Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Grant funds nuclear study
Blood Money
Pollution not patriotic
Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops
French affirmation on new reactor
U.S. Must Explain Removal of Iraqi Nuclear Equipment, Buildings
U.N. Warns of Possible Nuclear Thefts in Iraq
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Has No Regrets
Released Japanese hostages want to stay in Iraq
Cheney Makes Clear U.S. Is Not Willing to Bend on North Korea
Genesis of Nuclear Proliferation
LANL to host Procurement Expo in Espanola
Eye on Effingham: County's sewer plans cause a stir
Lawyer barred from Hanford health case
Government says it will ship nuclear waste to Nevada
Nevada Seeks to Block Ohio Nuclear Waste
Inside the Ring
Bush Uses 'Terror' as A Fallback, Kerry Says
New Book Says Bush Asked for Iraq War Plan in 2001
MILITARY
US 'bound by law to sell arms to Taiwan'
New way for NATO to do business
U.S. Names More Firms With Ties to Hussein
Pentagon criticises Air Force over Boeing pact
Audit Criticizes Another Boeing Deal
New Unity on Contracts Seen in NATO
Chen receives delegates from US, Germany
Hong Kong Leader Backs Slow Reform
Europeans Reject Bin Laden 'Truce'
Bin Laden's truce offer rejected as 'absurd'
Factions Slug It Out in Battle To See Who Will Lead Ukraine
Get Out Now, Before We Are Thrown Out
Rumsfeld Says He Underestimated Level of Violence in Iraq
Radical Cleric Stands Firm, Says He Won't Disband Army
Iraqis Are Hoping for Early and Peaceful End to Shiite Insurrection
Delicate Maneuvers Led to U.S.-Israeli Stance
'US Soldier' Captured in Iraq, 4 Foreigners Freed
US Holding 200 Iraqi Troops Who Mutinied - Comrades
The war of words over war in space
Domestic Spy Agency: New Call, Old Worries
CIA Warned of Attack 6 Years Before 9 / 11
China air force officers arrested for spying for Taiwan: reports
U.S. Open to a Proposal That Supplants Council in Iraq
Bush and Blair Signal Support for U.N. Plan for Iraqi Government
U.S. deaths from enemy fire at highest level since Vietnam
Extended Tours in Iraq Dash Hopes and Raise Fears Among Families
U.S. troops, parents confirm Humvee risks
Rumsfeld: Iraq Toll Higher Than Expected
Journalist Shares War Secrets
Krohn departs
How the 'NewsHour' Changed History
52 Pick Up and the 100- to-1 Rule
General Calls Insurgency in Iraq a Sign of U.S. Success
Arab TV Airs Video of Captured U.S. Soldier
Tape, Probably bin Laden's, Offers 'Truce' to Europe
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Drugs Found Aboard Colombian Warship
Time Eases Tough Drug Laws, but Fight Goes On
FBI said buried by security demands
City resolution doesn't favor the Patriot Act
Administration Considers a Post for National Intelligence Director
Ship Cargo Security Upgrades Approved
In Jordan, Refugees Cling to Hope
D.C. Police Are Arrested At High Rate
New Target and Tone Message Shows Al Qaeda's Adaptability
Evacuation Is Ordered for Most U.S. Diplomats in Saudi Arabia
Troops Blast Music in Siege of Fallujah
Special Counsel's Chief Is Assailed Bloch Accused of Silencing Staff
OTHER
OMB Modifies Peer-Review Proposal
Region's Air Doesn't Meet New Standards
Company's Mad Cow Tests Blocked
Survey Shows Slight Decline in Homeless on the Streets
ACTIVISTS
Brethren peacemakers return from Iraq.
"Peace Criminal" Shares His Experience In Iraq
Guardsman Pleads Innocent to Desertion
Tax resisters make their case
Antiwar activist tells of son's death in Iraq, questions reasons for war
Judge upholds government's use of obscure 1800s law in charging Greenpeace
Honduras to halt gold mine after protests
The Guardian profile: Mordechai Vanunu
War protesters close federal building
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- business
Grant funds nuclear study
Gabrielle Lahatte
USC Tiger News Writer,
Friday, April 16, 2004
http://www.thetigernews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/16/407f033fd9924
Recently, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) awarded a research grant to the University to improve analytical systems used by the IAEA's Safeguard Analytical Laboratory (SAL) in Seiborsdorf, Austria to separate radioactive samples from various nuclear sites around the world.
The Clemson research team, headed by Dr. James Navratil, an environmental engineering professor, hopes to improve the analysis of uranium, plutonium and americium. The presence of these elements often indicates a nuclear weapons program.
The group also plans to develop new radiochemistry separation methods used in analysis of radionuclides. The goal for the team is to create a system that is able to detect smaller quantities of each substance. The team hopes to achieve its goal by using different sizes and qualities of resin in order to separate the samples more efficiently.
This research will help inspectors identify smaller samples of uranium-235, which is desired for nuclear weapons because of its fissile properties. It will also help them detect lower concentrations of plutonium and americium isotopes, which also indicate suspicious nuclear activity. Finally, it will allow inspectors to separate and concentrate these radioactive isotopes from diluted liquid samples.
With the uncertainty of the Iranian nuclear program and other nuclear programs worldwide, this research is essential to the IAEA's mission. Founded because of great fear and expectations about nuclear energy, the IAEA was created to regulate nuclear technology's use, security and safety. Using its inspection system, the agency verifies that countries comply and are in accordance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other non-proliferation agreements, which say nuclear material and facilities may only be used for peaceful purposes.
The SAL was created by the IAEA to interpret the samples collected by inspectors, providing the agency with crucial information that allows them to achieve their goals of nuclear safety.
The major bulk of the research has yet to be conducted. Monday, Dr. Navratil left for Austria to work at SAL during the summer and Amanda Padgett, a team member and a Clemson environmental science graduate student, will join him in mid-May for two to three weeks in order to master SAL's radiochemistry separation techniques before applying them in their research here at Clemson.
Padgett, a recent Clemson graduate who officially joined the project two weeks ago, explained the significance of the upcoming trip to Seiborsdorf.
"As a chemical engineer, I haven't taken a chemistry lab since my sophomore year. You get a basic understanding from concepts in class, but there will certainly be a learning curve for me."
Padgett, also a current intern at Oconee Nuclear Power Plant, hopes to apply her knowledge from her job to the project as well.
The grant seems appropriate for Clemson, one of the few universities in the country that offers a nuclear-related concentration in its environmental science graduate program. Dr. Navratil's previous work experience with the SAL also helped Clemson secure the funding for the project.
With better analytical systems to detect radioactive isotopes, the IAEA hopes to be better equipped to determine the true nature of suspicious nuclear programs before it is too late to act. With the impending public report about Iran's program, any new advances in analytical technology will be greatly appreciated by the SAL.
----
Blood Money
Former Exec: American Company Paid Terrorist Group to Protect Overseas Interests
By Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz
April 16, 2004
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Primetime/World/paying_abu_sayyaf_040415-1.html
April 16 - Before his company sent him overseas, Allan Laird, a former Denver-based mining executive, had never heard of Abu Sayyaf.
As Laird quickly learned when he arrived in the Philippines, Abu Sayyaf is one of the world's most-feared terrorist organizations, closely connected to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Laird said he also soon discovered the company for whom he formerly worked, Echo Bay, was regularly paying Abu Sayyaf and other terror groups in the Philippines in exchange for protection of its gold-mining operations. Laird calls the practice "corporate support of terrorism."
Laird took his story to the Sierra Club, the conservation group known for its opposition to the mining industry. Marilyn Berlin Snell, a reporter for the club's bimonthly magazine Sierra, is reporting Laird's story this week.
Thursday, in a moral victory for Laird, the Department of Justice reversed course and reactivated the investigation into Echo Bay's business practices.
"My company was dealing directly with terrorists. It must have been close to $2 million [U.S. dollars]. Maybe more," Laird said.
Laird said he believes that the funding provided by his former company cost American lives. That funding, he says, continued until the company closed its mining operations in 1997.
In May of 2001, Gracia and Martin Burnham, missionaries from Wichita, Kan., were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary trip at Dos Palmas Resort off Palawan Island in the Philippines when they were kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf and taken to the jungles of Basilan Island.
"My goal is to go home alive to my children," Martin Burnham said while in captivity on a videotape recorded by a reporter for a television station in the Philippines, who was given permission to visit the hostages.
He never did. After 376 days of captivity, Martin was killed in a firefight when the Filipino Army made a rescue attempt.
-------- depleted uranium
Pollution not patriotic
Rules to fight pollution caused by military training and munitions must stand
Florida Today,
Apr 16, 2004
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/opedstory0417WBASES.htm
Atoxic plume containing a cancer-causing chemical is working its way from a Superfund landfill site at Pensacola Naval Air Station toward Bayou Grande on Florida's Gulf Coast.
That's despite the Navy's multiyear, multimillion dollar effort to clean up 13 heavily polluted sites at the base.
Other cancer-causing substances have contaminated drinking-water wells at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, compromising the health of thousands of Marines and their families.
Despite such clear evidence that pollution from military activities poses grave dangers, the Bush administration again has asked Congress to exempt Defense Department facilities from crucial laws that protect the environment and the public health.
In all, nine Florida installations and more than a hundred munition ranges around the state -- including areas at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Patrick Air Force Base -- would be exempted under the proposed changes.
The Pentagon claims that military readiness and national security are weakened by compliance with pollution standards that all other branches of government must heed.
But that's a manipulation of patriotism in this time of war and terrorism to disguise what's really going on:
More of the across-the-board assault on environmental regulations that we've seen from the White House since President Bush took office.
In 2002, the first time the Pentagon asked for exemptions, congressional investigators found the laws in question have little effect on military readiness and refused to change them.
Plus, the military already has the right to request exemptions from such laws on a case-by-case basis.
What exactly is at stake?
# Giving blanket exemptions from some Clean Air Act rules to the Pentagon so standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency won't count military-caused pollution.
# Exempting munitions, including chemical weapons or those made with depleted uranium, from laws regulating safe disposal.
That opens the door for deadly weapons to be left where they can endanger base residents, or leak toxins into the groundwater and put entire communities at risk of exposure.
# Exempting from EPA or state oversight the contamination of water, air and soil caused by use of munitions, thus shielding the military from the burden of pollution clean-up at Superfund sites.
That's where Florida stands to lose.
The Sunshine State is home to some of the most polluted military bases in the nation, such as the Pensacola and Jacksonville naval air stations, and Homestead Air Reserve Base near the Everglades.
If the Pentagon is allowed to abdicate its responsibility for obeying environmental laws put in place to safeguard the public health, who would be saddled with the consequences?
Communities would not only bear the human cost in damaged lives, but hold the bag for clean-up expenses.
That constitutes an arrogant, unpatriotic disregard for service members who are dying in the line of duty, their families, and the communities that support them.
Congress must again refuse the administration's request.
----
Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops
What 'Support Our Troops' Really Means
By Amy Worthington
The Idaho Observer
4-16-3
http://proliberty.com/observer/20030401.htm
On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: "Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!" That's exactly what George Bush has done. America's mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.
Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a "liberation" gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.
Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.1 Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped.2 The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.3 These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them.4 The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.5
DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.
Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond the war in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II veterans for years as they slowly and painfully succumb to radiation poisoning. U.S and British troops deployed to the area are the walking dead. Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout zone are destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic illness and disability. Kidney dysfunction, lung damage, bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint pain, unsteady gait, memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer and premature death await those exposed to DU.
Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: "As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense against further exposure to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress, caffeine, insect repellent and radiation leftover from the last war. This is a war even the victors will lose."6
When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill.7
The Royal Society of England published data showing that battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can suffer kidney failure within days.8 Any soldier now in Iraq who has not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds.9 Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated debris.
Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of depleted uranium were used against Iraq in 1991.10 A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome.11 The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses.12 To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat in that war.13
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert. He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I. He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine.14 Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings.
In other studies, some sick vets were found to be expressing uranium in even their semen. Their sexual partners often complained of a burning sensation during intercourse, followed by their own debilitating illnesses.15
Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured vicious nuclear chastisement for years.16 U.S. air attacks against Iraq since 1993 have undoubtedly employed nuclear munitions. Pictures of grotesquely deformed Iraqi infants born since 1991 are overwhelming.17 Like those born to Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq will also be afflicted with hideous deformities, neurological damage and/or blood and respiratory disorders.18
As an Army health physicist, Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."19
DU remains "hot" for 4.5 billion years. Radiation expert Dr. Helen Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden winds of DU-contaminated war zones "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time."20 The murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops during the first few days of the current invasion are sure to have significant health consequences.
Rokke and his clean-up team were issued only flimsy dust masks for their dangerous work. Of the 100 people on Rokke's decontamination team, 30 have already "dropped dead." Rokke himself is ill with radiation damage to lungs and kidneys. He has brain lesions, skin pustules, chronic fatigue, continual wheezing and painful fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that anyone exposed to DU should have adequate respiratory protection and special coveralls to protect their clothing because, he says, you can't get uranium particles off your clothing.
The U.S. military insists that DU on the battlefield is not a problem. Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material Command recently told the BBC that complaints about DU "had no medical basis."21 The military's own documents belie this. A 1993 Pentagon document warned that "when soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk."22 A U.S. Army training manual requires anyone who comes within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment to wear respiratory and skin protection.23 The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admitted: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences."24 The Institute also stated that, if the troops were to realize what they had been exposed to, "the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive."25 For pragmatic reasons, DOD chooses to lie and deny.
Dr. Rokke confirms that the Pentagon lies about DU dangers and is criminally negligent for neglecting medical attention needed by DU-contaminated vets. He predicts that the numbers of American troops to be sickened by DU from Gulf War II will be staggering.26 As they gradually sicken and suffer a slow burn to their graves, the Pentagon will, as it did after Gulf War I, deny that their misery and death is a result of their tour in Iraq.
Dr. Rokke's candor has cost him his career. Likewise, Dr. Durakovic's radiation studies on Gulf War I vets were not popular with U.S. officials. Dr. Durakovic was reportedly told his life was in danger if he continued his research. He left the U.S. to continue his research abroad.27
Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely unaware of how deadly their battlefield environment is. Gulf War I troops were kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled DU fragments and some wore these lethal nuggets around their necks. A DU projectile emits more radiation in five hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian radiation exposure standards. "We didn't know any better," Kris Kornkven told Nation magazine. "We didn't find out until long after we were home that there even was such a thing as DU."28
George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war. Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical nuclear weapons including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and shells suited to commando warfare in Afghanistan.29 In late September, 2001, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans.30
Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village Voice: "Built ram tough with a heavy metal casing for smashing through the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes with the force of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one, a boosted plutonium firecracker called the primary and a heavy hydrogen secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb fireball."31
Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now contaminated by these nuclear weapons.32 Experts with the Uranium Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population. Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Dead birds still perched in trees are found partially melted with blood oozing from their mouths.33
Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed by Washington. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's regime is setting a new record for opium production. Both UN and U.S. reports confirm that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer.34 Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the Bush-Cheney narcotics industry.35 ABC News asserts that keeping the "peace" in Afghanistan will require decades of allied occupation.36 For years to come, "peacekeepers" will be eating, drinking and breathing the "hot" carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that nation for organized crime.
As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill Clinton laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for then vice-president George Bush Sr.37 As a partner in the Bush family's notorious crime machine, President Clinton committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in the Balkans, a prime heroin production and trans-shipment area. DOD's campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for the Bush mafia was yet another nuclear project.
For years, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles, bullets and shells across the Balkans, nuking the peoples of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. As DU munitions were slammed into chemical plants, the environment became hideously toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary. By 1999, UN investigators reported that an estimated 12 tons of DU had caused irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian environment, with agriculture, livestock and air water, and public health all profoundly damaged.38
Scientists confirm that citizens of the Balkans are excreting uranium in their urine.39 In 2001, a Yugoslavian pathologist reported that hundreds of Bosnians have died of cancer from NATO's DU bombardment.40 Many NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans now suffer ill health. Their leukemias, cancers and other maladies are dubbed the "Balkans Syndrome." Richard Coghill predicts that DU weapons used in Balkans campaign will result in at least 10,000 cases of fatal cancer.41
U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for criminal militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous military sites in USA that will require $billions to rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD has been both slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations.42 The Pentagon is now pressing Congress to exempt it from all environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free from liability.43
The Navy uses prime fishing grounds off the coast of Washington state to test fire DU ammunition. In January, Washington State Rep. Jim McDermott chastised the Navy: "On one hand you have required soldiers to have DU safety training and to wear protective gear when handling DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated waters. These policies indicate there is cause for concern....On the other hand the Department of Defense has repeatedly denied that DU poses any danger whatsoever. There has been no remorse about leaving tons of DU equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of your own country."44
DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. After the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, one third of the island's population developed serious illness. Many people show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have filed a class action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming DU contamination has caused widespread cancers.45
The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is a quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target practice zone for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents report bizarre illnesses, including 17 children who have contracted leukemia within five years. A survey of groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area wells are contaminated with radioactive materials.46
The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at three nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where workers handling uranium contaminated with plutonium have suffered for decades with cancers and debilitating maladies similar to Gulf War Syndrome.47
Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush asserts that the U.S. has the right to attack any nation it deems a potential threat. He told West Point in 2002, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."48 Thus, it is certain that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear wars are lined up like idling jetson a runway. Both Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush family's Carlyle Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so endless war is just good business.49
The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create special nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's underground nuclear facilities.50 Next August, U.S. war makers will meet to consolidate plans for a new generation of "mini," "micro" and "tiny" nuclear bombs and bunker busters. These will be added to the U.S. arsenal perhaps for use against non-nuclear third-world nations such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon.51
The solution? Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to rule this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains like Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for endless corporate war profits. Saddam was placed in power by the CIA.52 For years U.S. government agencies, under auspices of George Bush Sr., supplied him with chemical and biological weapons.53 Our national nuclear laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear program.54 Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late 90s when its subsidiaries signed $73 million in new contracts to further supply Saddam.55 The wicked villain of Iraq was nurtured for decades as a cash-cow by U.S. military-industrial piranhas.
If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending them into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs. Time is running out. If the DU-maniacs at the Pentagon and their coven of nuclear arms peddlers are not harnessed, America will have no able-bodied fighting forces left. All people of the earth will become grossly ill, hideously deformed and short- lived. We must succeed in the critical imperative to face reality and act decisively. Should we fail, there will be no place to hide from Bush-Cheney's merciless nuclear orgies yet to come or from the inevitable nuclear retaliation these orgies will surely breed.
Endnotes
1."DOD Launches Depleted Uranium Training," Linda Kozaryn, American Forces Press Service, 8-13-99.
2."Nukes of the Gulf War,"John Shirley, Zess@a.... See this article in archives at www.gulfwarvets.com.
3. BBC News, "US To Use Depleted Uranium," March 18, 2003; U.S. General Accounting Office, Operation Desert Storm: "Early Performance Assessment of Bradley and Abrams," 1-2-92.
4."Nukes of the Gulf War," op. cit.
5. Ibid.
6. "Invading Hiroshima," William Thomas, 2-4-2003, www.willthomas.net
7. "US Shells Leave Lethal Legacy," Toronto Star, July 31, 1999; also "Radiation Tests for Peacekeepers in the Balkans Exposed to Depleted Uranium," www.telegraph.co.uk, 12-31-02.
8. "Depleted Uranium May Stop Kidneys In Days," Rob Edwards, New Scientist.com, 3-12-02; also "Uranium Weapons Too Hot to Handle," Rob Edwards, New Scientist.co.uk, 6-9-99.
9. "Navy Seeks Cash for More Tomahawks," David Rennie in Washington, Telegraph Group Limited, 1-4-03, news.telegraph.co.uk.
10. "Going Nuclear in Iraq--DU Cancers Mount Daily," Ramzi Kysia, CounterPunch.org, 12-31-01.
11."Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01, www.guardianlimited.co.uk.
12. "Gulf War Illnesses Affect 300,000 Vets," Ellen Tomson, Pioneer Press, www.pioneerplanet.com. See also American Gulf War Veterans Association at www.gulfwarvets.com.
13. "2 of Every 5 Gulf War Vets Are On Disability: 209,000 Make VA Claims," World Net Daily, 1-28-03, WorldNetDaily.com.
14. "Research on Sick Gulf Vets Revisited, "New York Times, 1-29-01; "Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, The Sunday Times (UK) 9-3-02.
15. "Catastrophe: Ill Gulf Vets Contaminated Partners With DU," The Halifax Herald Limited, Clare Mellor, 2-09-01. This article is available in archives at www.rense.com.
16. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02; "US Depleted Uranium Yields Chamber of Horrors in Southern Iraq, Andy Kershaw, The Independent (London) 12-4-01.
17. "The Environmental and Human Health Impacts of the Gulf War Region with Special References to Iraq," Ross Mirkarimi, The Arms Control Research Centre, May 1992. See also Gulf War Syndrome Birth Defects in Iraq at www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html.
18. "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm, Has Our Country Abandoned Them?," Life Magazine, November 1995; "Birth Defects Killing Gulf War Babies," Los Angeles Times, 11-14-94; "Depleted Uranium, The Lingering Poison," Alex Kirby, BBC News Online, 6-7-99.
19. "Depleted Uranium, A Killer Disaster," Travis Dunn, Disaster News.net, 12-29-02.
20. San Francisco Chronicle, 10-10-02.
21. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.
22. "Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01.
23. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02.
24. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.
25. US Army Environmental Policy Institute: Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the U.S. Army, Technical Report, June 1995.
26. "Pentagon Depleted Uranium No Health Risk," Dr. Doug Rokke, 3-15-03; also "The Terrible, Tragic Toll of Depleted Uranium," Address by Dr. Rokke before congressional leaders in Washington, D.C.,12-30-02; also "Gulf War Casualties," Dr. Doug Rokke, www.traprockpeace.org. 9-30-02.
