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NUCLEAR
Licensing for Advanced Nuclear Power Plants to Be Tested
The Nuke Next Door
World Bank pledges to nearly double aid to reduce danger
Pentagon: Uranium Didn't Harm N.Y. Unit
Depleted Uranium deaths could surpass worst-case predictions
ABC's of DU
North Koreans Agree To Mid-Level Talks
Kim Jong-il agrees to attend next nuclear talks
N. Korea Nuke Talks to Convene in China
U.S. to Bolster S. Korea Missile Defenses
Advice raises North Korea nuclear spectre
US to deploy new air defense missiles in South Korea this year
Russia set to join antiproliferation group
More radioactive material at lab raising fears
Nuclear lab denies security concerns
WIPP oversight agency shuts doors
NRC rejects request to halt VY fuel movement
MISSING FUEL REPORT WAS NEVER FILED
MILITARY
Not-guilty plea in case of missile parts trade
Thailand Sends Troops to Counter New Attacks
France Struggles to Curb Extremist Muslim Clerics
Germany puts its first Eurofighters into service
U.S. Weighs Falluja Pullback, Leaving Patrols to Iraq Troops
Marines Plan Handoff To Militia in Fallujah
Deal Is Reached to Cede Control of City to Iraqi Troops
Ex - Weapons Inspector: Too Few Iraq Troops
AP Toll Says 1,361 Iraqis Killed in April
Sharon's Gaza Pullout Plan May Face His Party's Rebuff
Sharon's Party May Reject Plan
Public Must Defend Itself in War on Terror, Expert Says
Israeli Military Says It Regrets Killing of a Palestinian Lecturer
Letter to President Bush from Former U.S. Diplomats
Some on Hill Seek to Punish Syria for Broken Promises on Iraq
US lauds Pakistan Cooperation In War Against Terror
Arabs inflamed by Iraq photos
Allegations of Abuse Lead To Shakeup at Iraqi Prison
TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
'Appalling' UK Soldiers Torture Iraqi Detainee
KGB Resurrection
Intelligence
U.S. Weighs U.N. Proposal for an Interim Iraqi Leader
U.N. Struggles to Find Troops to Police Haiti
A Full Range of Technology Is Applied to Bomb Falluja
Pentagon to Try to Fix War Zone Voting Woes
U.S. Deaths in Iraq Up Sharply in April
Pentagon reports 128 troops killed in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Scientist Details Oklahoma City Bomb Residue
Quashed Testimony
Chemical Plant Security Lagging Under Bush, Kerry Tells Mayors
Study Tracks Boom in Prisons and Notes Impact on Counties
Prisons Skew Census Data, Report Says
As Terrorists Strike Arab Targets, Escalation Fears Arise
Zarqawi cements role as al Qaeda's voice
Terrorist: Wish We Had That Bomb
POLITICS
Former Envoy Talks in Book About Source of C.I.A. Leak
Investigators Remain Mum on CIA Leak
Book Names Iraqi in Alleged '99 Bid to Buy Uranium
A READING LIST
Study Finds 25 Nations Hindered by Corruption
Bush and Cheney Tell 9/11 Panel of '01 Warnings
9/11 Panel Questions Bush and Cheney
Bush tells panel memo lacked data
Just How 'Historic' Can an Oval Office Interview Be
Some Stations to Block 'Nightline' War Tribute
Cheney Praises Fox News Channel
Al-Jazeera's Learning Curve
Promoter of U.S. Image Quits for Wall St. Job
Kerry on pre-emption
Kerry Says Bush Ignoring Imminent Threats
Reviewing Patriot's powers
Rebuilding Aid Unspent, Tapped to Pay Expenses
ENERGY
Senate Fails to Resurrect Stalled Energy Bill
OTHER
E.P.A. Will Not Withdraw Its Mercury Plan
EPA Delays Mercury Regulations
French Firm Fined for Mont. Toxic Waste
French firm fined for hazardous waste at Montana plant
Leak Near San Francisco Contained
US Senate Panel Probes World Bank
ACTIVISTS
A win-win for vegans
Italians Rally After Ultimatum Is Issued On Hostages in Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
Licensing for Advanced Nuclear Power Plants to Be Tested
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
April 30, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-30-09.asp#anchor6
The nuclear power industry is gathering its forces to build the next generation of nuclear plants. Two groups of energy companies have announced that they will participate in a joint industry-U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program to demonstrate and test the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's new licensing process for an advanced nuclear power plant.
Seven companies announced March 31 that they are forming a consortium that will work with DOE to test the new combined license to construct and operate an advanced reactor.
The companies are Constellation Generation Group, a subsidiary of Constellation Energy, Baltimore; EDF International North America, Washington, a ubsidiary of the large French utility; Entergy Nuclear of Jackson, Mississippi; Exelon Generation of Philadelphia; Southern Company of Atlanta; and two nuclear reactor vendors, Westinghouse Electric Co. of Pittsburgh, and GE Energy's nuclear operations based in Wilmington, North Carolina.
The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding expressing their intent to form the consortium. Neither the planned consortium nor its members are making a commitment to build a new nuclear unit at this time.
Another consortium, led by Dominion Generation, submitted a proposal to DOE on March 17. AECL Technologies, a subsidiary of Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL); Bechtel Power Corp.; Hitachi America are partnering with Dominion Generation.
This consortium has not committed to building a new nuclear power plant at this time, but both groups have their eyes on the future.
"We must keep the nuclear energy option open for the future," said Chris Crane, president and chief nuclear officer of Exelon Nuclear. "To protect consumers against spiking energy prices and for our own national security, we need to maintain fuel diversity in the energy industry."
The consortia are responding to a solicitation from DOE last November asking energy companies for proposals to test the NRC's new Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) process.
The process is part of DOE's Nuclear Power 2010 program, established by the Bush administration to facilitate the development of advanced technology reactors.
The groups' goal in testing the COL process is to reduce any business uncertainties for companies interested in building new nuclear plants. The untested COL process was established by Congress in the 1992 Energy Policy Act to streamline the licensing of new plants.
"Advanced nuclear plants offer a promising potential - passive safety designs, stable fuel prices, lower production costs than other fuels used to generate electricity, and a very low environmental impact," said Gary Taylor, president, CEO and chief nuclear officer of Entergy Nuclear.
Exelon Nuclear Vice President Marilyn Kray will serve as the consortium's executive lead and DOE contact.
The proposals, if approved and co-funded by DOE, would determine the best cost estimate for building and operating a new nuclear plant. More detailed engineering work would be done on advanced nuclear reactor designs than ever before.
The two reactor designs selected by the consortium for further engineering work are Westinghouse's Advanced Passive 1000 and General Electric's Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, a 1,400 megawatt design.
The team led by Dominion is using AECL's advanced Candu reactor design for its proposal.
The seven-member consortium plans to submit the COL application to the NRC in 2008. After a decision by the NRC, projected in late 2010, any combination of the consortium's members could use the COL, should they decide to build a new plant.
-------- accidents and safety
The Nuke Next Door
Do Cancers Cluster Around Atomic Plants?
By Trish Riley,
April 30, 2004
E Magazine
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?1730
Raised on fresh fruits and vegetables by his vegetarian mother, Ty-Michael Schmidt never even had a cold or ear infection before the age of five. Then doctors found a tumor in his abdomen. His mother, and some scientists, suspect the tumor has something to do with the fact that he lives near a nuclear power plant.
"I never knew a child with cancer until my son," says Audra Schmidt of Hobe Sound, Florida. "Now I know nothing but kids with cancer. At least 50 kids in our local area have it."
But there's not a cancer cluster in the neighborhood, according to the St. Lucie County, Florida Health Department, which conducted an in-depth study of the homes of 28 children with cancer. During the same period, another 12 cases were identified in near-by Martin County. Tests were conducted on water, soil, air and dust for 561 different chemicals and potential contaminants. The results were negative for all chemicals tested.
Debi Santoro with her four-year-old daughter, Jadyn, whose cancer is now in remission. (c)TRISH RILEY "We have yet to find any commonality," says James Moses, director of environmental health for St. Lucie County. "We are dealing with 30 cases from 1981 to 1997. There was no cancer cluster."
The study continues, though, because it did find a marked increase in childhood cancers of the brain and central nervous system: 15 diagnosed in three years, nine within a seven-month period. The report notes that the trend should be monitored and perhaps studied further.
Health officials did not test for Strontium 90 (Sr-90), a radioactive carcinogenic byproduct of nuclear fission. The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), a nonprofit research center in New York City, recently released a study linking increased incidence of childhood cancers to areas near nuclear power plants. The study was published in the peer-reviewed Archives of Environmental Health last year.
"Of the 14 areas studied, the two counties closest to the reactors in St. Lucie County had the highest cancer rates," says principal researcher Joseph Mangano, national coordinator of the RPHP. Mangano says the Florida State Cancer Registry lists four cases in St. Lucie County for children under 10 from 1981 to 1983, but this increased to 30 cases from 1996 to 1998. Accounting for a near doubling of population, the incidence still represents a 40 percent increase, compared to an average national increase of 11 percent in childhood cancers.
The RPHP has also been studying radiation levels in baby teeth of children around the country. Dubbed the Tooth Fairy Project, (see Your Health, "Glowing in the Dark," May/June 2002), researchers report higher levels of Sr-90 near nuclear power plants, including St. Lucie and Miami-Dade counties. Water samples indicate higher levels of Sr-90 in areas within 20 miles of the nuclear power plants than in more distant locales. The study also found that the levels of Sr-90 in the teeth of children diagnosed with cancer were nearly twice as high as levels in children who do not have cancer.
These results are hotly disputed by the multi-billion dollar nuclear power industry. "Their claims are false," says Rachel Scott, spokesperson for Florida Power and Light, which owns the St. Lucie and Miami's Turkey Point nuclear power plants. "Cancer levels are not higher in South Florida. The levels of Strontium 90 are not higher in South Florida, according to the Florida Department of Health and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
The nuclear industry blames any Sr-90 still in the environment on residual effects of bomb testing. But a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report says because of decay, insignificant levels of Sr-90 remain in the soil and atmosphere from the bomb tests that ended 40 years ago.
"This touches a nerve in the nuclear power industry," says Stephen Lester, science director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ). "These plants are releasing small quantities of low-level radiation every day. The amounts may seem insignificant, but when you look at 50 cities, you can see it slowly has an impact."
At least two families were sufficiently convinced to file suit against Florida Power and Light because of their children's illnesses, which include one death. "A huge thing at stake here is the state of nuclear power plants," says Nancy LaVista, attorney for the plaintiff families. "If in fact it is giving cancer to our children, we have a right to know and a duty to protect all citizens of Florida."
St. Lucie and Martin County families have joined forces to create a packet detailing their children's illnesses. "It's not so much for our children, who are already sick," says organizer Debi Santoro, whose four-year-old daughter, Jadyn, contracted cancer when she was six months old. "It's for the children to come. These children are dying and they're not going to die in vain-they're going to help other children." In another part of the country, New York's Westchester and Suffolk counties and the state of New Jersey have appropriated funds to study areas near nuclear plants where cancer clusters are suspected.
A 2003 report released by the European Committee on Radiation Risk found the risk from low-level radiation to be significant, concluding that "the present cancer epidemic is a consequence of exposures to global atmospheric weapons fallout in the period 1959 to 1963 and that more recent releases of radioisotopes to the environment from the operation of the nuclear fuel cycle will result in significant increases in cancer and other types of ill health."
Meanwhile, U.S. industry officials insist on labeling the reports "junk science," and eagerly push a nuclear energy agenda. The federal government and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are currently promoting legislation to renew interest in nuclear power and encourage the development of more new nuclear power plants for the first time since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
Stephen Lester of CHEJ suggests the power industry adopt his organization's new Be Safe Campaign. "It's based on the fundamental principle of public health that says, 'if it is dangerous or has the potential to harm, proceed with caution.'"
