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NUCLEAR
Nuclear power not a responsible choice
South Korea shuts nuclear power plant over steam leak
Australian government forced to drop nuclear waste dump
The Sickness of War
UK veterans accuse officials of refusing to attend independent probe
MKM Wins Largest Contracts
3-stage nuclear power programme evolved
High radioactivity recorded in Israel
Nuclear-Free New Zealand - Twenty Years On
Danger lurks in state's abandoned mines
Dumping on Yucca Mountain
Roberson lent drive to cleanup czar job
U.S. Forging Ahead With Yucca Mountain Project
INSIGHTS: Yucca Mountain - What Is at Stake for Our Nation?
MILITARY
Afghan President Warns Warlords to Lay Down Arms
Chinese told U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to proceed
Two arrested after 35,000 bullets seized on Romanian border
China warns US to stop arms sales to Taiwan or risk bilateral ties growth
House Approves 'Bioshield' Defense Bill
City Opens a Secure Lab to Counter Bioterrorism
Blair to admit mistakes before Iraq war
Report Cites U.K. Iraq Intelligence Flaws
Report Says British Data on Iraq Was Flawed, Not Distorted
China Warns U.S. on Policies
Powerful Car Bomb Rocks Baghdad
Calm in Baghdad Is Shattered as Car Bomb Kills at Least 10
Philippines begins to withdraw troops
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Israel Expands Program to Attract Jews from North America
Israel to Reroute Path of Barrier in West Bank
Globalist: Israel's wall, a victory for the logic of war
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Okinawa anti-base candidates elected
Trouble in the desert kingdom
Aide to Bin Laden Surrenders
Philippines, Reacting to Threat, Starts Troop Withdrawal
Bogus Afghan Jailers May Face Prison Time
Bush and C.I.A. Won't Release Paper on Prewar Intelligence
Scarlett must go, say MPs
Goss has no chance of heading CIA: Roberts
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Hijackers allowed to stay for fear of infringing their human rights
TSA May Change Screening Redesign Considered for Airport Program
Unprecedented Security for Democratic Convention
Patriot Act chalks up 310 arrests
Security for Democratic convention unprecedented, Ridge says
U.S. Assails Uzbekistan Policies, Trims Aid
Justice Dept. Report Details Use of Patriot Act
Obstacles Block Tracking of Terror Funding
POLITICS
Excerpts of British Intelligence Report
How Niger Uranium Story Defied Wide Skepticism
The Cult of Power - From Leon Trotsky to Paul Wolfowitz
Former Army Scientist Sues New York Times, Columnist
Iranians Get the Last Laugh After Clerics Ban a Comedy
VOA Staff Members Say Government Losing Voice
Al Jazeera Adopts a New Code of Accuracy and Good Taste
In Bush's War Room, the Gloves Are Always Off
Powell Flies in the Face of Tradition
A Bipartisan Report Masks Deep Divisions
OTHER
EPA Sues for $2.8 Million in Arizona Superfund Cleanup
USDA's Mad Cow Detection Challenged
ACTIVISTS
The time for renewable energy is now
Group's Antiwar Billboard Is Offered New Times Sq. Spot
New York Rejects Central Park for Convention March
Thousands Protest Government in Peru Strike
2nd Annual Nuclear Free Future Run
-------- NUCLEAR
Nuclear power not a responsible choice
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
MAINE VOICES:
Maria Holt
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/viewpoints/mvoice/040714midcoastnuke.shtml
An article from USA Today described a study by the New York-based Radiation and Public Health Project that found increased levels of strontium-90 in baby teeth collected in counties near nuclear power plants as compared with other counties in the same states.
Strontium-90 is a byproduct of uranium fission, which collects in bones and other tissues. The RPHP is currently studying whether children with cancer have more strontium-90 in their teeth than other children.
Sr-90 was widely released into the environment and the food chain by our above-ground nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s and by the French and Chinese between 1970 and 1980. Surprisingly, the RPHP study shows that although Sr-90 levels would have been expected to decline in the decades folowing the end of above-ground nuclear weapons tests, levels have actually been rising, especially in counties near nuclear reactors, where the levels were 31 percent to 54 percent higher than other counties in the same states.
We all need to be aware that, although nuclear power plants do not give off greenhouse gases, they consume great quantities of fossil fuel in processing the uranium fuel and in the construction and operation of the plants.
Few of us know that they also continuously release man-made radioactive pollution even when they are functioning the way they are supposed to. Maine Yankee nuclear power plant is still releasing small amounts of radioactivity even though it has been shut down since 1998.
When the Maine Low-Level Radioactive Waste Report covering 1986-1990 showed that more radioactive material was being released into the water and air by Maine Yankee than was being shipped out of state for burial, we were worried but not surprised. According to the Maine Yankee toll-free daily report (1-800-762-7104), during the past year while moving the radioactive fuel rods (high level waste) to on-site storage, more radioactive gas was released per day than per month during active operation.
Our Maine Bureau of Health reported that after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine in 1986, the radioactive cloud "rained out" here in Maine as it passed overhead on its way around the planet, producing measurable increases in radioactivity in, for instance, milk from our local dairy farms. According to Russian press reports, following the Chernobyl accident the cancer rates in the Ukraine and to the north in Byelorussia doubled in the next two years.
Our government, the Russian government and the World Health Organization have given the world only reassuring information about nuclear power and the Chernobyl accident. However in 1991, we had a visitor from Russia at Morse High School in Bath, brought to this country by students, teachers and alumni.
She visited the state Legislature, where she was asked quietly about the official downplaying of the health effects following the Chernobyl accident. She looked very sad and answered, "Those reports are not true."
We are in favor of taking action against the threat to life represented by global warming, but we feel strongly that we should give precedence to ways of doing this which do not cost us our health and the health of our children.
What can we do? Lobby our legislators to make more responsible choices in energy policy, and make more responsible choices ourselves. For example, it is now possible to buy, for a small premium, truly "green power," which is generated entirely within the state of Maine from non-nuclear and non-fossil sources. Ask Central Maine Power.
This should be happening nationwide, but as we know, "Maine leads the nation."
-------- accidents and safety
South Korea shuts nuclear power plant over steam leak
REUTERS SOUTH KOREA:
July 14, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26005/story.htm
SEOUL - South Korea shut a nuclear power plant after a steam leak was discovered on Sunday, a spokesman for state utility Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) said.
The spokesman for the company, which operates all 18 of South Korea's nuclear power reactors, said it would take several days to fix the problem at the 950-megawatt (MW) plant.
The reactor in Yonggwang, in the south of the country, was closed at 0721 am on Sunday (2221 GMT on Saturday), he said, stressing there had been no radioactive leak.
Two other reactors in Yonggwang were shut for more than three months for safety checks late last year, after a radioactive leak was found at one of the twin reactors, driving up demand for alternative fuels including oil and natural gas.
KHNP is a unit of state-controlled Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO), which supplies more than 95 percent of the country's power.
Energy-deficient South Korea, which imports all of its crude oil needs, relies on nuclear energy for 40 percent of its electricity.
-------- australia
Australian government forced to drop nuclear waste dump
SYDNEY (AFP)
Jul 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040714034851.m87xalmk.html
The Australian government was forced Wednesday to abandon plans for a national radioactive waste dump on a remote outback site as the political price proved too high in election year.
The site was to have been built on a sheep station acquired for the purpose near Woomera in South Australia, but after months of wrangling with state authorities, Prime Minister John Howard said his government had dropped the plan.
The decision came after Howard's Liberal colleagues expressed fears over the electoral implications of foisting the dump on South Australia in which three key marginal seats are under threat at the election due by the end of this year.
Howard blamed a recent Federal Court ruling against the forced acquisition of the land and the failure of the states to cooperate with Canberra in finding a national solution.
He handed responsibility for storage of waste back to the states, saying they had all accepted the need for safe and secure disposal, in one place. "But no-one wants it in their back yard," he said.
He said Canberra was committed to taking responsibility for the low-level radioactive waste, adding: "The states and territories now have a responsibility to do the same in relation to their waste and as a matter of priority."
Howard's conservative government purchased the land over the objections of the Labor-controlled state government, the land's owner and local Aboriginal communities.
The state government appealed against the acquisition of the land and the Federal Court upheld the appeal, finding there was no "urgent necessity for the acquisition".
It rejected federal government arguments that a dump would have presented no safety hazard and it would have been contrary to public interest for the purchase to be delayed.
Opposition Labor leader Mark Latham said Howard had spent eight years pushing for a waste site in South Australia, only to change his position in the run-up to an election.
"It's another example of Mr. Howard saying one thing before the election and getting ready to reverse the decision when the election is out of the way," he said.
-------- depleted uranium
The Sickness of War
Killing our own soldiers with radioactive weapons
Harvest Moon Hack
Joshua Greene
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Cleveland Free Times
E-mail Joshua Greene at: jgreene@freetimes.com
TOO BAD IT'S THE TROOPS and not the leaders who die in war. Instead we're living through someone's version of hell. I must have been one bad dude in my last life. Maybe we all were.
Last month we learned that our boys in Iraq are coming up positive, but it's bad. No joke. Investigative journalist Juan Gonzalez and the New York Daily News independently tested nine blood samples from National Guard military police who've complained of unknown ailments for months now. Four of them tested positive, not for head lice or mange or syphilis or derangement or any of the things that you or I are likely to test positive for. For uranium.
They've got uranium in their lungs.
Bullets made of lead weren't good enough. They couldn't pierce a tank, so they started using depleted uranium. Must have been a sale at the nuclear power plant. And it seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Gonzalez reports that the European Union in January 2003 became alarmed after a bunch of Italian soldiers started dying from leukemia. They called for a ban on using bullets made of nuclear waste. Gonzalez says 1,000 tanks were blown up in the first Iraq war using depleted uranium bullets. He says the exploding bullets sent uranium dust into the air. And our boys are now back in those very areas where this dust is just floating around.
Additionally, he reports that last year alone the U.S. forces used 127 tons of depleted uranium ammo.
What's up with that?
Who's making decisions saying it's okay to go spraying uranium around the surface of the earth? How does a decision like that get made?
Here in Ohio, we just let a corporation that's already proven it can't be trusted with our safety turn a nuclear power plant back on. And over there in World War III, they're sending poor boys into a land we already covered in "low-level radioactive waste."
Yo, Bush, that's why we were supposed to send the United Nations soldiers in.
And ain't that just like us. The hard news is, U.S. soldiers are being exposed to radioactive materials because they're in Iraq. Forget about what it's been like living in Iraq with radioactive waste just blowing around. Think the U.S. government keeping our troops in the dark is a big deal? It is. But who was supposed to tell the Iraqi kids not to play in the wrecked tanks?
The thing about uranium is it isn't exactly going anywhere anytime soon. As far as I can tell, the best a human can do right now is about 110 years. With a half-life of 2.3 million years, the Uranium 236 they're finding in these soldiers' lungs will outlive our species. What were we thinking?
There's something wrong about the way we're making decisions. It's like the time I was really stoned and couldn't figure out why my motorcycle wouldn't start. So I cut all the ignition wires and hot-wired it. When that failed, I noticed that the battery terminals just weren't cranked down tight enough. And so now I'm left with a bigger problem. But hey, even I know better than to spray nuclear waste around the surface of the earth.
It's a pretty dark path our whole modern society is on. In ancient times we had clean air and water, but it got dark at night and cold in the winter. So in the name of making it light at night and warm in the winter, we have dirty water and dirty air. Was darkness really that scary?
I've got a buddy in the armed forces. All last year he was marching to the administration's tune. "Weapons of mass destruction," he was telling me. "We can't have terrorists using our weapons." And his argument made sense. It's wrong for repressed, angry or just really stupid people to be allowed to use guns or explosives of any type. As we're proving, those are tools for a society far more advanced than ours.