27."Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Sunday Times (UK), Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, 9-3-00.
28. "The Pentagon's Radioactive Bullet: An Investigative Report," Bill Mesler, The Nation, 5-28-99, see www.thenation.com/ issue/961021/1021mesl.htm.
29. "Tactical Nukes Deployed In Afghanistan," World Net Daily, 10-7-01. 30. Ibid.
31. "The B-61 Bomb,The Burrowing Nuke" George Smith,VillageVoice.com 12-29-02.; also "Bunker-busting US Tactical Nuclear Bombs, Nowhere to Hide," Kennedy Grey, Wired.com, 10-9-01.
32."Perpetual Death From America," Mohammed Daud Miraki, Afghan-American Interviews, 2-24-03; also "Dying of Thirst," Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 11-17-2001.
33. Ibid.
34. "Afghanistan Displaces Myanmar as Top Heroin Producer," Agence France-Presse, 3-01-03. This article is at www.copvcia.com.;also "Opium Trade Flourishing In the `New Afghanistan,'" Reuters, 3-3-03.
35. "The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire," Michael C. Ruppert, Nexus Magazine, February-March 2000; The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill & Co., revised edition due May 2003; Drugging of America, Rodney Stich, Diablo Western Press, 1999; "Blood for Oil, Drugs for Arms," Bob Djurdjevic, Truth In Media, April 2000, www.truthinmedia.org. 36. ABC News, February 27, 2003.
37. Compromised, Clinton Bush and the CIA, Terry Reed and John Cummings, S.P.I. Books, 1994; The Clinton Chronicles and The Mena Cover-up, Citizens for Honest Government, 1996; "The Crimes of Mena, Grey Money," Ozark Gazette, 1995 (see www.copvcia.com.)
38. "Damage to Yugoslav Environment is Immense, Says a UN Report," Bob Djurdjevic, 7-4-99, truthinmedia.org. This report was submitted to the UN Security Council on June 9, 1999; also, "New Depleted Uranium Study Shows Clear Damage," BBC News,8-28-99; also "NATO Issued Warning About Toxic Ammo," Associated Press, 01-08-01.
39. CounterPunch.org, 12-28-01.
40. "Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing--Doctor," Reuters, 1-13-01.
41."Depleted Uranium Threatens Balkan Cancer Epidemic," BBC News, 7-30-99.
42. "Many Defense Sites Still Hazardous," Associated Press, 9-24-02; also Old US Weapons Called Hidden Danger, Los Angeles Times, 11-25-02.
43. "Pentagon Seeks Freedom to Pollute Land, Air and Sea," Andrew Gumbel in L.A., 3-13-03, Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.
44. "Radioactive DU Ammo Is Tested in Fish Areas," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1-11-03; Letter from Rep. McDermott to Department of the Navy: see "Navy Fired DU Rounds Into Waters Off Coast of Washington," 1-20-03, rense.com.
45."Cancer Rates Soar From US Military Use of DU On `Enchanted Island,'" www.telegraph.co.uk, 2-5-01; also "Navy Shells With Depleted Uranium Fired in Puerto Rico," Fox News Online, 5-28-99.
46. "The Fallon, NV Cancer Cluster And a US Navy Bombing," Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch.org, 8-10-02.
47. "DU Shells Are Made of A Potentially Lethal Cocktail of Nuclear Waste," Jonathon Carr-Brown, www.sunday-times.co.uk, 1-22-01.
48. "Preventative War Sets Perilous Precedent," Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers, 3-20-03.
49. PIGS at the Trough, Arriana Huffington, Random House, 2003 (New York Times best seller.); also "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy, From Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership With Killers of Americans;" Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness,10-10-01; also "Bush Sr.'s Carlyle Group Gets Fat on War and Conflict," Jamie Doward, The Observer (UK), 3-25-03; also "Halliburton Wins Contract for Iraq Oil Firefighting, Reuters, 3-7-03; also "Cashing In-Fortunes in Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War, Andrew Gumbel, The Independent (London) 9-15-02; also "War Could Be Big Business for Halliburton," Reuters, 3-23-03.
50. "Pentagon Seeks a Nuclear Digger," Washington Post, March 10, 2003.
51. "Remember: Bush Planed Iraq War Before Taking Office," Neil Mackay, The Sunday Herald (UK) 3-27-03; also "US Mini-Nukes Alarm Scientists," The Guardian (UK) 4-18-01; also "US Nuclear First-Strike Plan--It Keeps Getting Scarier, Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, 2-24-03.
52. Wall Street Journal, 8-16-90: The CIA supported the Baath Party and installed Hussein as Iraqi dictator in 1968.
53. "United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of Persian Gulf War Veterans," Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 1992, 1994; "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup," Washington Post, 12-30-02.
54. "US Government, 24 US Corps Illegally Helped Iraq Build Its WMD," Hugh Williamson in Berlin, Financial Times, 12-19-02; "Full List of US Weapons Suppliers To Iraq," Anu de Monterice, coachanu@e..., 12-19-02.
55. Huffington, op. cit.
Amy Worthington is a reporter for The Idaho Observer Observer@coldreams.com
-------- europe
French affirmation on new reactor
World Nuclear Association
Weekly Digest
16 April 2004
http://www.world-nuclear.org/news/2004/wd_apr16.htm
The French Prime Minister's recent statement that construction of a demonstration EPR unit in France was needed to keep the nuclear option open has been enlarged upon by the Industry Minister. He affirmed that the new government sees nuclear power as vital in combating the greenhouse effect and preserving national energy independence - "I don't know how we could do without nuclear". Any new reactor would be built by EdF, though at the same time it is keeping longer term options open for France by participation in the US consortium seeking a combined construction and operation licence in the USA for the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor.
EdF continued its strong export performance in 2003, with 66 billion kWh net exported, @ 3.35 cents/kWh average - total EUR 2.2 billion. Nucleonics Week 15/4/04.
Major European study of geological disposal. The European Commission has signed up to support a project demonstrating the technical feasibility of constructing, operating and closing a deep geological repository for high-level radioactive wastes. It is known as the Engineering Studies & Demonstrations of Repository Designs (ESDRED) project. It will involve industrial-scale prototypes and run for five years, with a budget of EUR 18 million. The EC agreement is with 13 organisations from nine W. European countries, coordinated by France's Andra. Other participants include ENRESA (Spain), Nagra (Switzerland), Nirex (UK), Posiva (Finland) and SKB (Sweden) - all involved with national radwaste projects. SKB's Aspo hard rock laboratory near Oskarshamn will be a key part of the research.
This complements another EC-funded project begun in January and run by ARIUS (based in Switzerland) and Slovakia's DECOM to undertake a pilot study on the technical and legal requirements for a regional waste repository. This SAPIERR project is related to the needs of countries with smaller nuclear programs, and it involves 21 organisations from 14 countries. ARIUS c March 2004, NucNet news #86/04.
-------- iraq / inspections
U.S. Must Explain Removal of Iraqi Nuclear Equipment, Buildings
NEW YORK, New York, (ENS)
April 16, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-16-05.asp
The chief of the United Nations nuclear agency has asked the United States for "clarifications" about what has happened to nuclear equipment and "entire buildings" the agency was monitoring before the Iraq war that now appear to have been removed from the country.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei expressed his concern about the missing buildings and equipment in an April 11 letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that was transmitted to the Security Council and made public on Thursday.
Lawyer and diplomat Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei heads the International Atomic Energy Agency. (Photo courtesy IAEA) Dr. ElBaradei said he is concerned about "the proliferation risk associated with dual-use material and equipment disappearing to unknown destinations."
A technology is considered to be of dual use when it has current or potential military and civilian applications.
The IAEA director-general said these disappearances may have "a significant impact on the agency's continuity of knowledge of Iraq's remaining nuclear-related capabilities."
The IAEA has a mandate to monitor and verify nuclear installations in Iraq and report to the Security Council every six months. Since March 17, 2003, the IAEA has not been in a position to implement its mandate in Iraq due to the war, but Dr. ElBaradei said the agency has been monitoring known nuclear sites by means of commercial satellite imagery.
"The imagery shows that there has been extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings," he wrote in the letter to Annan.
From left: IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Dr. Hans Blix, former chief weapons inspector in Iraq. January 10, 2003 (Photo courtesy U.S. State Department) "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, from sites monitored by IAEA," he wrote.
"It is not clear," he wrote, "whether the removal of those 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 the locations."
He did not specify the names or locations of the missing buildings and equipment.
Dr. ElBaradei said that the IAEA remains ready to resume its verification activities in Iraq. In the meantime, member states are expected to provide any information relevant to prohibited programs in Iraq or aspects of the IAEA mandate, to enable the Agency to fulfil its responsibilities under Security Council resolutions and under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The IAEA "expects" that all findings will be shared with the agency "in the near term," Dr. ElBaradei wrote.
--------
RADIOACTIVE SCRAP
U.N. Warns of Possible Nuclear Thefts in Iraq
April 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/16/international/middleeast/16NUKE.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 15 - Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency has reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrap yards.
The International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter to United States officials three weeks ago telling them of the findings. The information was also sent to the Security Council in a letter from the agency's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, which was circulated on Thursday.
Officials said the agency was awaiting a reply from the United States, which leads the alliance administering Iraq. Arms control officials fear that the war and the continuing unrest may have increased chances that terrorists may get their hands on materials used for unconventional weapons or that civilians may be 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 quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq" from sites previously monitored by the agency.
In January, the agency confirmed that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material found in a shipment of scrap metal in Rotterdam Harbor.
The material, natural uranium ore, probably came from a mine in Iraq that was active before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The material was uncovered on Dec. 16 by a 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, agency 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 agency has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the United States invaded the country in March 2003. The United States has refused to allow the agency's weapons inspectors into the country, saying that the alliance has taken over responsibility for illicit weapons searches.
So far those searches have come up empty-handed.
-------- israel
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Has No Regrets
April 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Vanunu.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- An Israeli who has spent 18 years in prison for spilling his country's nuclear secrets says he has no regrets, his brother tells The Associated Press.
Mordechai Vanunu, a traitor in the eyes of the Israeli government but a hero to anti-nuclear activists around the world, is due to be released on Wednesday, when he will have completed his term.
But instead of the freedom he has long awaited -- he wants to go to the United States -- he will face a series of restrictions on his movement.
Vanunu, 50, was a technician at Israel's top-secret nuclear plant near the desert town of Dimona. In 1986, he disclosed details and photos of the plant and the country's reputed nuclear weapons arsenal to The Sunday Times of London.
He subsequently was seized in Europe by the Mossad intelligence agency and spirited to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and espionage. He served 12 of his 18 years in prison in solitary confinement.
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.
Israel won't confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons. But based partly on photographs that Vanunu provided to the Sunday Times, it is widely believed the country has a large nuclear arsenal. The CIA recently estimated Israel has 200-400 nuclear weapons.
Meir Vanunu said his brother's actions provoked an essential debate on nuclear weapons and put an effective end to the policy. ``Nuclear ambiguity -- there's not much left of it,'' he said.
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.
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.
