal shack"? Let this phrase sink in. "A step above a metal shack."
We're talking about a pool that contains a massive inventory of radioactivity, an inventory that, if released, would make Chernobyl look like a picnic. At Indian Point we're speaking of an inventory that could permanently contaminate - depending which way the wind was blowing - three-quarters of New York State.
Alarmingly, these highly vulnerable "metal shacks," sometimes also described as Butler-type, Quonset-hut type buildings dot our fair country from coast to coast.
Over flights may reassure some citizens, but let's face the brutal facts: the pilots of said planes would not be able to spot the terrorist who creeps towards a spent fuel pool with a deadly weapon.
Thus far Senator Hillary Clinton has opted for the ostrichism of over flights. Although she has raised serious questions regarding the viability of evacuation plans at Indian Point, she has failed to advocate the only responsible action: shut down Indian Point and the 102 other nuclear power plants scattered throughout New York State and the US.
Only after shutdown will the nukes stop churning out more and more irradiated fuel. Only then can the already-accumulated fuel sitting in vulnerable pools be shifted into sturdy casks made terrorist-proof by underground burial and/or berms.
Senator Clinton is not alone in her ostrichism. Of the 100 Senators in the US Senate, not one has had the courage to call for the shutdown of any one particularly unsafe reactor or for the shutdown of all reactors in the US.
Over Congress's Christmas recess, I, for one, am headed to the local offices of my US Senators to have a little chat about this matter.
Mina Hamilton is a writer in New York City. She can be reached at minaham@aol.com.
----
Senator: Military must review vaccine use
By Mark Benjamin
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
November 25, 2003
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031124-045156-7401r.htm
WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A week after the Pentagon acknowledged one soldier's death might have been caused by a vaccine reaction, a U.S. senator is calling on the military to reconsider mandatory anthrax and smallpox vaccinations that he says could be causing "grievous" harm.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., plans on Tuesday to introduce a "Sense of the Senate" resolution asking Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to review the vaccine program amid growing reports of serious side effects. He also argues that U.S. troops face less risk of a biological attack since the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"There is a growing number of disturbing reports about how some of our servicemembers have contracted health problems shortly after receiving the anthrax and smallpox vaccines," Bingaman says in remarks prepared for delivery in the Senate Tuesday.
"These illnesses include mysterious pneumonia-like illnesses, heart problems, blood clots, and other medical conditions that have stricken otherwise young, healthy, and strong military personnel. It has even resulted in deaths."
On Nov. 19, the Pentagon acknowledged vaccinations might have led to the April death of Army nurse Rachael Lacy, who died after receiving shots for anthrax, smallpox and three other diseases. The Pentagon said her death might have been due to an underlying disorder that was triggered by one or more vaccines.
"Vaccinations are important tools to keep our servicemembers protected and healthy. Specialist Lacy's case was rare and clearly tragic," Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs, said last week. "We plan to continue to carefully administer our vaccination programs, including careful monitoring of adverse events that follow administration."
Bingaman acknowledges in his prepared remarks that "vaccines are an important factor in ensuring protection of our nation's military personnel from health threats -- both natural or from biological weapons -- in overseas conflicts."
But he said he is concerned "our current Department of Defense policies may be failing them, with grievous consequences."
"An estimated 84 percent of the personnel who had anthrax vaccine shots ... reported having side effects or reactions," says Bingaman's resolution, a copy of which was obtained by United Press International.
The resolution also notes that a government advisory committee withdrew its support for expanding the smallpox vaccination program for first responders "after finding that 1 in 500 civilians vaccinated for smallpox had a serious vaccine event."
The resolution calls for the military to reconsider punishments given to servicemembers who refuse to take the vaccines. Some have been court-martialed for refusing the vaccinations and others have left the military rather than receive them.
Prospects for the resolution do not look promising -- Bingaman introduced the measure without any co-sponsors. But the issue is getting increased attention among veterans groups and soldiers' families.
Bingaman's statement cites UPI and CBS News reports that "have identified a growing number of deaths and severe illnesses that point to the anthrax and smallpox vaccines." It also quotes from UPI's reporting on problems of sick, injured and wounded soldiers, many of whom served in Iraq, who have been stuck for weeks and months in "medical hold" awaiting treatment.
"At Fort Knox, according to a UPI story, 369 of the 422 soldiers did not deploy to Operation Iraqi Freedom because of their illnesses. This includes, according to the story, 'strange clusters of heart problems and breathing problems (also experienced by) soldiers at Fort Stewart and other locations,'" Bingaman said.
"These are health problems that are often cited as adverse events accompanying the anthrax and smallpox vaccines," he said.
"We certainly do not know whether these cases have been caused by the anthrax or smallpox vaccine at this point. In fact, these personnel desperately await any medical treatment and that must be addressed."
----
Broad Bills Stuffed With Lawmakers' Pet Items
November 27, 2003
New York Times
By ROBERT PEAR and MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/politics/27LOBB.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - In public, members of Congress have spent hundreds of hours debating the future of Medicare and the need for a national energy policy. Behind the scenes, they have spent even more time working on little-known provisions of the legislation that would benefit specific health care providers and energy companies.
Tucked inside the Medicare bill is an assortment of provisions that have nothing to do with providing prescription drug benefits to the elderly. The energy bill and the annual spending bills for federal agencies are also stuffed with pet projects, intended to win votes for the legislation.
Congress gave final approval to the Medicare bill on Tuesday, but is still wrestling with the energy measure.
The two bills - top priorities for President Bush and the Republican leaders of Congress - provided convenient vehicles for spending narrowly focused on special interests. Hundreds of health care providers and colleges now receive such largess, and the numbers have soared in recent years.
