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NUCLEAR
Liberian fighters handing in arms
South Africa still divided by race, poverty
Cheney Pushes Asian Nations on N. Korea
Cheney Warns of Asian Nuclear Arms Race
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
EC: Sellafield must clean up nuclear waste pond
Cheney Urges China to Press North Korea on A-Bombs
Radioactive materials disappearing in Iraq
UN nuclear watchdog says material, buildings gone missing in Iraq
Iraqi Nuclear Gear Found in Europe
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Has No Regrets
Cheney fears NKorea will give terrorists nuclear knowhow
Preparations for next round of NKorea nuclear talks "stalled"
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
Seoul must push U.S. on nuclear issues
Old weapons, new terror worries
Hearings to probe impact of weapons lab
Researcher: Open Rocky Flats Slowly To Public
DOE Eliminates Oversight Group's Funding
Mottel joins nuclear council
Kerry Says Bush's Stubbornness Hurts Troops
Kerry debates anti-war activist in New York
MILITARY
China demands US to clarify arms sale report
7 states flout ban on arms to China
Cheney stands firm on U.S. weapons for Taiwan
U.S. teams cross DMZ to search for remains of Korean War MIAs
Government Considers New Smallpox Vaccine
EADS set to win giant NATO contract for surveillance aircraft: report
Cheney Warns China About Hong Kong
Purported Bin Laden'Truce' Is Rejected
Tehran says United States sought its help in Iraq
Iranians in Iraq to Help in Talks on Rebel Cleric
Iranians in Iraq to Aid in Talks; Tehran Diplomat Is Killed
Marshes revive in postwar Iraq, but old ways gone
Al-Sadr agrees to talks with U.S.
Bush Pirates Shipwrecked in Iraq
U.S. Denies Raid on Najaf Is Imminent
Attacks Test Truce in Fallujah
Marines Use Low-Tech Skill to Kill 100 in Urban Battle
U.S. REJECTS ISRAEL INVASION OF GAZA
Bush Backs Israel on West Bank
Palestinians Assail Bush for Backing Israeli Plan
Sharon Coup: U.S. Go-Ahead
Israel Orders Freeze on Settlement Funds
Iraqis Comb Northern Hills for Unexploded Mines
NATO mission in Afghanistan exposes chink in bloc's armour
Musharraf May Not Give Up His Army Post
Russian jet lands in Baghdad to evacuate Russian, CIS citizens
Tenet describes 5-year plan for U.S. intelligence
CIA failed to act on pilot-school alert
Envoy Urges U.N.-Chosen Iraqi Government
Return to U.S. For 20,000 Troops Halted
Full text: 'Bin Laden tape'
U.S. Reporters Unable to Probe Killings in Fallujah
Incredible Credibility
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Secret Surveillance Warrants Up After 9/11
Al Qaeda Unchecked for Years, Panel Says
Sept. 11 Panel Cites C.I.A. for Failures in Terror Case
9/11 Panel Comments Freely (Some Critics Say Too Freely)
Saudi Student's Trial Opens in Idaho
Convictions Dropped for Muslim Chaplain at Guantánamo Bay
C.I.A. Says Voice on Tape Likely Bin Laden
Tape Said to Be From bin Laden Offers 'Truce' to Europe
ENERGY
Clean Power Focus of North American Energy Summit
Renewable Energy Promotes Job Growth Better Than Fossil Fuels
OTHER
San Francisco Recycles, Reuses Majority of Waste
Rat-Poison Makers Stall Safety Rules
Vegetable Fiber Tied to Lower Prostate Cancer Risk
ACTIVISTS
Curbs on freedom for Israeli nuclear arms spy
Three Japanese Hostages in Iraq Freed
Idaho's nuclear watchdog celebrates 25 years with symposium at BSU
Nepal Police Detain 1,300 Protesters
U.S. Vets, Families March For End To War In Iraq
AN ANGRY MAN TALKS ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- africa
Liberian fighters handing in arms
Thursday, 15 April, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3628253.stm
A rebel hands in his rocket-propelled grenade to a Bangladeshi peacekeeper The long delayed disarmament process in Liberia has resumed after a two month information campaign.
The six-month long exercise begins in Gbarnga, a stronghold of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).
It was postponed in February after rows over how much cash fighters would receive for their guns.
The UN expects some 40,000 fighters in Liberia to hand in their weapons in return for about $300 each.
UN special envoy Jacques Klein said the rebels are now fully behind the process.
Empty rifles
"Rather than do five or six camps at the same time and overwhelm the system, let's start with one," said Mr Klein ahead of the re-launch of the exercise.
The BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia says the former combatants and their leaders have expressed commitment to the process.
UN military chief in Liberia, General Daniel Opande and Asha Conneh, the wife of Lurd rebel leader Sekou Conneh, toured Lofa country, the headquarters of the rebels on Wednesday, to assess preparations for the exercise.
"The fighters are ready to disarm and no problem will be there this time," Mrs Conneh told the BBC's Network Africa.
The UN peacekeepers aim to disarm some 250 fighters a day during the exercise.
The former fighters will still get a two-part, $300 stipend, food rations and the prospect of vocational training after handing over their guns.
Fighters handing over their weapons must first turn in ammunition and will only be allowed into a cantonment site with an empty rifle.
The UN has some 14,000 peacekeepers in Liberia.
Last year, a national reconciliation government took over following a peace deal and the departure of former President Charles Taylor into exile in Nigeria.
----
South Africa still divided by race, poverty
April 15, 2004
By Alexandra Zavis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040414-102543-7673r.htm
JOHANNESBURG - On the fringes of the bright lights and skyscrapers of South Africa's "city of gold," tin shacks scattered among dusty mine dumps testify to the crumbling hopes of millions for a better life after apartheid's end.
Ten years after all-race elections sealed the end of a regime that brutally enforced segregation, the country remains divided into two nations.
Most of the 10 percent white minority still inhabit a world of California-like suburbs and shopping malls. Most blacks remain trapped in cluttered townships and isolated villages, many without running water or electricity.
"They say you get all the money in Johannesburg, the place of gold," Grace Obose, 45, said as she filled two jerrycans at a communal faucet and hauled them home in a wheelbarrow. "But there is no gold, only tears."
Full of hope, Mrs. Obose moved to Johannesburg with her two sons shortly before the historic election in 1994, when white housewives stood with their black maids and gardeners in long, snaking lines to elect Nelson Mandela as the country's first black president. She worked as a maid, but lost her job when she developed arthritis. She now lives in a leaky shack at the foot of a towering mine dump in a squatter camp optimistically called Jerusalem.
The miseries of poverty and joblessness are compounded by an AIDS epidemic that is killing at least 600 people a day. An estimated 5.3 million of South Africa's 45 million people - more than in any other country - are infected, and President Thabo Mbeki has been criticized internationally for his slow response to the crisis.
There was little doubt that Mr. Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC) would retain its sweeping majority in yesterday's elections.
Robert Maluleke, jobless and living in the Jerusalem shantytown, still remembers the excitement of casting his ballot for the first time. This year, he wasn't sure whether he would bother to vote.
"You see Mbeki," he said, holding up a smiling picture on an election leaflet. "He is laughing at us."
Mr. Mbeki, 61, an economist by training who spent decades in exile, was Mr. Mandela's designated successor as president. But he lacks Mr. Mandela's charisma and common touch and is seen as an intellectual who is detached from ordinary people's problems.
He asks his people to be patient and accentuates the positive. "We have always known that our country's blemishes, produced by more than three centuries of colonialism and apartheid, could not be removed in one decade," Mr. Mbeki recently told South Africans.
Nevertheless, he said, "We have made great advances." The achievements are striking. A new constitution, one of the world's most progressive, has been enacted. The hundreds of racist laws have been scrapped, and three successful national and local elections have been held.
The government has built 1.6 million houses, brought clean water to 9 million more people and delivered electricity to 70 percent of homes. Public schools have been desegregated, and free health care is provided to millions of children.
The ANC, formerly socialist, has revived an ailing economy by controlling spending, reducing debt and lifting trade barriers. The country, formerly an international pariah, now takes a leading role in African affairs.
But South Africa's biggest achievement often is forgotten. Until the end of apartheid, this was a nation wracked by fear and racial violence. Thousands disappeared into detention, and some never were seen again. Shadowy security forces stirred bloody clashes among black political groups. Whites stocked up on food and fuel in expectation of a blood bath once blacks were in power.
Today, South Africa has slipped from world headlines and become a "stable, boring democracy," in the words of government spokesman Joel Netshitenzhe.
"I really don't think anyone thought it would be going as well as it is now," said Nicola Boustred, 34, a white woman walking her dog along the polo field at Johannesburg's exclusive Inanda club. "Ten years ago, a lot of people were leaving, and you felt you were irresponsible if you weren't considering it. Now, I don't feel that way at all."
The club, like the moneyed elite it serves, has changed considerably over the years. Black business leaders now join their white counterparts sipping drinks on the terrace overlooking tidy lawns and a sparkling pool.
Across town, in the dusty townships and squatter camps, it is hard to be so optimistic. Unemployment of more than 30 percent has hit the poorly educated black majority especially hard.
Every day, Mr. Maluleke, 33, and his brother Selby, 25, get up early to hunt for factory work. But on every gate, a sign says: "No work."
The two are among hundreds of thousands of job seekers who have flooded the cities since the lifting of apartheid laws that confined blacks to poor townships and tribal "homelands."
Like Mrs. Obose, they have made a home in Jerusalem, one of the camps on the outskirts of Johannesburg built of scraps of wood, salvaged cardboard and corrugated iron. But there is little of the promised land here.
"Now we should change that name Jerusalem to Babylon," grumbled Selby Maluleke.
-------- asia
Cheney Pushes Asian Nations on N. Korea
TOM RAUM,
Associated Press
Thu, Apr. 15, 2004
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/local/8433081.htm
SEOUL, South Korea - Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Asian powers Thursday to do more to contain North Korea's nuclear program, saying that letting it grow unchecked could spark a new arms race in the region and create a weapons bazaar for terrorists.
"We must see this undertaking through to its conclusion," Cheney told a university audience in Shanghai, China. "Time is not necessarily on our side." He expressed clear frustration with the current diplomatic stalemate before flying to South Korea, his last stop of a weeklong Asia trip.
The speech was carried by China's state television without deletions or blackouts, which U.S. officials took as an encouraging sign of change.
Cheney praised China for setting up six-way talks to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program, but he prodded Chinese leaders to be more aggressive in bringing pressure to bear on Pyongyang.
The six-way talks include the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas.
"We'll do our level best to achieve this objective through diplomatic means, and through negotiations. But it is important that we make progress in this area," Cheney said.
He suggested that North Korea represented a double threat - it could stock its own nuclear arsenal and sell weapons to the highest bidder, including al-Qaida and other terror organizations.
"The people of Asia are particularly vulnerable to the threats of (weapons) proliferation," Cheney said. "Many countries that have the means to develop the deadliest weapons have refrained from doing so."
But he said a continued North Korean nuclear threat could persuade other powers in the region to develop their own nuclear weapons, triggering a new arms race across the region "and the likelihood that one day those weapons would be used."
Cheney said recent information gleaned from a top former Pakistani nuclear scientist provided compelling evidence that Pyongyang has an active atomic weapons program.
The reclusive communist government "must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons," Cheney said.