We think we're advanced 'cause we've got 160 channels of advertising and mind-control in our homes. We let people with evil intentions, people we don't know, trust, love or nothing, come into our homes and tell us what to buy and how to talk. We're about ready for a trip back to the Stone Age. We need to relearn some of the basics.
Like don't shit where you eat.
This place, Iraq; it's known as the fertile crescent of the planet, and we're making it radioactive. Win, we all lose, and lose, we all lose too. It's just wrong to use weapons that not only kill our enemy and make his land fallow, but cause our own soldiers to die too. It's really not hard to understand.
----
UK veterans accuse officials of refusing to attend independent probe
2004-07-14
(Xinhuanet)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-07/14/content_1600314.htm
LONDON, July 14 -- British veterans of the 1991 Gulf war and their supporters accused government officials of "chickening out" of attending an independent inquiry into illnessesthat have affected more than 6,000 former soldiers, the British Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.
The British government has decided not to allow its ministers, civil servants and members of the armed forces to attend the investigation led by Lord Lloyd of Berwick into the so-called "Gulf War Syndrome."
It would be "inappropriate" to accept invitations to the unofficial hearings chaired by the former Lord Justice of Appeal, the Ministry of Defense said.
However, the ministry promised instead to provide "a pack of appropriate documents" to help Lord Lloyd understand the complex issues involved. The Department of Health was bound by the same decision.
The three-week hearing headed by Lord Lloyd aims to take evidence from 30 ex-servicemen, medical experts and government representatives to establish the facts about Gulf War illnesses and resolve the long-standing dispute over their causes.
Thousands of British veterans say they have suffered from unexplained ailments including kidney pains, memory loss, chronic fatigue and mood swings. They blame the cocktail of tablets and vaccinations they were given to protect them against nerve agents,anthrax and botulism.
Exposure to depleted uranium munitions has also been identifiedas a possible cause of the illnesses.
However, it has never been accepted that the illnesses have a common cause arising from the Gulf War, meaning that hundreds of veterans have not been able to claim compensation.
The British government has never acknowledged the existence of "Gulf War Syndrome." The Ministry of Defense maintains that the illness are so varied that there can be no distinct syndrome or a specific cause.
--------
MKM Wins Largest Contracts in Its Corporate History
Valued at $142 Million From USACE Louisville and Tulsa
07/14/2004
PRNewswire - STAFFORD, TX USA
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-25-2004/0002238638&EDATE=
STAFFORD, Texas, Aug. 25 -- MKM Engineers, Inc. (http://www.mkmengineers.com ) announced it has won the two largest contracts in its corporate history. MKM Engineers, an 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business, won:
-- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District, Multiple Award Remediation Contract (MARC) valued at $100 million, distributed among five small businesses as Set-Asides
-- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Tulsa District, Multiple Award Task Order Contract (MATOC), valued at $42 million, competed among three firms in the 8(a) small business pool
MKM Vice-President of Federal Programs, Don Brenneman, said, "These are the most significant wins in our corporate history. Contract work can range from Hazardous, Toxic and Radioactive Waste (HTRW) to remedial construction services in all 10 states. The Corps noted in its award letter that quality, cost and time are the three critical performance aspects, with safety paramount. We intend to deliver outstanding performance throughout the life of these contracts."
Brenneman was formerly a VP at Halliburton Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Tetra Tech, and NUS, all major U.S. engineering firms. Brenneman also won the first U.S. Navy and Department of Energy (DOE) contracts for MKM. Other MKM contracts include those with the Department of Homeland Security (U.S. Coast Guard), Defense Reutilization Marketing Services (DRMS), Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), EPA, and others.
MKM's initial Aug. 23 MARC award was part of a $100,000,000 Department of Defense (DoD) contract for remediation services. Performance is expected to be completed by Aug. 23, 2014 within the boundaries of the Louisville District (KY, IN, IL, OH, MI). The Tulsa MATOC will be performed within its own boundaries (TX, OK, LA, AR, NM).
MKM President Khodi Irani said, "Since 2000, MKM Engineers has grown over 300%. Our revenues for FY 2003 were $42 million. We are poised to reach $48 million revenues by the close of 2004. We are enhancing our safety and QA programs. They will help ensure success in all our contract executions."
The U.S. Army Joint Munitions Command (JMC), Rock Island Arsenal HQ, tapped MKM to serve in its worldwide rapid response Army Contaminated Equipment Retrograde Team (ACERT) program. JMC deployed MKM to Kuwait to clean up depleted uranium. As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, MKM was invited by the Army Bomb Damage Assessment Team to review war damage in Iraq. Also, DOE BWXT Pantex recently awarded MKM an additional contract to perform work at its nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant in Amarillo, TX.
MKM was contracted by U.S. Army JMC to provide turnkey sampling, characterization, and profiling, brokering, transportation and disposal services for the former McClellan AFB CS10 project, which was the U.S. Air Force's largest low level radiological waste (LLRW) disposal project. As a subcontractor to EG&G, a division of URS, MKM participated in the largest seizure in Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) history of 4.2 million pounds of explosives stored illegally in a Kansas warehouse as well as the FBI/BATF seizure of over 2,500 missiles in Roswell, NM.
MKM Engineers received the U.S. SBA Administrator's Award for Excellence, Region 6, in 2004. The Air Force AFCEE program also selected MKM for its Mentor-Protege Program, teamed with MWH.
Since its inception in 1991, MKM has successfully completed over 400 projects in 46 states. MKM's businesses include munitions response/unexploded ordnance (UXO), radiological waste, homeland security, design-build, and environmental remediation. MKM currently has over 150 employees and offices in 17 locations, including Kuwait. MKM is providing environmental/munitions response services at four of over 10 Army ammunition plants served.
Contact: Chief Public Information Officer: Colonel (Ret.) Paul Ihrke 281-814-2038 paul.ihrke@mkmengineers.com or Gurinder M. Rana, P.E. 330-962-8877 gm.rana@mkmengineers.com
MKM Engineers, Inc. 4153 Bluebonnet Drive; Stafford, TX 77477 V 281-277-5100 Fax 281-277-5205 1-800-277-4095 http://www.mkmengineers.com
SOURCE MKM Engineers, Inc. Web Site: http://www.mkmengineers.com
-------- india / pakistan
3-stage nuclear power programme evolved
Press Trust of India
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33780
New Delhi, July 14: To utilise large reserves of thorium, a "carefully balanced" three-stage nuclear power programme has been evolved by government, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday. Under this, from the spent fuel of the first stage in which natural uranium is used, plutonium is extracted and used as fuel in the second stage in fast breeder reactors, minister of state in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan said.
In the third stage, uranium-233, produced by irradiating thorium in nuclear reactor, is used as fuel, he said. Thorium by itself is not fissionable.
The minister said the third stage for large-scale exploitation of thorium can be launched only after a sizeable base capacity of the second stage is built up.
-------- israel
High radioactivity recorded in Israel
The Dimona nuclear plant is situated in the Negev desert
Reuters,
Wednesday 14 July 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AE4FB40C-5F1C-4AED-B02C-2EEAB498AA6B.htm
Worryingly high levels of radioactivity have been discovered in southern Israel's underground water table.
According to scientific research published on Wednesday, the soaring radioactivity levels measured in the Negev Desert and in the Arava valley are caused by natural radioactive elements such as uranium and radon gas.
But Professor Avner Vengosh, who co-authored the study by Ben Gurion University, dismissed any relation between the abnormal findings and the nearby nuclear plant of Dimona, also in southern Israel.
Contaminated water?
"This phenomena has spread throughout the area," he said, referring to Jordan and Egypt's Sinai desert.
"We discovered concentrations of radium reaching up to 10 times the normal average in (Israel's) water table," he added. Officials in the environment ministry have advised local fish farmers not to use the water for fear it will contaminate fish destined for human consumption.
The agriculture ministry insisted however that no contaminated fish had been found in the area.
-------- pacific
Nuclear-Free New Zealand - Twenty Years On
July 14, 2004 Engineers for Social Responsibility
http://www.esr.org.nz/events/even2004/NuclearFreeNZ.html
Dr Robert White spoke to the July meeting of the Auckland Branch of ESR to comment on the historical background to New Zealand's anti-nuclear legislation in 1984, and comment on the present situation.
On 14 July 1984 the Labour Government came to power and introduced the first nuclear-free policy for weapons and reactors on ships that New Zealand had ever had. It also established NZ as the first ever, single-nation, nuclear weapons-free zone. NZ is the only country that has put its nuclear-free policy into law which is comprehensive and expresses our complete rejection of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, or having anything to do with them. For many New Zealanders it is very symbolic and has won our country international recognition as an advocate of a nuclear-free world.
In 1970 there was no nuclear weapons policy and there was a long history of visits by ships of the US Navy. Each visit was covered by a separate visit request. In the 1970s there was a request by the Americans for blanket clearance to be given to their ships on an annual basis. The National Government agreed to that and the new procedure continued right up until 1984. It meant that no questions were asked about weapons at all on these ships.
Of course America was operating its neither-confirm-nor-deny policy on nuclear weapons, in other words they would neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on any ships throughout this whole period. This only affected ships that were not nuclear-powered, because in the 1960s concern had been growing in New Zealand about the safety of reactors on these ships and in the early 1970s a new safety code was introduced governing the safety of these nuclear reactors and in 1972 the US request for a nuclear-powered submarine was actually refused because NZ now required technical details of the reactors and the US refused to give those details. That situation continued until 1975 when Labour lost the election, although in 1974 the US gave NZ an absolute guarantee of liability for any nuclear reactor accident. But during this whole period visits by conventionally powered warships continued.
Then in 1975 National won the election and came into power and in 1976 dropped all restrictions on nuclear-powered ship visits, except that they had to be cleared individually, and nuclear-powered ship visits resumed.
It is probably that nuclear weapons did enter New Zealand in those years, right up to April 1984, although with the neither-confirm-nor-deny policy we cannot say for sure. This would be confirmed by a couple of statements by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon in 1976.
At that time there were enormous protests in NZ, about nuclear weapons. There were huge marches with tens of thousands of people, and the peace squadron flotilla, all with people protesting the possible presence of nuclear weapons in NZ on these ships.
We had the celebration yesterday [14 July] of the 20th anniversary of the Labour Government coming into power in 1984, when we got our first real nuclear-free policy. They had the dedication to establish a nuclear-free policy which completely banned the visits of nuclear-powered vessels on safety grounds and established a very unique formula for deciding whether to admit a vessel that might or might not be carrying nuclear weapons. The Government itself would decide whether or not to admit a ship or submarine that might be carrying nuclear weapons. That had never been done by any other country before or since.
It is worth noting that the ban on nuclear-powered vessels was always more controversial than the bans on vessels carrying nuclear weapons. This section of our nuclear policy has always had less support than the nuclear weapons ban which has always had high support from the public. The National Party recently published some poll results which they claimed showed great support, but which really are the same as they have been for years and years.
The USS Buchanan episode was the first American attempt to try and produce some sort of procedure whereby the new Labour Government's policy was melded with past activities to produce not too much disturbance for the American situation. One thing that was really worrying our Government was how the new nuclear policy was going to affect ANZUS and our relations with the Americans. The USS Buchanan was an aging destroyer, and it was claimed that it would be most unlikely to carry nuclear weapons, although at that stage in the Cold War virtually any ship that could carry nuclear weapons would do so.
Leaks of various Government communications led to huge activity by the Peace Movement, and the visit was eventually cancelled. Lange informed the American Ambassador, Munro-Brown, that they could not under the circumstances guarantee that the ship would fit with the new policy.