A provision benefiting a specific hospital in Tennessee was added to the Medicare bill at the last minute in an effort to get the vote of Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee.
The hospital was not named in the bill, but was described in terms that apply to only one hospital in the United States, the Regional Medical Center at Memphis. Mr. Ford's father, a former congressman, is a lobbyist for the hospital.
In the end, Mr. Ford voted against the bill. Bush administration officials now say they will probably not provide any extra money, even though the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, is urging them to do so because the hospital is in his state.
"We are the largest charity hospital in Tennessee," said Dr. Bruce W. Steinhauer, the hospital president. "We also provide millions of dollars worth of care to poor people from Mississippi and Arkansas."
The Medicare bill also increases payments for doctors in Alaska for a cancer treatment known as brachytherapy and for health maintenance organizations that have been dropping out of the Medicare market.
The energy bill includes $1 billion for a new nuclear reactor in Idaho, $800 million in federal loan guarantees for a coal gasification plant in Minnesota and tens of millions of dollars in subsidies for timber companies to log national forests for energy production.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said "parochial projects" were siphoning money away from higher priorities at many agencies.
Timothy M. Westmoreland, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said: "Big bills become larded with whatever bait it takes to get a majority vote. A lot of money in the Medicare bill is spent on things that have nothing to do with a prescription drug benefit."
For decades, it has been common practice for lawmakers to designate money for specific military bases, post offices and waterways. In recent years, they have funneled increasing amounts to specific hospitals, medical schools and health care projects.
Data collected by The Chronicle of Higher Education shows that spending on pork barrel projects at colleges and universities topped $2 billion this year for the first time. In a recent report, the Democratic staff of the House Appropriations Committee said the number of projects designated for assistance under the health and education spending bill nearly quadrupled, to 1,850, in the last three years.
Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, a consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, said, "The Medicare bill is a grab bag of special interest provisions benefiting a large number of industries."
Public interest groups criticize pork barrel projects as shameful. But lawmakers often take credit for their handiwork back home.
Just before the Senate gave final approval to the Medicare bill on Tuesday, Dr. Frist displayed a chart listing 358 organizations that supported it.
Members of many of those groups stand to benefit from the bill and participated in a lobbying campaign coordinated by Susan B. Hirschmann, a former chief of staff to Tom DeLay of Texas, now the House Republican leader.
The push for special interest provisions to ensure passage of the Medicare and energy bills led, in some cases, to new variations on the traditional relationships between lobbyists and lawmakers.
Lobbyists have long tried to influence members of Congress. But increasingly members of Congress have put pressure on lobbyists to support their legislative priorities. E-mail messages obtained from recipients provide details of such reverse lobbying.
On Sept. 12, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the chairman of the Finance Committee, sent a "wake-up call" to hospital executives around the country, asking for their help in fighting cuts proposed by the House.
"I met with Washington representatives from the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Catholic Health Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the National Association of Public Hospitals," Mr. Grassley wrote. "I asked them to stand with me in opposing these cuts."
Senator Grassley was successful. Hospitals were spared, and rural hospitals received substantial increases in payments.
Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California, the main author of the Medicare bill, tried to minimize the number of special interest provisions. But lobbyists say those provisions are sometimes needed to increase access to lifesaving medical technology.
The Medicare bill establishes a "special payment for brachytherapy," a procedure that uses radioactive "seeds" to treat a wide array of cancers. The bill stipulates that Medicare will pay for the seeds, in addition to the procedure required to implant them.
Two Georgia Republicans, Senator Saxby Chambliss and Representative Nathan Deal, proposed the new method of payment. Theragenics, which produces and sells seeds for use in brachytherapy, is based in Buford, Ga. It led a coalition of manufacturers and doctors who lobbied for the change, noting that some patients were more costly than others because they needed more seeds.
In the last week, Congress also agreed to a proposal to help a Missouri company, Briggs & Stratton, one of the world's largest producers of gasoline engines for lawn mowers and other outdoor equipment.
The provision was added to a catch-all spending bill by Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri. He wanted to prevent states from adopting tough new air pollution standards for small engines of the type made by the company.
Mr. Bond said the legislation would avert the closing of two Missouri plants and save 22,000 jobs around the country.
But Senator McCain said it was "an egregious provision that would have detrimental effects on air quality in many states, including my own."
The energy bill includes a section that would make it easier for a consortium of European and American companies, Louisiana Energy Services, to build a $1.2 billion uranium processing plant for nuclear energy near Hobbs, N.M.
The provision would speed up a federal review of the environmental effects of the project and would allow the Energy Department to transport radioactive waste from the plant to storage sites.
Senator McCain criticized the project as "the epitome of corporate welfare." The federal costs, he said, could reach $500 million to $1 billion. But a spokesman for the consortium, Marshall Cohen, said that it would pay for transporting the waste and that taxpayers would not have to bear any of the costs.
State officials in New Mexico said the project came about through the efforts of Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who urged the consortium to build the plant there after local opposition blocked similar efforts in Tennessee and Louisiana. Mr. Domenici said the plant could generate 600 jobs.
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On Secret Iraq Trip, Bush Pays Holiday Visit to G.I.'s
November 27, 2003
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/international/27CND-BUSH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 - In a stunning mission conducted under enormous secrecy, President Bush flew into Baghdad today aboard Air Force One to share Thanksgiving dinner with United States officials and several hundred astonished American troops.
His trip - the first ever to Iraq by an American president - had been kept a matter of absolute secrecy by the White House, which had said that Mr. Bush was to spend the holiday weekend at his ranch outside Crawford, Tex.
Even his wife, Laura, and his parents, the former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, who had also come to Crawford, received only a few hours' notice of the trip, officials said later.
The mission was an extraordinary gesture, with scant precedent, and was seen as an effort by Mr. Bush to show the importance he attaches to the embattled United States-led effort to pacify and democratize Iraq.