During Cheney's Asia trip, citizens from all three countries he visited - Japan, China and South Korea - were seized by militants in Iraq. Three Japanese hostages were released Thursday. The South Korean and Chinese hostages were freed earlier.
Cheney has engaged in unusually blunt talk in his travels, urging allies with troops in Iraq not to bow to pressure from militants and telling Chinese leaders that U.S. defensive military sales to Taiwan are largely a response to their own military buildup on the Taiwan Strait.
In remarks at Shanghai's Fudan University, almost exactly 20 years after President Reagan spoke on the campus, Cheney praised China's economic advances but pointedly suggested they be coupled with "full freedom of religion, speech, assembly and conscience."
"Prosperous societies ... come to understand that clothing, cars and cell phones do not enrich the soul," he said.
The vice president arrived in South Korea on Thursday shortly before polls closed in parliamentary elections. A liberal party loyal to South Korea's impeached president won the most seats.
The win by the Uri party could result in the crafting of a foreign policy more independent of the United States, South Korea's traditional ally, and the forging of closer ties with the North.
Cheney came seeking South Korea's support on the North Korea nuclear issue and its commitment to a promise to send more than 3,000 troops to Iraq.
He was meeting with South Korea's acting president, Prime Minister Goh Kun, and visiting U.S. troops stationed in Seoul before returning Friday to Washington.
In a question-and-answer period, one student asked Cheney to describe his relationship with President Bush, given that he was often described as "the most powerful vice president in history."
"That's not a question I had anticipated," Cheney said to laughter.
He said the role of the U.S. vice president had evolved over recent years into one of more responsibility. But he said that the vice president's actual authority, other than his constitutional duty to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, was "based strictly upon your relationship with the president."
"I've been fortunate," he said.
----
Cheney Warns of Asian Nuclear Arms Race
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 15, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cheney-Asia.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney warned in China Thursday that failure to contain North Korea's nuclear weapons program could trigger a new arms race that could sweep across Asia.
He was bringing the same message to South Korea, arriving here in the middle of a national election on his final stop on a weeklong tour of the region.
``We have no alternative but to act with diligence,'' Cheney told students at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
He suggested that North Korea, an impoverished communist country, posed a double threat -- either directly or if it decides to raise cash by selling nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. North Korea's nuclear program is also a top agenda item for Cheney in South Korea, but he arrived here at a challenging time.
Washington is not only looking to Seoul to help revive stalled six-nation nuclear talks with North Korea, but also is counting on South Korea's commitment of more than 3,000 troops for Iraq.
That commitment has been shaken by the recent kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Iraq, including eight South Korean missionaries who were later released.
Opposition is also growing among many South Koreans to the continued presence of 37,000 U.S. troops here.
Cheney arrived in Seoul just before polls closed on a day in which South Koreans voted in closely contested parliamentary elections that could determine the future of impeached President Roh Moo-hyun and reshape relations with the United States.
The vice president planned to meet Prime Minister Goh Kun, the acting president and visit U.S. troops at Yongsan Garrison in downtown Seoul on Friday before returning to Washington.
Cheney in his speech in Shanghai praised China's leading role in seeking to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs. But he suggested more action was needed.
``We must see this undertaking through to conclusion,'' he said. ``Time is not on our side.''
``The people of Asia are particularly vulnerable to the threats of (weapons) proliferation,'' Cheney said. ``Many countries that have the means to develop the deadliest weapons have refrained from doing so.''
But he said a continued North Korean nuclear threat could persuade other powers in the region to develop their own nuclear weapons, triggering a new arms race across the region ``and the likelihood that one day those weapons would be used.''
Cheney praised China for its breakneck economic growth, but said that ``prosperous societies also come to understand that clothing, cars and cell phones do not enrich the soul.''
``That can only come with full freedom of religion, speech, assembly and conscience,'' Cheney said in the speech. U.S. officials said that the speech was broadcast on China's state television -- without any deletions or blackouts.
Cheney noted that his speech comes 20 years after then President Reagan spoke at the same university ``and expressed the essence of economic and political freedom.''.
In a question-and-answer period, Cheney defended the U.S. policy of providing military equipment to Taiwan such as the recent sale of a sophisticated radar system.
He said that the arms provided to Taiwan were only defensive ones, and that the United States had not changed its opposition to Taiwanese independence despite the recent independence movement on the self-governing island.
``We oppose unilateral action on either side of the (Taiwan) Strait to change things,'' he said. China views Taiwan as a renegade province.
One student asked Cheney to describe his relationship with President Bush, given that he was often described as ``the most powerful vice president in history.
``That's not a question I had anticipated,'' he said to laughter.
He said the role of the U.S. vice president had evolved over recent years into one of more responsibility. But he said that the vice president's actual authority, other than his constitutional duty to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, was ``based strictly upon your relationship with the president.''
``I've been fortunate,'' he said.
----
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
By REUTERS
April 15, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-asia-cheney.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in South Korea on Thursday warning of the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region if pressure is not brought to bear on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs.
Cheney, armed with new evidence of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities, is wrapping up a weeklong mission to persuade key Asian allies that the threat from their reclusive neighbor is real and that time may be running out to address it.
Cheney warned in a speech carried uncensored on Chinese state television that North Korea could not only spark a new Asian arms race, but ``could well'' provide nuclear technology to international terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.
``There are nations in the region that have the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons who have not done so,'' Cheney told students at Shanghai's Fudan University.
But Cheney added, ``If North Korea becomes a nuclear power then those nations may conclude that their only option is to develop their own capability, and then we'd have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia.''
Some analysts say Japan would feel the most pressure to go nuclear to counter the threat from North Korea.
Cheney's warnings about North Korea have become increasingly dire in the course of his weeklong Asia tour. ``Time is not necessarily on our side,'' he said of North Korea before flying to Seoul -- on its election day -- for a final round of regional talks.
``We worry that, given what they've done in the past and given what we estimate to be their current capability, that North Korea could well, for example, provide this kind of technology to someone else or possibly to, say, a terrorist organization,'' he said, noting al Qaeda had sought nuclear weapons in the past.
The North Korean crisis has simmered since October 2002, when U.S. officials say Pyongyang disclosed it was working on a clandestine program to enrich uranium -- in addition to a plutonium-based program that had been mothballed in 1994.
But Cheney came to the region bearing new intelligence from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist believed to have sold nuclear technology to North Korea as well as to Libya and Iran.
U.S. officials said Khan has provided third-party confirmation that Pyongyang already has up to three nuclear devices -- evidence Washington hoped would help persuade skeptics in China of the urgency of the threat.
Cheney said the United States was ``greatly encouraged'' that China had taken a leading role in efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs.
``We'll continue to ... do our level best to achieve this objective by diplomatic means and through negotiations,'' Cheney said. ``But it is important that we make progress in this area.''
He said North Korea needed outside support ``given the sad state of their economy... In order simply for that regime to survive, they must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons.''
ECONOMY, TAIWAN
Before wrapping up his three-day visit to China, Cheney also raised the touchy issue of trade, saying Beijing had a responsibility to lower barriers and to let financial markets determine the value of China's yuan currency.
Cheney's market-opening message could score him political points at home with key constituents -- manufacturers and their workers -- before the November presidential election.
He reiterated the U.S. position that it does not support the independence of Taiwan, an island China has considered a breakaway province since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949.
In his Shanghai speech, aired with a slight delay but without censoring, Cheney cautiously breached the subject of greater democracy in China by saying demands for individual liberties would grow with time.
``If people can be trusted to invest and manage material assets, they will eventually ask why they cannot be trusted with decisions over what to say and what to believe,'' Cheney said.
``And when they experience the benefits of economic liberty, they desire greater freedom in expressing their views and choosing their leaders.''
In Seoul, Cheney is meet on Friday with Prime Minister Goh Kun, South Korea's acting president during the country's presidential impeachment trial.
In addition to North Korea, Iraq is expected to figure heavily in the discussions. South Korea already has 600 military engineers and medics in Iraq. Seven South Koreans were taken hostage there but were later freed.
-------- britain
EC: Sellafield must clean up nuclear waste pond
Bellona Foundation, Russia,
April 15, 2004
http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nuclear/sellafield/33360.html
A forty-year-old radioactive waste storage pond at Britain's Sellafield nuclear power installation-whose waste content is unknown-has become the centre of a European Commission, or EC, intervention that has requested British authorities to develop a plan to dismantle the aged storage pond by May. Bellona will inspect the pond in June.
The aged storage pond, which was built in the late 1950's, was originally used to hold spent nuclear fuel, or SNF, for reprocessing and eventual production of weapons grad plutonium. The storage pond is now closed, but still contains between 300 and 450 tonnes of SNF. Some of the waste within the pond has corroded or disintegrated, making the fuel removal and cleaning request from the EU especially difficult to fulfill.
Unfamiliar with the contents
British authorities will now have to clean up the old storage pond, officially refereed to as B30, but nicknamed "dirty 30" by workers at Sellafield. The EC has requested Britain develop a comprehensive plan for removal of the waste before the end of May 2004. If it misses that deadline, it may be necessary too take the United Kingdom government before the European Union, or EU, Court of Law.
Removal and destruction of the nuclear waste may be difficult. Because of the radiation near dirty 30, workers at the plant can only spend one hour at a day near the pond. Parts of the spent fuel have corroded, and no one knows precisely how much waste the pond is holding.
This is exactly what worries the EC. Since the EC first gained accesses to the plant in 1986, the B30 pond has been a security issue. But little has been done from the British side to improve conditions, and it seems evident patience has run out in Brussels, home to the EC and other branches of EU government.
According to an EC document cited in the British daily "The Sunday Herald," the EC is "strongly concerned about the situation regarding radioactive contamination of the environment surrounding the pond." According to the Euratom treaty from 1957, every European country within the 15-soon to be 25- member EU is obliged at all times to know the precise amount of fissile materials it possess.
Because the British government have no information about, or control over, the contents of B30, it's impossible to keep an accounting of dirty 30. This, according to the EC, is a violation of Euratom. The financially troubled British Nuclear Fuel plc, or BNFL, which owns the Sellafield nuclear facility, has told the commission that the derelict storage pond contains approximately 1,300 kilograms of plutonium. Of those 400 kilograms are likely corroded and lying at the bottom of the pond with other radioactive waste and sediment.
Radioactive leaks
According to The Sunday Herald, leaks have also occurred at the pond. Other tank installations at Sellafield have leaked in the past. Most notable, however, have been technetium-99, or Tc 99, leaks into the ground water. BNFL has begun efforts to reduce these leaks, which come from another tank on the Sellafield territory. Bellona inspected this tank installation in Spring, 2003. BNFL has also agreed to let Bellona representatives inspect the B30 storage pond in June this year.
Bellona wants to speed up decommissioning and clean-up work at Sellafield. Many old buildings in the plant's industrial area are in significant disrepair. This is especially so in Sellafield's now disused military complex, where weapons-grade plutonium was produced for British nuclear bombs. These plants are now empty-polluted ghost towns inside Sellafield.
Catastrophic fire
In October 1957, a catastrophic fire started in one of the military reactors at Sellafield. The fire caused two large spills of radioactivity. The largest spill happened early on the Friday, the 11th of October of that year. In a desperate attempt to extinguish the fire, Sellafield fire units doused the reactor with large amounts of water.