Now 10, Ty-Michael Schmidt spent a year in the hospital undergoing radical experimental treatment for a rare form of cancer. Doctors have never been particularly encouraging about his prognosis, giving him only six months to live when he was diagnosed four years ago, but he is in remission and he's beaten the odds thus far. Doctors say his cancer can be traced to fetal cells, meaning it developed in utero.
For now, RPHP researchers recommend that concerned people try a remarkably simple precaution: drink only water that comes from a deep, protected source or that has been filtered to remove Sr-90 particles (such as by reverse osmosis). If only Audra Schmidt and the dozens of other parents of ill children in her community had known that.
-------- asia
World Bank pledges to nearly double aid to reduce danger of radioactive waste sites in Kyrgyzstan
Friday, April 30, 2004
By Kadyr Toktogulov,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-30/s_23350.asp
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - The World Bank is pledging to nearly double aid to Kyrgyzstan to reduce the danger from radioactive waste sites that could threaten Central Asia's densely populated Fergana Valley, officials said Thursday.
Kyrgyzstan inherited several radioactive dumps from the Soviet nuclear industry, and uranium waste sites in the southern town of Mayluu-Suu have the potential to contaminate water resources in the Fergana Valley, which is shared by two other former Soviet republics.
In November, the World Bank pledged US$5 million for ecological projects, part of which was supposed to be used to rehabilitate sites in Mayluu-Suu.
But the World Bank and Kyrgyz government have now agreed to increase funding for rehabilitation projects to US$11.8 million, said Emil Akmatov, spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry. The Finance Ministry said Kyrgyzstan was pledging US$2 million of that amount.
The proposal still must be approved by the World Bank's board of directors in June, the Finance Ministry said.
Akmatov said landslides could cause radioactive dumps at Mayluu-Suu to leak into a river that runs into the Uzbek part of the Fergana Valley if no action was taken to prevent them. He called the situation there "critical."
Kyrgyzstan is an impoverished ex-Soviet republic that has appealed to the international community for help in solving ecological problems and to deal with the consequences of natural disasters that have shaken the country in recent years.
On Thursday, officials called for international help to resettle some 2,000 families from landslide-prone areas in the country's south.
-------- depleted uranium
Pentagon: Uranium Didn't Harm N.Y. Unit
Friday April 30, 2004
By ADAM ASHTON
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4037119,00.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040430-0033-soldiers-depleteduranium.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of a National Guard military police unit who said they fell ill after exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq did not have abnormal levels of the metal, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
The results did not reassure at least one of the soldiers.
Members of the 442nd Military Police Company, based in Orangeburg, N.Y., had complained of headaches, soreness and insomnia. A private test this month indicated that four of them had unhealthy levels of uranium in their urine. Further tests by the military showed that depleted uranium exposure did not cause the ailments, the Pentagon said.
``Those people all had normal levels of uranium in their urine,'' said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of the Deployment Health Support Directorate.
Depleted uranium is the hard, heavy metal created as a byproduct of enriching uranium for nuclear reactor fuel or weapons material. It is about 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium, Kilpatrick said.
The U.S. military uses the metal in rounds fired by M1 Abrams tanks and A-10 attack jets to penetrate tank armor - a practice that has been criticized for causing unnecessary risks to soldiers and civilians.
``As long as this is exterior to your body, you're not at any risk and the potential of internalizing it from the environment is extremely small,'' Kilpatrick said.
Most studies have indicated that depleted uranium exposure will not harm soldiers. But a 2002 study by Britain's Royal Society said soldiers who ingest or inhale enough depleted uranium could suffer kidney damage. The report cautioned its results were inconclusive and recommended a long-term study of soldiers exposed to the metal.
About 1,000 soldiers returning from Iraq have been tested for exposure to the metal. Of those, three showed unhealthy levels in urine samples. All three had fragments embedded in their bodies, Kilpatrick said.
Soldiers must choose to take a test for depleted uranium. All members of the 442nd will be able to take one if they ask, Kilpatrick said. Twenty-seven members of the unit have been tested so far.
One company member, Sgt. Ray Ramos, said the latest results did not reassure him. He has suffered from migraine headaches, breathing problems and pain in his elbows since returning from Iraq in September.
An earlier test suggested depleted uranium may have been partially responsible for his pain. He said he will pursue a third test from an independent doctor to compare the results.
``When I become ill, or possibly become ill later on, I want to have things in place,'' said Ramos, 41, of New York City.
The Pentagon is monitoring a group of 70 veterans from the first Gulf War who have pieces of depleted uranium embedded in their bodies. Kilpatrick said none of them has shown health problems related to depleted uranium.
Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and a Gulf War veteran, said the military should test all soldiers returning from Iraq to determine whether fears about the metal are valid.
----
Depleted Uranium deaths could surpass worst-case predictions
by Amy Worthington
April 30, 2004
Idaho Observer
http://proliberty.com/observer/20040410.htm
The Pentagon has just announced that 18,000 American troops were medically evacuated from Iraq during the first year of operations there. Thousands more have been sickened and maimed in Afghanistan since 2001. No one knows how many U.S. troops have actually died in these two quagmires, because the Pentagon cooks the books by listing the not quite dead as "wounded," conveniently excluding them from the death count when they do die.
There are now two bills pending in our graft-ridden Congress to authorize mandatory national service obligation for both young men and women. These are HB163 and S89. Reinstatement of the draft is not feasible until after the November elections.
Meantime, as the war/occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan grinds on, military recruiters are frantically mining high schools and colleges across the nation for new cannon fodder. Under provisions of G.W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, recruiters have access to names, addresses and phone numbers of all American high school juniors and seniors.
The Associated Press explains that these hapless kids are being seduced to the killing fields with hot rod races, trendy ads and online games. When a recruiter excites the immature with his laptop game "Powerpoint Rangers," you can bet these devious psychological tools show kids neither the horrors of missing limbs nor the after effects of depleted uranium.
No American kid should sign on the military's disingenuous dotted line before reading a new book by Dennis Kyne, former Army air medic in the 18th Airborne Corps during Gulf War I. This easy-read book, despite a few expletives, should be a basic primer in all American high schools. It is guaranteed to give kids a perspective on the realities of the atomic battlefields to which Washington has been sending American troops since 1991.
Kyne comes from a family with a proud military heritage, but his experiences in Gulf War I revealed that the military structure as it exists today is not what it claims to be. He describes the filthy living conditions, lies, corruption and incompetence that continually put our young troops in harms way.
He confirms the military's despicable treatment of vets when they return to the United States decimated from disease, battlefield toxins, vaccines and radiation. Desperately needing adequate medical testing and care, they are abused with games and denials from a callous establishment determined to escape responsibility and save money.
The fact that America deliberately creates and arms the enemies it will fight later is not lost on Kyne. He notes that the United States sent $1.6 billion in arms and high tech equipment to Saddam and that one U.S. shipment landed in Iraq just one day before the U.S. went to war against him in 1991. Kyne says, "Much like the casinos in Las Vegas that give you money to get you started at the black-jack table, we were giving Iraq the weapons to get a war started."
This is why Corporate America, including Dick Cheney's gluttonous Halliburton, Inc., now growing tick-fat from ongoing Middle Eastern conflagrations, has continued to supply Saddam into the late 1990s.
Kyne illustrates the incredible disinformation to which both the American public and U.S. forces are continuously plied to stampede the U.S. into perpetual war so lucrative for corporate warmongers. He says, "As citizens we were told that our mission was to save Kuwait and so we voiced our support of intervention without knowing the truths of the war. We did not know that the Kuwaiti girl speaking before the U.S. Senate, about atrocious things Iraqi soldiers had done, was the Emir of Kuwait's niece, lying profusely. We did not know that the oil fields of Kuwait and Southern Iraq were set ablaze by our own forces."
What worked for father George, worked for son W. Thus America has been abused with the 9-11 and WMD scams, costing a bankrupt America $3.7 billion a month in Iraq and $900 million a month in Afghanistan.
Kyne's most shocking revelation is that 75 percent of U.S. Desert Storm casualties in 1991 were caused by friendly fire, a fact he says is confirmed by an MIT study. Considering a recent media report about marines being strafed with depleted uranium by a U.S. A-10 in Nasiriyah, Iraq, this comment by Kyne hits home:
"Combat fight badges are awarded to officers when they obtain combat flight hours .... commanders would get up and lose their minds in the sand storms.
"Lacking any points of reference or terrain recognition skill, these officers flew with no knowledge as to where they were going, or which side the enemy was on... Most [on the ground] cried into the transmitter and started picking their own troops out of the sand while they pissed themselves in fear..... It became who gets who first between the United States and itself."
Kyne, who like hundreds of thousands of Gulf War I vets, suffers from Gulf War Syndrome, describes the horrendous depleted uranium exposure endured by U.S. troops during and after the three-day ground war of Desert Storm.
U.S. air forces had spent 45 days contaminating Kuwait and Iraqi territory with depleted uranium weaponry into which our ground forces were then forced to march. Kyne tells potential military recruits, "It is time for the world to know that the United States military is using young soldiers for guinea pigs, not defenders of the constitution."
Kyne's excellent web site is DennisKyne.com. It contains graphic pictures of radiation-melted Iraqi bodies, demonstrating the horrific effects of U.S. nuclear weaponry now used routinely and illegally in foreign nations for the aggrandizement of the amoral U.S. defense industry.
Kyne's book and an 8-minute video are only $10 plus $2 shipping. The book is gripping and easy read. The video brings home the message of battlefield radiation that has killed thousands of U.S. troops and which will continue to poison hundreds of thousands more. This is a great package for informing friends and family. If any young person you know is contemplating military suicide, give him or her this book and video and consider it an investment in America's future.
Write Denis Kyne at PO Box 720254, San Jose, CA 95172
The Idaho Observer P.O. Box 457 Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869 Phone: 208-255-2307 Email: observer@coldreams.com Web: http://idaho-observer.com http://proliberty.com/observer/
----
ABC's of DU
2004/04/30
Mehr News, Tehran Times
By Charles Larkin
http://www.mehrnews.com/wfNewsDetails_en.aspx?NewsID=74622&t=Political
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=5/1/2004&Cat=2&Num=025
TEHRAN, April 30 (MNA) -- Depleted uranium is what is left over when most of the highly radioactive isotopes of spent (or partially spent) uranium are removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. The depleted uranium may be used in armor-piercing munitions and in enhanced armor protection for some Abrams tanks.
When it comes to depleted uranium, among other things, it puts out a small amount of the very worst and most harmful of all radiation when it comes to human health: neutron radiation. Neutron radiation, in comparison to alpha, beta, gamma, and x-ray radiation, is the worst there is for human cells because of its mass/size. Alpha and beta don't go very far, they are like photons of light. However, they have some mass. They are charged electrons (about as small as you can imagine, maybe one-ten-thousandth the size of the nucleus of an atom, which includes protons and neutrons).
When electrons are emitted from an isotope, they are charged electrically and are therefore drawn to other electrons in the air or to other atoms. Alpha and beta particles travel only a few inches or feet from a source, such as U-238, and are then "knocked down" or attracted to other particles of matter.
Now a neutron is a different thing entirely, and that's one of the things depleted uranium emits. A neutron is, in relation to an alpha or beta particle or an electron something like a hot-air balloon or soccer ball compared to a marble. Imagine rolling a marble through a gymnasium full of basketballs on the floor. If the basketballs on the floor are ten feet apart, the marble has less of a chance of hitting a ball across the distance of the court. The larger the item you roll, the more chance it has to hit a basketball, such as a soccer ball would. And when the neutron hits another atom or electron, the mass/weight of it causes much worse damage. It either destroys a human cell or causes it damage which may cause it to mutate into a cancer cell.