He told the troops that the United States would not back down in the face of stern resistance in Iraq.
The trip also carried a powerful public relations message, coming on a day when millions of Americans traditionally are at home before their televisions to watch parades or football games.
The presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, speaking on CNN, called the trip "a perfectly executed plan" that would be "one of the major moments in his biography." It would have provided "an incredible thrill" for the Americans, he said.
Mr. Bush was spirited out of Crawford on Wednesday in an unmarked car, without his customary motorcade, and boarded Air Force One, which left under the pretext that it was flying to Washington for maintenance work.
He then flew to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where a few advisers and a small number of reporters sworn to secrecy awaited him. Boarding a second, identical, airplane, the group then flew on to Baghdad International Airport, arriving around dusk.
The president spent 2 hours 32 minutes in the country before heading back to Crawford, where he was due around daybreak Friday.
About 600 startled soldiers, most of them from the Army's First Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne, had arrived at a heavily guarded hangar at the Baghdad airport under the impression that they would be dining with L. Paul Bremer III, the chief United States administrator there, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq.
Mr. Bremer told the troops that he was supposed to read a message from the president, but then said that normally "the most senior person" present should read it.
With a barely suppressed grin and almost glazed look on his face, he said, "Let's see if we've got anybody more senior." Mr. Bush then appeared from behind a curtain, wearing a gray army exercise jacket, and strode to the microphone.
The troops jumped to their feet to give him a tremendous cheer, and many held up cameras to snap his picture.
"Thank you," he said, adding with a grin, "I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere." He later helped serve the Thanksgiving meal.
Mr. Bush also met with four members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
The trip must have raised enormous concerns for the president's security team. A DHL cargo plane using the same airport on Saturday was struck in the wing by a shoulder-fired missile, forcing it to make an emergency landing. But such missiles, reliant on visual contact with their targets, are considered ineffective after dark.
"It's not real risky," Don Shepperd, a retired general, said on CNN. "At night, the risk is minimal."
The president's specially outfitted Boeing 747 flew with its lights out, aides said.
The trip, nonetheless, was clearly not free of risk, taking the president into the heart of a country where coalition forces have been the targets of dozens of attacks a day. More than 60 American troops have been killed in hostilities there this month, many of them in helicopter crashes.
The trip underscored the extraordinary ability of this administration to keep even the most dramatic of secrets.
Presidential aides later said Mr. Bush had conceived of the idea five or six weeks ago, but only informed Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House chief of staff Andrew Card, and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on Wednesday.
Officials said afterward that if word of the trip had leaked out - even while Air Force One was in the air approaching Baghdad - the visit would have been canceled.
The president, who at times has been criticized for not responding publicly to the daily news of American casualties in Iraq, told the troops today that the American losses simply strengthened his determination:
"We did not charge hundreds of miles through the heart of Iraq, pay a bitter cost of casualties, defeat a ruthless dictator and liberate 25 million people only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins," he said.
"We will prevail," he said. "We will win because our cause is just. We will win because we will stay on the offensive. And we will win because you're part of the finest military ever assembled."
News of the trip came out around noon, Washington time, or 8 p.m. in Baghdad, as Americans prepared to gather around Thanksgiving tables, assuming that their president was doing the same in Texas.
White House officials had given no hint that anything else was happening.
"The president will be spending Thanksgiving at his ranch here in Crawford, Tex.," a White House spokesman, Claire Buchan, said Wednesday. "He'll be joined by family and friends, including his mother and father, former President Bush and Mrs. Bush."
She even announced the menu, starting with "free-range turkey" and ending with "Prairie Chapel pecan pie made with pecans from the president's ranch."
She added, apparently unaware herself of the impending trip, "If there are updates, additionally, to what he does on Thanksgiving, we'll try and keep you posted."
The president's father had visited American troops at a desert outpost in Saudi Arabia on Thanksgiving Day in 1990, during the coalition buildup ahead of the first Gulf War. He was the first American president to visit a front-line area since President Richard Nixon visited Vietnam in 1969.
The younger Mr. Bush had earlier shown a flair for the dramatic gesture.
On May 1, wearing a flight suit, he piloted a navy S-3B Viking jet and landed on the deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, off the California coast.
There, in a scene since made controversial by the continued violence in Iraq, he stood before a banner that read "Mission Accomplished" and asserted that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
Among earlier presidential trips to war zones were those of Dwight David Eisenhower, then president-elect, to Korean battle fronts in December 1952; trips to Vietnam by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and 1967; a 1969 visit with troops south of Saigon by President Richard Nixon; and President Bill Clinton's 1999 meeting with Kosovar refugees and NATO military personnel in Macedonia.
Other dramatic wartime missions included President Franklin D. Roosevelt's meeting on Aug. 8, 1941, with Winston Churchill aboard the H.M.S. Prince of Wales, in waters off Newfoundland; and Roosevelt's 1943 meeting in Tehran with Churchill and Stalin.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Fate of Idle Ex-Fighters Poses Challenge for Liberia
November 27, 2003
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/international/africa/27ARMS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MONROVIA, Liberia - Schooled in the jungle insurgency of Sierra Leone, drafted into one of this country's most dreaded fighting units, Tejan Fofanah now spends his days peddling cigarettes on street corners.
A recent morning found him emerging from his sunless room in the basement of a burned-out hotel and ranging across this pummeled, once bitterly partitioned city in search of customers.
The day's journey brought him face to face with old friends and foes alike: one of his old AK-47 boys, now selling bottles of eau de Cologne; a mercenary from Sierra Leone, left homeless; a soldier from the rebel camp, now a regular customer.