No one knew at that time what the results of fighting the reactor fire with water would be. It could have caused a explosion, but fortunately the water snuffed the fire out. The price was a massive cloud-like spill of radioactive steam, which drifted south through most of England and further, into the air over Europe.
By 11 o'clock on that catastrophic friday, firefighters brought the fire under control. Over 20 percent of the reactor was destroyed, and workers in the area were exposed to radiation levels 150 times higher than established limits. People in the local population were exposed to radiation levels of 10 times the maximum lifetime dose.
The old reactor is now hermetically closed. It's still uncertain how it would be possible to dismantle the damaged reactor.
In addition to the old military reactor, the British authorities have before them the task of decommissionin the first military reprocessing plant at the Sellafield, known as B204. This plant has been shut down since an accident in September 1973.
-------- china
Cheney Urges China to Press North Korea on A-Bombs
April 15, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/asia/15chen.html
BEIJING, April 14 - Vice President Dick Cheney presented Chinese leaders with new evidence on Wednesday about the scope of North Korea's nuclear program and warned that "time is not necessarily on our side" in negotiations, a senior Bush administration official said Wednesday.
Mr. Cheney told President Hu Jintao and other top leaders that the United States remained committed to a series of six-nation talks under Chinese auspices, held twice so far without tangible progress, to find a solution to the nuclear standoff.
But he emphasized that the talks must show "real results" soon, though he set no timetable.
"It is important to stay engaged and to make progress," the senior official said. "But we need to keep in mind that we need results and that they are developing nuclear weapons as we deliberate."
The discussions about North Korea were held during Mr. Cheney's three-day visit to China, his first as vice president. The two sides also addressed Beijing's tense relations with Taiwan, its large trade surplus with the United States and American concerns about human rights abuses in China.
American officials also said they had held talks about China's encryption standards for wireless communications and its enforcement of intellectual property rights, among the top concerns of American companies that do business here.
Chinese leaders told Mr. Cheney that they planned to send Deputy Prime Minister Huang Ju to the United States later this year to discuss currency policy, another sore point in relations between the countries.
The visit was the most extensive exchange between the Bush administration and top Chinese leaders since the Communist Party handed power to Mr. Hu in late 2002. Mr. Cheney first came to China with President Gerald R. Ford in 1975 but had not visited during the decade-long economic boom that transformed the economy and the urban contours of Beijing.
On Wednesday, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Hu had two hours of talks over lunch in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound. Mr. Cheney also met with Jiang Zemin, Mr. Hu's predecessor as president and Communist Party chief, who remains China's top military official. He discussed economic issues with Wen Jiabao, the prime minister.
Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who is thought to exercise extensive influence behind the scenes in the ruling party, was Mr. Cheney's host for dinner Tuesday night at the Great Hall of the People.
Before leaving Beijing for Shanghai on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Cheney praised what he called the professionalism of the new leadership and talked of "shared concerns and strategic interests." But he said "it would be a mistake for us to underestimate the extent of the differences."
On North Korea, Mr. Cheney "brought to the attention" of Chinese leaders a report in The New York Times on Tuesday about the North's nuclear program, the senior official said.
That report quoted Bush administration and Asian officials as saying that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who has acknowledged selling weapons technology around the world, claims to have seen three nuclear devices in North Korea five years ago.
Chinese officials have raised doubts that the North, its neighbor and onetime ally, has working nuclear weapons. Beijing has cited faulty intelligence about Iraq's weapons as one reason that it is opposed to taking hasty action against North Korea.
The senior Bush administration official implied that China, which exercises considerable influence over North Korea, needed to achieve a breakthrough in coming talks to forestall sanctions against the North. China is expected to convene a third round of negotiations by the end of June, and may set up a working group before then to search for common ground.
China's main concern during Mr. Cheney's visit was Taiwan, which it claims as part of its territory, and the recent narrow re-election there of President Chen Shui-bian, whom Beijing views as determined to formally establish Taiwan as an independent nation. Mr. Cheney rejected a Chinese demand that Washington reduce its arms sales to Taiwan.
-------- iraq / inspections
Radioactive materials disappearing in Iraq
Associated Press,
April 15, 2004
Toronto Globe & Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040415.wnuke0415/BNStory/International/
http://www.dailycomet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040415/API/404150905
United Nations - Iraq's nuclear facilities remain unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the UN's nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrap yards.
The International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter to U.S. officials three weeks ago informing them of the findings. The information was also sent to the UN Security Council in a letter from its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, that was circulated Thursday.
The IAEA is waiting for a reply from the United States, which is leading the coalition administering Iraq, officials said.
The United States has virtually cut off information-sharing with the IAEA since invading Iraq in March, 2002, on the premise that the country was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons have been found, and arms-control officials now worry that the war and its chaotic aftermath may have increased chances that terrorists could get their hands on materials used for unconventional weapons or that civilians may be unknowingly exposed to radioactive materials.
According to Dr. ElBaradei's letter, satellite imagery shows "extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings" in Iraq.
In addition, "large quanitities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq from sites" previously monitored by the IAEA.
In January, the IAEA confirmed that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbour.
Yellowcake (uranium oxide) could be used to build a nuclear weapon, although it would take tonnes of the substance refined with sophisticated technology to harvest enough uranium for a single bomb.
The yellowcake in the shipment was natural uranium ore that probably came from a known mine in Iraq that was active before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The yellowcake was uncovered Dec. 16 by Rotterdam-based scrap-metal company Jewometaal, which had received it in a shipment of scrap metal from a dealer in Jordan.
A small number of Iraqi missile engines have also turned up in European ports, IAEA officials said.
"It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their locations," Dr. ElBaradei wrote to the council.
The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded the country in March, 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA or other UN weapons inspectors into the country, saying that the coalition has taken over responsibility for illicit weapons searches.
So far those searches have come up empty-handed, and the CIA's first chief weapons hunter has said he no longer believes Iraq had weapons just before the invasion.
----
UN nuclear watchdog says material, buildings gone missing in Iraq
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415165134.540rlpm3.html
Contaminated metal, equipment and even entire buildings in Iraq that had been monitored by UN nuclear inspectors have disappeared since the war, the UN's nuclear watchdog said on Thursday.
Diplomats said the discovery, much of it from commercially available satellite pictures, raises concerns about whether the US occupation in Iraq has been able to effectively monitor sensitive Iraq sites.
"The imagery shows that there has been extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the UN Security Council.
"Other information available to the agency, confirmed through visits to other countries, indicates that large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq," he said.
ElBaradei said it was unclear if the material had gone missing in the looting that engulfed Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster or "as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of the locations."
He said that the United States had been informed of the discovery.
"We have seen the report and we are concerned, and we told the IAEA we are looking into the matter," a US diplomat said.
UN inspectors left Iraq in March 2003 on the eve of the US-led war, and ElBaradei said the movements of the material could have a major impact on their "continuity of knowledge" about whatever nuclear capacity Iraq still has.
There is also concern about the proliferation of so-called dual-use material, which could either serve as part of weapons systems or have civilian, non-military applications.
----
Iraqi Nuclear Gear Found in Europe
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13416-2004Apr14.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 14 -- Large amounts of nuclear-related equipment, some of it contaminated, and a small number of missile engines have been smuggled out of Iraq for recycling in European scrap yards, according to the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog and other U.N. diplomats.
Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council in a letter that U.N. satellite photos have detected "the extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings" from sites that had been subject to U.N. monitoring before the U.S.-led war against Iraq.
ElBaradei said an IAEA investigation "indicates that large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq, from sites monitored by the IAEA." He said that he has informed the United States about the discovery and is awaiting "clarification."
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered, inventoried and destroyed most of the equipment used in Iraq's nuclear weapons program. But they left large amounts of nuclear equipment and facilities in Iraq intact and "under seal," including debris from the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in 1981. That debris and the buildings are radioactively contaminated.
The U.N. nuclear agency has found no evidence yet that the exported materials are being sold to arms dealers or to countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons. But ElBaradei voiced concern that the loss of the materials could pose a proliferation threat and could complicate efforts to reach a conclusive assessment of the history of Iraq's nuclear program.
"It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq, or as part of systematic efforts" to clean up contaminated nuclear sites in Iraq, ElBaradei wrote. "In any event these activities may have a significant impact on the agency's continuity of knowledge of Iraq's remaining nuclear-related capabilities and raise concern with regards to the proliferation risk associated with dual use material and equipment disappearing to unknown destinations."
Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said, "We have seen the reports and are obviously concerned, and as we told the IAEA we are looking into the matter."
ElBaradei's letter is dated April 11 and was circulated privately this week among members of the Security Council.
Evidence of the illicit import of nuclear-related material surfaced in January after a small quantity of "yellowcake" uranium oxide was discovered in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam's harbor. The company that purchased the shipment, Jewometaal, detected radioactive material in the container and informed the Dutch government, according to the Associated Press. A spokesman for the company told the news agency that a Jordanian scrap dealer who sent the shipment believed the yellowcake came from Iraq.
ElBaradei did not identify the European countries where the materials were discovered. But U.N. and European officials confirmed that IAEA inspectors traveled to Jewometaal's scrap yard to run tests on the yellowcake. The search turned up missile engines and vessels used in fermentation processes that were subject to U.N. monitoring. The U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission informed the council about the finds in a letter, according to diplomats. The IAEA, meanwhile, ordered up satellite images to assess conditions at Iraq's former nuclear weapons sites. A senior U.N. official said they discovered that two buildings at one former site had vanished and that several scrap piles contained weapons-related materials were also missing. "In Europe, stainless steel goes for $1,500 a ton," the official said. "And that is worth transporting for the purpose of recycling."
Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
-------- israel
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Has No Regrets
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Vanunu.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu believes his disclosure of Israel's nuclear secrets provoked an essential debate on nuclear weapons and has no regrets over the action that sent him to prison for 18 years, his brother told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Vanunu is due to be released Wednesday after completing his term for treason and espionage. He plans to go to court to challenge restrictions on his movement, to be imposed after his release.
Vanunu disclosed details and photos of Israel's top-secret nuclear plant and the country's reputed nuclear weapons arsenal to The Sunday Times of London in 1986. He subsequently was seized in Europe by the Mossad intelligence agency and spirited to Israel for trial.
In an AP interview on Thursday, a day after visiting Vanunu in prison, his brother, Meir, said Vanunu has no second thoughts. ``It is obvious that Mordechai regrets nothing in his action,'' he said.
Based partly on photographs that Vanunu provided to the Sunday Times, it is widely believed Israel has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA recently estimated Israel has 200-400 nuclear weapons.
Israel has an official policy of ``nuclear ambiguity,'' saying only that it won't be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
Meir Vanunu said his brother's action put an effective end to the policy. ``Nuclear ambiguity -- there's not much left of it,'' he said.
Senior Israeli officials have suggested that Vanunu may still have sensitive security information and could divulge it after his release, but Meir Vanunu denied that. ``Mordechai spoke to the Sunday Times in 1986,'' he said. ``Everything he had to say he said then.''
Though Israeli military censorship still weighs heavily against specifics about Israel's nuclear programs, in recent years members of parliament have spoken out on the issue, and the subject of nuclear weapons has been debated at times in the local media.
Vanunu, who was a technician at the nuclear plant near the desert town of Dimona, served 12 years in solitary confinement in prison after being convicted in an Israeli court.
He has become a hero of anti-nuclear weapons activists around the world.