NEUTRONS ARE LETHAL! And since the "depleted uranium" is, in fact, undergoing criticality (splitting and become numerous and varied particles of light, energy, electrons, heat, gamma rays, x-rays, etc.) it also puts out different elements and isotopes, going from perhaps U-238 to a radioactive isotope of iodine along with all the other aforementioned material and energy. The worst damage is done to human cells by the neutron, and there are numerous neutrons emitted with every splitting of the atom.
Standing next to depleted uranium is like standing next to a small, noiseless, miniature operating nuclear bomb without the concussion and heat. The neutron radiation kills or mutates human cells more than any other type of radiation. No noise, nothing detected by our senses, and it lasts for thousands or millions of years after a shell is fired. The effect of the neutron radiation on the human cell may not appear for years, such as in the case of cancer. And the longer the human cell is subjected to neutron radiation, the more chance of damage or death to the cells. Ingesting DU is extremely dangerous, as is being near a DU source, such as sleeping on it for days or months, due to the time it has to do damage.
Uranium is used because it is so dense that it can penetrate almost any type of armor meant to protect a tank or vehicle.
-------- korea
North Koreans Agree To Mid-Level Talks
By Anthony Faiola and Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 30, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53194-2004Apr29.html
TOKYO, April 29 -- North Korea agreed Thursday to attend a round of mid-level diplomatic talks starting May 12 aimed at dismantling its nuclear weapons program but bluntly stated that it must receive a "reward" for taking even the preliminary step of a nuclear freeze.
Agreement on the new round of talks, to be held in Beijing between mid-ranking delegations from the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, was confirmed Thursday by participating countries, including China and South Korea. The new negotiations will follow two previous rounds that involved higher-ranking diplomats from the six countries but failed to yield significant results.
Chinese and South Korean officials said the new talks were a step toward breaking the stalemate over North Korea's nuclear ambitions. But the government's statement on Thursday, attributed to a North Korean Foreign Ministry source on its official KCNA news service, immediately signaled just how far apart the two main participants -- the United States and North Korea -- remain from a meaningful agreement.
The Bush administration has taken a hard-line position that North Korea must agree to a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear programs without any immediate benefits up front. North Korea insists that talks address its demands for economic and diplomatic compensation including oil shipments and an end to existing sanctions against it in exchange for a temporary freeze. It is also demanding security assurances from the United States, something the Bush administration has said it was willing to provide only within the context of a regional agreement involving North Korea's neighbors.
Many U.S. officials are skeptical the working-level talks will yield much progress, in part because there is little incentive for either North Korea or the United States to reach an agreement before the U.S. presidential elections in November.
On Thursday, the North Korean government restated its demand of "reward for freeze." But the Bush administration has been loath to even use the word freeze at the negotiating table, believing it sounds too similar to a suspension deal on North Korea's nuclear programs reached in 1994 with the Clinton administration, which later fell apart. Instead, the Bush administration has said a freeze would be acceptable only if it were clearly tied to further steps toward dismantlement.
U.S. officials say the North Koreans admitted to breaking the Clinton agreement in late 2002. Since then, North Korea is believed to have made significant headway on its nuclear arsenal. U.S. intelligence officials said this week that they are set to raise their estimate of the number of nuclear devices North Korea possesses from two to at least eight.
China, Russia and South Korea have urged the United States to be more flexible in order prevent North Korea from officially becoming the world's newest nuclear power.
Chinese officials suggested that despite North Korea's public demands, "this time the agenda will be open, and all the parties can present their views," said a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Kong Quan. "The basic goal is to prepare for the next round of six-party talks" between higher-ranking officials.
At a regular ministry briefing, Kong called on the governments involved in the talks to be patient, a request seen as an appeal to the Bush administration. Indeed, Vice President Cheney on his recent tour of Asia suggested that time was running out on the Chinese-led diplomacy.
"There is a saying in China, that you must be very patient to achieve results," Kong said.
The nuclear issue was a centerpiece of a surprise summit held this month in Beijing between Chinese officials and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il. But Kong evaded questions about whether North Korea's agreement to attend the working-level talks resulted from Kim's visit.
Cody reported from Beijing. Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
----
Kim Jong-il agrees to attend next nuclear talks
2004-04-30
Reuters
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Asia/2004/04/30/1083291890.htm
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed Pyongyang would join a first round of six-party working level talks on his nuclear programs on May 12 after a visit to China this month, media and officials said yesterday.
The lower-level talks to focus on details rather than strategy would be the first concrete result of two rounds of high-level talks involving China, Russia, the two Koreas, the United States and Japan in Beijing in the last year on North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions.
The breakthrough came when reclusive North Korean leader Kim made a rare visit to Beijing this month and met Chinese President Hu Jintao to set the May 12 date, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
Kim's trip came just days after a visit to Beijing by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who brought more evidence of North Korea's efforts to develop a nuclear force.
"There is no period set, there are no specific topics fixed," South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck told reporters.
He suggested only one working group meeting in Beijing was likely before the next round of six-way talks and that this seemed to be North Korea's doing.
"As far as I know if North Korea wanted to have talks just once then there will be talks only once," he said.
The talks were expected to last about five days, Kyodo said.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials say communist North Korea disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of an international agreement.
"The talks will likely discuss mainly the CVID (complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling) issue," Lee said.
The U.S. has offered to provide security assurances to Pyongyang if it agrees to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear arms programs.
One analyst said North Korea may soon cease its denials of a program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade, enabling progress.
"I believe North Korea will admit it has a uranium enrichment program during the upcoming working-level talks or a third round of the six-party talks," said Hajime Izumi, Korea expert at Shizuoka Prefectural University near Tokyo.
A failure to do so could jeopardize further high-level talks.
"North Korea is considering whether it can gain more by making concessions just before the U.S. presidential election," he said, referring to the November elections.
Washington recently notified China that it had accepted a May 12 date for the inaugural working group meeting, Kyodo said.
Participants would include Joseph DeTrani, U.S. special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, Akitaka Saiki, deputy director general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and Ning Fukui, Chinese ambassador in charge of North Korean nuclear issues, Kyodo said.
The six parties have held two rounds of senior-level talks on the North's nuclear programs, the first in August 2003 and the latest in February this year.
In the February talks in Beijing, the six agreed to meet again before mid-year and to start working-level talks before that to discuss the dispute. No progress had been reported since.
U.S. officials said on Wednesday that Washington was working on a new intelligence estimate that is expected to find North Korea's nuclear weapons program is more threatening that previously thought.
Asked about such a report, Lee said: "When we asked the U.S. government about this report they explained that this report was groundless."
The reports appeared to be based on the assumption that all 9,000 used fuel rods at Pyongyang's plutonium plant had been reprocessed, Lee said "But it has never been confirmed that the reprocessing has been completed."
North Korea said last year it had restarted a frozen nuclear reactor and completed making weapons-grade plutonium from fuel extracted from the plant.
Pyongyang has reversed its reported admission to the United States that it had the uranium-based program.
----
N. Korea Nuke Talks to Convene in China
April 30, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The six nations negotiating the North Korean nuclear standoff will lay the groundwork for another round of talks at low-level meetings next month in Beijing, South Korea and China said Thursday.
Word of the apparent breakthrough came as North Korea repeated demands for aid in return for freezing its nuclear program, and a newspaper reported that the United States was prepared to upgrade its estimate of Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal to at least eight atomic weapons. The United States has said the North had ``possibly two'' weapons.
But American and South Korean officials on Thursday denied that there were new estimates.
``Our official government estimate, of which there's not a new one, I don't think is going to be a subject of discussion,'' at the May 12 talks, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported that the estimate overhaul is being prepared by U.S. intelligence officials to account for strides North Korea has made since last year, when it restarted its nuclear reactor and plutonium reprocessing facility in Yongbyon.
The officials have also concluded that a separate uranium-based nuclear program will be operational by 2007, producing enough material for as many as six additional weapons a year, the Post reported.
An upgrade would be seen as upping pressure on other participants in the six-nation negotiations to back Washington at the table.
In Seoul, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck quoted U.S. authorities as saying the Washington Post report was ``groundless.''
Lee said that an estimate of eight nuclear bombs is based on the assumption that the communist state has reprocessed all its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.
The rods, if chemically treated, can yield enough plutonium for several bombs. North Korea says it has reprocessed all and is already increasing its ``nuclear deterrent.'' Speaking at a news conference, Lee said: ``There is no scientific proof that the North has reprocessed all the 8,000 rods.''
South Korea believes that rival North has enough nuclear material to build one or two nuclear bombs.
Lee said that the six nations involved in resolving the dispute -- the United States, China, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan -- are scheduled to begin working level talks May 12 in the Chinese capital.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said the ``fundamental goal'' of the so-called working-group meetings was to prepare for a third round of six-party talks by the end of June.
Lee said South Korea, the United States and Japan would consider giving the North energy aid if it freezes all its nuclear facilities, including those for power generation, with the condition that it will eventually completely dismantle them.
On Thursday, North Korea demanded economic aid in return for a freeze of its nuclear facilities.
However, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman criticized the U.S. demand for a ``complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling'' of the North's nuclear facilities.
``The U.S. is putting pressure upon (North Korea), talking about `irreversible' or something like that although it is not a defeated nation,'' he said.
``If the U.S. insists on this stand, (North Korea) does not feel any need to sit at the negotiating table with it,'' he added.
The nuclear standoff began in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted having a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 pact.
North Korea says it will dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities only if the United States provides economic aid and makes a nonaggression pledge. The United States demands that North Korea first scrap all its nuclear facilities.
----
U.S. to Bolster S. Korea Missile Defenses
April 30, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Missile-Defense.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United States will deploy new missile defense batteries in South Korea this autumn as part of a $11 billion upgrade on the Korean peninsula, the military said Friday.
The U.S. 8th Army's new 35th Air Defense Brigade, located at Fort Bliss, Texas, and equipped with Patriot Advanced Capability 2 and 3 systems, will be deployed to South Korea, the U.S. and South Korean Combined Forces Command in Seoul said in a news release.
The PAC 2 and 3 missile systems are designed to intercept and destroy incoming ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and enemy aircraft. There are already several batteries fielded in South Korea.
Two batteries will be added at Gwangju Air Base and the 35th Air Defense Brigade headquarters will be located at Osan Air Base with about 500 soldiers, the release said.
Last September, North Korea denounced the deployment of a PAC-3 defense system in South Korea, accusing the United States of building up arms to invade the communist North.
Pyongyang said it was ``part of the escalating military confrontation moves of the U.S. which drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war.''
Tensions have run high over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons. North Korea also has an aggressive missile development program.
The United States keeps 37,000 soldiers in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War.
The new missile defense systems are part of a $11 billion package to improve U.S. military readiness on the divided peninsula. The overhaul includes swift-action units, high-tech air surveillance and high-speed transport for troops based in Japan.
----
Advice raises North Korea nuclear spectre
By Carol Giacomo
Washington April 30, 2004
Reuters
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/29/1083224514427.html
North Korea's nuclear weapons program may be more threatening than previously thought, according to US officials who are working on the new theory.
The Bush Administration is still debating the matter, but some officials believe Pyongyang has manufactured as many as eight nuclear weapons as part of a plutonium program.
They fear that a covert highly enriched uranium program could be operational by 2007, and capable of producing another half a dozen bombs.
US officials said they hoped a new, more alarming estimate would convince sceptics such as China that Pyongyang's nuclear weapons efforts were a growing danger, and pressure must be exerted to halt them.