It was the civilians now that got to him most. A former fighter for the exiled President Charles G. Taylor, he felt the razor's edge of their taunts. Everyone here knows that the men who not long ago went around looting and terrorizing on behalf of the man they called "Papi" have been left behind with nothing.
"I have many regrets," confessed Mr. Fofanah, quiet, gaunt and weary-eyed at 28. "I feel Charles Taylor deceived us."
As Liberia tries to move on from its latest and most devastating bout of war, what to do with men like Mr. Fofanah is the country's most formidable challenge. The repercussions of its success - or failure - are likely to be felt far beyond Liberia.
For over a decade, ragtag mercenaries recruited and trained in Liberia have roved across West Africa, feeding off of one conflict after another. Stopping that flow once and for all, experts say, is vital to any hopes for the region's stability.
Precise numbers are not available. But the United Nations mission in Liberia estimates there are 38,000 former combatants from among Mr. Taylor's loyalists and their two rebel adversaries. About 40 percent are believed to be under 18.
Under the latest peace deal, leaders of all three factions have agreed to disband their forces and turn in their guns to the United Nations, but many fighters are holding on to their mortars and AK-47's. With barely 4,700 peacekeepers here, the United Nations mission is hardly in a position to disarm them by force.
"It is the last leverage the fighting factions have - their fighters," said a senior United Nations official. "Yielding the rifle is the ultimate thing for any fighter. One has to be sure of his or her political future, economic future and security."
[About 800 Liberian fighters have disarmed voluntarily, United Nations officials announced Wednesday. The formal disarmament effort starts Monday.]
Disarmament could pose the biggest test for the United Nations mission in Liberia. Its proposal carries a price tag of more than $49 million.
Former combatants are to receive $300 each for joining the disarmament program and giving up their weapons. They are supposed to get vocational training, subsidized employment, seeds and tools to work the land. Ultimately, they would be urged to go back home.
Homecomings are likely to raise new challenges for a country divided and damaged by 14 years of conflict. Will civilians accept soldiers who wreaked such havoc? Will child soldiers be embraced by their families? Will they find a place in Liberia's ruined economy?
Liberia has tried to disarm its fighters before, and it has failed. Soldiers loyal to one warlord have switched their loyalties to another, torn up their former combatant identity cards and chucked the sacks of cooked, ground wheat, known as bulgur wheat, that they received in exchange for their guns and picked up new ones.
"I can't eat bulgur wheat!" Muhammad Jalloh, a 38-year-old former fighter, recalled bitterly the other day. "I wanted them to do something for me. They don't give me a job. They don't give me nothing."
His anger was directed at the disarmament process in 1997, after Mr. Taylor was elected president. Barely two years later, he took up another gun, on behalf of an anti-Taylor insurgency called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Jalloh, a bullet wound in his left shoulder and an AK-47 in his lap, sat guarding his group's headquarters in Tubmanburg, north of here, holding out for more this time. "I want them to give me a job," he insisted. "I got to do something for myself. I can do business. Dry goods."
The rickety transition from war to peace is on stark display at the Ducor Hotel, a onetime four-star establishment with panoramic views of the sea. Throughout the latest war, it was the headquarters of Mr. Fofanah's antiterrorist unit. Artillery positions were erected on the rooftop. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a strategic view of the two bridges leading into downtown, the war's most fearsome front line.
Soldiers occupied three floors of sea-view rooms, turning the place into a Liberian version of a New York City crack den. The stairwells turned into toilets. Stray bullets sometimes came whizzing in.
Once, an unruly fighter who calls himself Peter Tosh was tortured in the hotel foyer, for shooting a young woman in the knee. Tubes of hot plastic were pressed against the flesh of his back, leaving dark, almond-shaped welts.
Since Mr. Taylor left the country on Aug. 11, his men began clearing out of the hotel. The Ducor's caretakers cleaned the stairwells and corralled the handful of remaining fighters into a subterranean corner.
The soldiers began quieting down, more out of shame, their civilian neighbors figured, than anything else. They had been promised a reward after the second rebel attack on Monrovia last June. But it never came, only a third devastating assault. Mr. Taylor went into exile.
"They realized the man never left them a penny," said Moses Youlo, a former Ducor Hotel security guard who still keeps watch over the place. "Civilians started mocking them. `Oh, you're a soldier, you're with A.T.U. and you don't have a cent.' "
Liberia being a small country, the past of a fighter-turned-cigarette- vendor like Mr. Fofanah is well-known. A high school graduate from Kenema, Sierra Leone, he joined the dreaded Sierra Leonean rebel group, Revolutionary United Front, which Mr. Taylor supported.
Later, Mr. Fofanah came to Liberia at the behest of one of Mr. Taylor's principal allies, Sam Bockarie, a Sierra Leonean warlord. Mr. Fofanah joined the unit, run by Mr. Taylor's American-born son, Chuckie, and raked in $150 a month.
Mr. Taylor has since been indicted by a war crimes tribunal on charges that he aided the Sierra Leonean rebels. Mr. Bockarie, also indicted, was killed this year.
Mr. Fofanah's version of his past contains an important - but easy to understand - elision. He denies any role in the Sierra Leonean rebel force, saying only that he joined the Liberian unit, because he saw it as a modern, professional army.
Much of his time, he said, was spent keeping records. Only during the most terrifying final days of the battle for Monrovia earlier this year was he compelled, he said, to fight on the front line. In exchange, he could dip into the goods that his men had stolen from the shops on their side of the city. It was the only way he and Patricia Johns, a fishmonger whom he calls his wife, could eat. He had not been paid in months.
He said he turned in his gun in mid-October under orders from a commander; the claim is impossible to verify. He is waiting for something in return. He said his goal was to attend a university (there are none now in the country) and study criminal justice. Most of his comrades, he said, want money. "If people say they want to disarm without money, I for one know the problem will not be solved," he said.