Vanunu was adopted by a family in Minnesota in the mistaken belief that the adoption would provide him with American citizenship. After visiting him Thursday in prison, Nick and Mary Eeloff expressed disappointment that they could not take him back to the United States.
``He just wants to lead a normal life and we just want to bring him home,'' Nick Eeloff told the AP.
Vanunu's cell has been emptied of books and other belongings, which are being checked as part of a pre-release routine, Moss said. The Prisons Authority declined comment.
On Sunday, Vanunu learned that following his release, Israel's Shin Bet security agency will impose a series of restrictions on him, including barring him from leaving Israel, approaching border terminals and foreign embassies, and communicating with foreigners, including foreign residents of Israel.
Security officials said the restrictions would be re-evaluated after six months and might be eased if Vanunu fulfills the conditions.
Meir Vanunu said his brother will challenge the restrictions in court.
``But our hopes are not high, because for more than 17 years, they have gone with the secret services against Mordechai,'' he said.
Meir Vanunu said his brother had expressed great frustration about the restrictions.
``It is unbelievable what they are doing now after 17 1/2 years of persecution,'' Meir quoted him as saying. ``I didn't believe they would do this after all this time.''
Meir Vanunu said his brother wants to live abroad ``as a free man.''
``He wants to go to the United States,'' he said.
-------- korea
Cheney fears NKorea will give terrorists nuclear knowhow
SHANGHAI (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415083310.bz7t1cgh.html
US Vice President Dick Cheney voiced fears Thursday that North Korea will provide nuclear technology to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, and warned of a nuclear arms race in Asia if it is not stopped.
"We worry given what they've done in the past, and given current capabilities, that North Korea could very well provide this technology to someone else, or terror groups," he told students at Fudan University in Shanghai.
"We know that there are terror groups like Al-Qaeda that have tried to acquire nuclear weapons before."
Few analysts however seem to believe the idea of North Korea as a major potential proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. They say Pyongyang's diplomats are more likely to use this option for blackmail, threatening to equip terrorists if the United States pushes them too hard.
"North Korea's primary interest in acquiring nuclear weapons is as a deterrance to prevent a US attack," said Timothy Savage, a North Korea expert at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at South Korea's Kyungnam University.
"There is no ideological affinity between North Korea and Islamic terror groups and it is highly unlikely they will sell nuclear material to terrorists.
"The danger of retaliatory measures is too big."
Nevertheless Cheney, stepping up the pressure ahead of a third round of six-party talks expected before June, described North Korea as "one of the most serious problems in the region today".
Two rounds of six-party talks hosted by China -- and also including the two Koreas, United States, Russia and Japan -- to defuse the crisis have so far failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
The United States claims North Korea is pursuing uranium-enriched nuclear arms and says it has an intelligence assessment that Pyongyang has produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
Cheney reaffirmed Washington's stance Thursday.
"We are confident that they have a program to enrich uranium," he said, praising China, the North's closest ally, for taking the lead role in trying to find a solution.
"President Bush and the American people are also greatly encouraged by the Chinese government's decision to take a lead role in matters of the international community and persuade North Korea to completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear program."
Pyongyang's rulers deny they have a uranium-based program, although US reports suggested this week North Korea's bomb-makers might have been much more successful than previously feared.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, told interrogators that he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times reported.
Cheney cited the intelligence report during his talks with China's top leaders in Beijing, US officials said.
China refused to be drawn into the fray, saying it knew nothing about North Korea's nuclear capability.
"We don't understand the specific situation on the nuclear plans or nuclear weapons," said foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan, but added: "The Chinese government is firmly opposed to any type of nuclear proliferation."
Cheney warned that if North Korea was allowed to possess nuclear weapons, other countries without the bomb, but which have the technical expertise, would feel compelled to build nuclear weapons.
"And then we would have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia," he said.
Analysts say nations such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are the most likely to follow suit. China is already nuclear capable.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of reneging on a 1994 bilateral nuclear freeze accord by setting up a clandestine atomic program based on enriched uranium.
----
Preparations for next round of NKorea nuclear talks "stalled"
BEIJING (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415103833.0nn5x7td.html
Differences among six nations involved in talks over North Korea's nuclear drive were delaying the establishment of a working group to prepare for the next round of negotiations, China said Thursday.
"Admittedly, there are some differences among the various sides on the agenda and operating mechanism for the working group," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.
"I'm not in a position to give you details. The various sides are still in discussions and consultations."
Kong declined to say whether US Vice President Dick Cheney's just-ended visit to China had helped push forward the process of organizing a third round of six-nation talks.
The talks involve China, Japan, North and South Korea, Russia and the United States.
"I hope that Vice President Cheney's visit to China, through the exchange of views between China and the United States, will be helpful to the early implementation of the consensus reached at the second round of six-party talks not long ago," Kong said.
At the last round of talks in Beijing in February all sides agreed to set up the working group to make preparations for a third round of six-party discussions.
Kong said Chinese leaders had told Cheney that Washington and Pyongyang should both be flexible and practical.
"Through this visit (Cheney's) ... the Chinese side expressed that during the process of resolving this issue, both sides face differences, even serious differences, and should show a practical and flexible attitude," Kong said.
"Only through this practical and flexible attitude can the working group be set up, to hold meetings of the working group and to make preparations for the third round of six-party talks."
The first two rounds of talks hosted by China failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
----
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
April 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-asia-cheney.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in South Korea on Thursday warning of the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region if pressure is not brought to bear on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs.
Cheney, armed with new evidence of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities, is wrapping up a weeklong mission to persuade key Asian allies that the threat from their reclusive neighbor is real and that time may be running out to address it.
Cheney warned in a speech carried uncensored on Chinese state television that North Korea could not only spark a new Asian arms race, but ``could well'' provide nuclear technology to international terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.
``There are nations in the region that have the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons who have not done so,'' Cheney told students at Shanghai's Fudan University.
But Cheney added, ``If North Korea becomes a nuclear power then those nations may conclude that their only option is to develop their own capability, and then we'd have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia.''
Some analysts say Japan would feel the most pressure to go nuclear to counter the threat from North Korea.
Cheney's warnings about North Korea have become increasingly dire in the course of his weeklong Asia tour. ``Time is not necessarily on our side,'' he said of North Korea before flying to Seoul -- on its election day -- for a final round of regional talks.
``We worry that, given what they've done in the past and given what we estimate to be their current capability, that North Korea could well, for example, provide this kind of technology to someone else or possibly to, say, a terrorist organization,'' he said, noting al Qaeda had sought nuclear weapons in the past. The North Korean crisis has simmered since October 2002, when U.S. officials say Pyongyang disclosed it was working on a clandestine program to enrich uranium -- in addition to a plutonium-based program that had been mothballed in 1994.
But Cheney came to the region bearing new intelligence from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist believed to have sold nuclear technology to North Korea as well as to Libya and Iran.
U.S. officials said Khan has provided third-party confirmation that Pyongyang already has up to three nuclear devices -- evidence Washington hoped would help persuade skeptics in China of the urgency of the threat.
Cheney said the United States was ``greatly encouraged'' that China had taken a leading role in efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs.
``We'll continue to ... do our level best to achieve this objective by diplomatic means and through negotiations,'' Cheney said. ``But it is important that we make progress in this area.''
He said North Korea needed outside support ``given the sad state of their economy... In order simply for that regime to survive, they must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons.''
ECONOMY, TAIWAN
Before wrapping up his three-day visit to China, Cheney also raised the touchy issue of trade, saying Beijing had a responsibility to lower barriers and to let financial markets determine the value of China's yuan currency.
Cheney's market-opening message could score him political points at home with key constituents -- manufacturers and their workers -- before the November presidential election.
He reiterated the U.S. position that it does not support the independence of Taiwan, an island China has considered a breakaway province since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949.
In his Shanghai speech, aired with a slight delay but without censoring, Cheney cautiously breached the subject of greater democracy in China by saying demands for individual liberties would grow with time.
``If people can be trusted to invest and manage material assets, they will eventually ask why they cannot be trusted with decisions over what to say and what to believe,'' Cheney said.
``And when they experience the benefits of economic liberty, they desire greater freedom in expressing their views and choosing their leaders.''
In Seoul, Cheney is meet on Friday with Prime Minister Goh Kun, South Korea's acting president during the country's presidential impeachment trial.
In addition to North Korea, Iraq is expected to figure heavily in the discussions. South Korea already has 600 military engineers and medics in Iraq. Seven South Koreans were taken hostage there but were later freed.
--------
Seoul must push U.S. on nuclear issues
By Eugene B. Kogan
Apr 15, 2004
The Straits Times (Singapore)Asia News Network
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/04/15/200404150019.asp
"A friend in need is a friend indeed," a saying goes. South Korea's decision on April 2 to send some 3,600 troops to Iraq is a fitting illustration of the adage. The deployment will make the country the largest U.S. coalition partner in Iraq after Britain.
Unlike the impeached South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, who once declared that he "won't kowtow to the Americans," acting President Goh Kun has said that a strengthened relationship with Washington is his top foreign policy priority. Given this strategic outlook, the decision by the South Korean government to send troops to Iraq could not have come at a better time.
Goh must remember, however, that a strong friendship is founded not only on a supporting posture in a time of need, but also on a candid dialogue about mutual concerns.
Seoul must remind Washington about the urgency of resolving the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula - an issue that the Bush administration, overburdened by commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems to have put on the back burner. Goh should communicate this message to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who will be visiting South Korea as part of his six-day Asia tour.
Upon his return from North Korea in early January, Jack Pritchard, former Bush administration envoy for negotiations with North Korea, quoted North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan as saying that "time is not on the U.S. side. The lapse of time will result in the quantitative and qualitative increase in our nuclear deterrent."
According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, North Korea restarted the Yongbyon reactor in February last year. Siegfried S. Hecker, senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who accompanied Pritchard on the trip, noted that the reactor would produce 6kg of plutonium each year. Kim reportedly told the U.S. delegation in January that this plutonium would be used to "strengthen our deterrent."
The Bush administration has not taken this important point seriously. In the State of the Union Address on Jan. 20, President George W. Bush mentioned North Korea just once en passant, noting that "along with nations in the region, we're insisting that North Korea eliminate its nuclear program."
The lack of urgency in the Bush administration's actions indicates that Washington does not see the resolution of the nuclear standoff on the peninsula as a priority. Goh must warn his American counterpart against making this serious strategic mistake. Active engagement by the United States is critical if the crisis is to be defused.
First, the United States must provide a written assurance to North Korea that the stated goal of nuclear disarmament is not an Iraq-style masquerade for regime change.
Proclaiming one day that North Korea must completely and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear program, while simultaneously asserting that leader Kim Jong-il's regime is a powerful reminder that "freedom is not free," sends an unmistakable signal to Pyongyang that the United States is trying to cheat it into giving up its nuclear deterrent only to destroy the regime afterwards.
Clearly, this approach hinders rather than helps the efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff. South Korea, along with other nations participating in the six-way negotiations, must urge the United States to stop sending conflicting messages to Pyongyang
Second, the Bush administration must not allow negotiations with Pyongyang to be dictated by considerations of domestic politics.
This is a presidential election year in the United States, and the administration's unyielding demand for CVID - complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program - smacks more of political expediency than hard-nosed realism.
The claim that the multilateral talks are somehow going to yield the grand prize of CVID may be a good sell at home, but, in the real world, it is strategically unacceptable.