With the November US election looming, this could fan a new crisis by highlighting the lack of a North Korea nuclear deal as President George Bush campaigns for re-election and grapples with Iraq.
American officials and experts have long worried that if the economically strapped North expanded its arsenal, it would start to sell nuclear arms to other states. Advertisement Advertisement
Word that the Administration is working on the new estimate was first reported in Wednesday's Washington Post.
US officials said, however, that the Administration, often at odds over North Korea, was squabbling over key details.
"If the numbers have changed, I am not aware of it," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Berlin. "My last estimate from the director of intelligence was that we believe they could have had, might still have, one or two weapons."
The CIA refused to comment. For years, the agency has asserted that Pyongyang has enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons.
-------- missile defense
US to deploy new air defense missiles in South Korea this year
SEOUL (AFP)
Apr 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040430033721.2gpzr8iw.html
The United States will deploy new air defense Patriot missiles in South Korea later this year as part of its build-up against North Korea, military authorities said.
The US-South Korean combined forces command said a new US air defense brigade would arrive later this year with two anti-missile batteries and 500 soliders.
The reinforcement of the Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) and upgraded PAC-3 systems designed to destroy ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft is part of the 11-billion-dollar US military build-up plan in South Korea, the command said.
South Korea has been vulnerable to North Korea's artillery and missile attacks, according to US and South Korean military authorities.
"The deployment of this strictly defensive air defense artillery Patriot missile unit brings additional deterrent capabilities to the peninsula," said Lieutenant General Charles Campbell, commander of the 8th US Army.
The United States has also been upgrading its air defense systems, already deployed in South Korea.
North Korea has deployed short-range Scuds and Rodong missiles with a range of 1,300 kilometers (800 miles), while actively developing longer-range Taepodong missiles.
-------- russia
Russia set to join antiproliferation group
Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan)
April 30, 2004
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040430wo41.htm
Russia is expected to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), an international program to stamp out proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including ballistic missiles, possibly before a Group of Eight summit meeting scheduled for June in Sea Island, Ga., a government source said Thursday.
The PSI currently comprises 14 countries including Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States. The members currently are coordinating over whether to formally admit Moscow to the PSI at a meeting to mark the first anniversary of the group's founding in late May, according to the source.
Russia would be the last country among the G-8 nations to join the PSI. Moscow's participation is likely to further strengthen global efforts to prevent proliferation of WMD by countries such as North Korea.
Russia is likely to attend the two-day commemorative assembly that is scheduled to be held from May 31 in Krakow, Poland, the city where U.S. President George W. Bush proposed the initiative in May last year.
The 14 member states and several associate members including Turkey meet to discuss proliferation and conduct joint military exercises.
The 14 basically have agreed on Russia's participation in the PSI, the source said.
Since Russia, the world's second-largest nuclear power, has great influence over neighboring countries, its participation in the PSI is expected to enhance enforcement of joint activities such as inspections of ships and airplanes to block the illegal transportation of WMD and the transfer of related technologies. The three-day G-8 summit meeting scheduled to begin in Georgia on June 8 is expected to make strengthening the framework for the prevention of proliferation one of its top priorities.
The United States has been calling for Russia to join the PSI ahead of the summit meeting to expand and strengthen the group.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
More radioactive material at lab raising fears
By Kerana Todorov
San Joaquin News Service
Friday, April 30, 2004
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2004/04/30/news/06_livermore_040430.txt
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's plan to store twice as much radioactive material as it does now is dangerous, wasteful and unnecessary, grassroots activists told lab officials Wednesday.
During a hearing at Tracy's Holiday Inn, members of the public and lab officials focused on expansion plans that could allow the lab to more than double its plutonium storage capacity from 700 kilograms to 1,500 kilograms. It also could allow the staff to work on up to 30 grams of tritium at a time, rather than 3.5 grams.
Officials say the changes are necessary to protect the safety of the nation's nuclear program.
Stockton's John Huntoon was among those who questioned the proposal, which he said would increase the risk of nuclear war. The weapons, Huntoon said, will be used either purposely or accidentally.
"There are plenty of nuclear weapons right now to destroy the earth four, five times over," he said. "You hand them in the hands of a president who describes himself as a 'war president.'"
"The development of nuclear warfare is not deterring anybody," he added, referring to North Korea and others.
Most of the 19 people who spoke Wednesday belong to Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, a Livermore-based grassroots organization.
The lab should get rid of its nuclear materials, partly because the lab is close to seismic faults and heavily populated areas, they said.
According to Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CARE's executive director, a concern is that prevailing winds carry particles in the air from Livermore to Tracy most of the year.
"And so Tracy residents have reason to be concerned in the increase in nuclear weapons activities and nuclear materials," Kelley said.
The group may file a lawsuit if the lab continues with its plans, she said.
But Mike Schmidt, CEO for the Tracy Chamber of Commerce, said that while the chamber understands the concerns, it would favor the lab's plans. The lab employs 8,500 people in the area, he noted.
The plan, which Department of Energy officials will approve or deny in January 2005, also includes a proposal to build a 40,000-square-foot facility at the lab's Site 300 testing site near Tracy to replace three old facilities, said lab spokesman Tom Grim.
Site 300, which now receives and treats its own well water, would be connected to San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy water distribution system in a cost-saving measure, Grim said, though the well water's quality is suitable.
Hank Khan, a lab engineer, estimated the pipes would be connected less than six miles from Site 300 and pipe 648,000 gallons of water per day.
Also this week, congressional analysts in Washington, D.C., urged that security at the nation's nuclear weapons research laboratories be increased against terrorist attacks.
The consolidation of nuclear research at one site would make the facilities easier to protect, but make research more difficult, said David Schwoegler, a Lawrence Livermore spokesman. He said he thinks the lab is secure.
The ultimate decision on the future of plutonium work at Lawrence Livermore and elsewhere will rest with the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, he said.
Lab officials, who conducted two hearings on the 10-year plan in Livermore Tuesday, had a second meeting at the Holiday Inn on Wednesday evening.
A fifth public hearing is scheduled for Friday at the Department of Energy's office in Washington, D.C.
The public has until May 27 to forward comments to the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The University of California operates Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Comments can be forwarded to the National Nuclear Security Administration Livermore Site Office, L-293, 7000 East Ave., Livermore, CA 94550-9324; or faxed to (925) 422-1776.
For more information, call (925) 422-0704 or (877) 388-4930; or e-mail tom.grim@oak.doe.gov. Contact reporter Kerana Todorov at kerana@tracy-press.com.
----
Nuclear lab denies security concerns
By Richard Clough rclough@media.ucla.edu
UCLA DAILY BRUIN REPORTER
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=28734
A battle between intellectual advancement and national security concerns in Northern California may result in significant changes in the research capabilities of one University of California-managed laboratory.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the primary nuclear weapons labs in the United States, has been criticized recently for its perceived vulnerability to terrorist attacks and has been urged to move its store of plutonium and highly enriched uranium to a more secure location.
The lab has resisted this measure because the removal of the nuclear material would hinder its research efforts. Livermore officials maintain that the lab's security, which is constantly reevaluated, is adequate to combat potential terrorist threats.
"Security has never been better than it is right now," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the Energy Department, which oversees research labs across the country, including Livermore.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the lab has instituted a number of security upgrades. But a report released Tuesday by the General Accounting Office, the investigative wing of Congress, admonished the lab and four others for their lingering vulnerabilities.
The report also cited the labs' proposed time frames to update their security procedures as unrealistic.
Concern has arisen over the prospect of a terrorist group infiltrating the labs and constructing and detonating a makeshift nuclear device within minutes.
The Design Basis Threat is a program instituted by the labs that will require them to be able to defend against a "larger attacking force" by 2006. The GAO report said the labs will likely not be ready by then.
"They (the GAO) don't think we can meet our own standards that we laid out for ourselves but that's absolutely not true," Wilkes said.
"Sept. 11 changed a lot of things and since Sept. 11, we have been doing a lot of things to improve security at all of our sites," he said.
The security concerns surrounding Livermore, located about 45 miles southeast of San Francisco, are derived largely from the lab's vicinity to residential communities.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on National Security on Tuesday, Danielle Brian, executive director of independent watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, said the lab "will not be able to comply with the new directives" and poses a serious threat to its neighboring communities.
"The encroaching residential community surrounding Lawrence Livermore has made it nearly impossible to properly protect the weapons quantities of plutonium and highly enriched uranium stored there," Brian said.
Brian recommended the nuclear materials at Livermore be moved to the Energy Department's Nevada Test Site.
Moving the materials will make them more secure, but researchers at Livermore question whether this outweighs the benefits of their research.
"If all the nuclear securities in the United States were in one area, it would make security much easier," said David Schwoegler, a spokesman for Livermore.
"You have to strike a balance between what's in the best interest of national security from a research standpoint and what's in the best interest of national security from a materials protection standpoint," he said.
A large portion of the research done at Livermore is environmentally friendly, Schwoegler said, as it study methods to dismantle, immobilize and store nuclear weapons that create as little nuclear waste as possible.
-------- new mexico
WIPP oversight agency shuts doors
By Victoria Parker-Stevens
Current-Argus
Apr 30, 2004
http://www.currentargus.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=323&num=6292
CARLSBAD - Sixteen workers who spent their days analyzing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant are now without jobs.
Friday was the final day of work for many employees of the Environmental Evaluation Group, but the oversight organization may be resurrected later this year by Congress, said the office of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. Many of the eight people in the Carlsbad office had been with the EEG for 10 years or more, and no one had been there for less than a couple of years, said Director Matthew Silva, who was in Carlsbad Friday.
Three employees will remain through May to close the facility, and some have offered to finish reports on their own time, he said.
The EEG also employs eight people at the main Albuquerque office, which handled many of the more controversial issues, Silva said.
In addition to the exiting of employees, EEG air monitors in Carlsbad, Loving, Artesia and at the WIPP site have been removed, along with gamma radiation detectors at the site fence line and near the WIPP truck parking area.
The EEG notified employees a couple of weeks ago that they would be out of work by the end of the month if the federal Energy Department didn't provide more money.
The need for funds was a regular occurrence, and the DOE always came through, often with the encouragement of New Mexico officials, Silva said.
But this year, the clock ticked down further than usual, and Silva went public with the situation.
The attempt was unsuccessful.
Last Friday, the DOE said no more money would be granted, citing many other unanticipated budget requests and displeasure with EEG management.
Silva said Friday he hadn't seen it coming.
"I didn't know there would be a change in (DOE) policy at the end of the (five-year) contract period," he said.
In recent days, the EEG garnered support from longtime backers Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M.; and Gov. Bill Richardson.
But Domenici - who, with Bingaman, co-sponsored the legislation that supported the EEG - was not behind Silva's efforts - an issue on which Silva declined to comment.
Initially, Domenici had remained quiet, but in more recent days, he said, through a spokesman, that the DOE had "finally called the management's bluff."
"It's a shame the EEG employees are going to have to suffer," said spokesman Chris Gallegos. "It does seem that their funding problems are related to a management issue with consistent overspending of appropriated funds over the past few years."
While Domenici strongly supports the EEG's oversight role, he would like to see a review of the group's mission, Gallegos said.
Later this year, Domenici plans to pursue reauthorization of the group, and a review would likely be a part of that, he said.
Even if the EEG had not disbanded, congressional reauthorization was needed this fall for the group to continue.
Silva has said the Energy Department has obligations under federal law that require the EEG, although the DOE has disagreed with that contention.
Silva and the DOE also part ways when it comes to the reason for EEG's closure. Inferences of mismanagement make Silva bristle.
The EEG never agreed that the DOE's five-year contract figure of $7.6 million was enough to complete the work it is legally required to do, he said.