On his cigarette run this morning, Mr. Fofanah is among a long line of pedestrians crossing one of the old front-line bridges. Head down, keeping himself inconspicuous, he marches past the peacekeepers and under the billboards polka-dotted with bullet holes and glances across the lagoon at the market stalls, where just a few months ago, in the heat of war, his men had decapitated a rebel soldier and brandished the head for all to see.
On this morning, he runs into one of those old rebels, who happens to be one of his former buddies, Moses Vanery, 20, of Sierra Leone.
Mr. Vanery, too, started out with the Sierra Leone rebel force. "They kill my mother, they kill my father, so I join them," was his explanation. He, too, was drafted into Mr. Taylor's elite unit. Mr. Fofanah helped train him.
Mr. Vanery did not last long. Unpaid, disenchanted, he returned home, signed up for a disarmament program run by the United Nations and learned how to be a carpenter. But earlier this year, he dropped his tools and came back to Liberia - this time, to fight with Mr. Taylor's enemies. He was offered $500 up front. He was promised more if his side ousted Mr. Taylor.
He is still waiting on that promise. For now, he tells Mr. Fofanah, he must find a place to sleep every night, still holding on to his Kalashnikov, his only bargaining chip. "Besides my arm, I got nothing," Mr. Vanery told him.
Later, Mr. Fofanah said he felt sorry for his old friend, who now, he noted disapprovingly, sleeps in a tin-roofed house in the swamp. Also, he looks unkempt. "Look at his nails," Mr. Fofanah said. "They're dirty."
-------- arms
Bombing Anywhere On Earth In Less Than Two Hours
Force projecion world wide 24/7 is the goal of the US Air Force
Washngton - Nov 27, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zzr.html
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the US Air Force share a vision of a new transformational capability that aims to provide a means of delivering a substantial payload from within the continental United States (CONUS) to anywhere on Earth in less than two hours.
This capability would free the U.S. military from reliance on forward basing to enable it to react promptly and decisively to destabilizing or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organizations.
The US Government's vision of an ultimate prompt global reach capability (circa 2025 and beyond) is engendered in a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV). It is envisioned that this autonomous aircraft would be capable of taking off from a conventional military runway and striking targets 9,000 nautical miles distant in less than two hours.
It could carry a 12,000-pound payload consisting of Common Aero Vehicles (CAVs), cruise missiles, Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) or other munitions. HCVs as part of the future U.S. force structure will provide the country dominant capability to wage a sustained campaign from CONUS on an array of time-critical targets that are both large in number and diverse in nature while providing aircraft-like operability and mission recall capability.
The US Government is interested in innovative HCV concepts utilizing novel technologies that mitigate heat load and extend range. Such innovative concepts could enable effective prompt global reach missions and potentially provide a reusable first stage of a two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) access to space vehicle. This vision is consistent with the goals of the DoD/NASA National Aerospace Initiative.
The United States, however, needs a prompt global reach operational capability in the much nearer term (see AF Space Command Operationally Responsive Spacelift and Prompt Global Strike Mission Need Statements).
This near-term operational capability is embodied in the CAV munitions delivery system integrated with a low-cost, operationally responsive, rocket booster. Essentially, CAV is an unpowered, maneuverable, hypersonic glide vehicle capable of carrying approximately 1,000 pounds in munitions or other payload. This concept has been studied since the mid-nineties and conceptual designs utilizing existing technologies have been developed that offer substantial capability.
CAV designs based on existing technologies are predicted to have a downrange glide on the order of 3,000 nautical miles. Advanced CAV designs have also been developed that offer substantially greater downrange (approximately 9,000 nautical miles) and improved maneuverability (approximately 3,000 nautical miles cross-range). This enhanced performance CAV, henceforth referred to as the Enhanced CAV, requires significant technology development particularly in the areas of thermal protection and guidance, navigation, and control.
In the far-term, the HCV itself could deliver CAVs to multiple targets. In the near-term, CAV requires a launch vehicle or other means of attaining its pierce point conditions in terms of geo-location, altitude, attitude and velocity. Expendable rocket boosters offer adequate near-term capability.
However, existing booster systems are costly and in limited supply. As a consequence, The US Government intends to develop a low-cost, responsive launch vehicle called the Small Launch Vehicle (SLV) under the FALCON program. The program envisions the SLV design being integrated and developed in parallel with the Enhanced CAV design.
The SLV should serve a two-fold function in that it will also provide a low-cost, responsive launch capability for placing small satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). A total cost per launch (not including payload specific costs) of five million dollars or less is desired. Taken together, the two objectives satisfied by the SLV are a significant spiral in the development of an Operationally Responsive Spacelift (ORS) capability currently being pursued by the Air Force.
Substantial commonality exists between the key technologies that will enable the Enhanced CAV in the near-term and the HCV in the far-term. As a consequence, CAV (using available technologies), Enhanced CAV, and HCV are viewed to lie on a common evolutionary design and technology maturation path.
Therefore, the FALCON program will be an incremental program in that as key capabilities are matured and demonstrated in flight, opportunities will be generated to spiral them into Systems Development and Demonstration (SDD) programs that will provide successive enhancements to the country's capability to perform prompt global strike missions from CONUS (or equivalent reach from alternative US basing).
Recent military engagements in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq have underscored both the capabilities and limitations of United States air forces in terms of placing ordnance on military targets. While advancements in target identification and precision strike have been abundantly demonstrated, deficiencies in engaging and defeating time-critical and high value, hard and deeply buried targets (HDBT) have also been revealed.
Moreover, the current and future international political environment severely constrains this country's ability to conduct long-range strike missions on high-value, time critical targets from outside CONUS (OCONUS).