The Bush administration must agree to negotiate a freeze of North Korea's nuclear program first, which would give the six nations breathing space. So far, it has refused to consider this gradualist approach, which it regards as a failed, Clinton-ra negotiation strategy.
The alternative is to keep insisting - for months or even years - on the grand prize of CVID, while Pyongyang continues to build its nuclear arsenal. The choice should be clear: to freeze, if not yet shut down, the North Korean nuclear Wal-Mart sooner rather than later.
This may not be as politically desirable as CVID for President Bush's reelection campaign, but it is both possible and necessary under the present strategic conditions.
It is time to get serious and realistic about negotiating a peaceful resolution to the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. This message from Mr. Goh to Mr. Bush would be a sign of a robust and frank relationship between the two nations and their leaders.
The writer is an independent international affairs analyst in Washington, D.C. - Ed.
-------- russia
Old weapons, new terror worries
April 15, 2004
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0415/p06s02-woeu.html
Russian and US experts meet this month to assess terror tactics, from hacking into systems to seizing a weapon. By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor MOSCOW - Imagine this scenario: Computer hackers working for Al Qaeda break into Russia's nuclear weapons network, and "spoof" the system into believing it is under attack, setting off a chain reaction, and a real nuclear counterattack.
Another doomsday possibility made headlines when Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No. 2, was quoted last month boasting that Al Qaeda had already acquired "some suitcase bombs" - radioactive material packed with conventional explosives. Mr. Zawahiri said that anything was available for $30 million on the Central Asian black market or from disgruntled Soviet scientists. Russia immediately rejected the claim. But such what-ifs are among the nuclear terrorism threats that analysts are reexamining, as the learning curve of terror groups today comes closer to intersecting the vulnerabilities of atomic arsenals.
A handful of Russian and American nuclear experts, both military and civilian, are quietly convening a first meeting in Moscow later this month, to launch a year-long modeling exercise to specify the new dangers.
"These are future threats, but we must be ready for them today," says Pavel Zolotarev, a former major general in Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, which inherited the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal. "There should be no chance that wrong signals get into the system, to provoke a presidential decision [to launch]."
In the past, top priority in Russia has been protecting its stocks of bomb-grade nuclear material. The US has been spending roughly $1 billion per year to upgrade Russia's nuclear security and dismantle warheads.
But experts are now looking at new terror tactics, from hacking to seizing a complete weapon.
"The threats are changing in the most radical way," says Vladimir Dvorkin, a former rocket forces major general, who was head of development for the Russian Defense Ministry's strategic forces, missile defense, and space systems until 2001.
Cyberwarfare meets 50s tech
Ironically, Russia's older systems may be less vulnerable than US weaponry to the most cutting-edge threats, particularly cyberwarfare.
Russia's strict centralized control system - a holdover from the Soviet era - makes it "harder, at some level, for terrorists to do something to break the safeguards and launch," says Bruce Blair, a nuclear security expert and former Minuteman launch officer who heads the Center for Defense Information in Washington (CDI).
In contrast, the US Department of Defense infrastructure consists of over 2.1 million computers, with 10,000 local area networks, and 1,000 long-distance networks.
Danger from hackers
Hackers have been active against government networks, if targeted US systems are any gauge. Mi2g, a digital security analyst company based in London, found that 2003 yielded a "meteoric rise in electronic crime," and that along with criminal scams, "extremist group activity" had risen by several hundred percent.
The sobering results of the still- classified work by a Pentagon "Commission on Nuclear Fail-Safe" - to which Mr. Blair testified about Soviet nuclear safeguards, inside a vault at the Pentagon around 1992 - point to US vulnerabilities that could also apply to Russian systems today. Investigators found an "electronic back door" into the US Navy's system for broadcasting nuclear launch orders to Trident submarines.
"This deficiency allowed unauthorized hackers, which could be terrorists or high school mischief makers, to potentially insert a launch order and transmit it to the Trident," Blair says. The gap was so serious that Navy launch order verifications had to be revised.
Indeed, few systems are safe. The US National Security Agency hired 35 hackers in 1997 to simulate a cyberterrorist attack. They were able to break into defense networks and shut down parts of the power grid and emergency services.
Such risks prompted the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to hold a first meeting on the issue of vulnerable electronic systems in October 2002.
"We are aware of the problem and addressing it as part of our broader nuclear security," says an IAEA official in Vienna. "It goes hand in hand with the ability of hackers to get into supposedly secure systems."
Russia's early warning and launch system is self-contained, however, and not connected in any way to the Internet or other outside portals, so it is widely deemed here to be secure. Like US nuclear command and control - some elements of which were built in the 1950s and 1960s - Russia relies on an antiquated system.
"It's like having a first generation Mercedes Benz that no modern repair center can fix," says Maxim Shingarkin, a former major in the 12th Main Directorate of Russia's Defense Ministry, which protects the nuclear arsenal.
Even when military cables are laid alongside nonmilitary ones, exposing the system to outside access, terrorists could "take the signal, but could not generate it" without being detected, Maj. Shingarkin says.
'Old scrap of metal'
A special project begun in the late 1990s took three years to get a modern computer to recognize and integrate information from "this old scrap of metal" that handles nuclear weapons systems, Shingarkin adds.
Even today, perforated punch cards are often used instead of normal computer passwords.
But Russia's underpaid and poorly maintained military poses its own terror risks, says the CDI's Blair. "There's now the question of insider collusion, and if you have people on the inside sharing information about potential vulnerabilities, you quadruple the problem."
$750,000 for a can of mercury
Tentative first signs of such collusion are already raising red flags, though making the link hasn't been easy, says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom.
"The connection between the guy in a position to steal, and Al Qaeda, is a pretty difficult step," says Mr. Bunn. "It's not like you can walk in wearing a white turban waving a million dollars around, and expect to get anywhere."
Last year, however, a Russian businessman was found to have offered $750,000 for weapons-grade plutonium, and contacted scientists at a key Russian institute, Bunn says. They deceived him by selling him a canister of mercury.
The days of the "desperate insider" of the 1990s - when guards at nuclear sites left their posts to forage for food, or electricity to alarms and weapons systems was cut because bills had gone unpaid - are now giving way to the "greedy insider," Bunn adds.
And what money can't buy may be more easily acquired by force.
The US military has demonstrated this danger by staging successful mock terror attacks on American nuclear facilities that included setting off an improvised nuclear device within minutes on site. Secret Russian test exercises have also broken through security at nuclear sites.
Several terror-related events have been raising concern. In four incidents in 2001 and 2002, Chechens were caught scoping out two nuclear sites - so secret that even their location was supposed to be unknown - and two mobile missiles.
Chechen separatists have strong links with Al Qaeda, and have warned explicitly that they might take over a nuclear facility. Few doubt their chutzpah. Russians were shocked when 41 heavily armed Chechens seized a theater in downtown Moscow in October 2002 - a force that could easily overwhelm numerous remote nuclear sites, says Bunn.
"This is very worrisome," says Bunn. "The basic assumption is that the intelligence services are so good, they'll know [when intruders are] coming. [But] if they don't know, they're going to be in trouble."
Security kits remain in boxes
Bureaucracy is blunting the effectiveness of US efforts to tighten Russian nuclear security. Just half of the 123 US-supplied kits for making quick-fix upgrades at secret sites have been installed, four years after delivery. They each include a half a mile of multilayer fencing and an array of intrusion detectors.
"A huge part of security for those sites is that nobody knows where they are," Bunn says. "[The upgrade kits] are sitting on shelves, and terrorists apparently know where sites are. It's unbelievable."
Many Russian experts argue, though, that even if a terror group seized a nuclear weapon, they would not be able to use it. American and most Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles have various safeguards that can permanently disable a weapon if it is tampered with, or require an actual missile launch to arm the warhead.
"We can't exclude terrorists seizing a missile, but that will be the end of this terrorist act, because they will not be capable of launching it - never," says Dvorkin, who also discounts chances of an inside job. "There is not a single worker next to a nuclear weapon who is capable of giving this information, because the codes are only known to the highest command."
However, Russia is believed to have around 3,400 live "tactical" nuclear weapons - such as mines and artillery shells, which are sometimes triggered only by radar or radio signals. US experts suspect that these weapons are often not protected by much more than padlocks.
Beyond James Bond
Still, the amount of foresight Al Qaeda displayed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks deepens fears of nuclear terror.
"It's more complicated than slapping on an alarm clock and running a couple of wires, like James Bond," says Jon Wolfstahl, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But we believe it's within the capability of more sophisticated, well-financed groups, especially if they can get their hands on scientists or engineers with knowledge of these systems."
Al Qaeda tops that short list.
"[Al Qaeda cells] are not very capable, technically, but they're learning more and more, and this isn't going to go away in one or two years," says David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Searching for clues about the level of Al Qaeda nuclear expertise, he has examined troves of documents and videos uncovered in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.
"They make a lot of mistakes, [but] they're becoming more capable over time," says Mr. Albright. Recruiting nuclear and computer experts could make the dangers surge.
"People have that capability, they may turn sympathetic to Al Qaeda, or be blackmailed by Al Qaeda," Albright says. "You can't build a defense on the premise that Al Qaeda can't do it."
Chart (2002 - 2003):
US and Russian nuclear arsenals RUSSIA US
Intercontinental ballistic missiles 2,915 1,600
Submarine-launched missiles 1,072 2,880
Bomber missiles 864 1,660†
Tactical weapons 3,380@ 800†
Total weapons 8,231@ 6,940
†"Deadly Arsenals" by Joseph Cirincione, 2002 figures
@Estimated
TOM BROWN - STAFF SOURCE: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (http://www.ceip.org), 2003 figures
• First of an occasional series on US-Russian strategic issues.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Hearings to probe impact of weapons lab
People's Weekly World Newspaper,
04/15/04 14:02
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/5095/1/211
LIVERMORE, Calif. - While it's been known for some time that the U.S. government is developing new, earth-penetrating nuclear bombs and "mini-nukes," a new draft environmental impact statement by the nation's primary nuclear weapons design laboratory suggests the Bush administration's weapons program may be bigger than imagined.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's last environmental impact statement was issued in 1992 and is now obsolete. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which owns the lab, is now required to conduct a fresh survey and to issue a new Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the lab. Moreover, to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, DOE must hold public hearings and solicit public comment on its plans.
Livermore Lab is located about 45 miles east of San Francisco and is managed by the University of California.
The environmental review of the Livermore complex comes against the backdrop of the Bush administration's 2002 "Nuclear Posture Review" and "National Security Strategy of the United States" documents, which advocate preventive war and the preemptive use of any weapon (including nuclear) for any reason of its own choosing.
The draft SWEIS was released in February and its 2,000-plus pages provide a rare glimpse into the lab's operations. It lays out a full buffet of dangerous new programs, called "proposed actions," to be implemented over the coming decade, including the following:
• More than doubling the plutonium storage limit at the lab, from 1,540 pounds to 3,300 pounds, enough for more than 300 nuclear bombs.
• Making Livermore the place to design and test new technologies for producing "pits," the sealed radioactive plutonium cores that serve as triggers for nuclear warheads. This technology is intended to be used at the Modern Pit Facility, a modern bomb-core production plant, which has not been built, nor has the final location been chosen. It would be capable of producing up to 450 new pits per year (and 900 if run on double shifts, which would approximate the combined nuclear arsenals of France and China - every year).