During this time French nuclear testing was going on and this was a big trigger to generate further support for the anti-nuclear policy of the Labour Government, especially after the sinking of the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour.
Then in June 1986 George Shultz who was the official mostly involved with the Government in discussing the whole nuclear policy and ANZUS, declared that NZ had effectively finished its membership of ANZUS and this was formally announced in August 1986. Whether this was a legal move by the American Government or not is open to question.
On the 8 June 1987 the nuclear policy finally became law. The US clearly saw the move from policy to legislation as quite serious, making it much more difficult for a succeeding NZ government to rescind the ban on nuclear armed and nuclear powered ships.
Then in 1990 the National Party itself adopted Labour's nuclear legislation in what seemed like a surprise move. Most people feel that this was done to win votes, with the Labour Government being in disarray at the time over their moves on the economy.
Then on 27 September 1991, a surprise announcement came from the US, saying that they were going to unilaterally remove all nuclear weapons from their surface ships, aircraft that could carry nuclear weapons and the smaller nuclear-powered submarines called attack submarines. It was clear that they did this because the weapons were old, generally obsolete and the US Navy regarded them as a damn nuisance because they never used them. The British and the Russians followed suit rapidly.
Finally in 1995 the Royal Navy resumed visits to NZ without any question about our nuclear legislation whatsoever and there were no real protests and these visits have continued off and on up until very recently. So the British accepted our nuclear-free legislation as it stands. The only people standing against it were the Americans.
Throughout the period 1988 to the present NZ-US defence relations have been improving, but the nuclear policy, according to the US, remains a block to full relationship. They have refused to send conventionally powered warships here even though everyone knew they did not carry nuclear weapons any more from 1992 on. But the legislation still remained a block.
In discussing the present and future of New Zealand's nuclear-free stance, he mentioned the National Party's recent claims about the Danish policy, obviously arising from National's complete misunderstanding of it.
Denmark has a policy allowing nuclear-powered ship visits, but what they say is "if you want to send your nuclear-powered ship here you have to tell us about how the reactors work, how the safety systems work, so that we can assess for ourselves if the ship is going to be safe in our ports". This is what NZ did earlier on. The Americans never do that for anybody, nor do the British or other nuclear navies. So while American conventionally powered warship visits to Denmark (a NATO country) continue, no US Navy nuclear-powered vessel has ever visited Denmark. This also serves to put to the lie the claim by the Americans that they do not discriminate between their nuclear and their non-nuclear powered ships, another excuse they use for not visiting.
Another claim made for the need for ship visits is that of strategic reasons. But if that really was so, then non-nuclear-powered ships could visit, but they do not do so. Looking at the actual pattern of nuclear-powered vessels of the years it becomes apparent that in the period 1958-75 there were only 4 visits by nuclear-powered visits. A report in 1984 said the nuclear-powered attack (ie smaller) submarines were generally only for rest and recreation by their crews.
And in the 1975 period when we had the Danish type of policy, there were no nuclear-powered visits at all, although other vessels did visit. From 1976 to 1984 there were 9 different nuclear-powered vessels visited and they made calls in 10 different ports.
They now have no cruisers. Their nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are so deep they cannot get into our ports. So if we lifted our ban the only type of vessels that would visit us would be the smaller nuclear-powered submarines. They also have very large ballistic missile submarines, but they never visit foreign ports, and probably would not be able to get in anyway, they are so huge.
So what about the question of safety? Do we really expose ourselves to great risks by having nuclear-powered vessels in our ports?
The US navy certainly has a good record for safety for its nuclear-powered vessels. But even so we know that there are nuclear-powered American submarines on the floor of the seabed. We all remember with great sadness the terrible recent Russian disaster with its submarine Kirsk. The Royal Navy has nuclear-powered submarines and they have had continuing safety problems. The British Government does not even allow them into its commercial ports. Likewise Australia bans nuclear-powered vessels from Sydney Harbour.
In the UK, Portsmouth authorities have issued iodine tablets to the local population in case of a naval reactor accident. Normal iodine fills the thyroid instead of radio-active iodine which is the most common release from a nuclear reactor accident.
A problem that has arisen more recently is that terrorists might seize a nuclear-powered vessel in a port - it would be a very tantalising target.
Dr White then commented that he believes the real problem is one of symbolism, the symbolism of a small and independent country standing up to the US and telling them what they can or cannot do. That is something which they just cannot tolerate, especially in the light of their ongoing nuclear strategies.
In the international arena NZ is seen as a highly-principled country, a truly nuclear-free country, working for nuclear disarmament, and it really does, according to people overseas, give support to groups in other countries, including in the US, who are looking for a nuclear-free world. And if we weaken our iconic legislation one bit, people will see this as us being under the US thumb again and we will lose much of that respect.
The Bush Administration has developed what is really a very, very worrying new nuclear weapons policy which blurs the traditional distinction between nuclear weapons with their dreadful destructive power and all other weapons. They will now consider using nuclear weapons against any country, including non-nuclear powers, that they see as seriously threatening them. And they will use them in what they call surprising military situations, whatever that means, presumably attacks by terrorists.
But of direct relevance to us is that while the only nuclear-powered vessels likely to visit us are the nuclear-powered attack submarines, these vessels still retain the ability to carry nuclear weapons. On the surface ships they took away they took away the extra structures that were required to carry nuclear weapons, although in principle they could put them back. But these submarines retain the capability to carry nuclear weapons and the Americans have weapons in storage that at very short notice could put back on these attack submarines.
And the bellicose Bush Administration could deploy these at any time. There is also talk of developing new weapons for surface ships. So the situation is now very serious. The US is destroying hopes for nuclear disarmament despite what it claims and, their actions could see a nuclear armed US Pacific fleet in our waters again in the very near future in the guise of having to defeat terrorism.
Dr White concluded that he sees our legislation as being as significant as ever it was, and even more so perhaps, and all efforts to change it in any respect must be resisted with all possible strength.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Danger lurks in state's abandoned mines
By LISA STIFFLER
The Seattle Post Intelligencer
Jul. 14, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5434273
INDEX, Snohomish County -- Under the shade of massive cedars, Fritz Wolff pitches a small rock into a manhole-sized pit.
Silence.
A bird chirps.
Silence.
And finally, plunk.
A quick calculation and the innocuous-looking black hole is revealed as an 85-foot-deep shaft. A short hike from there, the granite hillside yawns open, exposing a monster chasm where miners once blasted away in search of copper.
Ancient timbers shoring up the entrance to the old Sunset Mine look as flimsy as toothpicks.
Wolff isn't going in, but others clearly have done so. Beer bottles are strewn below, and there are slide marks down the dirt slope. Wolff, a geologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, recalled meeting a man who told him he ignored the warning signs and walked into one of the main tunnels. He made it through unscathed.
Many aren't so lucky. Every year, dozens of people around the country are killed when they enter abandoned mines like this one off U.S. Route 2 on the way to Stevens Pass.
Others in Washington unwittingly fill their pets' sandboxes with arsenic-laced mine debris, or spin the wheels of their ATVs over contaminated waste, state and federal officials say.
There are more than 3,800 abandoned metal mines scattered around Washington, many of them leaching poisonous chemicals into the environment or posing serious hazards to backcountry hikers.
State officials concede that an inventory of mines and the risks they pose is only partially done -- money is running out, and there's no concerted effort to warn the public.
"There could be heavy metals leaching from sites we're not aware of -- pretty big, physical hazards we don't know about," said Mo McBroom, an attorney with the Washington Public Interest Research Group, a non-profit advocacy group. "What worries me is we don't know how bad it is."
In "Washington Undermined," a report being released today, the group calls for increased funding and better coordination between state and federal agencies to get the old mines inventoried. WashPIRG is also calling for mining companies to create a fund that will help pay for cleanups and for the government to establish a public education program.
"Washington is way behind, and we're moving forward much too slowly," McBroom said.
While there are fewer abandoned mines here, many states in the West boast computerized inventories and well-publicized education programs, she said.
Wolff, a retired Boeing worker and former miner, is the only one working on creating an inventory of the state's abandoned mines -- and he's parttime.
Over the past four years, he's catalogued about 50 mines, but there are dozens of large sites remaining that need attention. The project is down to its last $6,000.
Department of Natural Resources officials hope more money will be funneled into the project, although the agency's Geology and Earth Resources Division is still reeling from a 40 percent budget cut.
"We've got other things that we are committed to funding, in terms of earthquake-hazard research, and there are a lot of other things we're doing," said Dave Norman, assistant state geologist with DNR. "It's a balancing act. I think we'll pull it off."
Norman estimates it would take about $200,000 to complete the inventory of major mines. The project has been supported financially in large part by the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. Officials with the federal agencies consider it important work that's key to their operations.
The inventory is a way to answer the questions "where are the sites, what's really bad and what do we need to pay attention to for cleanup?" said Bob Fujimoto, of the Forest Service's Minerals and Geology Department.
Because the mines are on private land as well as property managed by government agencies, the state seems the logical choice for tracking the information, Fujimoto said.
With a complete inventory, land managers could begin to understand the cumulative threat the mines pose to fish and surface and drinking water.
"Independently they might not look like much," said Ken Marcy, an EPA Superfund site-assessment manager. But taken together, "that adds up potentially to a problem."
Hard-rock mines were operated locally beginning in the late 1800s. Only three are still operating in the state.
Wolff, who majored in mining sciences in college and worked in mines as a young man, has a healthy fear of the abandoned shafts and tunnels.
The blasted-out holes can collapse or rain down chunks of rock. They hold pockets of odorless, oxygen-depleted air that can quickly suffocate. Rotted planks bridging nearly bottomless tunnels disintegrate underfoot.
And along with a metallic booty of copper, silver, gold, uranium and magnesium, Washington's miners liberated from deep underground potentially dangerous heavy metals, such as arsenic, cadmium and lead.
Unearthed sulfur undergoes chemical reactions that produce strong acids that contaminate water and kill aquatic life. At some sites, sandy waste piles, or "tailings," are left in mounds after miners extracted what they could from the ore.
"People are using these sites as recreational spots and have no idea that the sandy soil is tailings full of arsenic," McBroom said.
Wolff said he met a woman in her 80s who had been drinking for years from water that flowed from mines in the Monte Cristo mining district in Snohomish County. The water was contaminated with arsenic at 3,300 parts per billion -- about 300 times higher than today's federal drinking water standard.
The woman, who Wolff believes is still alive, told him, "I don't know if it helped me or hurt me."
There have been relatively few cleanups of abandoned mines in Washington. Since passage of the 1872 Mining Law, until revisions were made in the 1970s, mining companies were able to walk way from mines without addressing environmental damage.
Locally, a cleanup project is getting started at Holden Mine near Lake Chelan -- one of the nation's largest copper mines. Soil and water at the mine, which ceased operations in the '60s, are contaminated above safe levels and tailing mounds are at risk of sliding into a creek.
A cleanup plan should be released this winter, and aluminum manufacturer Intalco has agreed to pay for the investigation of the contamination. Regulators hope to persuade the company, the successor to the mine's original operators, to pay for the cleanup as well.
But many other orphaned sites languish, with owners unwilling, unable or no longer around to address the hazards.
There's too little money in government budgets to cover the costs. Officials with the state Ecology Department, which oversees cleanup projects, said they're working to revamp their program and come up with better ways to track down those responsible for the old mines.
The industry would be willing to contribute to a cleanup fund if liability issues and ownership concerns are addressed, said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association.
Miners hauled almost 13 million pounds of copper from the Sunset Mine near Index, which ran intermittently from 1902 until 1946. Its operators are long gone.