Congress doesn't appropriate money for the EEG, which is funded under a contract.
Silva said it was up to the DOE to initiate discussions about how the EEG could meet its responsibilities under the budget, which it never did.
He said even before the most recent contract, the group has needed $2 million a year and has had to negotiate for it.
Since 1990, the EEG has had the same number of employees, said Silva - who was with the organization at the time, although he has only been director for four years.
Last year, the Energy Department allowed the group to borrow $500,000 against this year's budget. It also evaluated a list of projects and gave thumbs down to some, Silva said.
Those included studying a proposed plutonium pit production facility at WIPP and whether brine water was compromising radioactive detection equipment.
Silva said the projects were within the agreed-upon workscope, and the EEG went ahead with them.
Again this year, the DOE said it would release more money if it was provided with a project list, but Silva said he didn't want to see the group's independence compromised.
Federal law says the director is responsible for determining the work to be completed, he said.
Silva said the DOE's offer showed the department had money to give the EEG if it wished.
"This is not a budget issue," Silva said, noting the DOE would prefer not to have oversight of WIPP.
And this is a time when oversight is very needed because there are many important issues the site is facing, he said.
Those include the proposed relaxation of transportation and waste analysis requirements, the receipt of higher level remote-handled waste, the reclassification of high level waste for shipment to WIPP and new shipping containers with only one level of containment.
In addition to reports on topics such as these, the EEG took air and water samples. The group recently verified the detection of a small amount of plutonium in an air sample, Silva said.
"We always operated in the open," he said.
That's especially important as the DOE now has more regulators, but still has areas of self-regulation, Silva said.
For example, no organization regulates the radioactive portion of the waste while workers are handling it, he said.
The EEG is a unique organization, Silva said. It has been in existence since the late-1970s, when it was created to keep New Mexico informed about WIPP.
The group has been responsible for many positive changes, Silva said, including the current location of the burial panels due to brine water and the use of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved shipping container.
"(WIPP) has enjoyed five years of safe operations due to the good work of the DOE and (contractors and labs), but also due to the oversight of EEG," Silva said. "Because of our well-known integrity, the public has confidence in the facility."
For an oversight group to be successful, it must be respected, trusted and independent, Silva said.
The EEG's 90 reports were not subject to editing by any governmental body, and the scientist responsible for the report put his name on the cover, he said.
He said the group never sought to keep either the DOE or interest groups happy and managed to draw the ire of both.
"I'm very proud we commanded the respect of regulators and scientists," he added, noting the group had the favor of many organizations, including the highly respected National Academy of Sciences. "And we merited the trust of the public and elected officials."
The EEG has also had a healthy exchange with (WIPP contractor) scientists, who utilized the group's lab, he said.
Silva said he hasn't heard anything from the DOE since last Friday and isn't sure what is supposed to be done with EEG property, such as lab equipment, a library and radioactive materials.
He also didn't know if the Energy Department would pay for costs incurred in the shutdown.
"It's been a great group. We took on some tough issues, and we worked together as professionals," Silva said. "This has been the most fascinating and intellectually stimulating work of my career."
The Energy Department didn't return phone calls seeking comment Friday.
-------- vermont
NRC rejects request to halt VY fuel movement
By CAROLYN LORIÉ
Brattleboro Reformer Staff,
Friday, April 30, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2118094,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- It's too late to stop the movement of fuel at Vermont Yankee, the New England Coalition learned on Wednesday, because there's no more moving to be done.
The outage is almost over, the reactor sealed and the plant is ready to start back up early next week.
Following Vermont Yankee's announcement that two segments of fuel rods were missing from a container in the spent fuel pool, the coalition filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The coalition has asked that the movement of all fuel should stop until a full inventory is conducted at the plant.
But in a phone conference with the NRC on Wednesday, coalition staff advisor Ray Shadis and expert witness Paul Blanch were told that the reactor, which has been opened for refueling, was now closed.
"This is typical. We ask for expedited action and they move at snail's pace, hoping that the problem will go away," said Shadis.
The petition was filed on April 23. According to Shadis, the NRC received the petition prior to the sealing of the reactor.
Neil Sheehan, NRC spokesman for region 1, said that the agency responded as quickly as it could.
"There wasn't any effort on our part to delay discussing it with them," he said, adding that the petition was received only a few days prior to Wednesday's meeting.
The call, said Shadis, was arranged by petition manager Allen Wong. There will be a follow-up phone call next week between the NRC petition review board and the coalition, which members of the public are invited to listen in on but not contribute to.
Shadis said that Entergy has been invited to take part in the meeting. Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams said that the company had not yet been notified about the meeting.
On Wednesday, Blanch and Shadis also requested that the NRC provide the documents detailing the 1980 incident that led to breaking of the rod in question.
"They were somewhat taken aback," said Shadis. "They want us to walk in with the evidence so that they could put staples in it and dismiss it."
Blanch, who worked in the industry for 35 years, said that record-keeping in the late 1970s and early 1980s was often lacking, so the documents may not even exist.
The NRC also agreed to turn over the paperwork related to a 1992 incident that the coalition learned about through a whistleblower. Shadis said that he was concerned that there may be fuel fragments in the spent fuel pool, which is being searched with a robotic camera, but it may not be the segments missing from the canister.
Williams said that the 1992 incident did not result in broken fuel rods. Although there are other containers in the spent fuel pool, they contain items such as irradiated metal, control rods and filters, not spent fuel.
"NEC has no basis for its claim," said Williams.
Shadis said that although it was too late to stop the movement of fuel, Entergy, with NRC supervision, should still be required to account for its inventory.
"We want NRC oversight to be stringent enough that the NRC can certify that inventory is accurate and complete," said Shadis.
Next week's meeting has not yet been scheduled but will be announced publicly prior to taking place.
Ed Anthes of Nuclear Free Vermont said that public interest in taking part will most likely be high.
"Everybody is talking about it. At first, people were quite scared because there was no good explanation of what happened. People are less scared but no less concerned," said Anthes, who said he hopes to listen in on next week's phone call.
----
MISSING FUEL REPORT WAS NEVER FILED
By SUSAN SMALLHEER,
Rutland Herald
April 30, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/Story/82887.html
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. never filed a report with federal regulators when it broke two fuel rods in 1979, creating the pieces that are now missing.
The New England Coalition said it made an extensive document search - assisted by NRC staff - over the past week, seeking information about the incident, but turned up nothing.
NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said she didn't know whether broken fuel rods had to be reported to federal regulators back in 1979, or now.
"I don't know what the requirement is now and I don't know what was reportable then, and they do change over time," Screnci said. She noted there was an extensive list of "reportable" events and she would have to research the issue.
Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, which bought the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon in 2002, said he didn't know anything about the lack of reports in 1979, or whether broken fuel rods warranted an official report to regulators.
Williams said the fuel rod pieces were created when Yankee personnel tried to put the damaged fuel rods into new assemblies. While the 12-foot fuel rods broke into several pieces, the two pieces that are now missing were so short they _were put in a special container.
All the other pieces are accounted for, Williams said.
New England Coalition technical advisor Raymond Shadis said that an NRC official told him Thursday that nuclear power plants were allowed to break a small percentage of its fuel rods a year without filing an official report with regulators, as long as radiation levels remained within certain limits.
But Shadis disputed Williams' assertion that the plant knows where all its fuel rods - and pieces - are.
"They have lost control of their fuel inventory. You don't lose nuclear fuel," he said.
Vermont Yankee has more than 150,000 fuel rods in its spent fuel pool, and about 19,000 in the reactor core at any given moment.
Shadis said the NRC reported that Vermont Yankee broke two faulty fuel rods when they were trying to insert them into the spent fuel pool. The fuel rods had been removed from the reactor core in 1979 because of leaking radiation.
The New England Coalition filed a citizens' petition last week, asking that the movement of fuel into the reactor be halted until the missing fuel rod pieces were found, and saying it had evidence of other broken fuel rods.
"The two rods are the only rods unaccounted for. In 1992 there were fuel problems, but there was no breakage into separate segments. There is no more fuel unaccounted for," Williams said.
Shadis said he had been told by a plant employee that a fuel rod had "exploded," in 1992 and the employee had seen a video of the damaged fuel which looked like it had blown apart, as if it had disintegrated.
Entergy Nuclear has already finished refueling the reactor, having already fixed the cracks in the steam dryer, which is at the top of the reactor, and had returned the top to the reactor, bolting it back in place.
Meanwhile, Gov. James Douglas said Thursday said he had no problem with Vermont Yankee resuming operation next week, despite the fact that the missing fuel rod pieces haven't been found.
"The storage of the spent fuel rods is an issue that's related to, but still different from, the operation of the plant, and I don't think that it will necessarily hold up the restart of the plant next week," Douglas said at his weekly news conference.
Douglas has called the loss of the fuel rod pieces "unacceptable" and has demanded accountability from both Entergy and the NRC.
"We have no regulatory hold, the schedule is theirs," the NRC's Screnci said. "We would have to have a reason it wasn't safe to operate to keep them from starting the plant. I know of nothing that would prevent them from starting."
Douglas has been pushing the NRC for a commitment for a so-called independent engineering assessment, and has left open the possibility that it would ask for a much more detailed, lengthy and expensive independent safety assessment.
So far, the NRC has been noncommittal about doing even the engineering review, which the Vermont Public Service Board has set as a condition of the plant's permit for a power increase or uprate.
Screnci said there was no connection between the missing fuel and the plant's ability to operate.
And she said there was no reason to stop the plant from resuming power generation.
Vermont Yankee provides about one-third of the state's power needs, about half of its production. The rest of its power is sold out of state.
The plant, which shut down in early April, is expected to resume power generation on Monday, if things go as planned.
Williams said that a special remote camera - less than 3 inches tall - had been placed in the 40-by-30-foot fuel pool to try to locate the missing fuel pieces. He said, if necessary, another, more technical camera could be brought in.
He said the camera came from R.O.V. Technologies of Vernon, a company that specializes in remote cameras used by the nuclear power industry.
Once the camera was put in the spent fuel pool, it too became radioactive waste, Williams said.
On yet another front, Wallace Malley, an assistant attorney general, said he was researching the issue of whether of the "four little words," that Entergy Nuclear wants added to a 1977 state law dealing with the storage of high-level nuclear waste at the Vermont Yankee site in Vernon.
Malley is doing the research at the request of Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor.
Malley said he might have the legal opinion finished today, but he said it was a complicated issue and it might be Monday before the opinion is completed. "It's a high priority and we may have something tomorrow," he said.
The four little words - "its successors or assigns" - would clear the way for Entergy Nuclear to seek approval from the Public Service Board to store high level waste at the Vernon reactor, and not have to have approval from the Legislature as well.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Not-guilty plea in case of missile parts trade
By MICHAEL P. MAYKO mmayko@ctpost.com
Friday, April 30, 2004
http://www.connpost.com/Stories/0,1413,96%7E3750%7E2118535,00.html
BRIDGEPORT - A Hasidic Jew and his two corporations accused of illegally shipping missile parts and accessories for a fighter jet radar system to Israel pleaded not guilty to the charges Thursday.
Meanwhile, federal authorities and the Israeli National Police continue their investigation into suspicions that the parts were destined for Iran.
Leib Kohn, and his companies, L&M Manufacturing and Nesco NY, both located in Brooklyn, N.Y., entered the pleas before U.S. Magistrate Judge William Garfinkel who set jury selection for June 16 before U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney in Hartford.
Kohn and his companies are accused of conspiring to violate and violating federal export laws. The two charges each carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence and up to $1 million in fines.
Kohn is accused of purchasing the parts from Radio Research in Waterbury and then shipping them to Israel.