• Vaporizing plutonium at the lab and shooting laser beams through the hot plutonium to separate its isotopes for use in various weapons experiments. To do this, the lab plans to increase the amount of plutonium that can be used in any one room at any given time threefold, from 44 pounds to 132 pounds.
• Adding plutonium, highly-enriched uranium and lithium hydride to the mix of experiments to be conducted in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser when its construction is completed, adding to the facility's cost and environmental risk.
• Manufacturing radioactive tritium targets for NIF on site, which will increase the amount of tritium allowed to be "at risk" at a time in any one room by nearly tenfold, from just over 3 grams to 30 grams.
• Preparing for a return to full-scale underground nuclear testing in Nevada by developing new diagnostics at Livermore to enhance U.S. "readiness" to conduct these tests, which were halted in 1992.
Peace and environmental activists are gearing up for the public hearings.
"At the end of this month, the public will have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to influence nuclear weapons policy and the future direction of Livermore Lab," said Marylia Kelley, the executive director of the Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment). "Will we be silent and let them develop new nukes? Hell, no."
Retired staff scientist Marion Fulk said, "I know first-hand that Livermore Lab has not been able to keep its contamination inside the fence line. It's already a Superfund cleanup site. If these programs go forward, there will be more accidents, spills and releases of plutonium, tritium and other radioactive materials into the environment. Cancer is only the tip of the iceberg."
Tara Dorabji, the outreach director for Tri-Valley CAREs, said, "Every peace advocate's voice is needed at the public hearings. It is our responsibility to show up and use the opportunity to oppose new nuclear weapons and the dangerous new lab programs that enable them."
Public hearings will be held on April 27 at the Double Tree Club Hotel in Livermore; on April 28 at the Holiday Inn Express in Tracy, Calif.; and on April 30 at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. For more information, call Tri-Valley CAREs at (925) 443-7148, e-mail loulena@trivalleycares.org, or visit the group's web site at www.trivalleycares.org.
-------- colorado
Researcher: Open Rocky Flats Slowly To Public
Apr 15, 2004
(AP)
http://news4colorado.com/localnews/local_story_106124109.html
GOLDEN, Colo. - A University of Colorado researcher says visitors will face little risk of contamination at a wildlife refuge at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, but the area should be opened slowly to the public.
James Ruttenber of the CU's School of Medicine has conducted extensive studies of cancer rates among people who worked at Rocky Flats. He said the risk of contamination would be minimal in outlying areas of the 6,200-acre site northwest of Denver.
Still, Ruttenber said, the reasonable approach would be to take time in allowing visitors to the site, which will be a national wildlife refuge once cleaned up.
Boulder County, and the cities of Boulder and Superior say recreational use of the site should be restricted because of the plutonium and other materials that were at the plant for decades.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will manage the refuge, is taking comments on plans for the site. Fish and Wildlife proposes limited public access on designated trails.
Ruttenber said a reasonable approach would be to monitor the area for a while before allowing regular visits. Fish and Wildlife workers should be on the lookout for places where things might be buried.
"A lot of this is perception and building confidence," Ruttenber said.
He noted that bomblets containing the nerve agent sarin have been found at the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Commerce City, also being converted to a federal wildlife refuge.
Parts of the arsenal, a Superfund cleanup site, were closed to public while crews searched for more munitions. Chemical weapons and pesticides were produced at the arsenal for decades.
Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons from the 1950s to 1989. The last weapons-grade plutonium was removed in August.
The site is home to diverse vegetation, including rare xeric tallgrass prairie and tall upland shrubland, the service said. Wildlife species include the threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse and resident deer and elk.
-------- new mexico
DOE Eliminates Oversight Group's Funding
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-WIPP-Oversight.html
CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) -- Layoff notices have been given to the entire staff of a New Mexico nuclear watchdog group that oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The Department of Energy has cut funding to the Environmental Evaluation Group, which will shut down in two weeks if no new money is found.
``It looks to me like DOE is trying to kill EEG,'' said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M.
The group's scientists have questioned the DOE's attempt to eliminate tests to see if drums headed to WIPP contain explosive chemicals. The DOE wants to eliminate the tests to save money.
EEG also questioned DOE's proposal to begin shipping nuclear waste to WIPP in single-walled containers. Current shipments use containers with double steel walls to prevent leaks in case of an accident.
Paul Detwiler, head of DOE's Carlsbad office, said the cuts are not related to the Environmental Evaluation Group's criticisms of DOE plans.
Detwiler said the department is merely trying to get EEG to stop overspending.
Sixteen Environmental Evaluation Group employees in Carlsbad and Albuquerque will be out of their jobs April 30 unless the DOE provides additional money.
EEG was set up in 1978 to help advise the state on WIPP issues. Its staff is formally employed by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Before WIPP's opening, EEG's scientists provided independent analysis of the site's safety. Since the waste storage area opened in 1999, the group has shifted to analysis of the safety of waste operations, including review of DOE initiatives to bring new and different types of radioactive waste to the site.
DOE is forced to pay for EEG's operations by agreements with the state. But those agreements do not specify how much money is needed.
Members of New Mexico's congressional delegation repeatedly have had to intervene in recent years to persuade DOE to provide sufficient money, said Matthew Silva, EEG's director.
``WIPP's strongest advocates always saw EEG as a nuisance,'' Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Tuesday.
The DOE's Detwiler said he is not trying to kill EEG, but to get it to live within the terms of a $7.6 million, five-year contract signed in 2000 -- slightly more than $1.5 million per year.
Silva said the $1.5 million annually was only an estimate, and that DOE and EEG have negotiated an annual budget each year based on workload.
Last year DOE cut the funding to $1.6 million, and this year DOE is insisting on only giving EEG $1.5 million.
Rather than accept the budget cuts DOE was imposing and lay off part of his staff last year, Silva kept a full staff while he tried to negotiate with DOE for full funding at the previous $2 million level.
When that failed, he gave his entire staff their layoff notices Tuesday.
-------- south carolina
Mottel joins nuclear council
South Carolina Morning News
Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/041504/LOCmottel.shtml
Town Councilman Bill Mottel of Hilton Head Island recently became a member of the South Carolina Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council.
The appointment of Mottel, 75, by Gov. Mark Sanford was confirmed by the state Senate on March 31.
The nine-member council makes recommendations on handling, transportation, storage or disposal of nuclear materials within or outside of South Carolina that might impact state citizens' safety, according to a news release from Town Hall.
It also provides advice regarding the Atlantic Compact Commission and on various nuclear waste programs of the U.S. Energy Department.
Before his 1991 retirement to Hilton Head Plantation, Mottel's 38-year career with the DuPont Co. included serving as manager of the Savannah River Plant from 1977 to 1979.
Now known as the Savannah River Site, the facility near Aiken was built starting in 1950 to produce plutonium and tritium, two ingredients essential to the hydrogen bomb.
Mottel, 75, was a research and development specialist when he began work at the plant in 1953, the year its first reactor became active. He served as a superintendent and in other upper management positions before becoming manager.
------- us politics
Kerry Says Bush's Stubbornness Hurts Troops
Policy in Iraq 'Costing Us Money And . . . Lives'
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12944-2004Apr14.html
NEW YORK, April 14 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said here Wednesday that President Bush's stubbornness in refusing to share authority and decision making with the United Nations and other countries has put U.S. forces at greater risk, unduly burdened American taxpayers and made success in Iraq far more difficult.
"I think the approach of this administration has been consistent and stubborn in the way that it persists in this American occupation and in proceeding down its own road," Kerry said. "It has made that mistake from Day One, and it is costing us money and I think it is costing us lives."
In his most extended comments about Iraq since the eruption of new violence there that has left more than 80 American soldiers dead this month, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee charged that Bush failed in his news conference Tuesday night to offer a clear exit strategy or to show any willingness to cede authority to gain greater international cooperation.
Kerry said withdrawal of U.S. forces should be determined by whether Iraq has been stabilized, not whether it has achieved democracy. Democracy "shouldn't be the measurement of when you leave," Kerry told reporters at an afternoon news conference. "You leave with stability. You hope you can continue the process of democratization -- obviously, that's our goal. But with respect to getting our troops out, the measurement is the stability of Iraq."
Kerry said more international support would help take the focus off the U.S. occupation. "The minute you have that international acceptance, you begin to reduce some of the capacity of people to focus on the infidel United States and to focus their energies on our occupation alone."
As Kerry stepped up his public criticism of Bush on Iraq, the president's reelection campaign struck back hard. Its chairman, Marc Racicot, accused Kerry of a "cynical and defeatist" approach and of "very, very seriously undermining" the U.S. effort in Iraq and forces fighting there.
Racicot, who was joined in his conference call by former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, said Kerry was attempting "to cause division and erode confidence" and said the senator's comments were evidence of "why he shouldn't be president."
Kerry denied he was making any effort to politicize the war in Iraq, but he stood firm in his critique of the administration. "American soldiers are bearing the huge majority, the lion's share, of the risk in Iraq," he said. "It doesn't have to be that way, it never had to be that way."
The sharp exchanges underscored the growing debate over Bush's policies in Iraq and signaled the Democrats' belief that the president may be vulnerable on national security issues long presumed to be his greatest asset politically.
During a town hall meeting at City College, Kerry was confronted by Walter Daum, a retired mathematics teacher at the college, who said the United States should withdraw immediately, angrily accusing Kerry of backing an imperialist war and of having the same policy as the president.
Kerry took issue with that characterization, but said the United States could not cut and run. "I have consistently been critical of how we got where we are, but we are where we are, sir," he said, "and it would be unwise beyond belief for the United States of America to leave a failed Iraq in its wake."
Kerry said that "it may take a new president" to bring about the policy changes that he said are necessary to assure success and reduce the risk to U.S. forces in Iraq and said if he were president now he would be deeply engaged with other foreign leaders to spread the burden and the risk. He noted that the president had said he is counting on the help of U.N. special representative Lakhdar Brahimi to help arrange the terms of the transfer of power to the Iraqi people June 30 but said there is still a fundamental difference between Bush's approach and his own.
"Why doesn't the president just come out and say I want the U.N. to be a full partner and the resolution that we pass will turn the authority over to them?" he asked. "That's the argument right now -- whether or not we're prepared to turn the authority over to them or whether or not they're prepared to come in without the authority. That's the fight and the question is why the president won't do that."
The exchange over Iraq overshadowed an announcement by Kerry's campaign of an expanded plan for national service that seeks to put 500,000 young Americans in service to the country.
For those who give two full years of service, Kerry would have the federal government pay the cost of four years of in-state college tuition. A campaign fact sheet said Kerry could pay for the plan, whose cost the campaign estimated at $13 billion over 10 years, by ending the guaranteed profit for banks on student loans.
Kerry also continued to add to his campaign treasury, raising $6.5 million at two fundraisers Wednesday night, after a $4.1 million event in Boston on Tuesday night.
----
Kerry debates anti-war activist in New York
Bush campaign scolds Democrat over stand on Iraq
Thursday, April 15, 2004
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/14/kerry.iraq/index.html
NEW YORK -- Sen. John Kerry tried to outline a "more thoughtful and more achievable course" in Iraq during an impromptu debate with an anti-war activist Wednesday, but he said the United States cannot leave behind a "failed Iraq."
President Bush's campaign, meanwhile, accused Kerry of playing politics with the war in Iraq, where more than 80 American troops have been killed this month battling Sunni insurgents and Shiite militants.