Meir Vanunu said his brother had expressed great frustration about the restrictions and will challenge them in court.
``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.''
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.''
Vanunu has been 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.
Meir Vanunu said his brother wants to live abroad ``as a free man.''
``He wants to go to the United States,'' he said.
-------- japan
Released Japanese hostages want to stay in Iraq
Koriyama wishes to stay to document Iraq, Takato wants to continue her volunteer work in war-torn country.
April 16, 2004
By Hiroshi Hiyama - TOKYO
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=9667
Two of the three Japanese hostages released in Iraq have said they want to stay in the troubled nation, prompting disbelief and exasperation among relatives and politicians Friday.
Moments after she was released by a militant group, volunteer worker Nahoko Takato, 34, said on the Arab satellite television station Al-Jazeera that she wanted to continue her volunteer work in Iraq.
Another released hostage, photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama, 32, told his family he wished to stay to document the war-torn nation, relatives told reporters.
"I will continue my work in Iraq," Takato said in an interview conducted shortly after she was released.
Takato went to Iraq as an unaffiliated volunteer, distributing medicines to Iraqi people and helping street children.
"The kidnappers did things to me that I did not like. But I cannot hate the Iraqi people," she said, wiping away tears.
In the same Al-Jazeera footage, released in Japan on Friday, Koriyama was seen smiling, snapping photos of Takato and the other released hostage Noriaki Imai, 18, and telling them: "My job is to shoot pictures."
It was not immediately clear if the two former hostages were refusing to return to Japan. The government said the hostages were due to fly to Dubai Friday to meet Senior Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa before heading home.
Koriyama, former soldier turned freelance photographer, provided a mass circulation Japanese magazine with pictures of Baghdad after the city fell.
Koriyama's mother Kimiko said he told her on the phone he wanted to remain in Iraq to continue taking pictures.
"I told him, 'What a foolish son you are'," Kimiko told reporters at her home in southern Japan.
"I don't think he realises how much trouble he has caused," she said.
Takato's brother Shuichi also said he told Nahoko to realise the gravity of the situation.
"I want her to rest up and be able to rationally understand the entire ordeal," Shuichi said.
There was no indication of whether the third hostage Imai hoped to stay in Iraq. Imai, who only graduated from high school in March, went to Iraq to write a children's book about the problem of depleted uranium used in coalition munitions, believed to have contaminated parts of Iraq.
The comments from Takato and Koriyama triggered exasperation and anger among Japanese leaders, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who faced the worst crisis of his administration as Tokyo worked intensely for their release.
"So many government staff worked so hard without sleep, without eating, and they are saying such things? They need to become aware," about the work of others, a visibly irritated Koizumi said.
Trade minister Shoichi Nakagawa also reacted angrily.
"Please go if you like. But if anything happens, it is your own responsibility," he said using a press conference to send his message to the former hostages.
The minister in charge of disaster management Kiichi Inoue said the families and the hostages ought to have to pay part of the cost associated with the rescue efforts.
Tokyo would bill the three for part of the cost of chartering an aircraft to transport them from Baghdad to Dubai. The three would also have to pay for a medical checkup and the flight back from Dubai to Japan, the foreign ministry said.
The Japanese media meanwhile treated the news of the release of the three with a mixture of celebration and recrimination.
"It was hard to decide why we were being forced to decide the grave matter of whether to put human lives or national policy first thanks to the reckless behaviour of the three Japanese," said a signed opinion piece in the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, the nation's best-selling daily.
-------- korea
Cheney Makes Clear U.S. Is Not Willing to Bend on North Korea
He repeats warnings to Japan, China and South Korea on threat posed by Pyongyang and its nuclear program.
By Doyle McManus,
April 16, 2004
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cheney16apr16,1,7384002.story?coll=la-headlines-world
SEOUL - Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up pressure on Asian nations to embrace the U.S. stance on North Korea this week, renewing Bush administration warnings that the reclusive regime could provide nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and touch off a regional arms race.
After meeting with South Korea's acting president and foreign minister this morning, Cheney said the U.S. and the government in Seoul "stand together in insisting on a Korean peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons."
But Cheney diplomatically avoided noting that the South Korean government had been moving toward a policy of conciliation with North Korea, and did not mention Thursday's parliamentary election that gave a slight majority to the Uri Party - which is in favor of greater cooperation with the North.
In his visits to Japan, China and South Korea, Cheney delivered strong warnings on North Korea - both privately and publicly - reiterating Washington's assessment that the North already had nuclear weapons, was building more, and posed an increasing threat to its Asian neighbors as well as the United States.
"Time is not necessarily on our side," he told students at Shanghai's Fudan University on Thursday. "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 [nuclear weapons] ... to, say, a terrorist organization. We know that there are terrorist organizations out there like Al Qaeda that have sought to acquire these kinds of weapons in the past."
And in a comment designed to get China's attention, Cheney warned that if North Korea deployed nuclear-armed missiles, "other nations in the region" might go nuclear as well. That was a veiled reference to Japan, China's strategic rival, which has the technical expertise to build nuclear weapons but has chosen not to do so.
One of Cheney's main goals in Asia this week has been to convince China, Japan and South Korea - which along with Russia and the U.S. have been engaging in six-party talks with North Korea on the nuclear issue - that the Bush administration will not soften its demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear programs as soon as possible.
China has urged Cheney and President Bush to show more "flexibility" in negotiations with North Korea - for example, by agreeing to a step-by-step process that would reward North Korea with economic aid as the regime made incremental steps toward dismantling its nuclear programs.
But Cheney, who has been a strong opponent of that kind of "incremental" approach, spent much of this week telling the Chinese and others why he believed that strategy was flawed.
"Our concern is that North Korea has, in the past, entered into agreements to give up its aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, in 1994, and then subsequently violated that agreement," Cheney said in his remarks at Fudan, which were broadcast on China's state-run television network.
"Because of the Pyongyang regime's past history of irresponsibility and deceit, the removal of all its nuclear capabilities is absolutely essential to the peace and stability of Northeast Asia and the world," he said.
North Korea agreed in 1994 to freeze and dismantle its efforts to build nuclear weapons in exchange for a program of economic aid from the U.S., Japan, South Korea and other countries. At the time, the CIA said the impoverished North had already produced enough plutonium for two nuclear bombs.
In the years that followed, U.S. and other intelligence agencies charged that North Korea was secretly violating the agreement - among other things, by starting a second, clandestine program to produce weapons with highly enriched uranium even as it was showing U.N. inspectors the mothballed equipment from its plutonium-based program.
The argument escalated in 2002, when the U.S. slowed its aid shipments and Pyongyang renounced the 1994 agreement, declaring that it was restarting its plutonium production. At the same time, U.S. officials said North Korea officially acknowledged the existence of the uranium-based program. Pyongyang later denied making such an admission.
Since 2003, the United States has pushed the six-party talks in an effort to end the impasse. A key U.S. strategy in those talks has been to win support for its position from the other regional powers, especially China, North Korea's most important economic supplier and the closest Pyongyang has to an ally.
U.S. officials believe that Cheney made headway in convincing China that the Bush administration is in no mood to compromise with the North Koreans. The Chinese were publicly silent on the issue; they now appear to face a choice of how hard to press Kim Jong Il, the reclusive North Korean leader, in response to Cheney's direct requests.
The last round of six-party talks ended in Beijing in February without any breakthrough and the discussions are expected to reconvene this month or in May. Diplomats and Asia experts believe that North Korea is unlikely to agree to any deal before the U.S. presidential election in November, if only to see whether Democrat John F. Kerry wins the White House and adopts a different strategy.
But part of Cheney's message was that the election should not serve as an excuse for other parties to ease up on Pyongyang.
"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."
"Given the sad state of their economy, [the North Koreans] obviously need outside support," Cheney said. "In order simply for that regime to survive, they must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons."
In South Korea, Cheney held two back-to-back meetings with the country's acting president, Goh Kun - first in Goh's original capacity as prime minister, and second in his current role.
The elected president, Roh Moo Hyun, has been suspended from his job since the conservative majority in the National Assembly voted to impeach him March 12. But Roh is expected to win reinstatement from the Constitutional Court.
Though Cheney would have liked to have met with Roh, U.S. officials said his "suspended" status made that impossible - a dilemma one senior official called, with understatement, "rather awkward."
Cheney wanted to press Roh on the North Korea issue in the same way he pressed leaders in China and Japan. The South Korean president has already distanced himself from the tough U.S. negotiating position and the election returns may encourage him to move even further toward peaceful coexistence and dialogue with the North.
In his meeting with Goh, Cheney thanked South Korea for sending 600 military engineers and medics to Iraq, and encouraged Seoul to follow through on plans to send 3,000 more troops.
A South Korean government advisor, who asked not to be quoted by name, said Goh would reassure Cheney that Seoul's commitment to send more troops to Iraq remained firm.
Times staff writer Barbara Demick contributed to this report.
-------- treaties
Genesis of Nuclear Proliferation
The entire gamut of how nuclear proliferation started
Friday April 16, 2004
Pakistan Tribune
Adnan Gill, Defence Journal
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=61964
An open season has been declared on Pakistan in the wake of Doctor A Q Khan's bold confessions. It seems that Pakistan and its scientists are the first and only proliferators in the history of nuclear weaponry.
Nuclear proliferation was born with the first set of nuclear weapons. Its a half century long saga of strategic maneuvering, clashes of ideologies, espionage, love, hate, deceit, back stabbing and personal greed.
History bears witness to the fact that there is nothing extraordinary, new or unique about Pakistan proliferating nuclear know-how, if at all. The United States started the tradition by gifting it to the UK and France. The rogue (socialist) elements in the UK and US exported the same technology to the Soviet Union, who in turn gave it away to countries like China and India. China in kind, passed it to Pakistan who is said to have kept the tradition alive by trying to pass it on to the Iran, Libya and N. Korea. India and Israel did their part by bringing South Africa and Brazil onboard.
For their share of proliferation the French passed the nuclear technology to Israel. Despite De Gaulle's opposition and direct orders to shut the technology pipeline built by Shimon Peres, his atomic energy minister Jacques Soustelle kept the transfer going on. Was Soustelle punished for going rogue and breaking the laws against the proliferation? Not that the world knows of.
If anything, it is the United States, which unintentionally, or otherwise, initiated the nuclear proliferation. The US was the first to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, the rest merely followed in its footprints.
The US proliferation started even before the first nuclear device was ever detonated. It began when the US started to train the foreign scientists from Britain, Canada and France in the art of "Atomic Bomb" making during the Manhattan project. The fear of expansion of communism right after the WWII was so intense, that the US started to pass the nuclear technology willy-nilly to its friends under the garb of a program called "Atoms for Peace". To this day the world has not been able to recover from this massive US proliferation.
At times the US looked the other way when its friends were building the nuclear network, and even pretended like nothing happened when its spy satellites detected an atmospheric nuclear explosion over the Indian Ocean on September 22, 1979. The episode was swept under the rug because there was a strong possibility that it was one of the American allies who conducted the test, namely Israel.