A raid on the Israeli warehouse by that country's national police turned up the HAWK missile parts and the radar components for the F-4 fighter jet. Israeli police arrested Eli Cohen, who they believe runs Q.P.S. in Binyamina, Israel. Cohen is suspected of previously shipping armored carrier personnel parts to Iran.
The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service is continuing their investigation.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Appleton, who specializes in anti-terrorism and international weapons trafficking cases, is prosecuting.
-------- asia
Thailand Sends Troops to Counter New Attacks
April 30, 2004
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/international/asia/30thai.html
BANGKOK, April 29 - Thailand flooded its predominantly Muslim south with about 1,000 soldiers on Thursday as local residents and human rights groups questioned the overwhelming force used to kill more than 100 lightly armed attackers on Wednesday.
Saying he feared retaliatory attacks, Defense Minister Chettha Thanajaro ordered two battalions of reinforcements into an area where the government's use of force has fed resentment and violence.
Interviewed on Thai television, local residents voiced anger and bewilderment at the killings, particularly an attack on a mosque in which about 30 of the men had taken refuge.
The locals identified some of the dead - mostly young men in their teens - as local villagers, including 18 members of a soccer team, according to The Associated Press.
Altogether, the government said, 108 attackers had died, along with 5 soldiers and police officers.
Much larger questions concerned the motives for the attacks on a dozen police stations and outposts early Wednesday and the identity of the people who organized them.
The attackers shouted Islamic slogans, but they also appeared to be some of the same young men who analysts said had been hired in the past to burn schools and carry out raids.
Southern Thailand, which was annexed by what was then Siam a century ago, is home to most of the 6 million Muslims in this largely Buddhist nation of 66 million people.
It seethes with vendettas, political rivalries, criminal gangs, smugglers, drug runners and a dangerous feud between the military and the police, as well as with the remnants of a separatist rebellion that was mostly quelled more than a decade ago.
"There are too many things going on there for anybody to actually point a finger and say this is the thing that caused it,'' said Saroja Dorairajoo, an expert on the region at the National University of Singapore. "The causes are multiple.''
Like other experts, she said she doubted the involvement of international terrorist groups, although members of these groups have had a presence in Thailand.
The violence, which has intensified since a well-planned raid on an armory in January, has brought an atmosphere of fear to the region.
A newly deployed security force has used brutal tactics that experts say include killings and kidnappings, heightening local anger at the largely Buddhist military and police presence in the region.
If Thailand continues to emphasize a military response to the southern unrest, a backlash could grow, several experts and human rights campaigners said.
The military said it was bracing for more violence.
"I would say the military phase has just started,'' Gen. Pallop Pinmanee, who commanded the attack on the mosque, told a radio station.
The country's top Muslim cleric, Sawas Sumalayasak, spoke out on television in support of the military's aggressive response to Wednesday's attacks and its own attack on the mosque.
"The authorities exercised reasonable restraint in dealing with the situation,'' he said. "They were patient and waited for a long time outside the mosque.''
Newspapers and television stations in Bangkok reacted with shock at the high number of fatalities.
Under a banner headline reading "Kingdom Shaken,'' The Nation, an English-language daily, said the episode "may change Thailand forever,'' and warned it could lead to "an era of constant fear, mistrust and intolerance among people of different beliefs.''
The Thai Post, a mass-circulation daily, wrote: "The government said the attackers were teenagers who were lured and hired by adults to carry out the unrest. If this information is true, and as Thailand is a civilized country, should they have been killed?''
It continued: "If the government does not understand what has caused the problem in the south and intends nevertheless to use such strong measures, it may lead to more violence that cannot be quelled.''
The United States and international human rights groups expressed concern over the killings.
"Most of the attackers only had machetes and knives,'' Forum Asia said in a statement. "So surely the well-armed soldiers and police who are trained to deal with this can handle these people, so why shoot to kill?''
Along with scores of machetes and knives, it said only six firearms were recovered from the attackers.
-------- europe
France Struggles to Curb Extremist Muslim Clerics
April 30, 2004
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/international/europe/30FRAN.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
VÉNISSIEUX, France, April 23 - This town's largest mosque is temporarily leaderless, its chief cleric having been expelled from France last week for advocating wife beating, stoning and other medieval Islamic views at odds with the principles of the modern French state.
The cleric, Abdelkader Bouziane, was the fifth cleric expelled from France this year on charges of spreading a dangerously divisive brand of radical Islam. The country has kicked out dozens since 2001.
"The government cannot tolerate the public statement of views that are contrary to human rights, attack the dignity of women and call for hate or violence," the country's new interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, said recently.
France has long maintained one of the strictest antiterrorism programs in Europe, in part because the country was hit early by Islamist terror and because it has the largest Muslim population on the Continent. Many other countries in Europe have been far more tolerant in allowing radical discourse to flourish in their mosques.
But making such a hard-line stance stick is difficult, even here in a country that has been more willing than most of its European neighbors to limit free speech in the interest of a calm and cohesive society.
Mr. Bouziane, 52, won an appeal that would allow him to return from his native Algeria to France, despite the Interior Ministry's presentation to the court of evidence that Mr. Bouziane has links to groups that support terrorism.
[On Thursday, President Jacques Chirac, who has been criticized by moderate Muslims for his handling of the case, vowed to take further legal action if Mr. Bouziane returns from Algeria. "If we have to change our law to avoid repeating this kind of case, which is unacceptable for us, we will change the law so we can expel people who say such things," he said at a news conference.]
The expulsion and possible return of Mr. Bouziane highlight a thorny issue that most countries across Europe are facing as they struggle to meet the needs of their growing Muslim populations and protect traditional civil liberties while trying to curb the spread of extremist Islamic thought.
Part of the problem is a dearth of domestically trained clerics to lead congregations of European-born Muslims. As a result, mosques like that in Vénissieux often have to rely on imported imams or self-proclaimed clerics who espouse fundamentalist beliefs that grate against Europe's more tolerant societies.
"The problem is that we have 1,500 imams, but the great majority of them don't have any knowledge of the land," said Azzedine Gaci, who heads the Muslim Council in the Rhône-Alps region.
Only about 10 percent of the imams preaching in France's mosques and prayer rooms are citizens, and half do not speak French, according to the Interior Ministry.
The issue has become more pressing in the 10 years since a wave of Islamist terrorism swept France and has continued to spread around the world. The fundamentalist clerics provided inspiration and support for Islamists returning from Afghanistan and Eastern Europe jihads - among them the hijackers who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. They have also helped prepare fresh recruits from among Europe's frustrated, disenfranchised second-generation immigrant youths now rediscovering their religious roots.
Mr. de Villepin said last week that France would have to help Muslims to train moderate prayer leaders here to encourage the emergence of a tolerant "French Islam." The country's government-sponsored Muslim Council is working on a training program but says it needs state aid. Any government move to support such a program, however, faces huge obstacles because of France's strict laws barring the state from meddling in religion.
The robed men streaming into the mosque for Friday prayers this week angrily refused to answer questions from outsiders, arguing that they have been misrepresented by the news media. "Apparently, the government is giving away airplane tickets for free," said a long-bearded man, referring to Mr. Bouziane's expulsion.
But extreme fundamentalist congregations in Vénissieux and other working-class suburbs east of Lyon, France's second-largest urban center, have produced violent militants in the past.
In September 1995, the police killed an Algerian Islamist in a shootout near Lyon after recovering his fingerprints from an unexploded bomb found on the tracks of the high-speed rail line between Lyon and Paris. The man, believed to have been behind a spate of bombings that terrorized Paris earlier that year, had attended a fundamentalist mosque in Vaulx-en-Velin, Lyon's other principal working-class suburb with a concentration of Muslims.
In January this year, the police arrested six men from Vénissieux who were alleged to be part of a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda that had planned a chemical weapons attack in Paris in 2002. One of the men taken into custody ran a small radical prayer room in town, and another was leading an effort to expand the mosque at which the now-expelled Mr. Bouziane preached.
Two Vénissieux men are among people taken prisoner two years ago in Afghanistan and are now detained at the United States naval station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
France has tried to regulate its five million Muslims by creating a national advisory body to address issues like the training of clerics and to act as the Muslim representative in dealing with the government. But the country's most extreme fundamentalists have refused to take part.
"People like Mr. Bouziane live in another world," said Mr. Gaci, who is part of a broader trend of young, politically active second-generation Muslims here who are struggling to establish a united front to give Europe's Muslims a stronger voice and indisputable power. He worries that the scattered but spreading fundamentalist movement is hurting that effort.
Mr. Bouziane has preached at several mosques in and around Lyon since arriving in France from Algeria in 1979. After a six-month stint in Saudi Arabia, he began preaching at the Vénissieux mosque, an unassuming gray concrete box a block from the town's largest housing development.
The imam's extreme views were well known among Muslims in the region and drew the attention of the local authorities last year after he reportedly issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for jihad against American interests in France.
The Interior Ministry issued an expulsion order in February, but did not immediately execute it. Then, in early April, a local publication, Lyon Mag, published an interview with Mr. Bouziane in which he spoke about his support for the Koran's teaching that adulterous women should be stoned and that it was a man's right to strike his wife if she was unfaithful.
"He shouldn't hit her in the face, but aim lower, the legs or stomach," he said in the interview, adding that a man can hit hard to instill fear in his wife.
France's national press picked up the article, and within days the Interior Ministry executed the expulsion order. Mr. Bouziane was put on a plane to Algiers, where he was apparently detained for questioning.
But the expulsion drew sharp criticism from many Muslims across France, who saw it as part of a broader attack on Muslims by the French state. The country has recently issued a law banning girls from wearing Muslim veils at school, for example.
In the housing projects near Mr. Bouziane's mosque, a young man with a closely cropped beard said he thought that the cleric had done nothing wrong. "If my wife cheats on me, I have the right to correct her," he said, "and not just with a slap on the bottom, but with a gunshot."
--------
Germany puts its first Eurofighters into service
Apr 30, 2004
LAAGE, Germany (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040430134530.9d0swotg.html
The German air force announced Friday that it had officially put its first five Eurofighter jets into service in the northern city of Rostock.
The five aircraft, which will be used mainly for training purposes, were given to the Steinhoff fighter squadron based in Laage.
Germany, which was the first country to take delivery of the European-made fighter but the second to put it into service after Italy, has ordered 180 of the combat aircraft at a cost of 80 million euros (95 million dollars) each.
The Eurofighter Typhoon is a multi-role combat jet with a range of 2,500 kilometres (1,560 miles) and can be equipped with a mix of missiles depending on its mission.
It is built by a four-nation consortium involving the French-Spanish-German group EADS, Britain's BAE Systems and Italy's Alenia.
Britain has ordered 232 aircraft, Italy 121 and Spain 87. Last year Austria became the first nation outside the consortium to place an order, asking for 18. Greece has committed to 60 with an option for a further 30 aircraft.
-------- iraq
SIEGE
U.S. Weighs Falluja Pullback, Leaving Patrols to Iraq Troops
April 30, 2004
By JOHN KIFNER and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/international/middleeast/30IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 29 - United States military commanders here moved to loosen their siege of this city on Thursday, proposing to turn over the task of ending a fierce anti-American insurgency to a new force of Iraqi soldiers, led by officers once loyal to Saddam Hussein.
The plan seemed tentative at best, with conflicting statements from commanders here and military officials in Washington.
News of the proposal emerged as fresh American airstrikes and skirmishes were erupting late on Thursday inside Falluja. Pentagon officials, who often hear of decisions by battlefield commanders several hours later, said that negotiations on a number of possible solutions had been under way to end the three-week siege here, and that the plan was one under discussion.
If it goes forward, the plan would mark a shift in the strategy to end weeks of violence that have cost many American and Iraqi lives as well as support for the war among ordinary Americans.