And a Republican congressman accused Kerry of offering vague criticism of the occupation that only plants "seeds of doubt and confusion."
At a question-and-answer session at City College campus in Harlem, semi-retired math teacher Walter Daum accused Kerry -- a onetime anti-war activist -- of supporting an "imperialist war" in Iraq.
"You say you are a stark difference from George Bush," said the 64-year-old Daum. "People hate George Bush, but by the end of your presidency, they'll hate you for the same thing."
Kerry voted for the congressional resolution that gave Bush the authorization to invade Iraq, but he said Bush "made a terrible mistake to take us to war the way that he did."
"I have consistently been critical of how we got where we are," Kerry responded. "But we are where we are, sir, and it would be unwise beyond belief for the United States of America to leave a failed Iraq in its wake."
The Massachusetts senator, and presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said the Bush administration has failed to draw international support that would lend legitimacy to the occupation and a new Iraqi government.
A banner hanging at the campus forum demanded a U.S. withdrawal, but Kerry said that would leave "the potential for civil war."
"The course that I have proposed is to turn over to the United Nations the full responsibility for the transformation of the government and for the reconstruction," he said.
"Because I believe that as long as it is an American occupation, we will have great difficulty in staying any course and achieving the kind of stability we want to achieve."
At news conference after the forum, Kerry said: "We should not only be tough, we have to be smart -- and there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing."
Kerry campaigned in the city with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York --their first time on the trail together. They were joined at the City College forum by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.
Kerry touted a scaled-back version of a national service program that would pay tuition for about 200,000 public college students in exchange for two years of national service and pay part-time fees for 300,000.
Kerry originally proposed paying tuition for 500,000 students, funding the program by reforming the direct student loan program.
But aides said he had to scale back that proposal due to the federal budget deficit, currently projected to run about $480 billion.
The Bush campaign and its Republican allies accused Kerry of trying to exploit the trouble in Iraq for his political benefit.
Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign, said Kerry's argument was "just a lot of criticism and pessimism." Kerry reads to a group of preschoolers Wednesday as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a child at a Jumpstart preschool in Manhattan.
"He is saying that we should hand over power to the United Nations," Weinberger said. "The United Nations is totally incapable of doing any kind of job as pacifying or removing terrorism from a country like Iraq."
Rep. Peter King of New York said Kerry has offered only "sideline criticisms and back-seat driving" as an alternative to Bush's proposals.
"If he is going to criticize the president, he should say what he would do differently and not just make general statements," King said.
"By putting out ambiguous statements like that, he's only sowing seeds of doubt and confusion."
King said Kerry's attacks on Bush were particularly dismissive of those U.S. allies who are contributing troops to the occupation.
"For him to be belittling that really flies in the face of how he's going to bring some allied coalition to assist us in Iraq," King said.
In a press conference Tuesday night, Bush acknowledged that the United States had suffered some "tough weeks" in Iraq, but he said his administration would "finish the work of the fallen."
He said American commanders would have as many troops as they felt necessary to battle the Shiite uprising south of Baghdad and the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
China demands US to clarify arms sale report
(Xinhua)
2004-04-15
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-04/15/content_323650.htm
China has demanded that the United States clarify the report by Taiwan media on US arms sales to Taiwan.
Taiwan media reported that the United States inclined to sell submarines, Patriot-III anti-missile system and anti-submarine planes to Taiwan, and the island is ready to propose a budgetary program for the sales.
The US arms sales to Taiwan violate the three Sino-US joint communiques, particularly the August 17 Joint Communique, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in Beijing Thursday.
The move "interferes with China's internal affairs and may lead to further tension in situation across the Taiwan Straits," the spokesman said, adding that China has been opposing arms sales to Taiwan.
Chinese leaders have reiterated the stance to US Vice-President Dick Cheney during his China tour, Kong said.
"We urged the US side to honor its commitments, stop arms sales to Taiwan and stop any words or deeds in violation of the principles in the three joint communiques to avoid sabotaging the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits and the development of Sino-US relations," Kong said.
----
7 states flout ban on arms to China
April 15, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
BRUSSELS - At least seven European Union states sell arms to China despite a 15-year-old ban, Amnesty International said yesterday, urging the bloc to close loopholes in its code of conduct for weapons exports.
The London-based human rights watchdog also called on the union to demand evidence that Beijing was improving its human rights practices before bowing to French pressure for an end to the arms embargo.
----
Cheney stands firm on U.S. weapons for Taiwan
April 15, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040414-113140-3779r.htm
SHANGHAI - Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday told Chinese leaders that the United States is committed to its arms sales to Taiwan, and prodded China to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.
During several hours of meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin, Mr. Cheney told the leaders the Taiwan Relations Act, which permits the arms sales, is "an important piece of legislation," said a senior Bush administration official who briefed reporters after the meetings on the condition of anonymity.
The senior official stated that U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, were a direct response to "significant increases" in Chinese military deployments near Taiwan, including the deployment of some 500 short-range missiles.
Chinese officials believe the arms sales encourage Taiwan's pursuit of complete autonomy and this week criticized the island's recent purchase of radar systems from the United States.
"It's important that there be a very clear open channel of communications between our two nations on that issue," Mr. Cheney said of his discussions about Taiwan, which has been a contentious issue with China for decades.
The Taiwan Relations Act commits the United States to preventing the forcible reunification of the island with China's mainland.
"From my perspective, it's been a very successful trip," said Mr. Cheney. "I've been pleased with the way we've been received."
On North Korea, Mr. Cheney said, "I didn't come expecting to alter Chinese policy.
"I did come with the mission of making clear what our views were, of hopefully sharing perspective with my hosts," Mr. Cheney said. "I think we achieved that."
Mr. Cheney told the Chinese leaders that information provided by the covert nuclear technology supplier group headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan should convince Beijing that North Korea obtained uranium enrichment technology through the network, the senior official said.
China's government in the past has said it does not believe North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program, only the plutonium program that was reported to the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
The recent disclosures about Mr. Khan supplying nuclear technology to North Korea is ominous, the senior official said, noting that "time is not on our side with respect to the North Korean program."
"We think it's important to move forward aggressively to get this thing resolved as quickly as possible," the senior official said. The official stated that the six-nation talks on the problem is "the preferable method" for dealing with the issue.
Later, Mr. Cheney told reporters traveling with him that China and the United States both have made enormous progress since Mao Tse-tung's rule over China ended with his death in 1976.
China's leaders, including Mr. Hu, have shown "professionalism" that is impressive, Mr. Cheney said.
However, he stated: "I think it is a mistake for us, as Americans, to underestimate the extent to which there are differences, in terms of our approach, in terms of our political systems, in terms of our culture, history.
"By the same token, I think it's clear that there are broad areas where we share common strategic interests, and that with careful, thoughtful work on both sides going forward, there's no reason why we can't achieve a high degree of cooperation and avoid the kind of conflict and confrontation that would be a tragedy for everybody," Mr. Cheney said.
Mr. Cheney also raised U.S. concerns about the erosion of democracy in Hong Kong during the Beijing meetings, telling the Chinese "that to some extent the people of Taiwan might view what happens in Hong Kong as a bellwether of China to the one country, two systems approach," the senior official said.
Mr. Cheney expressed U.S. support for China's agreement in 1997 to allow Hong Kong to govern itself separately from Beijing under the one country, two systems idea, the senior official said.
Mr. Cheney passed on a letter from the Vatican asking China to allow the Vatican to send formal representatives to China. Beijing's official atheist communist government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or the Vatican and has created a state-run Catholic organization in its place.
-------- asia
U.S. teams cross DMZ to search for remains of Korean War MIAs
By Joseph Giordono,
Stars and Stripes Pacific edition,
Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=20808&archive=true
YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea - For the first time, U.S. remains recovery teams have crossed the Demilitarized Zone with equipment to search for servicemembers missing from the Korean War.
Pentagon officials also said that, for the first time since 1999, recovered remains will be returned across the DMZ at the end of each search operation. Previously, team members flew into the North to conduct operations, which began after lengthy negotiations in 1996.
"This year, the recovery work will be split between two sites for a schedule that will extend between April and October," read a Pentagon news release. "Twenty-eight U.S. team members will join with their North Korean counterparts for each of these approximately 30-day operations."
The sites have been identified as Unsan County and an area near the Chosin Reservoir, both sites of major Korean War battles that saw heavy losses of U.S. servicemembers. Five operations are scheduled, officials said.
There was no media coverage of the equipment as it crossed into North Korea on Monday, U.S. Forces Korea officials said Tuesday. However, repatriation ceremonies would be held at Yongsan Garrison for any remains.
Moving the supplies and equipment was made possible by negotiations between the North Koreans and the U.S. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office this February, the release said.
Separately, the office announced a "historic meeting" between Russian and U.S. archivists to examine the issue of information about American POWs and servicemembers missing in action. The meetings are to take place this week at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md.
U.S. officials "invited the Russians in 2003 to discuss technical areas important to the effort to locate materials in the Russian archives about unaccounted-for American servicemen," officials said.
The conference will look at issues such as declassifying Russian political and military documents from World War II, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and the Cold War; U.S. experts say these documents could prove invaluable in determining the fate of missing Americans.
A small team of U.S. specialists is already working in Moscow to recover such documents, but officials hope this week's conference will help smooth the process.
U.S. recovery teams have operated in North Korea for the past nine years, recovering more than 180 sets of remains in 27 separate operations, officials said. The Pentagon says more than 8,100 U.S. servicemen remain listed as missing in action from the Korean War.
More than 88,000 Americans are missing in action from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and Desert Storm, officials said.
-------- biological weapons
Government Considers New Smallpox Vaccine
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13095-2004Apr14?language=printer
Buoyed by promising results in animal experiments, government officials are contemplating buying massive quantities of a new type of smallpox vaccine to supplement the national stockpile already assembled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Scientists believe that unlike any of the vaccines now available, the new vaccine may be effective in protecting against the deadly infectious disease without the risk of serious -- and occasionally lethal -- side effects.
Efforts to develop the new vaccine, underway for several years, have taken on an air of urgency after safety concerns stalled a 2003 campaign to vaccinate millions of health care professionals and emergency workers who might be first to respond to a biological attack. Those concerns were underscored on Tuesday, when the vaccine that makes up the bulk of the U.S. stockpile was possibly linked to cases of heart inflammation.
As doubts grow about the existing vaccines, scientists are increasingly optimistic about the prospects for the experimental vaccine, called Modified Vaccinia Ankara, or MVA.
Scientists say recently conducted studies using MVA on mice and monkeys indicated the vaccine is both effective and safe, results that are especially encouraging for the some 30 percent of the population that is not supposed to take any of the vaccines now available because of a high risk of complications. That group includes people with HIV, those with compromised immune systems due to chemotherapy, pregnant women and individuals with the skin disease eczema.
But some government officials say MVA has shown such promise that it could do far more than merely fill the gaps left by other vaccines, and that it may become the nation's primary means of defense against a smallpox attack. They say, too, that it could help resuscitate the foundering national campaign to vaccinate millions of emergency workers who would be responsible for cutting off the deadly virus's spread in the event of an outbreak.
"As of now, the front-line vaccine we have is Dryvax," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, referring to the only vaccine now licensed for smallpox. "The question is whether we find something that comes along that can replace it. That's looking like it could be MVA."