This restriction coupled with the subsonic cruise speed limitations of the current bomber fleet translates to greatly extended mission times. Consequences include failure to successfully engage and destroy a large subset of high value, time-critical targets, severe reduction in the tonnage of ordnance that can be placed on targets within a given timeframe, and excessive physical and emotional fatigue levied upon bomber crews.
The US Strategic Command has a critical need for responsive, effective, and affordable conventional strike to provide deterrence, power projection and coercion, delivering munitions in minutes to hours globally from CONUS (or equivalent reach from alternative US basing). The intent is to hold adversary vital interests at risk at all times, counter anti-access threats, serve as a halt phase shock force and conduct suppression of enemy air defense and lethal strike missions as part of integrated strategic campaigns in the Twenty-First Century.
During the high-threat early phases of an engagement, critical mission objectives include the rollback of enemy Integrated Air Defenses (IADs) and the prosecution of high-value targets. Throughout the remainder of the campaign, a continuous vigilance and immediate lethal strike capability are required to effectively prosecute real-time and time-critical targets and to maintain persistent suppression of enemy IADs. A system capable of responsively and effectively performing these mission objectives would provide a "no win" tactical deterrence against which an enemy's defenses would be ineffective.
The US Government acknowledges the differences between past research and development programs, and the FALCON vision. However, the importance of leveraging the lessons learned from past programs should not be minimized.
The US Government expects the Offeror to utilize to the maximum extent possible the knowledge base gained from past programs. This leveraging of capabilities can be accomplished, in part, through teaming with partners that possess expertise in critical technology areas.
One important deviation from past approaches will be the major emphasis upon incremental flight-testing in the FALCON program. The US Government desires technologies be developed in the context of a "building block" flight test approach and that the FALCON program remain demonstration-focused.
The US Government seeks to open up the design space and provide a catalyst for exploring "clean sheet of paper" system design philosophies and global strike mission scenarios especially for far-term approaches. Creative integration of the latest advances across a broad suite of component technologies, and innovative CONOPS will enable a revolutionary advance in global strike capabilities.
The Offeror is encouraged to "think out of the box" and propose unique collaborative design methodologies, analysis tools, processes, capabilities, concepts, innovative teaming arrangements and business practices to reduce the cost of product development.
-------- business
Consultant on Iraq contracts employed president's brother
By Stephen Fidler and Thomas Catán in London
November 27 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1069493552660&p=1012571727172
Neil Bush, a younger brother of US President George W. Bush, has had a $60,000-a-year employment contract with a top adviser to a Washington-based consulting firm set up this year to help companies secure contracts in Iraq.
Neil Bush disclosed the payments during divorce proceedings in March from his now ex-wife, Sharon. The divorce was finalised in April and the court papers were disclosed by the Houston Chronicle this week.
Mr Bush said he was co-chairman of Crest Investment Corporation, a company based in Houston, Texas, that invests in energy and other ventures. For this he received $15,000 every three months for working an average three or four hours a week.
The other co-chairman and principal of Crest is Jamal Daniel, a Syrian-American who is an advisory board member of New Bridge Strategies, a company set up this year by a group of businessmen with close links to the Bush family or administrations. Its chairman is Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's campaign director in the 2000 presidential elections.
Other figures at New Bridge include Ed Rogers, its vice-chairman and a senior official in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, and Lanny Griffith, with whom he works in the lobby firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers. Lord Charles Powell, adviser to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is listed as an advisory board member.
On its website, New Bridge describes itself as being created to "take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq".
In his deposition, Neil Bush said he provided Crest "miscellaneous consulting services". This included "answering phone calls when Jamail [sic] Daniel, the other co-chairman, called and asked for advice".
There is evidence that the relationship between Mr Bush and Mr Daniel goes further. Joseph Peacock, Crest's company secretary, is one of the original investors in Ignite, Neil Bush's educational software company based in Austin, Texas.
In 1996, Mr Daniel and his wife hosted a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner at their Houston mansion for the Texas Alliance Against Alcohol Abuse. The event was chaired by Sharon Bush, while George H. W. Bush, the former president, and his wife Barbara were to be present, according to the Houston Chronicle in 1996.
Other investors in Ignite, which was founded last year, include George H. W. and Barbara Bush, and Winston Wong, a Taiwan businessman who started the Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. The court papers further show Mr Bush benefits from a contract with Grace, a company also backed by Jiang Miangheng, son of Jiang Zemin, the former president of China.
Under the deal, signed on August 15 2002, Grace would pay Mr Bush $2m in shares over five years, issued in annual $400,000 increments.
In return, according to the Los Angeles Times, Mr Bush agreed to "provide GSMC from time to time with business strategies and policies; latest information and trends of the related industry, and other advice", according to the contract.
A call to New Bridge in Houston went unanswered yesterday, a holiday in the US. Previous attempts to contact Mr Daniel through the office were unsuccessful.
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Boeing could face widening crisis over ethics breakdown
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 27, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031127113433.liwvcueb.html
Already rocked by a series of ethics problems, Boeing could be facing a deeper crisis that would affect the bottom line for the aerospace giant and one of the largest US defense contractors.
Earlier this week, Boeing sacked chief financial officer Mike Sears for improperly recruiting a US Air Force official to join the firm at the time she was involved in decisions that affected the company.
The case involved the hiring of Darleen Druyun, who retired late last year as the Air Force's principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and management, and joined Boeing in January.
Druyun, believed to be a key official in crafting a controversial tanker leasing deal with Boeing while at the Air Force, was fired by Boeing this week along with Sears.
Boeing said it had hired former US senator Warren Rudman to review the company's ethics procedures to avoid a repeat of the latest incident.