The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, explained in an e-mail message on Thursday night that the new Iraqi unit, which he said was formally called the First Battalion of the Fallujah Brigade, would be made up of "mostly former Iraqi Army officers and men."
General Conway said a small group of marines would be assigned to the unit as a liason to American forces. The head of the Iraqi force would be the former commanding general of the 38th Iraqi Infantry Division, and would report to General Conway.
Even as details of the plan leaked out, 10 American soldiers were killed on Thursday, 8 by a huge suicide car bomb south of the capital, Baghdad, and two others in separate attacks, one in Baghdad and one in Baquba.
Under the plan, which officials say was proposed by tribal leaders and former Iraqi military officers, Marine units would pull back from in and around Falluja, to be replaced in stages by some 900 Iraqis under direct command of former Iraqi officers.
Placing Iraqis, and not Americans, on the front lines to control thousands of insurgents would seem to help ease several problems for the occupation force. Heavy fighting here early this month transformed Falluja into a symbol of resistance to the occupation, and officials here worried that any new battles, especially ones in which Iraqi civilians died, could stir mass uprisings.
Moreover, the plan would seem to give a greater public role to Iraqi authorities, something United States officials are eager to display amid doubts here about the true extent of power that will be ceded to Iraqis on June 30. Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne here called the plan "an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem." He said: "They know the populace. They know the terrain."
Another Marine commander also called the arrangement a way to "enfranchise" the Sunni Muslims, the minority that lost its favored position with the fall of Mr. Hussein. The insurgents here are largely Sunni. In addition, he said, it could be a way to pacify the city "without the butcher's bill of having to clear it block by block."
In answer to a question about whether Falluja was a decisive battle, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday on MSNBC's "Hardball," "Well, there's no question that, for success in Iraq, you can't have a city taken over by a bunch of terrorists and the former regime elements and have that persist over a sustained period of time."
He added: "The marines on the ground are the ones that are making those judgments. And that's why they calculated that it's in our interests to do it the way they're doing it and to have these discussions with the Sunni tribal leaders." It is unclear, however, how much power the new Iraqi force will be able to exert over the embattled insurgents, who have shown some military skill and are said to include foreign fighters. There is much skepticism among United States forces about the effectiveness of Iraqi soldiers, many of whom refused to fight alongside Americans in Falluja.
The plan emerged on an especially deadly day for American troops. The deaths brought to 126 the number of American soldiers to have died in the Iraq conflict this month, the most of any month so far.
The eight soldiers were killed along a highway near the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, as they conducted a foot patrol in search of roadside bombs. Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, of the First Armored Division, said the soldiers noticed a car parked on the side of the highway, which leads from Baghdad south to Basra.
"They went to investigate why the car was there and it blew up," he said. A military statement said it was a suicide attack. Declining to release details, he said four other soldiers were injured by a bomb estimated to weigh 300 to 400 kilograms. He said roadside bombs had been a growing problem in that area. On Thursday night, the road south of Mahmudiya was blocked to traffic and crowded with tanks and soldiers warning away drivers.
In Baghdad on Thursday, the military reported one soldier killed by a rocket-propelled grenade attack at 5 a.m. Another soldier was killed on Thursday in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, by a roadside bomb.
In the surrounded cities of Najaf and Kufa, south of Baghdad, there were reports of continuing skirmishes between American soldiers and militiamen loyal to the rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Seven mortars were also fired at an American base near Najaf, where Mr. Sadr is hiding out. No injuries were reported.
The standoffs in Falluja and Najaf have presented American officials with their most difficult test yet: how to quell two rebellions without stoking still greater anger in Iraq. Military commanders have all but ruled out storming Najaf, a city held holy to Shiites, to capture or kill Mr. Sadr, who led an uprising early this month in several cities.
And amid condemnation in Europe and elsewhere for what some leaders say are heavy-handed tactics in Falluja, American military and civilian officials in Iraq have shown much reluctance to return to all-out fighting here either, despite strong talk from President Bush and other administration officials about ending the insurgency.
On April 5, the Marines threw a cordon around this city of roughly 300,000, following the ambush murder of four American security contractors. Hundreds of Iraqis died in intense fighting, and Falluja emerged among many Iraqis as a rallying cry against the occupation.
Last week, American officials agreed not to restart a military offensive if local leaders could persuade insurgents to hand over their heavy weapons. So far, military officials say, few serviceable weapons have been turned in.
Despite that, American officials said Sunday they would defer any large-scale attack in favor of joint patrols with members of the American-recruited security force known as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. Still, there have been repeated clashes, including an attack by an AC-130 Specter gunship on Tuesday night on a truck carrying ammunition or bombs that produced spectacular explosions on live television along with sniper activity. Dozens of Iraqis are believed to have been killed.
Even on Thursday night, after details of the new plan emerged, explosions and gunfire could be heard from the Jolan area in the northwest of the city, an insurgent stronghold. The Navy reported dropping three 500-pound bombs in the Falluja area.
News of the new plan came so swiftly on Thursday that some Marine company commanders were still glumly working over maps to coordinate the earlier plans for joint patrols with Iraqi forces when word reached them. The exact source of the new plan remained sketchy, but several military officials said they were approached by military and tribal leaders from Falluja looking for a way to end the violence here.
"They came to us," one ranking officer here said. "We would be foolish not to listen to them."
Under the plan, Colonel Byrne told reporters, his troops from the First Battalion, Fifth Marines would withdraw from positions in buildings in the southern industrial zone. The Falluja police chief, Saber al-Janabi, told the Reuters news agency that the Americans would withdraw troops from the city. Marine units on the northern edge of the city are staying put for the moment, an officer said. Several officers said the plan was to have 300 Iraqis report on Friday, 300 on Saturday and another 300 on Sunday.
Soon after taking control of the country last spring, the occupation authority disbanded the Iraqi Army, which many commanders now say was a mistake, and purged members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party from many positions in society. In recent days, the chief occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, has announced an easing of these rules, including allowing many senior military officers to return to their posts. In a sense, their return may be a first test of this policy.
"The Iraqi military was a respected institution in the society of Iraq," one officer here said. "Not every member of the Iraqi Army is a black-hearted individual."
The plan could also test the tolerance of the many Iraqis, especially among the majority Shiites, who resent any new role for former leaders of Mr. Hussein's government. The commander to be placed at the head of the new unit was identified only as a Gen. Salah.
In Basra, a South African civilian was killed in a drive-by shooting on Thursday.
--------
Marines Plan Handoff To Militia in Fallujah
Car Bomb Kills 8 Soldiers in Baghdad Suburb
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52255-2004Apr29?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 29 -- U.S. Marines will withdraw from this violence-wracked city and hand over responsibility for pursuing insurgents to a new militia headed by former Iraqi army officers under a deal brokered by the top Marine general in Iraq, military officials here said Thursday. In Washington, senior Pentagon officials insisted a final agreement had not yet been reached, but Marine commanders here said they had received orders to prepare for a pullout that would begin Friday.
In one of Baghdad's southern suburbs, meanwhile, eight U.S. soldiers were killed by a car bomb in one of the deadliest single attacks against American forces in weeks.
The surprise agreement in Fallujah, which was authorized by Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, is intended to give more responsibility to Iraqis for subduing the city while attempting defuse tensions by pulling Marines back from front-line positions. But some U.S. military and civilian officials privately expressed concern that Conway's strategy involves too hasty a retreat and relies too heavily on Iraqis whose combat skills and allegiances have not been fully examined.
After word of the agreement made its way though Fallujah, insurgents resumed firing on Marines, some of whom were preparing to depart. The exchange of fire prompted commanders to summon airstrikes, and Navy fighter jets dropped at least three 500-pound bombs on the city.
It is not clear whether Conway conveyed the terms of the deal to his superiors in Baghdad and at the Pentagon, or even to leaders of the U.S. occupation authority. One person familiar with the deal said it took senior U.S. military and civilian officials in Baghdad by surprise. Because of the apparent lack of consultation, some officials said elements of the agreement, particularly the speedy troop withdrawal, may be tempered by the Pentagon or by the U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of operations in Iraq.
"It's very confusing right now," a senior Pentagon official said. "There's a disconnect here and we can't figure it out."
The Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry DiRita, said Marine commanders have considerable authority to negotiate deals within certain "broad objectives," including bringing to justice those Iraqis responsible for the killing and mutilation in Fallujah of four civilian U.S. security contractors on March 31. In general, DiRita said, the objectives involve ensuring that Fallujah is not "left in the hands of the former regime elements and whoever else" is in league with them.
"There is some uncertainty as to what exactly General Conway and the other commanders are working through," DiRita said. "But the commanders have an enormous amount of discretion, working closely with the political folks in Fallujah, to determine the arrangements they think they can establish in order to meet the broad objectives."
Conway's agreement is the latest and boldest attempt to pacify Fallujah, which has become a bastion of armed resistance to the American occupation of Iraq. U.S. officials estimate that there are anywhere from several hundred to a few thousand insurgents in the city.
Under the deal, Marine battalions stationed in and around Fallujah will begin pulling away from the city over the next several days. In addition to giving up front-line positions inside Fallujah -- some of which were gained only after Marines suffered significant casualties during fighting this month -- the Marines also will lift their cordon around the city of 200,000.
Ahmed Hardan, a physician who led a group of Fallujah residents in earlier negotiations with U.S. forces, said on the al-Arabiya satellite channel that the latest deal calls for U.S. troops to move out of the city's southern neighborhoods by early Saturday and to leave the northern part of Fallujah beginning Sunday.
The Marines will be replaced by a new militia called the Fallujah Protection Army, which will consist of 900 to 1,100 Iraqis who served in the military or other security services under former president Saddam Hussein, Marine officers said. The militia will be commanded by a group of former Iraqi generals, the officers said.
"They will bring in former Iraqi soldiers who are committed to fighting and maintaining the peace in Fallujah," said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, a battalion commander who was briefed on the deal.
"They'll pick up from us," Byrne said. "The plan is that eventually the whole of Fallujah will be under the control of the Fallujah Protection Army. The goal is that anyone should be able to come into the city without being attacked."
The Fallujah Protection Army will be subordinate to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and report directly to Conway, Byrne said.
Byrne and other Marine officers did not reveal the full name of the Iraqi force's overall commander or the individuals who agreed to the deal with Conway. Marine officers met with representatives of the new force on Thursday at a municipal building on Fallujah's outskirts.
"We are doing this because we love our country and we want these thugs out of our country," said Mohammed Faur, a former colonel in the Iraqi Intelligence Service who is serving as a liaison between the militia and the Marines.
Faur said most members of the new force would be from Fallujah. "It's about time for them to take responsibility," he said. "It's an Iraqi problem. The Iraqis are getting angrier. People are upset that Syrians and foreigners are causing trouble here."
Some American officials familiar with efforts to pacify Fallujah said they were concerned about the background of the participants and questioned whether they would be screened for past human rights abuses and other crimes. Marine officers said they did not know the details of how the force would be assembled. One American with knowledge of the plan said procedures for vetting participants had not been detailed by Conway.
A Marine officer familiar with the arrangement acknowledged that some former insurgents may be part of the force, creating the potential situation of U.S. troops having to work with people who have very recently been shooting at them.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, announced last week that elements of the Iraqi army, which was hastily dissolved after U.S.-led forces took control of the country, would be rehabilitated and returned to service. That decision, combined with the fresh approach in Fallujah, could help regain some support from Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, which ran the country under Hussein. U.S. officials consider Sunni support crucial to the successful handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.
The deal also could exploit any divisions among Sunni insurgents in the city, which appear to be growing, according to Marine officers.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, the military announced the deaths of 10 U.S. soldiers, eight of them in a single car-bomb explosion at about 11:30 a.m. Thursday in Mahmudiyah, a southern suburb of the capital. At least four other soldiers were wounded in that blast, U.S. military officials said.