Pollution there doesn't appear to be a problem. Wolff has thoroughly tested a stream that flows from a caved-in opening. The water runs cold and clear, prompting him to kneel along the stream and fill his water bottle for a refreshing swig.
But the geologist preaches extreme caution when he comes near the creepily alluring tunnels and chasms, splashed with the tropical-sea blue of oxidized copper.
"You take one more step," Wolff said, "and you're a permanent part of the mine."
-------- nevada
Dumping on Yucca Mountain
Native Americans lose their land as our presidential hero revives old-time nuclear tensions with Moscow
AL Kennedy
Wednesday July 14, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1260837,00.html
So glad that our Tony has now slithered himself a plucky and important millimetre away from Bush - "I now feel I can only agree absolutely with 99% of what the lovely president thinks and does". Sturdy chap, our premier. But if he's looking to improve his personal popularity - we can hardly expect him to be acting out of conscience - he still has to deal with the difficulty that if Bush and Blair together are the Laurel and Hardy of demonic foreign policy, Bush and Blair apart are quite evil enough to provoke spontaneous vomiting in small children.
Now, like many British citizens, I'd rather not think about our ghastly leader, but Bush is rather harder to blot out. It's that whole terror thing. I've been waking up screaming since I was five, so I find I am slightly susceptible to terror. Not the $60bn-earmarked-for-next-year, civil-rights-dissolving, Orange Alert type of terror - I mean real terror.
And it's not as if the genuine terror of Bush is hard to notice. Within hours of coming into office, he'd started approving oil exploration in national parks, cutting support for disadvantaged children, raising the levels of arsenic in drinking water... Being an utter bastard with numbing consistency is his only speciality beyond mangling his native language and playing golf like an unhinged Muppet in times of crisis.
But Team Bush could never be happy just tormenting its own (non-millionaire) citizens - the misery must spread. So we in the rest of the world get to be alarmed by the whole sabotaging Kyoto thing, the murdering strangers for fun and profit thing and the screwing the Middle East in hopes of Armageddon thing. But what gets slightly less attention is the reviving the cold war arms race thing.
It seemed momentarily puzzling when the US withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty and started developing cuter, smaller types of "battlefield" nukes when there didn't seem to be a cold war any more. These things were of little or no help against mobile terror cells and the Pentagon had proved itself completely unable to protect even its own troops from the radiation produced by existing DU weapons. But, of course, all this lucrative US nuclear development was bound to alarm the Russians and therefore justify itself retrospectively. Hence, Mr Putin's obliging announcement that his scientists have developed a vigorous response to America's ballistic missile defence. The fact that BMD won't work as advertised is, of course, balanced by the fact that it gets nukes very close to Russia and is supposed to be pre-emptive not defensive. Don't worry if this doesn't make sense - it makes money, which is much more important.
And the new cold war is why US military nuclear facilities (which have been closed down as unsafe by the FBI in the past) are now immune from environmental legislation. Better yet, plans for the Nevada test site now include sexy, actual testing of nuclear weapons. Needless to say this is really pleasing everyone in Las Vegas, which is only 65 miles away, and everyone in Utah - soon to be renamed Downwind, the Malignantly Mutating State. Naturally, attempts to amend the relevant Defence Authorisation Act failed.
But the Bushies' joy doesn't end there, because the Nevada test site isn't even on United States land - it's on territory which belongs to the Western Shoshone nation and is protected by treaty (should you feel that treaties between the US and indigenous peoples are in any way binding). The Yucca Mountain site earmarked for America's nuclear waste depository is also on Western Shoshone land, as is the planned Federal Counterterrorism Facility. And what is probably the world's third largest gold-producing area.
Which is why Karl Rove and George W have both visited Nevada lately and why seizures of Shoshone livestock have already started. Despite formal opposition from 80% of the Shoshone population, Amnesty International and the National Congress of American Indians, Congress has just passed the Western Shoshone distribution bill - which distributes 15 cents on the acre for huge tracts of land in four states, whether the owners intended to sell or not.
So with one bill, the neo-cons can ensure cancer misery on an epidemic scale, mindlessly polluting mineral extraction, increased efficiency in the belligerent surveillance of an entire population, world war three and one in the eye for them pesky redskins. Recent Irish revelations suggest that George is in his jimjams by 5pm and now we know why. His days are full of such knee-trembling thrills that it's a miracle he ever gets up off his back.
Talking of miracles, Bush was recently quizzed about his special relationship with Jesus and carefully assured his questioner that it "doesn't make me a better person than you". His delivery didn't convince. When he can do whatever he wants, whatever the consequences, surely that makes him better than all of us.
· More on the Shoshone defence of their territory can be found at http://wsdp.org
-------- washington
Roberson lent drive to cleanup czar job
Tri-City Herald,
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/opinions/story/5297362p-5234901c.html
Jessie Roberson ends her three-year stint as the nation's nuclear cleanup czar this week with a record of hard work and apparent enthusiasm for the job.
Some -- the Herald's editorial board included -- disagreed at times with the ways Roberson, as the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for environmental management, chose to approach the legacy of waste left by the nation's Cold War nuclear weapons production.
She came to the job with a drive to do cleanup faster and cheaper. It was a worthy goal, but a risky one. Faster and cheaper is good, as long as it doesn't end up being slipshod and half-done. Plenty of people differed with her on the tack the Energy Department was taking. But even her critics also know this about Roberson: Few have brought such an energy to the office, or worked so hard to make something happen.
There has been real progress. At Hanford, construction started on the vitrification plant, almost all radioactive liquids have been pumped from underground leak-prone tanks, workers have packaged nearly 20 tons of material containing plutonium and spent nuclear fuel has been removed from leak-prone pools near the Columbia River.
Some of that work was the result of momentum built before Roberson took office, but her dogged attempts to educate Congress about cleanup funding helped get money to make things happen.
Unfortunately, Roberson's tenure witnessed the worst decline in the Department of Energy's relationship with the state. But, to her credit, Roberson remained accessible and engaged even as relations were increasingly strained.
Roberson can rightfully claim that she leaves Hanford and other sites better off than she found them. And that's more than some assistant energy secretaries have been able to say.
-------- us nuc waste
U.S. Forging Ahead With Yucca Mountain Project
By J.R. Pegg,
July 14, 2004
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-14-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - The Bush administration will press forward with its plan to bury much of the nation's nuclear waste beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a top Energy Department official told the Senate Energy Committee on Tuesday.
Opponents of the plan say a federal court ruling issued last week effectively derailed the project, but Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow hailed the court's decision as "an enormous victory."
The court found the federal government's 10,000-year federal safety requirement for the highly radioactive waste is illegal because it is inconsistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.
But the court also rejected Nevada's constitutional challenge to the repository and McSlarrow said this overshadows the concern about the safety standard.
"Everything regarding site selection and standards was upheld except for one thing," he said.
The Yucca Mountain site was first identified as a possible location for storage of the nation's nuclear waste in 1987, but the project has been beset with criticism and skepticism.
The facility is the intended destination for a total of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from Defense Department sites and spent nuclear fuel from the 103 operating nuclear reactors across the United States.
The Deputy Energy Secretary said he expects the facility will open and begin receiving shipments of nuclear waste in 2010.
But even some supporters of the project do not share McSlarrow's optimism.
"This is an ominous situation," Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said of the court ruling.
The court did not specify how far out into the future the government must assure the safety of the site, but noted that the National Academy of Sciences report recommended a standard that would cover 300,000 years, when some project radioactive releases from the site to peak.
Critics of the project say this standard cannot be met and Domenici agrees.
He told colleagues it is impossible for scientists to determine the safety requirements for the site beyond 10,000 years.
"That is almost as far out as civilization has been in existence," Domenici said. "There was essentially nothing in the world 10,000 years ago that had to do with mankind."
A key concern for supporters is that the law that identified the Yucca Mountain site for the repository blocks consideration of any other site.
Sustained delay to or failure to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project would force state governments to deal with the waste.
And the nuclear waste problem is growing in scope and expense.
As of 2003, nuclear reactors in the United States had generated some 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and by the year 2035, the United States will have produced more than twice that amount.
Several court cases have ruled that the federal government is liable for the costs of storing the nuclear waste until the Yucca Mountain site is ready.
The industry says that total bill could be some $56 billion - the first of several cases that could determine that figure began this week.
States are in no position to oversee or regulate long-term waste storage, Domenici said, and this could cause some to begin to shut down nuclear power plants.
"It is terrifically important that we find a solution to this," said Domenici. "The entire nuclear power industry in the United States could stand or fall with this interpretation."
McSlarrow said the administration is still reviewing the court's ruling, but told the committee he could not see why the project could not proceed.
"It is unlikely that anything that might occur on a post 10,000-year standard would cause us to revise the 10,000 year standard," said McSlarrow, who noted that the ruling approved of the 10,000 year standard.
The court suggested two possible options for dealing with the 10,000 year compliance period: either federal agencies could revise their regulations to extend the compliance period beyond 10,000 years or Congress could intervene and pass legislation giving agencies permission to maintain the 10,000 year standard.
The ruling could also be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Changing the law fits the bill for Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who called the decision "a bump in the road."
"We will change the language so the judges can look at it again," said Craig, a Republican.
But changing the law would be far from easy - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is critical of the Yucca Mountain project, which is also opposed by both Nevada Senators.
Critics of the Yucca Mountain plan note that federal officials have raised an array of concerns about the project, including a finding that the manufactured storage containers in which the government plans to store nuclear waste at the facility will probably leak.
There are also funding concerns swirling around the project. In its latest budget request, the Bush administration proposed moving the majority of funding for the repository "off budget."
That funding proposal was "not well thought out," said Domenici, because the budget process does not permit the Bush request.
The problem is forcing the Congress to scramble to meet the $880 million funding request - the House budget only includes $131 million for Yucca Mountain.
McSlarrow acknowledged that funding below the administration's request could stall the project, but said "we are going to work with Congress to ensure we get the funding stream we need."
Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning criticized the administration for requesting cuts in funding for research projects designed to restart the nation's commercial nuclear power industry.
Although nuclear power produces some 20 percent of the nation's electricity, the industry has not ordered a new plant since 1973.
"If we do not expend more dollars on research and development of nuclear power, we are never, ever going to open another nuclear power plant," Bunning said. "If this country is going to have a new nuclear power plant, the federal government is going to have to subsidize it."
----
INSIGHTS: Yucca Mountain - What Is at Stake for Our Nation?
July 14, 2004
By LeRoy Koppendrayer
Chairman, Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and
Chairman, Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition
ST. PAUL, Minnesota, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-14-inskop.asp
Two years ago, Congress overwhelmingly ratified the President's February 15, 2002, recommendation to proceed with licensing and development of a permanent repository for the nation's civilian and defense nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. One would have thought that the repository was on its way to being completed. This is not the case. Instead, the very existence of the nuclear waste disposal program is threatened due to lack of annual funding.
Our nation's plan for the disposal of civilian and defense nuclear waste was established by Congress when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1982. The NWPA included a provision for funding the nuclear waste disposal program through a federal nuclear waste fund. Since 1983, ratepayers across the nation have paid and continue to pay into the nuclear waste fund.
LeRoy Koppendrayer, a Republican, served in the Minnesota State Legislature 1990-1998. Chair of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, he serves on the Board of the Organization of Midwest States which oversees the Midwest electricity grid. (Photo courtesy MPUC)
As mandated by Congress, the nuclear waste fund is designed to fund the Department of Energy's establishment of a safe, timely, and cost-effective centralized storage and permanent disposal of the civilian spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Unless Congress comes to grips with the intent of the NWPA, the nuclear waste disposal program may soon come to a grinding halt.