The recent transfer of simulation software to France enabled it to check the health of its nuclear weapons without detonating one is an example of American proliferation. A pledge to cooperate with India in the dual use nuclear and space technology is only the latest example the American proliferation.
Though the United States merits the dubious distinction of being the original proliferator, it was soon joined by a host of other wannabes. Following is a brief history of international proliferation, the actors involved and the end results.
Soviet Union/Russia: Despite the fact that great Soviet minds such as Yakov Zel'dovich and Yuli Khariton were already tinkering with the nuclear technology even before the WWII started, the Russians were still far from crossing the threshold. It took no less than complete design and data of American nuclear weapon supplied by the "Atom Spies" like Klaus Fuchs and Rosenbergs to detonate its first nuclear device four years after the United States.
Outcome of proliferation: The Soviets detonated their first nuclear device on August 29, 1949.
Britain: The British program directly benefited from the American "Manhattan Project" when its first rank scientists like Geoffrey I. Taylor and William G. Penney were sent to Los Alamos under the cover of 1943 Quebec Agreement. These American trained British scientists provided the nucleus for British post-war atomic weapons development efforts.
Thanks to the Quebec Agreement, Canada supplied plutonium was incorporated into the core of first British nuclear device, code-named Hurricane.
Outcome of proliferation: Britain detonated its first device on September 15, 1952.
France: Just like the British scientist, the French scientists like Dr. Bertrand Goldschmitt also worked with the Anglo-Canadian team on the Manhattan Project. After the war, he continued the weapons work in France and gave it its nuclear weapon.
Outcome of proliferation: The first French nuclear test, code-named Gerboise Bleue, was conducted on February 13, 1960 at Reggane in Algeria.
China: China was never a direct beneficiary of American proliferation, but it made tremendous gains from the blatant Soviet proliferation. In 1951 Peking signed a secret agreement with Moscow through which China received massive Soviet nuclear assistance in exchange uranium ores.
In 1957, China and USSR signed an agreement on new technology for national defense, which included additional Soviet nuclear assistance. The Soviets also provided China with a major gaseous diffusion facility for production of enriched uranium.
Outcome of proliferation: China's first nuclear test was conducted at Lop Nor on October 16, 1964.
India: India is a prime example of American initiated nuclear proliferation under the cover of "Atoms for Peace" program. During the 1950s and then in 1960s the United States and Canada helped India to lay the foundation for its nuclear weapons technology.
In 1956, Canada built 40 megawatt Canadian-Indian Reactor in India. The United States supplied the heavy water for it. This reactor will later become the source of plutonium for India's first nuclear device.
In 1963, India ordered two 210-megawatt boiling-water reactors for the Tarapur Atomic Power Station from General Electric.
India received its first heavy water production plant from Germany in 1962 and then built additional seven heavy water plants with help of France and Switzerland.
The United States continued to display a total disregard for all of non-proliferation conventions. In 1964, its assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton proposed to initiate a program to train and equip Indian forces to use nuclear weapons, and create a stockpile to disperse to India in times of crisis.
In 70s, the Soviet Union assumed the role of India's main supplier of heavy water, and covert and overt nuclear proliferation. During the 80s, India clandestinely acquired and developed centrifuge technology from the USSR and built uranium enrichment plants at Trombay and Mysore.
During the same decade, a German exporter and a former Nazi, Alfred Hempel shipped tons of heavy water via Dubai to India. This clandestine supply enabled the Indians to use its reactors like Dhruva to create plutonium for its atomic weapons program. The suppliers of heavy water included China, Norway and Soviet Union.
In January 1996, in a barefaced show of defiance of a "Nuclear Suppliers Group" ban, Moscow and New Delhi, reached an agreement to build two Russian light-water nuclear reactors at Kudankalam in Tamil Nadu.
Outcome of proliferation: India conducted its first so-called "peaceful nuclear explosion," on May 18 1974.
Israel: France laid the foundation of Israeli nuclear program on October 3, 1957, when it signed an agreement to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power), and a chemical reprocessing plant in Israel. A secret nuclear complex was constructed outside the IAEA inspection regime, at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps. France not only built a nuclear and reprocessing plant for Israel, it also supplied the heavy water and delivered Uranium for the Israeli plant. The plant went critical in 1964.
Since 1958, the United States had been well aware of the Israel nuclear program, but it did nothing to stop it. Walworth Barbour, US ambassador to Israel from 1961-73, allegedly said at one point that "The President did not send me there to give him problems. He does not want to be told any bad news." After the 1967 war, Barbour even put a stop to military attachés' intelligence collection efforts around Dimona. When in 1966, the US embassy staff sent a warning message to Washington upon learning that Israel was beginning to put nuclear warheads on its missiles, the message disappeared in thin air and was never acted upon.
Outcome of proliferation: Israel is speculated to be in possession of between 100 to 200 nuclear weapons, and in 1979 is suspected to have conducted a nuclear explosion over the southern Indian Ocean in collaboration with South Africa.
South Africa: Israel introduced South Africa to the exclusive nuclear weapons club. Israel provided South Africa with technical assistance on its weapons program, in exchange for S. Africa's 300 tons of uranium. "Oppenheimer of Israel" Ernst David Bergmann and several other Israeli nuclear scientists visited South Africa in 1967.
In 1974, Moshe Dayan is reported to have made a secret visit to South Africa and discussed nuclear weapon cooperation, including the possibility of nuclear tests.
Between 1977 and 1978 Israel received 50 tons of natural uranium from South Africa and in return supplied 30 grams of tritium, in 12 separate shipments. Israel is also believed to have provided the bomb design.
Outcome of proliferation: Till July 1990, South Africa was in possession of six nuclear devices as well as the partially completed seventh device.
Argentina: Argentina's nuclear program was supported by a number of countries. Canada and West Germany supplied the power reactors, while China and Switzerland supplied a heavy water plant. The Soviet Union supplied other nuclear equipment. In the absence of international safeguards, hot cells were operated from 1969-1972.
Outcome of proliferation: Argentina came stones throw away from building a nuclear device, as a number of sites and facilities were developed for uranium mining, milling, and conversion, and for fuel fabrication. A missile development program was also pursued for some years.
Brazil: The US proliferation to Brazil goes way back to the 1940s when it signed an agreement to transfer the nuclear technology in exchange for cooperative mining of uranium and monazite. In 1965, the US provided Brazil with medium-grade enriched uranium for its first nuclear reactor.
In 1975, Brazil signed a technology transfer agreement with Germany (not covered under the IAEA safeguards) for a complete nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment and reprocessing plants. The agreement called for West Germany to transfer eight nuclear reactors, uranium enrichment facility, plutonium reprocessing plant, and Becker "jet nozzle" enrichment technology.
Outcome of proliferation: Brazilian nuclear weapons program code-named "Solimões" was exposed by the members of CPI (Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito). In its report it was revealed that the IEAV (Instituto de Estudos Avançados) had designed two atomic bomb devices, one with a yield of twenty to thirty kilotons and a second with a yield of twelve kilotons. In September 1990, a nuclear test shaft was closed at Cachimbo, in Pará State.
Iraq: Iraqi nuclear weapons program's root are also traced back to the American "Atoms for Peace" program and to the Soviet supplied research reactor - the 2 megawatt IRT-5000, which was later upgraded to 5 MW in 1978.
In 1976, Iraq and France concluded an agreement for MTR reactors. MTR reactor was a derivative of the French Osiris reactor which was a pool-type reactor fuelled by 93% enriched weapon grade uranium.
In 1979, Iraq sent engineers to visit India's nuclear establishments and scientists.
During the same year, Iraq contracted with the Italian company SNIA-Techint for pilot plutonium separation and handling facility, and a uranium refining and fuel-manufacturing plant (not covered by IAEA safeguards).
Iraq also obtained large amounts of uranium - 100 tons of natural uranium from Portugal, and additional large shipments from Brazil and Nigeria.
During 1998 and 2001, an Indian company, NEC Engineers shipped several consignments of rocket fuel ingredients to Iraq via Dubai.
Outcome of proliferation: On behest of the IAEA, a group of nuclear weapon designers from the United States, Britain, France, and Russia met in April 1992 to assess the progress of Iraq's nuclear program prior to the Persian Gulf War. The group suggested Iraq's nuclear weapons program plan was established in 1988. Iraq's objective was to produce its first nuclear by 1991.
Those who view Pakistan's amateurish attempts at nuclear proliferation as unique or as a new phenomenon either harbor malice in their hearts or are selectively oblivious of history of nuclear proliferation. Their attempt is as spiteful as it is deliberate.
If the world community is really interested in finding the real nuclear proliferators, then it has to look no further than looking at the two superpowers. The Americans initiated the nuclear proliferation, while the Soviet Union setup the one stop nuclear superstore.
A parting word on pardons too. In the name of extraordinary services, the history is full of famous personalities going scot-free for their clear disregard of laws. For example, despite Oppenheimer's open association with the Communists, he was allowed to run the nuclear program till 1953. Eventually, he was quietly sidelined for his Communist associations, but only after he gave the US its nuclear bombs. Shouldn't the hush hush sidelining of a diehard Communist spy and a true "father of the Atomic Bomb" be called a "mother of all Pardons"?
How about Casper Weinberger receiving the pardon and a "Medal of Freedom" for the breakup of the communist block despite his utter disregard for the US laws, and his clear role in the Iran-Contra deals?
Lets not even talk about President Clinton pardoning the drug runners and other criminals, because it's beyond any logic and reason.
Last but not the least, how about President Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon for making a mockery of the US constitution and laws?
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is any way so discriminatory that it was rightly called as "disarming the unarmed". Those moralizing to Pakistan are well advised to do some honest soul searching.
Pakistan is only a window to the Nuclear Proliferating World, but certainly not the door to it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adnan Gill, now residing in the United States, received degrees in Political Science and Computer Information Systems. His Political Science studies focused on Internal Relations and Strategic Studies. He frequently writes opinions and letters to editors in local and national news media.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
LANL to host Procurement Expo in Espanola
Los Angeles Monitor
April 16, 2004
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/04/16/headline_news/news02.txt
Los Alamos National Laboratory is hosting a procurement expo Oct. 15 and 16 in Espanola to bring together the small business community, key federal, state and local government procurement agencies and their major subcontractors to explore and promote available procurement opportunities at the laboratory.
"Reaching New Heights" is the theme of the procurement expo at the northern New Mexico Community College, said Tim Martinez of Los Alamosâ Community Relations Office. The city of Espanola, the Small Business Administration and the northern New Mexico Supplier Alliance are co-sponsoring the two-day event.
More than 400 business owners, entrepreneurs, procurement officials and community leaders are expected to attend the expo, which also includes a job fair.
"The expo is the ideal opportunity for small, Northern New Mexico businesses to introduce their goods and services to government agencies in the area," said Martinez. "There are many locally-owned and operated businesses that can meet the needs of not only the Laboratory, but other agencies of government, in a timely and cost-effective manner."
The keynote speakers for the luncheon at noon Wednesday are Jacob Lazada,diversity adviser for the Office of Personnel Management, and Lee Allen, the Bureau of Land Managementâs western business coordinator in the Office of Small Disadvantaged and Business Utilization.