But to get to that point, the cost of producing the drug would be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not the billions. That sum is too high, some public health experts say, especially given that scientists may not know whether MVA truly works until there's an attack. Unlike Dryvax, which was used effectively during a global eradication campaign during the 1970s, MVA has never been put to the test during an outbreak.
Most experts believe the probability of a smallpox attack is low. Following eradication, only two known stocks of the virus remained in the world: one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and another in Russia. Vaccination campaigns in the United States ended decades ago because the risk of the vaccine was considered greater than that of the virus.
But national security experts fear that some of the Russian stockpile could be in the hands of terrorists. Smallpox is one of the most potent bioterror agents because it spreads from person to person and because it kills 30 percent of its victims while permanently disfiguring many of the rest.
After the 2001 anthrax attacks, the federal government made it a priority to develop a stockpile of smallpox vaccine large enough for every man, woman and child in the country. Now the question is whether a second stockpile of safer vaccine is needed, and if the government can afford it.
"The cost is unknown. But that has to be factored in," said D.A. Henderson, a science adviser to the Department of Health and Human Services and one of the principal forces behind smallpox's eradication.
Henderson said that dose for dose, MVA will end up being significantly more expensive than any of the smallpox vaccines now available because a lot more of the vaccine will likely be needed to induce immunity.
The current stockpile consists of three vaccines, including Dryvax from the government's decades-old stockpile. The second was donated from the stockpiles of Aventis Pasteur, the French vaccine maker. The third, made by Acambis PLC, is an update of Dryvax using modern production techniques.
They all protect people using the same basic method, one that dates back centuries. Although the vaccines in the stockpile are produced in different ways, they all involve a virus related to smallpox that, when injected, begins to replicate vigorously and spurs the body's immunity. The replication of the virus can have side effects, however, that range from the mild -- a fever or a swollen arm -- to the serious -- an inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis or, perhaps, an inflammation of the heart.
MVA is also alive when it's injected, but it doesn't replicate well in humans so researchers believe that it's much less likely to cause side effects. The vaccine was first discovered in Turkey, and was later given to more than 100,000 people in Germany.
Because Germany didn't have smallpox at the time, the vaccine's ability to combat the disease remains unknown. But in U.S. government studies completed earlier this year on animals, the vaccine surpassed experts' expectations.
In one experiment, monkeys were given Dryvax, MVA or no vaccine at all. They were then bombarded with monkeypox, a close cousin of smallpox. The monkeys that had not been immunized died, while all of those that had been immunized by either of the vaccines lived. Bernard Moss, who conducted the experiments for Fauci's NIAID, said he was impressed with how well the MVA-immunized monkeys held up to the challenge.
"We were very gratified. They showed absolutely no signs of illness," he said.
A second study tested MVA's effectiveness with mice whose immune systems had been compromised. Again, MVA did the job without causing adverse reactions. Future studies are intended to determine how quickly the protection takes effect, and how long it lasts.
The vaccine is scheduled to enter human trials in the United States within weeks, using samples from two competing companies. One of those companies, Acambis, has already produced an updated version of Dryvax called ACAM2000, some 200 million doses of which have been purchased in the past few years by the government. The company stopped adding volunteers to a study on ACAM2000 this week, however, after at least one person exhibited swelling in the heart. Acambis officials declined to comment on their MVA program.
The other company is the Danish firm Bavarian Nordic AS. The two companies are vying for a contract to produce several million doses of MVA that will likely be awarded later this year. Another contract, calling for 60 million doses or more, is slated to go out to bid in the fall. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated such a purchase would cost $900 million.
Bavarian Nordic chief executive Peter Wulff said that, at least initially, government officials are looking at MVA as a niche vaccine for those who can't take one of the other vaccines because of the threat of complications. He thinks, however, the government will eventually want to use MVA for everyone.
"If you have something that is safe, why would you want to use something that is unsafe?" Wulff said.
Bavarian Nordic and Acambis are not the only companies hoping to produce the vaccine of the future, and MVA isn't the only contender for that title. In the long term, experts say that a genetically engineered vaccine may be the solution. In the shorter term, the California-based biotechnology firm VaxGen Inc. reported this week that its vaccine, known as LC16m8, protected rabbits and mice against a pox virus just as well as Dryvax after only one dose. Scientists have yet to determine how many doses of MVA are needed to induce immunity. The question is important because in the event of an attack, there may not be time for more than one dose. "MVA would have little utility in response to an outbreak," said VaxGen chief executive Lance K. Gordon.
Some worry, too, that MVA may not be available for several years, and that focusing on it so heavily may distract from the more immediate goal of getting emergency workers immunized with Dryvax.
"We have a misperception of risk with the existing vaccine," said William Bicknell, professor of international health at Boston University and a former Massachusetts health commissioner, who insists Dryvax is safe for healthy adults. "MVA would be even safer. So much the better. But MVA is still several years away and waiting is not the best idea."
Fauci said he believes MVA could be in the stockpile within a year or two, and that it may ultimately be used to immunize health care workers who had been reluctant to get a shot of Dryvax.
Before the vaccine can be licensed for use by the Food and Drug Administration, however, it has to undergo a full battery of human trials. Approval of any smallpox vaccine is complicated by the fact that researchers can't ethically expose humans to the disease. Up until now, the best they could do was to give the vaccine to humans to check for side effects, and then test the vaccine's effectiveness on monkeys using monkeypox. But Peter Jahrling, principal scientific adviser with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, said he could take those efforts a step further by exposing monkeys to actual smallpox.
"I would be very surprised if it didn't work," Jahrling said. "But the only way to know is to do it, and I'll do it if asked."
Staff writer Justin Gillis contributed to this report.
-------- business
EADS set to win giant NATO contract for surveillance aircraft: report
PARIS (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415085353.t3jh7gj4.html
NATO is set to award a defence contract for a fleet of surveillance aircraft worth up to four billion euros (4.8 billion dollars) to a consortium led by European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
NATO's decision on what would be its largest defence contract for decades will not be formalised until next month, the newspaper said, quoting alliance and industry officials.
But chief procurement officers in NATO capitals have only until Friday to object to the EADS-led group, which also includes US company Northrop Grumman Corp, it said.
NATO hopes the decision to proceed with the long-delayed programme will signal the renewed commitment of the transatlantic alliance following the crisis over the Iraq war, the newspaper said.
Surveillance aircraft are used by the military as flying eyes and ears to monitor activity on the ground, at sea or in the air.
But the deal remains at risk due to a challenge by Raytheon Company, which also competed for the contract. The US company has accused NATO of pushing through the EADS bid under US pressure, it said.
According to Western diplomats, the US has backed the EADS contract because of the involvement of Northrop Grumman, which builds the US Air Force's J-Stars ground surveillance aircraft.
The United States had pushed NATO to buy J-Stars outright, but when several European members objected, Northrop joined EADS to produce a similar aircraft using a body by Airbus, EADS' aircraft division.
Shares in EADS climbed in early Paris trade, bucking the overall market's decline, on the report.
EADS shares were trading up 1.80 percent at 19.79 euros, while the CAC-40 index fell 0.24 percent to 3,724.48 points.
"This would be very good news for the company and it appears to be a large order," said one Paris dealer.
-------- china
Cheney Warns China About Hong Kong
Policy There Linked to Taiwan, He Says
By Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10601-2004Apr14.html
BEIJING, April 14 -- Linking two contentious issues in U.S.-Chinese relations, Vice President Cheney warned China's leaders Wednesday that any efforts by Beijing to thwart democracy in Hong Kong would likely reinforce the budding movement in Taiwan to formally separate from China.
Cheney's message, which was described, on condition of anonymity, by a senior administration official, echoed the arguments of recently reelected Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, who has vowed to draft a new constitution for the island by 2006. In the talks, Cheney reiterated the long-standing U.S. position that there is "one China," a statement prominently mentioned in China's state media. But his joining of the Taiwan and Hong Kong issues appeared to be intended to put the Chinese on notice that their actions in Hong Kong could have consequences for maintaining the status quo they seek in the Taiwan Strait.
Britain ceded authority over Hong Kong in 1997, but Beijing has increasingly disappointed democracy advocates by refusing to quickly broaden voting rights as anticipated under the agreement transferring the former colony to China.
Cheney, who met with President Hu Jintao for more than two hours, also told the Chinese that the negotiations over North Korea's nuclear ambitions needed to begin to show results, the official said. With new information emerging daily on North Korea's dealings with Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, time was running short, the official quoted Cheney as saying. Some key officials in the Bush administration want to put significant pressure on North Korea, such as through sanctions, after the American presidential election. Cheney appeared to be signaling that a diplomatic impasse will not remain an acceptable option, though he did not set a timetable.
"I didn't come expecting to alter Chinese policy," Cheney told reporters traveling with him. "I did come with the mission of making clear what our views were, of hopefully sharing perspective with my hosts."
Overall, however, Cheney stressed that U.S.-Chinese relations are good. "This really is an amazing relationship," Cheney said. Noting the contrast with his first visit to Beijing, in 1975, Cheney said "it's gone from almost nothing to one of the most significant bilateral relationships anyplace in the world."
Cheney added, "It is a mistake for us, as Americans, to underestimate the extent to which there are differences -- in terms of our approach, our political systems, our culture, history." But he said there were areas of "common strategic interests" and, with careful consultation, both sides can "avoid the kind of conflict and confrontation that would be a tragedy for everybody."
Yet, as Cheney met in private with senior leaders in Beijing, China voiced a strong public warning about mounting dangers it sees in Taiwan now that Chen has been reelected. Chen, the government's Taiwan Affairs Office said, is following a timetable leading to a declaration of independence for the self-governing island by 2008.
"That will definitely bring tension and danger to the region of the Taiwan Strait," said Li Weiyi, the Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman.
China has deployed an estimated 500 short-range ballistic missiles directly across from the strait that separates Taiwan from the mainland. The Bush administration has cited the Chinese missiles as the reason for selling radar and military equipment to Taiwan, pointing out that the U.S. government is legally obligated to assist in the island's defense. Cheney rejected Chinese complaints that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan were destabilizing, making it clear that the administration believes the sales were a direct consequence of China's missile buildup aimed at Taiwan, the official said.
Cheney's discussions also covered economic disputes with China, the United States' third-largest trading partner. China said Vice Premier Huang Ju would travel to Washington later this year to meet with Treasury Secretary John W. Snow for further discussions on having China adopt a more flexible currency exchange rate. Cheney also suggested that U.S. companies be tapped to sell nuclear reactors to China as it seeks to substantially boost its use of nuclear power. China issued an international bid earlier this year to build four plants, and Westinghouse Electric Co. LLC is competing with Japanese and French firms for the multibillion-dollar contracts.
Premier Wen Jiabao told Cheney that the Bush administration should ease restrictions on exports of high-technology products to China and grant it full market status "as soon as possible" as part of a "five-point agreement" to develop bilateral trade, the official New China News Agency said. Full market status would insulate China against charges it is dumping its goods by selling them abroad for less than they cost to produce.
China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland, has declared that it seeks peaceful reunification with the island but is prepared to use force if it's necessary to achieve that end. The country's leaders have indicated a declaration of independence by Taiwan is a red line that, if crossed, would likely lead to military conflict. And that, they have said, seems to be where Chen is heading.
"What Chen has done during the last four years clearly shows such an intention," Li said, adding: "He has claimed in public many times that he will hold a referendum on a new constitution in 2006, that in 2008 the new constitution will be put into practice a