The nation's ratepayers who receive electric energy generated from nuclear power make more than $750 million per year in payments into the nuclear waste fund, and with interest credits, this amount exceeds $1 billion annually. After deducting expenses to date, the fund now holds about $15 billion.
Unfortunately for the public, this account balance has been used to camouflage the federal deficit each year, rather than for developing a repository to receive spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear power plants, as intended by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. After being chronically underfunded for years, the nuclear waste disposal program now faces its most severe budget crisis ever.
In its FY 2005 budget, the Department of Energy requested $880 million to keep the project on track. However, the administration only allocated $131 million for the defense nuclear waste disposal program and zero for the civilian waste disposal program, incorrectly assuming that legislation would be enacted which would provide $749 million from annual ratepayer contributions.
Though the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently approved this legislation (H.R. 3981), only $131 million was marked-up by the House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee and it did not attach the bill to the FY 2005 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.
Unless the House and Senate enact H.R. 3981 expeditiously, the Program will not be able to retain an adequate workforce to meet the milestone dates necessary to allow waste to be accepted by 2010. As a result, spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste could be stranded indefinitely at plant sites throughout the nation.
Killing the current federal program permanent repository at Yucca Mountain would have dire consequences to the nation's electricity generation portfolio, and the environment. Nuclear power comprises 20 percent of our nation's base-load electric generating capacity and produces no controlled air pollutants, such as sulfur and particulates, or greenhouse gases.
Generating electricity from commercial nuclear power plants in place of other more polluting energy sources means fewer dangerous emissions are released into our nation's atmosphere. However, failure to provide a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste could lead to nuclear power plants being shut down, and forcing further reliance upon burning coal or expensive natural gas.
To aide this ailing program, we understand that Senator [Pete] Domenici plans to introduce a proposal to temporarily increase the fee customers' pay into the nuclear waste fund through their electric bills. This one-year only "transition fee" should collect $446 million to help make up for the $749 million shortfall in the Department of Energy's fiscal year 2005 budget.
However, since the nuclear waste fund already contains a $15 billion unused balance, the members of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition are not in favor of taxing the nation's ratepayers with an increased fee.
As a regulator, I believe it will be very hard for a state utility commission to justify double taxing its ratepayers when we have a $15 billion balance in the nuclear waste fund.
Further, we are very concerned that any increase in the nuclear waste fund fee could become permanent. However, if this single-year fee will be the instrument that clears the way to remove the nuclear waste fund fees from the annual appropriations stranglehold permanently and the DOE can tap annually into the corpus of the nuclear waste fund, as needed, then the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition may consider supporting it.
Government studies have determined that the current fee level is sufficient to build and operate the disposal site if these fees were appropriated annually. However, over the past several years, Congress has failed to appropriate adequate amounts. The resulting severe funding constraints have threatened the Program's ability to meet important Program milestones.
If Congress would enact legislation to codify the nuclear waste fund annual receipts as offsetting collections, it would ensure that every cent collected from the ratepayers will be delivered to the Program, as intended by the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Therefore, the members of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition urge the full House and Senate to enact H.R. 3981 expeditiously to ensure that this Program does not falter or come to a grinding halt.
The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition is comprised of 45 organizations in 25 states, including state regulators, state attorneys general, nuclear electric utilities and associate members working together to hold the federal government accountable for its contractual and statutory obligations to remove spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive material from nuclear power plants across the nation to interim storage and to a permanent repository.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan President Warns Warlords to Lay Down Arms
July 14, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Disarmament.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- President Hamid Karzai threatened Wednesday to crack down on Afghan warlords who continue to thwart efforts to disarm them.
Slow progress persuading militias to give up their guns has forced repeated delays of Afghanistan's first post-Taliban elections for fear of intimidation.
``Those who act against...or endanger the security of the country are rebels,'' according to a decree signed Wednesday by the president. ``According to the law, they are condemned to heavy punishment.''
Disarming militias which helped the United States drive out the Taliban in late 2001 is a key component of a U.N.-sponsored plan to prevent Afghanistan lapsing back into war.
But only 10,000 of the official 100,000 irregular fighters have given up their weapons so far, prompting Karzai to pledge action to speed the process.
The United Nations accuses powerful anti-Taliban leaders of stalling, raising concern that they will use fear to consolidate their power before they lose their private armies.
Militia commanders including Mohammed Atta and Hazrat Ali pledged their loyalty to the government and the disarmament process at a meeting with Karzai on Wednesday, state television reported.
The decree targets militias operating outside the nominal control of the Defense Ministry -- mainly smaller units who should be easier to dismantle.
It warned commanders and former fighters against secretly re-forming disbanded formations and hiding heavy weapons. It stopped short of naming any offenders.
A vote for president is set for Oct. 9, more than three months later than originally planned. Parliamentary elections have been put off until the spring.
-------- arms
Chinese told U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to proceed
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Gertz
July 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040713-111331-1903r.htm
The United States will sell arms to the Republic of China (Taiwan), despite Beijing's objections, because of the growing Chinese missile buildup opposite the island, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday.
That message was delivered to Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing last week by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, in response to Chinese complaints about Taiwan, including the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, said two officials who discussed some details of the meetings on the condition of anonymity.
Miss Rice also said in the meetings with Mr. Hu and former President Jiang Zemin, chairman of the powerful Communist Party commission that controls the military, that North Korea's nuclear-weapons program must be halted soon.
"We asked them to make clear to North Korea that time was a factor and that we didn't have forever," the official said.
Miss Rice also pointed out that North Korean connections to the covert Pakistani nuclear-supplier group led by Abdul Qadeer Khan showed that Pyongyang has a highly-enriched-uranium-based weapons program (HEU), a charge that China has disputed in the past.
Miss Rice told the Chinese that "A.Q. Khan was not engaged in academic research," the official said. "He was a nuclear-weapons expert, and his network existed for that purpose, and that North Korea has an HEU program."
On Chinese opposition to Taiwan arms sales, Miss Rice said a weapons deal has been under way since April 2001 and is reaching the point of actual transfers, the official said.
Pending sales are expected to include Patriot anti-missile systems and P-3 anti-submarine aircraft. Taiwan also is negotiating to buy up to eight diesel electric submarines and several guided missile destroyers.
The Chinese leaders were told that although the Bush administration does not favor "unilateral change" by either China or Taiwan, arms sales are needed "because China's missile buildup has created an imbalance on the [Taiwan] Strait, and we need to correct that."
"They need to understand that," the senior official said.
China has been deploying up to 75 short-range missiles a year within range of Taiwan for the past several years.
Beijing also is set to kick off large-scale war games near Taiwan this month, exercises that in the past were used as an attempt at political intimidation.
At the Chinese Embassy yesterday, a spokesman called in reporters to protest U.S. support for Taiwan.
"We are gravely concerned over the recent U.S. moves on the Taiwan question. We strongly urge the U.S. side to stop selling advanced arms to Taiwan and cut the military links between the U.S. and Taiwan. Stop any official exchanges with Taiwan authorities. Stop supporting Taiwan to join the international organizations where statehood is required," spokesman Sun Wiede said.
The senior administration official said the spokesman's comments were less strident than those heard in Beijing, where both Mr. Hu and Mr. Jiang told Miss Rice that China would not "sit idly by" while Taiwan moved to formal independence.
"They came at us very heavily on Taiwan," said the official, who took part in the meetings.
The Chinese said they appreciated the U.S. position that it did not support Taiwanese independence, but also protested the administration's adherence to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which permits defensive arms sales.
Miss Rice urged the Chinese to take up an offer made by Chen Shui-bian, the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), in his inaugural speech in May for China to resume talks with Taipei.
-----
Two arrested after 35,000 bullets seized on Romanian border
BUCHAREST (AFP)
Jul 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040713165520.gfit603z.html
Romanian police said Tuesday that they had arrested two Turkish men after seizing 35,000 bullets in a lorry entering the country from Bulgaria.
The ammunition was hidden in several boxes in a truck carrying 20 tons of French yoghurt to Turkey.
The Turks, aged 47 and 31, will face the prosecutor in the southern border town of Giurgiu before being deported to their country of origin.
Police said it was the biggest seizure of ammunition in Romania this year. The frontier police and the customs had previously announced strict security measures "to detect arms and ammunition that can serve terrorist purposes".
-----
China warns US to stop arms sales to Taiwan or risk bilateral ties growth
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jul 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040713231225.y0bejtvh.html
China warned the United States Tuesday to stop selling advanced arms to Taiwan and cut military links with the island if it wanted any improvement in bilateral relations.
Chinese embassy spokesman Sun Weide said at a press conference that Beijing was "gravely concerned" over recent US moves on the Taiwan question and said the situation was "quite critical," particularly over arms sales.
"We strongly urge the US side to stop selling advanced arms to Taiwan and cut the military links between the US and Taiwan," he said.
The United States remains the leading arms supplier to Taiwan despite its shift of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
Sun also called for a halt to all US "official" exchanges with Taiwan authorities and a stop to US backing for Taipei's bid to join international organizations.
"Only in this way can the stable development of the China-US relations as well as the peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait be guaranteed," Sun said.
The media conference in Washington comes on the heels of US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's visit last week to Beijing during which the Taiwan issue hogged the agenda.
Sun's remarks show that Beijing is not convinced by Rice's assurances to Chinese leaders, including China's military strongman and ex-president Jiang Zemin, that Washington respects Beijing's "one China policy" and is opposed to Taiwan independence, observers said.
Under a 25-year-old US law, the United States acknowledges Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China but is bound by law to provide weapons to help Taiwan defend itself if its security is threatened.
China has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan should the island declare formal independence. The two sides split in 1949 at the end of a civil war but Beijing regards the island as part of its territory.
Cross-strait tension has been escalating since pro-independence Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian took office in 2000 and since his re-election in March this year.
Taiwan's cabinet on June 2 approved a special budget of 610 billion Taiwan dollars (18.2 billion US) for the purchase of advanced weaponry. A team from Taipei was reportedly in the United States recently to shop for arms.
Sun stressed that the Taiwan issue "bears on China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity and is always the most important and sensitive issue in China-US relations.
"To address the issue properly is the key to the sound and stable development of China-US relations."
Sun also expressed "grave concern and dissatisfaction over recent irresponsible deeds and words by some US government officials and congressmen" on China's management of Hong Kong affairs.
"Hong Kong is China's Hong Kong. The Chinese people have the determination, the capability and the wisdom to maintain the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong," he said.
The United States this month reaffirmed its policy to push for greater democracy in Hong Kong after more than half a million people took to the streets of the Chinese-ruled territory to back calls for political reform.
More than 530,000 people protested on the seventh anniversary of the former British colony's return to Chinese control on Thursday to vent anger over Beijing's decision to deny the territory universal suffrage.
The United States is Hong Kong's second-largest trading partner.
-------- biological weapons
House Approves 'Bioshield' Defense Bill
July 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-bioshield-congress.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation to stimulate the development of drugs and vaccines to counter a bioterror attack won final congressional approval on Wednesday and was sent to President Bush to sign into law.
The $5.6 billion, 10-year Project BioShield program, approved by the House on a 414-2 vote, expands public- and private-sector research incentives to develop treatments, antidotes and vaccines that would otherwise not find a viable commercial niche.
The Senate earlier passed the bill, a 2003 initiative of Bush that enjoyed strong bipartisan support. The goal is to deter a biological, chemical or nuclear attack, as well as to limit casualties should one occur.
``The purpose of course is to protect Americans,'' said California Republican Chris Cox, chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. He said the bill marshaled public resources to spur an ``unleashing the creative genius of the private sector.''
Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, the top Democrat on the Homeland panel, said he hoped the bill would create a ``renewed sense of urgency regarding the bioterror threat. This bill marks but the beginning, not the end, of a long road we must travel.''
The legislation will encourage more research and will also basically guarantee a market by buying and stockpiling these new drugs and vaccines to treat or protect people against such diseases as anthrax, smallpox or the plague, or against such toxins as ricin.
Without such assurances, the private sector would be reluctant to invest millions in products that in a best case scenario would never be needed. On Wall Street, Biotechnology stocks rose Wednesday before the vote.
The legislation also allows the government to use experimental treatments in an emergency, even if they have not completed the usual Food and Drug Administration approval process.
Underscoring the threat, the Senate health committee announced it would hold a hearing next week on the bioterror threat going into the upcoming political convention and election seasons.
``Congress must be ever vigilant in its review and assessment of our defenses,'' said New Hampshire Republican Judd Gregg, chairman of the committee and a co-author of the BioShield bill.
The House passed similar legislation last year but it got snagged in the Senate until May.
Congress had already decided to appropriate the money and made close to $1 billion available for the current fiscal year in a separate spending bill. Government scientists have already reported some progress in researching potentially fatal agents.
--------
City Opens a Secure Lab to Counter Bioterrorism
July 14, 2004
By MARC SANTORA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/nyregion/14lab.html
Nearly three years after anthrax attacks in New York City brought home the danger that bioterrorism poses to the world, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday announced the opening of a $16 million high-security laboratory to help detect and deal with future threats.
For the first time, the city will not have to send many kinds of pathogens for testing to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, using the new lab instead and making New York a leader in studying and defending against infectious diseases, health officials said.
Mr. Bloomberg pointed to the city's history at the vanguard of public health, including instituting some of the country's first sanitation laws in the wake of a typhoid epidemic a century ago caused, he said, by a kitchen worker named Mary Mallon. The 20,000-square-foot lab, on the East Side near Bellevue Hospital, would give New York crucial protection in an age of new dangers, he said.
"Today New York faces a different kind, a more dangerous kind, of biohazard: bioterrorism," Mr. Bloomberg said. "This facility is an important addition to the city's defense against weapons of mass destruction and also natural epidemics."
Answering critics who say that government officials are focused too narrowly on bioterrorism after three decades of neglecting the nation's public health infrastructure, Mr. Bloomberg and Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner, said the lab would also improve the monitoring of less exotic diseases.
"One of the things we try and do with our terrorism preparedness is make sure that we get double value," Dr. Frieden said. "For example, the laboratory here, which is testing for bioterrorism, also greatly upgrades our ability to test rapidly, say, for tuberculosis." Scientists in the lab will also test for emerging viruses like West Nile and SARS, as well as devise timely AIDS tests.
As the focus on public health declined in the years before bioterrorism, budgets for the city's public health labs were among the hardest hit.
In fact, the new lab - known as a Biosafety Level 3 facility - was first envisioned in 1992, when a new strain of tuberculosis appeared in the city, according to a health official. In 1999, those plans, still on the drawing board, were expanded after West Nile emerged. The lab design expanded yet again after the anthrax attacks in October 2001.
The day before the anthrax attacks, in which people were exposed to a white powder sent in the mail, only two people worked in the city's existing Level 3 lab, which was basically one room in the same building as the expanded lab. As the city struggled with the anthrax threat, bringing in dozens of scientists to work in labs scattered around the city, two technicians were exposed to anthrax spores, and critics pointed to improper training as the main cause.
In the new lab, more than 100 technicians and scientists will be able to work at one time if required. On any given day, roughly 20 people will staff the Level 3 section of the lab.
The city paid the entire cost of building the lab. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will help pay for new equipment and staff members, officials said.
In a tour of the new lab yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg moved from one pristine vial-filled room to another as Dr. Sara T. Beatrice, who runs the city's public health labs, talked of diseases with imposing names like tularemia. Nearby, Dr. Edward Lee, a virologist, was busy preparing an agent to test for SARS.
To deal with the actual SARS virus, Dr. Lee would have to work in a secure Level 3 section. Those areas, which hold dangerous pathogens, feature filtered air, sealed doors and negative air pressure, which prevent germs from leaking out. People working in the secure areas must wear protective clothing. The highest security level for labs, Biosafety Level 4, is much less common and reserved for the study of exotic viruses and diseases.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, universities, states and the federal government have greatly expanded their financing for Level 3 facilities, raising concern about ensuring the security of the pathogens being studied. However, scientists have consistently said the odds of a pathogen's leaking or getting into the wrong hands are extremely small.
New York City has one of the most elaborate disease surveillance operations in the country. Every day, the Health Department monitors 60,000 health-related transactions, including 911 calls and hospital and pharmacy visits. That system gives officials a chance to get an early estimate of health problems like a flu outbreak, food contamination or a bioterror attack.
-------- britain
Blair to admit mistakes before Iraq war
Scotsman.com
JAMES KIRKUP
14 Jul 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=804052004
TONY Blair is today expected to be cleared of wilfully misleading the British public in the run-up to war with Iraq, as the Butler report is published into the use of intelligence.
The Prime Minister is none the less expected to admit that mistakes were made in the months before the conflict, and accept the points of criticism which will emerge today.
Despite widespread expectations that Lord Butler will find serious faults in the intelligence process, the Prime Minister, who received his copy of the report yesterday, made it clear he had no regrets and stood by his decision to go to war.
"I feel very much as I did 18 months ago," he said at a press conference in London. "It is very difficult to look at Iraq today, to look at Iraq under Saddam, and say we would be better off, the world would be safer, we would be more secure, if Saddam was still in charge of Iraq."
It has also emerged that intelligence chiefs are pushing for a new code of conduct to be drawn up, which would make impossible any future political interference with their work.
The Scotsman understands that British intelligence officials giving evidence to Lord Butler called for new rules that would clearly define the boundary between ministers and spies, preventing what many saw as the political interference in the intelligence assessment process that led to the September 2002 dossier which was used to justify going to war in Iraq.
US intelligence officials have recommended that British spies be given a way of expressing dissenting views about intelligence reports, in order to avoid politicians stating with certainty things that agents cannot prove beyond doubt.
British inter-service reports are based on consensus, meaning there is no way for dissenting opinions to be expressed to ministers, and American intelligence officials believe that contributed to Mr Blair's sense of certainty about Saddam's arsenal. Had there been a US-style system he would not have written in the dossier's foreword that it was "beyond doubt" that Saddam was continuing to produce illegal arms.
The controversial claim that Iraq had WMD ready to use at 45 minutes' notice might also have been dropped.
"It's amazing that on domestic policy, your Prime Minister can hear all the dissenting views of his Cabinet members before he makes a decision, but when it comes to something as crucial as going to war, there is no way for dissenting voices to be heard in the system," Bob Ayers, a former senior Pentagon intelligence official, told The Scotsman.
The report comes amid renewed tension between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, which has seen allies of the two men whispering and briefing against each other.
"One spark and the whole thing could go up," said one senior Labour MP yesterday.
But despite the tense atmosphere, Mr Blair's allies insist they are relaxed about the Butler report, which they expect to steer clear of personally rebuking the Prime Minister.
Although Jonathan Powell, the Downing Street chief of staff, may be criticised, the document is said to recommend that John Scarlett's appointment as head of MI6 next month should go ahead.
Unlike Lord Hutton's report in January, which could have cost Mr Blair his job, few expect Lord Butler to carry the same weight among jaded voters.
"The public have already made up their minds about Iraq - Butler won't change anyone's view of the war or the PM," said one Blairite MP last night.
Still, the report may have a significant effect on Labour's chances in by-elections in Leicester and Birmingham tomorrow.
Labour is defending two usually safe seats against a strong challenge from the Lib Dems. Labour campaign officials admit that the party is all but certain to lose Leicester South, and may also be defeated in Birmingham Hodge Hill.
Charles Kennedy, the Lib Dem leader, yesterday went to Leicester to demand Mr Blair "apologise for misleading the people and Parliament" over the war. The conflict, he said, had "re-invigorated" al-Qaeda and shown that Mr Blair "lacks crucial political judgment".
"On the day after the Butler Inquiry, people in Leicester and Birmingham should exercise their judgment" on the war by voting against Labour, Mr Kennedy said.
--------
Report Cites U.K. Iraq Intelligence Flaws
By ED JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
Jul 14, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_IRAQ_INTELLIGENCE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair escaped harsh criticism in an official inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq, which faulted him Wednesday for informal decision-making and pushing available intelligence to the limit, but found no deliberate distortions.
Blair said he took full, personal responsibility. But he told parliament, "No one lied, no one made up the intelligence" after the much-awaited report was released.
The commission - headed by Lord Butler, a retired civil service chief - found prewar Iraq had no usable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and that British intelligence was flawed, unreliable and incomplete. The five-member commission interviewed Blair, senior Cabinet figures and key intelligence officials.
But while criticizing Blair's "informal" governing style, it absolved him of misleading the public over Iraq, a charge that has dogged the prime minister since he took Britain into the U.S.-led war.
Protesters - including some who wore masks depicting Blair with a Pinocchio-like long nose - greeted the announcement by gathering outside the news conference where the report was released and carrying signs that featured Blair's face and read: B.liar.
Butler's judgment vindicates the British government of some of the harshest charges against it, a week after a Republican-led U.S. Senate committee excoriated a "broken corporate culture" at the CIA and said there had been a "global intelligence failure" on Iraq. CIA director George Tenet resigned before the report was released.
The verdict takes some pressure off Blair, whose popularity and credibility have been battered by the war and continuing violence in Iraq, and by the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction.
His Labour Party did poorly in recent elections, and there have been rumblings within the party calling for his ouster.
Blair's future has wider symbolic and political ramifications months after a pro-war government was voted out in Spain, and with Bush - Blair's chief ally - facing a re-election campaign.
"We have no reason, found no evidence, to question the prime minister's good faith," Butler told reporters.
He concluded "no single individual" was responsible for intelligence failures that led Blair's government to overstate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "This was a collective operation in which there were the failures we've identified, but no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead," he said.
Before the war, Blair said Saddam "has chemical and biological weapons ... (and) existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons."
Addressing the House of Commons on Wednesday, however, he acknowledged it was likely Saddam "did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy."
But Blair - who appointed the investigating commission five months ago - defended his decision to go to war.
"I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all," he said. "Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam."
Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, an opponent of the war, said the report showed "we committed British troops to action on the basis of false intelligence, overheated analysis and unreliable sources."
Like a U.S. Senate report released last week, the Butler report found human intelligence sources lacking.
One source's reporting was "open to doubt," while a second was "unreliable," the report said. And it found intelligence received from another nation on Iraq's biological agents was "seriously flawed." It didn't name the country.
The report criticized Britain's intelligence agencies for failing to check all their sources and relying on secondhand reports.
It also noted a "strain" between the measured assessments of intelligence officers and the government's desire to find strong evidence of the Iraqi threat - but insisted that did not amount to exaggerating or manipulating intelligence.
Butler said "there was no evidence we came across that the intelligence collectors were asked to collect intelligence to justify a particular course of action."
The report was the latest to exonerate Blair's government. Three previous inquiries also cleared officials of misusing intelligence or lying to build a case for war.
The government was accused in a May 2003 British Broadcasting Corp. report of falsely claiming that Iraq could deploy some chemical and biological weapons on 45 minutes' notice. The BBC has been criticized for the report.
Butler said the 45-minute claim was the weakest piece of intelligence published about Iraq, and should not have been made without explaining that it referred to battlefield munitions rather than missiles.
Butler did mention Blair's "informal" style of government, which relies heavily on the advice of unelected special advisers rather than Cabinet ministers. But it made no recommendations for change and called for no resignations.