But the turbulence may only be starting for the aviation giant, which had been sanctioned by the Pentagon earlier this year following the discovery that it had obtained secret documents from its chief competitor, Lockheed Martin Corp., for a bid on a rocket project.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said his staff was investigating if the Pentagon should suspend the 18 billion dollar deal with Boeing to lease 100 commercial wide-body jets and convert them into refueling tanker aircraft.
Asked if the contract should be delayed pending review, Rumsfeld replied: "At a senior staff meeting this morning, I asked our senior folks to ask themselves that question and to look into it."
Senator John McCain, a critic of the leasing plan, said the shakeup this week at Boeing confirmed his concerns about the company's conduct in the leasing contract.
"I am awaiting the completion of a full and complete investigation by the (Pentagon) Inspector General," McCain said. However, it strains credulity to assume that this action has nothing to do with the tanker lease deal."
The Boeing lease cost almost six billion dollars more than an outright purchase, but it allowed the Air Force to buy now and pay later. Critics termed the contract a Boeing bailout.
Other woes could be in Boeing's future as well. Federal law prohibits a company from offering jobs to public officials while the official is overseeing government business with the company, and violations can result in prison terms as well as fines.
Boeing's image meanwhile is taking a battering.
The problems with the tanker deal in the wake of the Lockheed scandal "make it clear that Boeing's ethical problems go right to the very top of its management," Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group.
"After being hit with a billion-dollar sanction earlier this year by the Defense Department for unethical contracting practices, Boeing cannot assert that its ethical problems are the result of a few corrupt middle managers."
Boeing chairman and chief executive Phil Condit said the company was committed to rooting out ethical problems.
"Boeing must and will live by the highest standards of ethical conduct in every aspect of our business," Condit said. "When we determine there have been violations of our standards, we will act swiftly to address them."
Meanwhile, the Times of London reported that EADS, the European aerospace group that owns Airbus, is weighing up legal action against Boeing in the wake of the tanker deal row.
The report said the Franco-German group has told Pentagon investigators that its contract offer for the same deal suffered "collateral damage" because, it was claimed, Boeing had access to details of its bid.
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Northrop Grumman Takes Aim At Hypersonic Weapon Delivery System
Nov 27, 2003
SPACEWAR
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zzp.html
El Segundo - Northrop Grumman Corporation will help the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force develop a concept for a high-speed, unmanned aircraft and related "glide weapons" that could deliver conventional, non-nuclear weapons from the U.S. to anywhere on the globe in about two hours.
This hypersonic cruise weapon system would allow the U.S. to conduct effective, time-critical strike missions on a global basis without relying on overseas military bases.
Northrop Grumman's six-month cost-sharing study contract will support the system definition phase (Phase I) of the joint DARPA/Air Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States (FALCON) technology demonstration program.
"This project continues the investments that Northrop Grumman has made in recent years to help the U.S. government reach its goal of affordable, reusable access to space," said Doug Young, director of space access programs for Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems sector.
"The company's heritage of innovative, advanced technology strike systems and its global leadership in unmanned air vehicle systems will provide critical momentum to the nation's efforts to define, develop and deploy a military space plane."
The DARPA/Air Force vision for FALCON is to develop, by 2025, a reusable hypersonic cruise vehicle that could take off from a conventional military runway and strike targets 9,000 nautical miles away in less than two hours.
Flying at speeds up to eight times the speed of sound (Mach 8), the hypersonic cruise vehicle would carry a 12,000-pound payload comprising several unpowered, maneuverable, hypersonic glide vehicles called common aero vehicles; cruise missiles; small diameter bombs or other munitions. Each common aero vehicle would carry approximately 1,000 pounds in munitions.
As a step toward implementing the hypersonic cruise vehicle concept, DARPA and the Air Force propose developing, by 2010, a global strike capability that would launch common aero vehicles on a low-cost, mission-responsive small launch vehicle. DARPA and the Air Force are developing the small launch vehicle under a separate contract.
During Phase 1, Northrop Grumman will develop concepts for demonstration and operational versions of the hypersonic cruise vehicle and identify technologies required to develop and deploy each.
The team will design a hypersonic cruise vehicle with a high lift-to-drag ratio and adequate flight control surfaces; define a thermal protection system that will allow the vehicle to fly at extreme speeds; and resolve guidance, navigation, communications, and command and control issues caused by the ionized boundary layer that forms at extreme speeds between the vehicle and the atmosphere.
The team will also perform subsystem and system-level trade studies to produce preferred design concepts for demonstration and operational versions of the common aero vehicle.
The demonstration common aero vehicle system will be able to fly 3,000 nautical miles in approximately 800 seconds and deliver a 1,000-pound penetrator munition. An enhanced version of this demonstration system will be able to fly 9,000 nautical miles in approximately 3,000 seconds. The common aero vehicle and its enhanced version will also be able to "turn" to hit targets up to 800 and 3,000 nautical miles, respectively, off a straight trajectory.
For the most part, common aero vehicles require the same technologies as hypersonic cruise vehicles, but also need a more rigorous thermal protection system to prevent their payloads from melting at re-entry speeds as high as Mach 25. By comparison, the hypersonic cruise vehicle will return to its base at speeds of approximately Mach 3-4.
In addition to its hypersonic cruise vehicle and common aero vehicle system-definition work, Northrop Grumman will also develop high-level concepts of operation for basing and deploying the hypersonic cruise vehicle and common aero vehicles to achieve the desired global strike capability.
The current six-month system definition phase, which includes multiple contracts, is the first of three phases planned for the FALCON program. At the conclusion of Phase I, DARPA and the Air Force will decide whether to proceed with Phase II, a 36-month system design and development phase, and a subsequent Phase III, a 30-month weapon system demonstration phase.