A military statement said the casualties in Mahmudiyah were part of a 1st Armored Division task force that was "working to make the roads south of Baghdad safe for the citizens and those traveling to the holy sites in the area." While the soldiers were working on one of the roads, the statement said, a driver in a station wagon approached and detonated the car bomb.
Earlier in the day, a rocket-propelled grenade attack on an Army patrol in eastern Baghdad killed one soldier from the 1st Cavalry Division. A few hours later, a soldier from the 1st Infantry Division died when a roadside bomb exploded as a military convoy passed near Baqubah, a Sunni-dominated city 30 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The attacks brought the number of U.S. soldiers killed in combat this month to 122, making it the deadliest since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003.
While U.S. officials weighed how to tame Fallujah and the Shiite holy city of Najaf, insurgents maintained the tempo of their attacks on U.S. troops outside those areas. The violence came as an influential Shiite cleric in the city of Karbala called on the United States to hand over full sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, not the limited version that has been discussed in recent weeks.
"We have recently seen the occupation authority's policy going in curves, without purpose or direction," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mudaressi, a scholar who has cast himself as an Islamic reformer, said at a news conference. "We must tell the coalition authority that force cannot fix things, that we need more wisdom, understanding and dialogue to avert escalating violence."
Despite a drumbeat of attacks across the country, eliminating resistance activity in Fallujah has emerged as a top priority for U.S. commanders and civilian officials. Marines entered the city in force on April 5, five days after the American security contractors were killed.
Correspondents Sewell Chan and Scott Wilson in Baghdad, staff writer Bradley Graham in Washington and special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Mahmudiyah contributed to this report.
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Deal Is Reached to Cede Control of City to Iraqi Troops
April 30, 2004
By JOHN KIFNER and EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/international/middleeast/30CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 30 - The Marines began moving from some of their positions here today as a former Iraqi Army general entered the besieged city under a plan intended to restore order with a new Iraqi force of 600 to 1,000 troops led by officers who once served Saddam Hussein.
The officer who will lead the takeover, Gen. Jasim Muhammad Salih, entered Falluja in his old uniform to cheers from hundreds of onlookers, and he paid a visit one of the largest mosques in the city.
A spokesman for the American military, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, declined to provide details about the leader of the new Iraqi force, but said that "he has been carefully chosen, has been initially vetted."
Outside the town, a hotspot of anti-American resistance throughout the year-old American-led military occupation, two marines were reported killed and six were wounded in a suicide car bombing this morning.
The Marines, who have born the brunt of the fighting on the coalition side of the three-week battle over Falluja, will continue to "maintain a presence in around Falluja" until the new Iraqi "battalion's units demonstrate a capability to man designated checkpoints and positions," General Kimmitt said.
"The coalition objectives remain unchanged - to eliminate armed groups, collect and positively control all heavy weapons and turn over foreign fighters and disarm anti-Iraqi insurgents in Falluja," General Kimmitt said in a Baghdad briefing. "We are certainly not withdrawing from Fallujah," he added. "Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the Marine forces are repositioning around Fallujah."
In a Pentagon briefing from Qatar, Gen. John Abizaid, who commands all United States forces in the Middle East, expressed a cautious optimism of a "possible breakthrough" in Falluja.
"The opportunity is to build an Iraqi security force from former elements of the army that will work under the command of coalition forces, that will be mentored and worked next to by coalition forces," General Abizaid said. "And I think that we should be very careful in thinking that this effort to build this Iraqi capacity will necessarily calm down the situation in Falluja tonight or over the next several days. It's a step-by-step effort that will have to include a clear understanding of the security situation." General Kimmitt emphasized that the Marines would retain authority over the new Iraqi unit.
"This battalion will be recruited largely from former soldiers of the Iraqi army," he said. "The battalion will function as a subordinate command under the operational control of the First Marine Expeditionary Force."
News of the proposal emerged on Thursday as fresh American airstrikes and skirmishes were erupting late in the day inside Falluja, 30 miles west of Baghdad. Pentagon officials, who often hear of decisions by battlefield commanders several hours later, said that negotiations on a number of possible solutions had been under way to end the three-week siege here.
The plan marked a shift in the strategy to end weeks of violence that have cost many American and Iraqi lives as well as support for the war among ordinary Americans.
The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, explained in an e-mail message on Thursday night that the new Iraqi unit, which he said was formally called the First Battalion of the Fallujah Brigade, would be made up of "mostly former Iraqi Army officers and men."
General Conway said a small group of marines would be assigned to the unit as a liason to American forces. The head of the Iraqi force would be the former commanding general of the 38th Iraqi Infantry Division, and would report to General Conway.
Even as details of the plan leaked out, 10 American soldiers were killed on Thursday, 8 by a huge suicide car bomb south of the capital, Baghdad, and 2 others in separate attacks, one in Baghdad and one in Baquba.
Under the plan, which officials say was proposed by tribal leaders and former Iraqi military officers, Marine units would pull back from in and around Falluja, to be replaced in stages by some the Iraqi force under direct command of former Iraqi officers.
Placing Iraqis, and not Americans, on the front lines to control thousands of insurgents would seem to help ease several problems for the occupation force. Heavy fighting here early this month transformed Falluja into a symbol of resistance to the occupation, and officials here worried that any new battles, especially ones in which Iraqi civilians died, could stir mass uprisings.
Moreover, the plan would seem to give a greater public role to Iraqi authorities, something United States officials are eager to display amid doubts here about the true extent of power that will be ceded to Iraqis on June 30. Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne of the Marines here called the plan "an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem." He added: "They know the populace. They know the terrain."
Another Marine commander also called the arrangement a way to "enfranchise" the Sunni Muslims, the minority that lost its favored position with the fall of Mr. Hussein. The insurgents here are largely Sunni. In addition, he said, it could be a way to pacify the city "without the butcher's bill of having to clear it block by block."
In answer to a question about whether Falluja was a decisive battle, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Thursday on MSNBC's "Hardball" program, "Well, there's no question that, for success in Iraq, you can't have a city taken over by a bunch of terrorists and the former regime elements and have that persist over a sustained period of time."
"The marines on the ground are the ones that are making those judgments," he said. "And that's why they calculated that it's in our interests to do it the way they're doing it and to have these discussions with the Sunni tribal leaders."
It is unclear, however, how much power the new Iraqi force will be able to exert over the embattled insurgents, who have shown some military skill and are said to include foreign fighters. There is much skepticism among United States forces about the effectiveness of Iraqi soldiers, many of whom refused to fight alongside Americans in Falluja.
The plan emerged on an especially deadly day for American troops. The deaths on Thursday brought to 126 the number of American soldiers to have died in the Iraq conflict this month, the most of any month so far. The casualties from today's suicide bombing outside Falluja would raise that to 128.
The eight soldiers killed on Thursday were attacked along a highway near the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, as they conducted a foot patrol in search of roadside bombs. Brig. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, of the First Armored Division, said the soldiers noticed a car parked on the side of the highway, which leads from Baghdad south to Basra.
"They went to investigate why the car was there and it blew up," he said.
A military statement said it was a suicide attack. Declining to release details, he said four other soldiers were injured by a bomb estimated to weigh 300 to 400 kilograms. He said roadside bombs had been a growing problem in that area. On Thursday night, the road south of Mahmudiya was blocked to traffic and crowded with tanks and soldiers warning away drivers.
In the surrounded cities of Najaf and Kufa, south of Baghdad, there were reports on Thursday of continuing skirmishes between American soldiers and militiamen loyal to the rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Seven mortars were also fired at an American base near Najaf, where Mr. Sadr is hiding out. No injuries were reported.
Today in Najaf, the chief of police said he had begun negotiations with representatives of the rebel cleric leading the insurrection there, Moktada al-Sadr, in an effort to get Mr. Sadr's so-called Mahdi Army to leave the town and allow the police to regain control. But at Friday prayers in Kufa, Mr. Sadr said he would stick to the way of "jihad."
The standoffs in Falluja and Najaf have presented American officials with their most difficult test yet: how to quell two rebellions without stoking still greater anger in Iraq. Military commanders have all but ruled out storming Najaf, a city held holy to Shiites, to capture or kill Mr. Sadr, who led an uprising early this month in several cities.
And amid condemnation in Europe and elsewhere for what some leaders say are heavy-handed tactics in Falluja, American military and civilian officials in Iraq have shown much reluctance to return to all-out fighting here either, despite strong talk from President Bush and other administration officials about ending the insurgency.
On April 5, the Marines threw a cordon around this city of roughly 300,000, following the ambush murder of four American security contractors. Hundreds of Iraqis died in intense fighting, and Falluja emerged among many Iraqis as a rallying cry against the occupation.
Last week, American officials agreed not to restart a military offensive if local leaders could persuade insurgents to hand over their heavy weapons. So far, military officials say, few serviceable weapons have been turned in.
Despite that, American officials said on Sunday that they would defer any large-scale attack in favor of joint patrols with members of the American-recruited security force known as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
Still, there have been repeated clashes, including an attack by an AC-130 Specter gunship on Tuesday night on a truck carrying ammunition or bombs that produced spectacular explosions on live television along with sniper activity. Dozens of Iraqis are believed to have been killed.
Even on Thursday night, after details of the new plan emerged, explosions and gunfire could be heard from the Jolan area in the northwest of the city, an insurgent stronghold. The Navy reported dropping three 500-pound bombs in the Falluja area.
News of the new plan came so swiftly on Thursday that some Marine company commanders were still glumly working over maps to coordinate the earlier plans for joint patrols with Iraqi forces when word reached them. The exact source of the new plan remained sketchy, but several military officials said they were approached by military and tribal leaders from Falluja looking for a way to end the violence here.
"They came to us," one ranking officer here said. "We would be foolish not to listen to them."
Under the plan, Colonel Byrne told reporters, his troops from the First Battalion, Fifth Marines would withdraw from positions in buildings in the southern industrial zone. The Falluja police chief, Saber al-Janabi, told the Reuters news agency that the Americans would withdraw troops from the city. Marine units on the northern edge of the city are staying put for the moment, an officer said. Several officers said the plan was to have 300 Iraqis report on Friday, 300 on Saturday and another 300 on Sunday.
Soon after taking control of the country last spring, the occupation authority disbanded the Iraqi Army, which many commanders now say was a mistake, and purged members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party from many positions in society. In recent days, the chief occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, has announced an easing of these rules, including allowing many senior military officers to return to their posts. In a sense, their return may be a first test of this policy.
"The Iraqi military was a respected institution in the society of Iraq," one officer here said. "Not every member of the Iraqi Army is a black-hearted individual."
The plan could also test the tolerance of the many Iraqis, especially among the majority Shiites, who resent any new role for former leaders of Mr. Hussein's government..
Ian Fisher and Christine Hauser reported from Baghdad and Mark J. Prendergast contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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Ex - Weapons Inspector: Too Few Iraq Troops
April 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Inspector.html
TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- The Bush administration failed to prepare adequately for postwar Iraq and has stationed too few troops there to maintain security during the occupation, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector said Friday. David Kay, who resigned from the CIA in January and told Congress ``we were almost all wrong'' about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, said he expects U.S. involvement in the country to result in more violence.
``We have too few troops there,'' Kay said at a speech to the Oklahoma Bankers Association. ``We had enough troops for a brilliant military victory ... But it's too few to win the peace.''
Kay, now a senior fellow at the Arlington, Va.-based Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said the U.S. needs about 200,000 troops to maintain security in Iraq. There are currently are 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 24,900 troops from coalition countries, according to the Pentagon.
President Bush had used Saddam Hussein's alleged pro