The report stressed that Joint Intelligence Committee head John Scarlett should not step down from his new job as chief of the MI6 spy agency. "We have a high regard for his abilities and his record," the report said.
Butler also noted that British intelligence had not suggested there was evidence of cooperation between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
--------
Report Says British Data on Iraq Was Flawed, Not Distorted
July 14, 2004
By ALAN COWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-BRIT.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
LONDON, July 14 - A major British inquiry into banned Iraqi weapons reported today that Saddam Hussein had no significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons capable of being deployed at the time United States and British forces invaded Iraq last year.
The report by Lord Butler, formerly Britain's top civil servant, castigated failures both in British intelligence-gathering and the use the government made of intelligence to justify the war, in effect contradicting Britain's rationale for the invasion. But it did not single out culprits for blame, softening the likely political damage for Prime Minister Tony Blair, the closest ally of President George W. Bush in the Iraq campaign.
"We have no reason, found no evidence, to question the prime minister's good faith," Lord Butler told a news conference.
Unlike in the United States, moreover, where a report last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee passed a withering verdict on the Central Intelligence Agency's operations before the war, the report specifically exonerated one of Britain's top spymasters, John Scarlett, sparing him the same destiny as George Tenet, who recently stepped down as director of the C.I.A.
For all that, the report by Lord Butler showed what it called "seriously flawed" intelligence-gathering that was "open to doubt" and had since been proved wrong.
It said that while Saddam Hussein had been seeking unconventional weapons, Iraq "did not have significant if any stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them."
In a speech to Parliament almost immediately after the report was published, Prime minister Tony Blair said he had to accept that, contrary to his expectations, "as the months have passed it seems increasingly clear that at the time of the invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy."
That represented a dramatic turnaround from Mr. Blair's earlier assertions about an Iraqi arsenal of unconventional weapons - depicted as presenting a current and serious threat in the preparations for the invasion when Britain and the United States sought international support for it. But, in an ebullient and energetic performance before Parliament, Mr. Blair seemed to carry off the about-face with some aplomb.
"I accept full personal responsibility for the way the issue was presented and therefore for any errors made," Mr. Blair told Parliament. At the same time, though, both Mr. Blair and his aides suggested that the specific intelligence about Iraq's supposed "weapons of mass destruction" was not the prime rationale for war, apparently revising their earlier arguments. Rather, Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with United Nations resolutions had been the prime justification, said Jack Straw, the foreign secretary.
That assertion met with some skepticism from the government's critics. "He has changed the grounds of the argument," said Alan Beith, a legislator from the oppostion Liberal Democrats.
Yet the report exonerated the government of the charge that it deceived the public and Parliament. "No single individual is to blame," Lord Butler said. "This was a collective operation in which there were the failures we have identified but there was no deliberate attempt on the part of the government to mislead."
That offered Mr. Blair some relief from the longstanding accusation that he took the country to war under false pretenses.
"No one lied. No one made up the intelligence," Mr. Blair said. "Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficult. The issue of good faith should now be at an end."
The publication of the 160-page report today had been seen as a critical hurdle for Mr. Blair but both its content and his self-confidence in Parliament seemed to suggest that he felt he had survived the challenge without the kind of damage that could have forced his resignation.
The publication of the report did nothing to dent Mr. Blair's avowed conviction that the war was justified.
"I cannot say that getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all," Mr. Blair said.
Moreover, he said that had the United States and Britain backed down on their threat to invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein would have resumed programs to build unconventional weapons, emboldening other dictators to follow suit.
But the report did not dissuade some of his critics from questioning whether the Iraq invasion had damaged Mr. Blair's standing.
"The issue is the prime minister's credibility. The question he must ask himself is: does he have any credibility left?" said Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative opposition, which supported the war.
Even opponents of the war within Mr. Blair's own Labor Party said they still believed the real reason for the invasion had not been acknowledged.
"We went to war under a false premise," said Alice Mahon, an anti-war Labor legislator. "We went to war on George Bush's timetable."
Other critics said the government now seemed to be shifting its grounds, making a retroactive case for regime change in Iraq after arguing at the time that the war was justified because of the purported threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons.
"Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam," Mr. Blair said.
In specific terms, the Butler report said that a contentious British government dossier, published in September 2002, went to the "outer limits" of British intelligence available at the time to support a claim by Mr. Blair that Saddam Hussein had the capability to deploy unlawful weapons within 45 minutes.
At a news conference, Lord Butler said the so-called 45-minute claim should not have been included "in this form" by the Joint Intelligence Committee, an advisory body headed last year by Mr. Scarlett before his appointment to heads the MI6 spy agency.
Moreover, the report said, Mr. Blair's government ignored some of the intelligence community's concerns about the flimsiness and limitations of the information concerning Iraq's unconventional weapons when it published its dossier in September 2002. "The judgments in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available," the report said.
The report also said that postwar checks on "human intelligence sources" inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq had "thrown doubt on a high proportion of those sources and of their reports and hence on the quality of the intelligence assessments." MI6 said in a statement today that it regarded the report as "wise and good."
The Butler report found that there was no evidence that Iraq had cooperated with Al Qaeda, echoing similar findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington last week. In tone, however, the British report was far less scathing about intelligence failures than the American report had been.
The British findings departed from the American report last week in several key areas. Firstly, Lord Butler said Britain had received information from "several different sources" to substantiate reports that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger, an assertion dismissed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In other areas, said Nev Johnson, a British Foreign Office official acting as a spokesman for MI6, the Butler report showed that British intelligence had indeed maintained high-level agents in Baghdad before the fall of Saddam Hussein even though they had no direct access to information on unlawful weapons.
And, unlike the United States, both Lord Butler and Mr. Johnson said, British intelligence agencies routinely avoid relying on exiled Iraqis as a source for information.
Despite the publication of the report - the fourth inquiry into the war - some of his adversaries said none of the investigations had thrown light on the basic political considerations that prompted Mr. Blair to support President Bush so closely in going to war. Even Mr. Blair acknowledged that those questions were not likely to go away.
"This report will not end the arguments about the war," he told Parliament.
-------- china
China Warns U.S. on Policies
Beijing Says Stances on Taiwan, Hong Kong May Hurt Relations
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47742-2004Jul13.html
China lashed out yesterday at the Bush administration's policies on Taiwan and Hong Kong, declaring it is "gravely concerned" that the issues will undermine progress on U.S.-China relations.
The tough statement, made at a rare news conference called by the Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington, came just days after national security adviser Condoleezza Rice toured the region and met with top Chinese officials. During the trip, Rice rebuffed demands from China that the United States curb arms sales to Taiwan, but the official state media then reported China's concerns in more muted language.
Sun Weide, the embassy spokesman, repeatedly declined to say whether Rice's message during the trip had unnerved the Chinese leadership. But he expressed fear that the administration's actions have undermined support for the "one China" policy that has governed U.S.-Sino relations for three decades.
"The important thing is for the United States to honor its commitments," Sun said, calling the situation across the Taiwan Strait "severely tested." Otherwise, he warned, it would harm bilateral relations and affect China's cooperation on such issues as the North Korean nuclear crisis.
The Bush administration entered office deeply suspicious of China, but has hailed the improving cooperation with China as one of its foreign policy achievements. China's decision to intensify its public criticism over Taiwan -- just seven months after President Bush alarmed conservatives by appearing to side with Beijing over Taiwan's moves toward independence -- suggested that the Chinese leadership is publicly testing the administration's commitments in this election year.
A senior administration official who had traveled with Rice played down the spokesman's comments in a conference call with reporters. "The relationship with China, while we are not wearing rose-colored glasses, is productive and stable," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under guidelines set by the White House.
The official said Rice heard even stronger language on Taiwan during her meetings in Beijing. Top leaders warned that they will "not sit idly by" if arms sales to Taiwan went forward, and said that Taiwan is "an obstacle" to U.S.-Chinese relations.
The official said Chinese officials appear to believe that the administration's policies on human rights, democracy, Hong Kong and other issues "added up" to a policy "aimed at regime change in Beijing." To allay those concerns, Rice, in her meetings, "conveyed that we do not want a weak China," he said. "We want a more confident and transforming China that the rest of the region would welcome."
Vice President Cheney, during a trip to Beijing in April, also tried to calm Chinese fears over the nascent independence movement in Taiwan. But Cheney pointedly noted that how Beijing handles Hong Kong -- which was returned to China in 1997 after a century of British colonial rule -- could influence the situation in Taiwan.
Sun yesterday rejected Cheney's statement as "interference from the U.S. government." He said that "you know, I know and everyone knows before 1997 there was no democracy. Democracy has been expanding in Hong Kong over the years" since Beijing took control.
The U.S. official who traveled with Rice said Chinese officials had told Rice during the discussion on Hong Kong that "you, too, suffered under the British colonial yoke." Rice, he said, made clear to the Chinese that although the United States is not challenging the "basic law" that set up Chinese authority over Hong Kong, "we have fundamental concerns about the civil liberties" in the former colony.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to seize it by force if necessary. Taiwan's newly reelected president, Chen Shui-bian, says the island is an independent country.
The U.S. official said Rice noted to the Chinese leaders that Chen muted his rhetoric in his inauguration speech, and that this "represented a chance for dialogue." But although he said the Chinese leaders acknowledged that Chen had modified his language, they are "convinced he is faking it," and "their distrust of Chen is visceral," the official said.
Rice told the Chinese leaders that the U.S. arms sales were largely in response to China's missile buildup across the Taiwan Strait, but the U.S. official said Chinese officials did not directly respond to this point. They noted instead that China's defense budget is small compared with that of the United States.
Sun said that China believes one of the three communiqués that governs U.S.-China bilateral relations, signed in 1982, requires the United States to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan, and "we think it is time for the United States to honor its commitments to the Chinese side."
President Ronald Reagan, who signed the communiqué, at the same time secretly signed a one-page memorandum saying that he believed the communiqué restricted U.S. arms sales only if the balance of power between Taiwan and China was preserved -- and so the United States could help Taiwan if China improved its military capabilities.
On the North Korean impasse, Sun also broke new ground at the news conference. He said China, along with other participants in the North Korean talks, believes the United States must reward North Korea with "corresponding measures" at the moment Pyongyang declares it has frozen its nuclear activities. The United States has insisted it will not provide such incentives until North Korea's full disclosure of its programs has been verified by U.S. intelligence.
-------- iraq
Powerful Car Bomb Rocks Baghdad
Bulgarian Hostage Executed; Fellow Driver Still Under Threat
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 14, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48187-2004Jul13.html
BAGHDAD, July 14 -- On Wednesday, a powerful car bomb apparently exploded by a suicide attacker in a search line outside of Baghdad's convention center, an area in the heart of the city frequented by Americans and foreigners. A police official at the scene said only that there were Iraqi civilian and Iraqi National Guard casualties, but would not specify how many. July 14 is a national holiday commemorating the 1958 revolution that overturned the monarchy.
Insurgents killed a Bulgarian hostage in Iraq and vowed to kill a second Bulgarian within 24 hours, al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday.
The Arab satellite station said it had decided not to broadcast a videotape of the killing because it was too gruesome. But it showed footage of one of the Bulgarians kneeling before three masked men and wearing a blindfold and orange jumpsuit, a uniform typical of U.S. jails and associated around the world with images of Muslims detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Bulgaria, which has contributed 470 troops to U.S.-led forces in Iraq, confirmed that one of the two truck drivers had been killed. "One of the Bulgarians has been executed," said Bulgarian government spokesman Dimitar Tsonev.
