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NUCLEAR
Until all nuclear nations disarm, others will lust after same power
Plutonium waste missing from Hanford
South Africa seizes uranium enrichment materials
Meacher rails at 'biased' cancer report
Ontario names adviser to mull nuclear unit restarts
Depleted uranium's deadly poison Making of a health disaster in Iraq
Memory of late Nuha al-Radi lives on through her art
India, Pakistan push ahead with CBMs despite Kashmir
What India, Pakistan Won't Talk About
Iran confirms new nuclear offer
Iran Wants Dialogue to Resolve Nuclear Standoff
Iran faces 'nuclear ultimatum'
Iran Negotiates Deal to Curtail Nuclear Work
Sharon: World Needs to Stop Iran Nukes
North Korea Nuclear Plant Suspended Again - Report
S Korea admits failure to report uranium test
S. Korean Official Attempts to Ease Nuclear Concerns
Russia Wakes Up to a Nuclear Threat
U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch
State sues over Yucca rail line
Group Says Terror Attack on Indian Point Would Be Apocalyptic
MILITARY
A Taboo Issue in Afghan Campaign
U.S. Report Finds Sudan Promoted Killings
French connection armed Saddam
Army to Rebid Part of Iraq Contract
Halliburton Weighs Options as Iraq Work Changes
Bogotá Says Army Killed Union Chiefs
7 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq
U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq
U.S. Planes Hit Rebel Stronghold in Falluja; 6 Reported Killed
Battles in Baghdad Slum Leave 40 Iraqis and a G.I. Dead
Military deaths pass 1,000
Israeli Officials Free Scores of Palestinians
Australian official clouds support for U.S.
Forget terrorism, Chechnya is Putin's war
Russia prepared for pre-emptive strikes on 'terror bases' worldwide
AIPAC Says U.S.-Israel Ties Are Under Attack
U.S. Toll in Iraq Crosses 1,000
Milosevic Loses Director Role in His Own Courtroom Drama
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Intelligence Retooling on Agenda as Congress Returns
Bipartisan Bill Offered on 9/11 Panel's Proposals
Final Tally Awaits the Police and Protesters
POLITICS
$2.3 Trillion in New Debt Expected by 2014
Bush Backs Budget Authority for New Intelligence Post
Inquiry Proposes Penalties for Hiding Medicare Data
Truth and its neo-consequences
Spy-scandal lobby blitz
Senator Accuses Bush of Cover-Up
At Site Bush Used to Make Case for Iraq War, Kerry Lists Costs
OTHER
Hurricane spilled 41 million gallons of acidic waste in Tampa
Study Finds Lack of Data on Health Effects of 9/11 Dust
ACTIVISTS
Filmmakers Examining the 'What Ifs' of Nuclear Power
Protesters may try to get last word, in court
Thousands rally behind Putin
What Democracy Looks Like Do protests matter?
-------- NUCLEAR
Until all nuclear nations disarm, others will lust after same power
Seattle Times
8 Sept 20004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002029162_plate08.html
LOS ANGELES - Fundamentally, as they tend to say in particle physics, the big brouhaha over the secret South Korean uranium enrichment experiment is an absurdity.
After all, the amount of fissionable material produced at the national laboratory - as currently reported - was trivial: It was about as big-time weapons-grade in the sense of a paper airplane requesting 747 landing rights at Kimpo Airport. The whole flap is curious in the extreme.
Seoul voluntarily reported the unauthorized experiment to international authorities, and that should be the end of it. But all sorts of unhelpful parties in the region may want to use the errant experiment for their own purposes. North Koreans may say that the clandestine South Korean program puts both Koreas in a plane of moral equivalency. It doesn't: South Korea is a far more transparent society, and thus the North Korean nuclear program is far more worrisome.
Some Japanese circles may want to point to the Seoul admission as further evidence that the Land of the Rising Sun needs to get cracking and develop its own nuclear-weapons program. That would be the worst development imaginable for peace and security.