After the kickoff luncheon, the expo is open to the public at 2 p.m., and includes an afternoon "get-to-know the buyers" session with one-on-one meetings between buyers from Los Alamos and Sandia national labs, other federal agencies and small businesses. Buyers and small business owners should contact Martinez at 667-2390 to set up a one-on-one appointment.
Also scheduled on Wednesday is a celebration and awards dinner at 6 p.m.
"Welcome to Northern New Mexico, Bienvenidos al Norte," is the theme of the celebration dinner, which is open to the public. The cost to attend is $25; proceeds from the dinner will be used to pay for training for small business owners and their employees, said Martinez. Contact Martinez for reservations to the dinner.
Martinez said in addition to the expo serving as a networking opportunity for businesses interested in doing work for the laboratory, business owners can meet procurement officials from other local, state and federal government agencies who also need goods and services and are looking for area businesses to fill those needs.
Also at the expo, procurement personnel and businesses can take part in two workshops, "How to utilize a GSA schedule" by Pat Cotterell of the General Services Administrationâs Federal Supply Services on Wednesday (Oct. 15) and "Government Competitive Sourcing (OMB A-76) Process" by Steve Merritt of Delta Solutions and Strategies on Thursday (Oct. 16). The workshops begin at 10 a.m.
Martinez said business owners can gain insights into government markets, identify and develop new suppliers and vendors, develop out-of-state markets and meet prospective employees at a job fair that also is part of the procurement expo.
Recruiters from the Laboratory are scheduled to be at the job fair to talk about job opportunities at Los Alamos. Other agencies participating in the job fair include KSL Services, Weirich and Associates, the Plus Group, Butler International, Protection Technology Los Alamos, Shaw and Associates, Jacobs Engineering, Los Alamos Medical Center, Los Alamos County, the city of Espanola, the New Mexico Department of Labor, the federal Department of Interior and its agencies and Ohkay Casino of San Juan Pueblo. In addition, job placement representatives from Northern New Mexico Community College, Santa Fe Community College, the University of New Mexico and its Los Alamos and Taos campuses and the College of Santa Fe are scheduled to attend.
Other sponsors of the expo include KSL Services, Networx Inc., Abba Technologies, JGM Management Systems, Tsay Corp., QUICK fix, Hensel Phelps Construction, Jacobs Engineering, Ares Corp., New Mexico Building and Trades Council, New Mexico Rural Development Response Council, Pro2Serve Inc., Shaw Environmental, Weirich and Associates, Washington Group International U-Lock-It Storage, Wells Fargo and others. Exhibit Solutions of New Mexico is the expo display provider.
-------- south carolina / georgia
Eye on Effingham: County's sewer plans cause a stir
More than 600 sign petition seeking another EPD hearing.
April 16, 2004
By Don Lowery dlowery@alltel.net
Savannah Morning News
912-826-1290
http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/041604/LOC_sewer.shtml
Opponents of Effingham County's sewer infrastructure plans, which could result in treated wastewater being dumped into the Ogeechee River, are petitioning the state for a hearing on the matter.
Guyton resident Frank Arden and others say the plan is flawed because it could pollute the Ogeechee with radioactive contaminants originating from the Savannah River.
"We have over 600 signatures of citizens who love the Ogeechee River and do not want to see it destroyed,'' Arden said Thursday. "We ask the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to provide a public hearing to discuss the concerns of citizens, to answer questions and to defend EPD's current policies.
"We respectfully request this meeting not only for these citizens but also for their children and their children's children, who will have to live or die with this decision,'' Arden said.
Karen Robertson, a spokeswoman for Effingham commissioners, said the county's plans are designed to avoid dumping treated wastewater in the Ogeechee. She noted that those plans were modified last fall to further avoid putting the treated effluent in the river.
"I think there are some people trying to make others think the county will be dumping radioactive materials in the river and that simply is not true,'' she said.
County officials say the wastewater treatment facility is part of long-term plans to establish a countywide water-sewer infrastructure to support rapid growth, improve the environment by reducing the number of septic tanks and deliver water to an area where groundwater withdrawals are limited by the state.
The $19 million project was the subject of two hearings, one by the county and another by the EPD, that drew standing-room-only crowds. Almost all the spectators opposed the plans, but the state approved a loan for the project in January, construction has started and the project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Most of the opposition focuses on dumping treated wastewater into the Ogeechee. County officials say the design of the sewage plant allows wastewater to be filtered and treated to produce "re-use water'' that can be used for irrigation, industrial use and other non-drinking uses.
Most of the re-use water will be piped to residences, schools and businesses along the sewer pipeline that stretches from Rincon to Marlow across southern Effingham.
But county officials say as a last resort, some unused re-use water may be dumped into the Ogeechee. Opponents say that should not be an option because treated surface water from the Savannah River is linked to the sewer project and will eventually go into the system.
"The water that will be treated at the plant will be pumped from the Savannah River, the seventh most polluted river in the U.S.,'' said Arden, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Organization, formed in opposition to the sewer plans. "It is contaminated with tritium, plutonium, strontium and other radioactive waste from the Savannah River Site nuclear facility near Aiken, S.C.''
Arden said the county is looking for a quick fix to handle Effingham's rapid growth rather than long term solutions.
State and county officials say the trace amounts of radioactive materials in the Savannah River are at acceptable levels.
Brian Baker, director of the EPD office in Savannah, said EPD Director Barbara Couch considers the quality and quantity of residents' concerns when determining public hearings on environmental issues. Couch is likely to do the same in this case, Baker said.
-------- washington
Lawyer barred from Hanford health case
04/16/2004
Associated Press
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D82025501.html
A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that bars an attorney from representing people who believe their health was harmed by radioactive releases from the Hanford nuclear reservation.
About 1,800 people have a lawsuit pending against former contractors at the Hanford site, claiming they have thyroid disease, cancer or other illnesses because of radioactive material released from the site when plutonium was being made during World War II and the Cold War.
Nancy Oreskovich, an attorney representing some of the plaintiffs, was removed from the case in 1996 when U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald ruled she had run a substandard solo practice, violated court orders, missed deadlines and overcharged her clients for work on the case.
The public must be protected from "an unqualified or unscrupulous practitioner," McDonald said.
The Washington Bar Association also investigated but dismissed all allegations against Oreskovich in October 2001.
Oreskovich used the dismissal by the bar to ask the federal court to allow her to again participate in the case. A federal court judge ruled that her motion, made more than nine months after the bar decision, was too late.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, according to recent filings in federal court in Spokane.
"Oreskovich had only personal excuses for her delay, not valid reasons," the appeals court memo said. The memo said the court would have ruled against her, however, even if she had filed sooner.
The bar association's dismissal of allegations was irrelevant in the face of a federal court's adoption of a report with 150 factual findings of misconduct, the appeals court concluded.
Oreskovich moved from Spokane to Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2001. Her clients were reassigned.
The first downwinders lawsuit was filed in 1990 after the federal government admitted its contractors released radioactivity from Hanford between 1944 and 1972. Most of the releases involved radioactive iodine-131, which has been linked to diseases of the thyroid, including cancer.
The downwinders lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in March 2005 for an initial group of about 11 plaintiffs.
Information from:
Tri-City Herald,
http://www.tri-cityherald.com
-------- us nuc waste
Government, ignoring threat of legal action, says it will ship nuclear waste to Nevada
Friday, April 16, 2004
By John Nolan,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-16/s_22888.asp
CINCINNATI - The Energy Department said Thursday it will ship radioactive waste from a Cold War-era nuclear plant in Ohio to Nevada despite that state's threat of legal action.
"They're protesting our legal right to transport low-level defense waste," Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said from Washington. "We've got a plan in place. We're going to go forward with it."
The department plans to truck what it says are the most dangerous remaining wastes at the former Fernald uranium-processing plant. Fernald processed uranium metal from 1951 until 1989 for use in government reactors to produce nuclear weapons.
The uranium ore sludge residue and powdery, metallic production wastes material will be shipped to the Nevada Test Site, a vast desert tract 65 miles north of Las Vegas that the government uses for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.
Other wastes from Fernald, about 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, have been shipped for years to the Nevada site. But Nevada officials say the silo waste is more radioactive and is mixed with hazardous waste and will need a more secure disposal site with lined pits.
"I'm very sympathetic with the people of Ohio who want to get rid of it. But we're not the dumping ground for the whole country," said Marta Adams, a senior deputy attorney general for Nevada.
In a letter faxed Tuesday to the Energy Department, Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval said he intends to sue in federal court to stop the shipments unless the government tells him by April 30 that it will voluntarily stop them.
A lawsuit could delay the Fernald cleanup, which has been under way more than a decade and has cost about $4 billion.
Nevada already is battling the government in federal court over Washington's plan to permanently store 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel from 31 states and waste from the government's nuclear weapons program at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department wants to open that dump in 2010.
--------
Nevada Seeks to Block Ohio Nuclear Waste
April 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Waste-Fernald.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Nevada asked federal regulators to block shipments of waste from a Cold War-era nuclear plant in Ohio.
The request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an emergency order comes after the state threatened to file a lawsuit over the shipments.
The agency had no immediate comment, commission spokesman David McIntyre said Friday from Rockville, Md.
The U.S. Energy Department plans to truck what it says are the most dangerous remaining wastes at the former Fernald uranium-processing plant. Fernald processed uranium metal from 1951 until 1989 for use in government reactors to produce nuclear weapons.
The uranium ore sludge residue and powdery, metallic production wastes material will be shipped to the Nevada Test Site, a vast desert tract 65 miles north of Las Vegas that the government uses for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.
Other wastes from Fernald, about 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, have been shipped for years to the Nevada site.
But Nevada officials say the silo waste is more radioactive and is mixed with hazardous waste -- and will need a more secure disposal site with lined pits.
Nevada cited a 2003 law that requires radioactive waste to be stored at an NRC-regulated facility, said Bob Loux, director of the state Nuclear Projects Office.
The test site, where the government tested nuclear weapons for decades, is administered by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the Energy Department.
``They cannot send it to the test site at all, under any circumstances,'' Loux said. ``It can only be disposed of at an NRC facility. We don't have an NRC-regulated facility in Nevada of any kind.''
The Energy Department said it plans to go ahead with shipments.
``We are aware of Nevada's activities to block our legal right to ship this low-level defense waste, including their petition before the NRC,'' Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis from Washington.
A lawsuit could delay the Fernald cleanup, which has been under way more than a decade and has cost about $4 billion.
Nevada already is battling the government in federal court over Washington's plan to open a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, on the western edge of the test site.
On the Net:
Nevada Attorney General: http://www.ag.state.nv.us
Fernald: http://www.fernald.gov
Nevada Test Site: http://www.nv.doe.gov/nts
-------- us politics
Inside the Ring
April 16, 2004
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Staying home
Some of the Senate's most vehement Democratic critics of President Bush's policies in Iraq have never gone there during the war. We obtained a copy of an official list of all the members of Congress who have visited Iraq since May.
We count 211 members, including 37 senators. Missing from the traveling senators are Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive party presidential nominee; Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia; Richard J. Durbin of Illinois; and Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota.