Northrop Grumman's FALCON program team is led by its Integrated Systems sector, but includes significant roles for the company's Mission Systems sector, Reston, Va., and Electronic Systems sector, Baltimore. The team also includes subcontractors Aerojet-General Corporation, Sacramento, Calif.; Space Works, Atlanta, Ga.; Textron Systems, Wilmington, Mass.; HITCO Carbon Composites, Gardena, Calif.; and Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, Conn.
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Lockheed Martin Wins $600 Million Air Force IT Contract
Nov 27, 2003
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-comms-03zv.html
Seabrook - Lockheed Martin has won a contract valued up to $600 million to support U.S. Air Force information technology requirements in the National Capital Region of Washington, D.C. The new contract will support the Air Force Pentagon Communications Agency (AFPCA) by providing managed services and classified voice, video and data assistance.
A full range of services include call center operations, enterprise IT management, VIP requirements, classified systems support, program management and engineering, and information assurance.
Supporting about 7,500 Defense Department users in the region, AFPCA provides a full range of unclassified and classified, mission-essential IT services. The Information Technology Services contract involves a 10-year program with funding to include a transition period and nine 1-year options.
Linda Gooden, president of Lockheed Martin Information Technology, said, "We have assembled a powerful team poised to give the best, most comprehensive support possible to meet the critical requirements of the U.S. Air Force and its customers. We are proud to have been selected to work and succeed with AFPCA in this important national mission."
Customers served by AFPCA include officials at Headquarters Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Military Command Center (NMCC), plus several other government agencies who work with DoD. The contract consolidates some 50 existing contracts with multiple vendors.
The lead company is Seabrook, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Information Technology, whose managed services and enterprise-level systems integration capabilities serve a wide variety of Defense and civil government agencies. The company's teammates include General Dynamics IS&T, SAIC, Titan, Booz Allen and Hamilton, SI International, SII, TDS, ESS, GMSI, Trawick, DSD Labs, NOC Technologies, AlphaTech, Tessada, and Phoenix Systems.
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China Warns Taiwan Again On Issue of Independence
Official Vows 'Strong Reaction' If Referendum Law Is Passed
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 27, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16617-2003Nov26.html
BEIJING, Nov. 26 -- China warned Taiwan on Wednesday that it would deliver a "strong reaction" if the island passed a law allowing its citizens to vote on proposals that could lead to independence. But the main Taiwanese political parties immediately dismissed the threat and pushed ahead with plans to adopt the referendum legislation as early as Thursday.
The Chinese warning and the swift response in Taipei appeared to set the stage for a showdown after more than a week of steadily escalating rhetoric by Chinese officials, who have threatened war if Taiwan continues taking what they describe as gradual steps toward formal independence.
"If a referendum law that sets no limits passes, I believe we will make a strong reaction," Zhang Mingqing, a spokesman for the Chinese government's Taiwan Affairs Office, said during a televised news conference. "Without a doubt, we will have a strong reaction. As to what the reaction will be, you will know in a few days."
Zhang declined to elaborate when asked whether a military response was possible.
For more than a week, Chinese officials, including Premier Wen Jiabao, have been attacking Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian's plan to pass a referendum law, draft a new constitution and put it up for an island-wide vote in 2006. They accuse Chen of trying to use the process to define Taiwan as an independent state, and have called on the United States to help stop him.
But Zhang's statements represent the clearest attempt yet by China to draw a line for what would trigger a Chinese response. Zhang said China would react if Taiwan adopted a referendum law that sets no limits on what issues the public could decide, and he specified that the law should prohibit referendums to change Taiwan's official name -- the Republic of China -- its national flag and the definition of its national territory.
Zhang said China supported the Taiwanese people's "demands for democracy" but warned that a referendum law that set no limits on content could "create the legal basis for Taiwan independence" and would provoke a strong response. "We will not sit by and do nothing faced with provocative activities aimed at splitting the motherland," he said.
Chinese officials have argued that changes to Taiwan's name, flag or the definition of its territory would amount to a declaration of independence and force China to attack the self-governing island of 23 million people where Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party fled in 1949 after the Communist Revolution. China maintains that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory.
The Bush administration has said it does not support Taiwanese independence and opposes moves by China or Taiwan that would unilaterally change the status quo and upset peace and stability in the region. But Bush has also promised to do "whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan, and Chinese officials complain that the United States has encouraged Chen by not taking a clear position on his referendum proposal.
Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party and its two main opposition parties denounced Zhang's warning as bullying and interference in the island's domestic affairs. Within hours of the news conference, legislative leaders in Taiwan announced plans to open debate on the referendum legislation Thursday morning and call a vote by late afternoon.
Taiwan's opposition Nationalist and People First parties had opposed a referendum law in the past, arguing that it would destabilize relations with China. But they suddenly reversed course earlier this month in a bid to seize the moral high ground from Chen in the run-up to presidential elections in March.
"We are a party which follows democratic principles, so there is no reason to stop this legislation," Alex Tsai, a Nationalist Party spokesman, told the BBC. "The opposition accuse us of following the Chinese communists' will, but we are not going to fall into that kind of trap."
Emile Sheng, a scholar of Taiwanese politics at Soochow University in Taipei, said Chen and his rivals were "trapped in a game of chicken. Because of the election, I don't see anyone backing down."
Taiwanese legislators were engaged in last-minute negotiations Wednesday night about the wording of the referendum law.
Cabinet spokesman Lin Chia-lung said the government's bill did not specifically prohibit or permit referendums on Taiwan's name, flag or sovereignty. But it does allow referendums on changes to the constitution, where such issues are now settled, and it also gives the president the power to call referendums on national security issues when Taiwan's sovereignty is threatened by outside forces.
Chen's supporters argue that the referendum law should cover issues of national iden