Bulgaria, which has said it will keep its troops in Iraq as long as they are needed, had urged the militants to release Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivailo Kepov, 32, who disappeared June 27. There was no word on which man had been killed.
The Monotheism and Jihad Group, which had asserted responsibility for the beheading of an American and a South Korean in Iraq, threatened Thursday to kill the Bulgarians within 24 hours unless U.S.-led forces freed all Iraqi detainees. The U.S. military has branded the group's leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab Zarqawi, its number one target in Iraq, saying he is behind much of the violence racking the country.
In a new hostage crisis, al-Jazeera said militants had set a 72-hour deadline to kill an Egyptian if the Saudi company he worked for did not pull out of Iraq.
On Wednesday, Philippine officials said they were coordinating to withdraw troops from Iraq following demands for a pullout from militants holding a Filipino hostage.
Confusion reigned over whether the Philippines intended to bring its troops home a month ahead of their scheduled Aug. 20 departure to save Angelo de la Cruz, 46, a truck driver threatened with death.
A Philippine Foreign Ministry statement said the number of troops in Iraq had dropped to 43 from 51, but did not say when the cut was made. A military spokesman said that no order to pull out had been received but that two transport planes were being prepared just in case.
The Reuters news agency contributed to this report.
-------
Calm in Baghdad Is Shattered as Car Bomb Kills at Least 10
July 14, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 14 - A suicide car bomber blew himself up this morning at the gates of the American-fortified Green Zone, killing at least 10 people, injuring dozens more and shattering a two-week lull in terrorism violence.
The blast occurred around 9 a.m. and smeared body parts and torn clothes across the thick concrete walls of the American compound.
It was the deadliest single attack since Iraq regained sovereignty just over two weeks ago and Iraqi officials thought it could be payback for their recent crackdown.
"We think this is a response to recent arrests in the last couple of days," said Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. This week, newly-minted Iraqi security forces have fanned out across the country, sweeping up hundreds of suspected terrorist and criminals.
"This was naked aggression against Iraqi innocents," Mr. Allawi said as he stepped through the wreckage.
In another attack, the governor of Mosul and two of his bodyguards were killed today when their convoy was ambushed, according to American officials..
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official who declined to be identified told the Reuters news agency that the governor was "on his way to Baghdad with a security escort of four cars when the attackers in another car pulled up beside his vehicle and threw a grenade, and then shot at his car." It was not clear who was the target of the Baghdad car bomb, which exploded as several cars were waiting in line to enter the Green Zone. Both American and Iraqi soldiers guard the area, where the Iraqi interim government and new United States Embassy are located. But like most other attacks, Iraqi soldiers bore the brunt of the casualties today, along with several Iraqi civilians. No Americans were killed but one American soldier standing by a checkpoint was injured.
In May, a similar attack killed the President of the Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, as his car waited at another entrance into the Green Zone.
Today is a holiday in Iraq, marking the end of the monarchy in 1958, and American commanders said they had tightened security at all checkpoints in anticipation of a major attack.
"I wouldn't call this a surprise," United States Army Col. Mike Murray said. "I get paid to be a pessimist. I'd be surprised if this is the last one."
Those in a crowd that had gathered to gape at the charred cars and whirling ambulances were dismayed. The past two weeks have been remarkably quiet and each day that ended without major bloodshed spawned more hope.
But much of that was dashed this morning with a blast big enough to make windows across the city quiver.
"Why do they start this again?" asked a grocer, Hadi Odai.
At nearby Yarmuk hospital, the bomb plunged the emergency room back into chaos. Nurses rushed bloodied bodies in and out of the wards. Men with bad burns and swollen faces writhed bed. Relatives shrieked for lost loved ones.
"Sayufi! Sayufi!" wailed Fouzia Kadhim, 75, calling out for a grandson she could not find. "You aren't telling me the truth!" she screamed to the workers. "He's dead!"
Her grandson turned out to be only lightly wounded. But in a nearby bed the news was not so good.
Salaam Bakr, 60, lay quietly with no shirt and bloody trousers. He and his wife had been walking outside the Green Zone when the bomb ripped open 10 yards away. His wife was knocked to the pavement, he said. When he called out her name, she said nothing.
"I was crying: `My wife! My wife!' " Mr. Bakr said.
But in all the commotion, the police rushed him away.
A hospital worker told a reporter, but not Mr. Bakr, that his wife was dead. This morning, the Bakrs traveled from Karbala, an hour to the south, to see if Mrs. Bakr could get back her teaching job. A former Baath Party member, she had been fired last year as part of the purge against Baathists. But under new rules, she was allowed to reapply.
The couple did not know today was a government holiday and all offices were closed.
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Philippines begins to withdraw troops
washtimes
July 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040713-114600-1191r.htm
MANILA - The Philippines said today it is withdrawing its small peacekeeping contingent from Iraq early to meet the demand of kidnappers threatening to kill a captive Filipino truck driver.
The announcement, which said the pullout was beginning immediately, was a dramatic turnaround by one of Washington's most fervent backers in the global war on terrorism.
The move by the staunch Southeast Asian ally coincided with the announced beheading yesterday of a Bulgarian hostage by an Iraqi insurgent group led by Osama bin Laden's ally Abu Musab Zarqawi.
For the United States, the Philippine decision marked the failure of a scramble by U.S. officials to persuade Manila not to withdraw its forces from Iraq to meet the demands of a terrorist organization.
This spring, Spain also pulled out its troops after terrorist rail bombings brought down the conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
The Bush administration expressed unhappiness at the Philippine government's announcement that it would withdraw its troops from Iraq "as soon as possible" in the face of demands of an Islamist terrorist group threatening to kill a Filipino truck driver seized last week.
Bulgarian officials confirmed late yesterday that one of the two truck drivers seized by Zarqawi's Unity and Holy War movement near Mosul five days ago had been killed.
A tape of the beheading had been given to the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network. The terrorists said they would kill the second Bulgarian hostage within 24 hours if their demand for the release of imprisoned comrades was not met.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Solomon Passy condemned the killing, but said it was "unthinkable" that his country, which has about 480 troops in the U.S.-led security mission, would give in to the kidnappers' demands.
In the Al Jazeera broadcast, three men dressed in black with their faces covered by masks stood over one of the Bulgarian hostages, identified by reporters as Georgi Lazov, 30. The video reportedly showed Mr. Lazov being beheaded, but the network did not air the most graphic footage.
Zarqawi's group earlier claimed responsibility for the beheadings of American businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il.
Mr. Lazov and fellow Bulgarian Ivaylo Kepov were kidnapped while traveling to Mosul in northern Iraq.
The Philippines earlier vowed it would not yield to pressure to move up the withdrawal, which had been scheduled for Aug. 20, when the force's mandate ends.
U.S. officials had expressed displeasure that Manila was even considering caving in to the kidnappers' demand, a position echoed by Australia and Iraq's new interim government.
"The Foreign Affairs Ministry is coordinating the pullout of the humanitarian contingent with the Ministry of National Defense," a Philippine government statement said. "As of today, our head count is down from 51 to 43."
A deadline set by the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin Al-Waleed Corps for the Philippines to meet the group's demands had expired early yesterday, but negotiations had continued in Iraq through intermediaries. The insurgents had told President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that Angelo dela Cruz, a poor father of eight, already had been moved to the place he would be killed if she didn't change her mind.
The crisis put Mrs. Arroyo squarely between domestic concerns and her previously strong commitment to the United States, the Philippines' former colonial power.
The timing was particularly bad, with political wounds still fresh from a bitter election. The opposition claims it won and has warned of mass protests. But the government has said that the threat of destabilization plots had eased after Mrs. Arroyo's inauguration for a new six-year term on June 30.
Bush administration officials said they were taken by surprise by the statement from a senior Philippine diplomat Monday night that Manila's 51-soldier contingent would be brought home from Iraq "as soon as possible."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "We certainly noted the remarks and are disappointed to see remarks like this at a time when Iraq is fighting for stability and peace," Mr. Boucher said.
"Our policy is not to negotiate or provide benefits to terrorists," he added. "We think that can send the wrong signal."
•David Sands contributed to this article from Washington.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli missiles rain down on Gaza
Palestinian metal workshops have been routinely targeted
Wednesday 14 July 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6148903F-597D-42E2-87F4-6552C5C58F35.htm
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at several metal workshops in Gaza City claiming they were used to manufacture bombs. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza's Zeitoun neighbourhood early on Wednesday.
Palestinian witnesses said three missiles hit the workshops in the nighttime strike.
The last time Israeli helicopters fired on Gaza, Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated by firing home-made missiles on the Israeli town of Sderot, east of Gaza.
Home-made rockets
Late on Tuesday, Palestinian fighters responded to the Israeli assassination of local leader Numan Tahaina by firing Quds-1 rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot, Aljazeera reported.
An Aljazeera correspondent reported that Numan Tahaina, 38, was on Israel's most-wanted list since the first Palestinian intifadha against Israeli occupation in 1987.
Israeli officials admitted they killed Tahaina after firing on his car which refused to stop at an impromptu checkpoint.
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Israel Expands Program to Attract Jews from North America
July 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/international/middleeast/14CND-MIDE.html
LOD, Israel, July 14 - With immigration to Israel down sharply in recent years, a charter flight delivered nearly 400 new arrivals from the United States and Canada today as part of an expanding program that has been attracting middle-class Jews from North America.
In a ceremony that filled a massive hanger at Ben Gurion International Airport, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and two of his cabinet ministers greeted the immigrants moments after they stepped from an El Al jumbo jet from Kennedy International Airport in New York.
"We have to bring hundreds of thousands of Jews from America to Israel," Mr. Sharon said. "We need them here. It is important for you, it is important for us."
The immigrants are among 1,500 from the United States and Canada - almost a third of them from New York State - who will be arriving this summer under the sponsorship of a private group, Nefesh B'Nefesh, or "soul to soul."
North American Jews, most of them comfortably middle-class at home, have traditionally migrated to Israel in small numbers, averaging about 3,000 to 5,000 annually for the past quarter-century, according to Israeli government figures.
But Nefesh B'Nefesh is seeking to substantially raise these figures. In its first attempt, the group brought in just over 500 immigrants in the summer of 2002. More than 1,000 came last year, despite the ongoing Mideast violence and an Israel economy just beginning to slowly recover from a recession.
Dr. Jonathan Paley, an orthodontist from Cedarhurst on Long Island, landed with his wife Sarah and their five children, ages 11 years to 4 months.
Dr. Paley, 33, will quickly settle his family in Jerusalem and then commute to New York for two weeks out of every month. He will keep working at his old practice until he can re-establish himself in Israel.
"It's not easy, but this is something very important to all of us," Dr. Paley said. "I first came to Israel when I was 11, and I've been dreaming about this ever since."
The immigrants said the continuing violence was not a deterrent to immigrating - in fact, in some cases, it motivated them to show solidarity with Israel during a time of turmoil. For young men, mandatory military service awaits them.
"At some point, I expect to serve in the army, which I'll do gladly," said Jason Silberman, 25, who had been living in Queens and working at a Manhattan law firm.
While the new arrivals cited personal reasons for coming, the immigration issue is also linked to the demographic battle between Israelis and Palestinians.
In the combined areas of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Jews currently outnumber Arabs by about 5.4 million to 4.9 million, according to figures from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
But the Arab birthrate is significantly higher and, under the current trends, Arabs will outnumber Jews within the next 10 to 20 years, according to demographers.
Israel's Jewish population rose with a wave of immigration from the Soviet Union that began in 1990. A year earlier, Israel had just 24,000 immigrants. In 1990, a record 200,000 arrived , the vast majority from the collapsing Soviet Union.
Immigration has fallen steadily since then because many Jews in economically distress