"Your five lead dogs have never gone," said a Republican staffer. "The people who have been there are quieter."
The staffer said lawmakers return from such trips, known as "co-dels" for congressional delegations, with the impression that progress is being made in rebuilding post-Saddam Hussein Iraq and introducing democratic ideals.
Four senators have traveled to Iraq twice. Only Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat and West Point graduate, has gone three times.
Additional trips have been postponed given the spike in violence in Iraq.
Pacific bases
Vice President Dick Cheney, who returns tonight from a eight-day, three-nation swing through Asia, talked on the trip about upcoming changes in the U.S. military force structure around the world.
Mr. Cheney said the planning is looking at "some adjustments" in how American forces are aligned not just in Asia and Japan, but around the world.
"U.S. forward deployments, our commitment to the security of Japan, our very strong alliance relationship now that's been so important to both nations for 50 years will in no way be diminished by these activities," Mr. Cheney said after a speech in Tokyo on Tuesday.
"It's simply a matter of modernizing and upgrading our military posture and keeping with the threats and the needs that we face out there today," he said.
Mr. Cheney, a former defense secretary, also said that U.S. forces are sensitive to local community concerns about U.S. troops in foreign countries and that "we'll do our best to minimize any negative impacts" in communities.
Bremer successor
The question of who will replace outgoing Coalition Provisional Authority leader L. Paul Bremer is being asked more and more. Vice President Dick Cheney was asked in Tokyo if Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz might replace Mr. Bremer.
The vice president said Mr. Bremer will be replaced by a new U.S. ambassador to Iraq that will be a "major posting."
"We're in the process of selecting the individual to take on that job and that responsibility, and I would expect an announcement in the near future," Mr. Cheney said.
Don't expect the choice to be Mr. Wolfowitz. "Mr. Wolfowitz, who once worked for me and [is] a man for whom I have the highest regard, is heavily occupied at this point as the deputy secretary of defense, the No. 2 man in our defense establishment," Mr. Cheney said.
"And my guess is we probably could not persuade Secretary Rumsfeld, his boss, to part with him at this particular time."
Sources said a likely candidate to replace Mr. Bremer is John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The United States is scheduled to hand over sovereignty to Iraqis on July 1.
Made in America
The Pentagon's clothing store is stuffed with all the official uniforms worn by the Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy. There are also racks of T-shirts affixed with military slogans, such as the "Army of One." Check the label, and you'll find that a lot of those shirts were made in Vietnam.
"Boy, how far we've come," commented one officer.
Book shelf
Two of Fox News Channel's most ubiquitous military analysts, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney and retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, are out with a new book on how to win the global war against al Qaeda and other terror groups.
In "Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror," the two Vietnam combat veterans call for ratcheting up the global conflict by taking on Iran, North Korea and Syria - now.
An excerpt: "Some have said that the war on terror could last 25, 50, 100 years. We cannot wait that long. We need to defeat the web of terror now, not just deter it for some indefinite period, hoping it runs out of gas or that time will somehow heal the perceived wounds that drive those who want us destroyed. State sponsors of terrorism must destroy the monsters they have created - or they themselves will be destroyed. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan must clean their own nests, while Iran, North Korea, Syria and Libya either must change regimes, or, as Libya has professed to do, cease supporting terror and surrender any ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction."
The two authors were good enough to quote from Rowan Scarborough's book "Rumsfeld's War." They note that it discloses for the first time - using a secret Pentagon document - that Israel's nuclear arsenal is estimated at about 80 warheads.
Gens. McInerney and Vallely then disclose that the United States, Israel and other countries are working on a "mega secret project" to deploy a weapon that "can neutralize nuclear weapons."
• Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertz@washingtontimes.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at rscarborough@washingtontimes.com.
--------
Bush Uses 'Terror' as A Fallback, Kerry Says
U.N. Role in Iraq His Idea, Senator Adds
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15951-2004Apr15.html
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., April 15 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) accused President Bush on Thursday of exploiting the war on terrorism, saying the president has tried to draw links between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network for political purposes. He vowed to convince voters that he can do a better job than Bush in fighting to keep the country safe.
"Home base for George Bush in this race, as you saw to the nth degree in his press conference, is terror," Kerry told about 100 donors at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York.
"Ask him a question and he's going to go to terror," Kerry said. "And everything he did in Iraq, he's going to try to persuade people it has to do with terror, even though everybody here knows that it has nothing whatsoever to do with al Qaeda and everything to do with an agenda that they had preset, determined. That's where they're going to go." Kerry's criticism drew another swift reply from Bush's campaign chairman, Marc Racicot, who said Kerry's "reckless allegation" demonstrates "a profound misunderstanding" of the global war on terrorism and the threat facing the United States.
"On a day when Osama bin Laden again threatened the United States and our allies, it is disturbing to realize that John Kerry neither recognizes nor understands the murderous ideology of our enemies and the threat that they pose to our nation," Racicot said in a statement.
On a busy day that took Kerry from the morning New York fundraiser to Washington for an appearance at Howard University and a private meeting with Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, and then to New Jersey for another fundraiser, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee repeatedly attacked his opponent and the Republican Party on terrorism, taxes and the economy.
Continuing to draw differences with Bush over Iraq, Kerry accused the administration of now embracing his calls for giving the United Nations a significant role in overseeing the creation of a new government. But for the second day in a row, Kerry, who prides himself on his expertise in foreign policy, repeatedly misnamed the U.N. special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is helping to negotiate the terms of the transfer of power to the Iraqis on June 30. Kerry referred to him as "Brandini."
"What you're seeing already is the administration is essentially trying to implement my strategy without admitting they're implementing my strategy," he said. "They've got Brandini over there, and he's negotiating. They've basically turned over the decision of what they're going to turn over the government to, to Brandini -- whatever he creates. . . . And they're desperately trying to avoid a visible public transfer of authority to the U.N., because that would be an admission of failure in the way they've approached it."
Republicans said Kerry's latest criticism of Bush was especially ill-timed because of the new bin Laden tape, but Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the issue was not whether the nation is united in its determination to bring bin Laden to justice but what she called Bush's shifting rationale for going to war in Iraq.
Saying even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell agreed there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq before the war, Cutter said Iraq has now become a breeding ground for terrorists. "This president has to decide what the mission is in Iraq and how we're going to achieve that goal instead of challenging John Kerry's patriotism and his commitment to the security of this nation," she said.
At Howard University, where Kerry held a question-and-answer session with students, he sought to rebut charges by the Bush campaign that he would raise taxes significantly as president by asserting that despite Bush's tax cuts, most middle-class Americans have seen their overall tax burdens rise because the weak economy has forced state and local governments to raise taxes and colleges to raise tuition.
After the campus event, Kerry met with McCarrick for about 45 minutes, at Kerry's request. Campaign officials declined to provide any information, with Cutter calling it "a private meeting between a man and a member of his clergy."
Kerry, who is likely to be the first Roman Catholic presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy in 1960, supports abortion rights, which puts him at odds with the church's position. McCarrick heads a church task force addressing the issue of what to do about politicians who openly disagree with the church's teaching.
Some Catholic prelates have criticized Kerry, and Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would not want Kerry to take communion in his archdiocese. On Easter, McCarrick defended the bishops' right to criticize Kerry during an interview with "Fox News Sunday," saying, "It's an issue, yes."
McCarrick said Kerry "certainly should follow the teachings of the church" but stopped short of saying he would recommend denying communion to Kerry. "I would want to get to talk to him, get to see him and get to understand him before I would make a decision like that," he said.
Staff researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.
---------
New Book Says Bush Asked for Iraq War Plan in 2001
April 16, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Woodward-Book.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.
Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in ``Plan of Attack,'' a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.
Bush did not address those preparations when asked about them Friday, saying, ``I do know that it was Afghanistan that was on my mind and I didn't really start focusing on Iraq 'til later on.''
Spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed Bush talked to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about Iraq war preparations during the Afghan campaign but said that did not mean the president was set on a course for invading Iraq at that time. ``There's a difference between planning and making a decision,'' he said.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, which will be available in bookstores next week.
``I knew what would happen if people thought we were developing a potential war plan for Iraq,'' Bush is quoted as telling Woodward. ``It was such a high-stakes moment and ... it would look like that I was anxious to go to war. And I'm not anxious to go to war.''
Bush and his aides have denied accusations they were preoccupied with Iraq at the cost of paying attention to the al-Qaida terrorist threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A commission investigating the attacks just concluded several weeks of extraordinary public testimony from high-ranking government officials. One of them, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, charged the Bush administration's determination to invade Iraq undermined the war on terror.
Woodward's account fleshes out the degree to which some members of the administration, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were focused on Saddam Hussein from the onset of Bush's presidency and even after the terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaida the top priority.
Woodward says Bush pulled Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld aside Nov. 21, 2001 -- when U.S. forces and allies were in control of about half of Afghanistan -- and asked him what kind of war plan he had on Iraq. When Rumsfeld said it was outdated, Bush told him to get started on a fresh one.
Bush said Friday the subject of Iraq came up four days after the terrorist attacks when he met his national security team at Camp David to discuss a response to the assault. ``I said let us focus on Afghanistan,'' he said, taking questions after a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Asked about the Nov. 21 meeting with Rumsfeld in a cubbyhole office adjacent to the Situation Room, Bush said only, ``I can't remember exact dates that far back.''
The book says Bush told Rumsfeld to keep quiet about their planning and when the defense secretary asked to bring CIA Director George Tenet into it at some point, the president said not to do so yet.
Even Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was apparently not fully briefed. Woodward said Bush told her that morning he was having Rumsfeld work on Iraq but did not give details.
In an interview two years later, Bush told Woodward that if the news had leaked, it would have caused ``enormous international angst and domestic speculation.''
The Bush administration's drive toward war with Iraq raised an international furor anyway, alienating longtime allies who did not believe the White House had made a sufficient case against Saddam. Saddam was toppled a year ago and taken into custody last December. But the central figure of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, remains at large and a threat to the west.
The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict.
Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who wrote an earlier book on Bush's anti-terrorism campaign and broke the Watergate scandal with Carl Bernstein, says Cheney's well-known hawkish attitudes on Iraq were frequently decisive in Bush's decision-making.
Cheney pressed the outgoing Clinton administration to brief Bush on the Iraq threat before he took office, Woodward writes.
In August 2002, when Bush talked publicly of being a patient man who would weigh Iraqi options carefully, the vice president took the administration's Iraq policy on a harder track in a speech declaring the weapons inspections ineffective. Cheney's speech was viewed as the beginning of a campaign to undermine or overthrow Saddam. Woodward said Bush let Cheney make the speech without asking what he would say.
The vice president also figured prominently in a protracted decision March 19, 2003, to strike Iraq before a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam Hussein to leave the country had expired.
When the CIA and its Iraqi sources reported that Saddam's sons and other family members were at a small palace, and Saddam was on his way to join them, Bush's top advisers debated whether to strike ahead of plan.
Franks was against it, saying it was unfair to move before a deadline announced to the other side, the book says. Rumsfeld and Rice favored the early strike, and Secretary of State Colin Powell leaned that way.
But Bush did not make his decision until he had cleared everyone out of the Oval Office except the vice president. ``I think we ought to go for it,'' Cheney is quoted as saying. Bush did.
U.S. forces unleashed bombs and cruise missiles, blanketing the compound but missing the palace. Tenet called the White House before dawn to say the Iraqi leader had been killed. But his optimism was premature. Saddam was alive.
The 468-page book is published by Simon & Schuster. Woodward will be interviewed on CBS' ``60 Minutes'' Sunday night to promote the book.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
US 'bound by law to sell arms to Taiwan'
Taiwan Relations Act requires Washington to make sure Taipei can defend itself, US Vice-President tells protesting Chinese
By Jason Leow,
April 16, 2004
Straits Times
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,4386,246026,00.html
BEIJING - Vice-President Dick Cheney yesterday said the United States was obliged to sell Taiwan military equipment for self-defence under a law enacted in 1979 called the Taiwan Relations Act.
At the same time, Mr Cheney said the US still supports the 'one China' principle, although China thinks the US arms sales will embolden Taiwan's independence seekers and thwart reunification. Advertisement
Mr Cheney's mixed message could irk Chinese leaders who this week had warned him that the US should not send the 'wrong signal' to Taiwan and harm Sino-American ties.
China repeated demands on Monday to drop the Taiwan Relations Act. But at Shanghai's Fudan University, Mr Cheney said that Act bound the US to a recent decision to sell Taiwan advanced early-warning radar.
'We are obligated under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the capacity to defend itself should that be necessary,' Mr Cheney told students after a 20-minute speech made at the end of a three-day trip to China.
'To do that, we have been selling them military equipment from time to time.'
The US switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China in 1979. As a safeguard, Congress passed into law a Bill that allowed the US to protect Taiwan's interests in times of conflict.
Referring to Taiwan media reports that the US may sell submarines, the Patriot-III anti-missile system and anti-submarine planes to Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan yesterday accused the US of meddling in China's 'internal affairs'.
He also warned that the arms sale could increase tension across the Taiwan Strait.
Chinese leaders who met Mr Cheney in Beijing this week said they wanted the US to express a clear position on the Taiwan issue. Military chief and former president Jiang Zemin even said a better handling of Taiwan could improve Sino-US ties.
But a senior US official told reporters yesterday that Mr Cheney had reminded Chinese leaders that Beijing's restriction on Hong Kong's self-government could increase Taiwan's tension with China.
The Taiwanese may see Hong Kong as 'sort of a bellwether' for China's commitment to 'one country, two systems', the official quoted Mr Cheney as saying.
Yesterday, hours before he left for South Korea, his last stop, Mr Cheney promised that there were 'no problems here that can't be solved, given the efforts of goodwill and adequate time'.
'Fifty years ago when we were adversaries, we fought each other in the war in Korea - we viewed each other as a significant threat. Today, I think that has changed,' he said.
'No question, we have differences, but in my consultations with leaders in Beijing, I think it would be fair that the areas of agreements are far greater than those we disagree.'
He cited cooperation with China in getting North Korea into a third round of anti-nuclear talks and praised Beijing for hosting the first two rounds.
But 'time isn't necessarily on our side', he said, after urging Chinese leaders this week to put more pressure on North Korea to drop its nuclear programme.
'It's important that we make progress in this area,' he said.
Mr Cheney passed on to Chinese leaders new information from a top Pakistani nuclear scientist suggesting that Pyongyang had at least three nuclear devices and can make them from both plutonium and enriched uranium.
Assessing his trip later, he told reporters he had achieved his aim of clarifying the US position on certain issues.
'I didn't come to alter Chinese policy. I did come with the mission of making clear what our views were. I think we achieved that,' he said.
-------- business
New way for NATO to do business
Katrin Bennhold/IHT
Friday, April 16, 2004
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/515350.html
PARIS With NATO member states just days away from awarding a E4 billion military contract to a transatlantic consortium of aerospace companies, a new era of joint procurement may be dawning for the alliance, defense experts said Thursday.
A group of six companies, led by European Aeronautic Defense Space, known as EADS, and Northrop Grumman of the United States, looked set to win the contract, worth $4.8 billion, to build a mixed fleet of manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft for the alliance by 2010, said a NATO official familiar with the selection process.
After procurement experts at NATO's Brussels headquarters threw their support behind the EADS-Northrop consortium, officials in national capitals were expected to sign off on that decision "within days" the official said.
"It seems to be a genuine multinational procurement decision, and that is quite a significant step for cooperation in this area," said Steven Everts, a defense expert at the Centre for European Reform, a think tank in London. "There is an acceleration of the desire to cooperate more closely within the EU and across the Atlantic."
Against a backdrop of violence in Iraq and heightened concerns that terrorists may be targeting Europe following the Madrid train bombings, pragmatism may be gaining the upper hand over the political procurement decisions of the past, analysts said. While some major European governments continue to disagree with America on a wide range of issues, including the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the willingness to deepen their cooperation within NATO may herald a renewed commitment to the alliance.
James Appathurai, a spokesman for NATO called the decision "historic," confirming a report on Thursday in The Financial Times.
"This is only the second time in NATO's history that members join forces in procurement on this scale," he said. The first time, he said, was the AWACs surveillance system developed in the 1960s. "The decision was reached pragmatically on the basis of price, capability and scheduling considerations - not necessarily three factors that have determined procurement decisions in the past," Appathurai said.
Governments have preferred to keep national control of procurement, both to determine the exact nature of a project and to award contracts to the titans of a country's defense industry.
As a result, defense capabilities within the European Union, where most countries also belong to NATO, have often been duplicated.
The idea for a joint fleet of air-to-ground surveillance aircraft has been considered for about a decade at NATO, Appathurai said. Recent progress on the matter "reflects a realization on the part of NATO nations that our troops are out there in the field, and they need this type of cooperation," he said.
This evolving pragmatism is rooted at least in part in financial reality. With technology becoming more sophisticated and expensive every year, collective procurement makes financial sense, analysts said. In addition, recent sluggishness in the global economy has depleted state coffers, leaving less room for governments to bolster defense budgets.
"Pooling is the way to go," Everts said. "It's good news for taxpayers and also good news for political cooperation that common sense has won."
The EADS-Northrop consortium includes Galileo Avionica of Italy, General Dynamics Canada, Indra of Spain, and Thales of France. In addition, more than 80 other companies from NATO countries support the joint proposal, which would provide a mixed fleet of manned A320 Airbus planes and unmanned Global Hawk planes.
According to Alexander Reinhardt, an EADS spokesman, the price for an A320 is about E50 million, though a modified version for intelligence purposes may vary in price. The Global Hawk aircraft that Northrop has been building for the U.S. Air Force costs about $30 million, James Stratford, a spokesman for the company said.
A competing consortium, led by Raytheon of the United States and including Siemens of Germany and Marconi of Britain, has complained that NATO's procurement officials took too little time to examine the two proposals, which were submitted only four months ago. Appathurai, of NATO, rejected the complaint.
International Herald Tribune
----
U.S. Names More Firms With Ties to Hussein
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page A04
Washington Post
From News Services
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16342-2004Apr15.html
The Treasury Department yesterday named more companies it says served as financial fronts for Saddam Hussein and members of his government, hoping the move will help in a global search for assets that could be returned to Iraq.
"With this action, we begin the unveiling of Saddam's financial web around the world. In the coming weeks and months, the Treasury Department plans to take similar actions against other operatives of the former regime," Deputy Treasury Secretary Sam Bodman said at a news briefing.
Treasury added five new companies and four new individuals to its own list of firms and people whose U.S.-based assets are to be frozen when found and transferred to the Development Fund for Iraq.
One of the newly named companies, Al Wasel and Babel General Trading, was described as playing "a key role in the former Iraqi regime's schemes to obtain illicit kickbacks on goods purchased through the [United Nations] oil-for-food program."
Another company, Al-Huda State Company for Religious Tourism, is accused of skimming money from Iranian pilgrims visiting Iraq holy sites.
--------
Pentagon criticises Air Force over Boeing pact
April 16, 2004
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Financial Times
http://www.nytimes.com/financialtimes/business/FT1079420384932.html
Pentagon investigators on Thursday said the Air Force followed inappropriate procedures in awarding Boeing a $1.3bn contract to upgrade Nato aircraft, dealing a fresh blow to the aerospace giant.
The Pentagon inspector-general concluded that the Air Force awarded a contract to Boeing to upgrade Nato's Awac surveillance aircraft "without knowing whether Boeing had proposed an efficient, technically capable or economically responsible solution".
James Roche, Air Force secretary, commissioned the report by the inspector-general. The report highlights the role of senior Air Force officials, including Darleen Druyun, a former senior procurement official who later worked for Boeing, in not following correct business and contracting procedures.
Ms Druyun is at the centre of another controversial $18bn deal in which the Air Force agreed to buy and lease 100 refuelling tankers from Boeing. The company fired both Ms Druyun and Mike Sears, chief financial officer, last year after an internal investigation revealed conflicts of interest in the hiring of Ms Druyun.
The Boeing investigation found that Mr Sears had inappropriate conversations with Ms Druyun about a job at the company while she was still in charge of negotiating the tanker deal. Ms Druyun also represented Nato in negotiations with Boeing over the contract to upgrade the Awac aircraft.
Ms Druyun is scheduled to appear before a federal judge next week, when she is expected to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Last week the inspector-general concluded that while there were problems in the procurement process for the refuelling tanker deal there were "no compelling reasons" to cancel the contract.
But the deal has come under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who sits on the US Senate's Armed Services committee and who has led efforts to investigate the deal, has raised concerns that the Air Force allowed Boeing to help draft a key procurement document which ensured that Airbus could not meet the requirements for the in-air refuelling tanker.
Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Pentagon criminal investigators are understood to be probing allegations that the Air Force and Boeing collaborated in producing the so-called "operational requirements document". Air Force officials have denied that they tailored the document to suit Boeing.
--------
Audit Criticizes Another Boeing Deal
Inspector General Says Air Force Didn't Negotiate NATO Contract Properly
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 16, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16391-2004Apr15.html
A former Air Force official, already under investigation for accepting a job offer from Boeing Co., had a role in the improper restructuring of a $1.34 billion contract with her future employer, according to a report from the Pentagon inspector general.
Darleen A. Druyun, the former principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and management, helped negotiate the contract with Boeing to modernize NATO planes. "Senior level managers did not use appropriate business and contracting procedures" when they negotiated the contract, the report said.
The inspector general conducted the audit at the request of Air Force Secretary James G. Roche following Druyun's dismissal from Boeing last year. Druyun joined Chicago-based Boeing months after helping award the NATO contract in 2002. She was fired when it was discovered that she was still overseeing Boeing contracts while she was being recruited to the company -- a potential violation of federal law. Druyun is scheduled to plead guilty next week to one count of conspiracy.
Roche asked the inspector general to examine several other Boeing contracts Druyun supervised or negotiated at the Air Force.
The inspector general's report does not identify Druyun by name -- only by her title. An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed that the report referred to Druyun.
The report said