And China, rightly pushing its Six-Party Talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, may point to the revelation as reason for more urgent diplomacy; but nothing substantive will happen until after the U.S. elections.
How did the flap start? At the end of the day, the origins of the illicit experiment will probably be traceable to South Korean nuclear scientists who did a bit of lab toying-around on their own. Such amoral conduct would easily track with that of other scientists elsewhere who tend to take matters into their own hands and act as if they are above the law. Basically, brilliant scientists tend to believe they are really not like you and me, that a special set of rules governs them, and that they can do as they please. It's called the God complex. But this above-the-law attitude creates problems for national governments and new international tensions that need to be smoothed away.
The revelation also reminds us that any state that has the steel will to want a nuclear capability (whether subterranean or otherwise) will proceed apace, no matter what anyone else says. South Korea appears not to be in that category, but then there is the question of Iran and Pakistan. It is U.S. policy - as well as the policy of the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - to seek to stymie the increase in the number of nuclear powers, on the entirely plausible ground that fewer is better. But, then again, as India might put it, it is easy to take this line when one already possesses such weapons than when one is on the outside looking in at the comfy nuclear club luxuriating in its high moral line.
The ideal number of nuclear powers would be zero, of course. But until and unless the United States - along with China, Russia, France and Great Britain - agrees to stuff the nuclear genie back in the bottle by advancing nuclear disarmament by leadership example, others will continually be tempted to lust after nuclear potency, too.
Even so, the danger the world faces is not so much from direct nuclear exchange between nuclear states that are in control of their militaries as well as their mental facilities. Rather, as famed theoretical physicist Norman Dombey puts it in the current London Review of Books, "It follows that the international community should focus on the weak link in the non-proliferation regime: that's to say, states which possess nuclear weapons and are not fully in control of their territory or of their citizens." Seen from this analytical perspective, therefore, nothing on the Korean peninsula - north or south - is anything as worrisome as Pakistan, against which since 9/11 the U.S. has had to snuggle up ally-style.
The U.S. - the only nation-state to have used such weapons in combat - thus is somewhat responsible for developments there, and it is also morally culpable for relying on nuclear weapons as a core part of its military arsenal. "We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago," wrote Iccho Itoh, mayor of Nagasaki, in the Nagasaki Peace Declaration for the 59th anniversary of the atomic destruction of his city. "So long as the world's leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed."
Nagasaki's mayor is right. This is the bottom line on nuclear proliferation. We need a world free from nuclear weapons; and so we need a re-moralized United States to take the lead and bequeath planet Earth a fate free of nuclear holocaust. Some kind of future nuclear tragedy would seem probable in the absence of transcendent American renunciation.
UCLA professor Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network (www.asiamedia.ucla.edu). His column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.
-------- accidents and safety
Plutonium waste missing from Hanford
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2004/09/09/news/the_west/thuwst00.txt
Equivalent of 50 nuclear weapons could be made from missing materials
SPOKANE, Wash. - Vast quantities of radioactive waste have been lost across the sprawling Hanford nuclear reservation since the 1940s, and the U.S. Department of Energy is ignoring the problem, a watchdog group contended Wednesday.
The waste contains enough plutonium to make dozens of nuclear weapons, according to Heart of America Northwest, which is pushing an initiative to ban additional shipments of radioactive wastes to the south-central Washington reservation.
"Enough plutonium to make more than 50 nuclear weapons appears to have been lost and abandoned by U.S. DOE in Hanford's soil, with no intention of cleaning up the spreading contamination,'' said the report authored by Gerald Pollett, director of Heart of America Northwest.
Colleen French, a DOE spokeswoman in Richland, disputed the allegations. She said the Energy Department is well aware of the volume of nuclear waste at Hanford and is making plans to deal with all of it.
It has been widely reported in the past that some of the plutonium made at Hanford during its weapons production days cannot be accounted for. The plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons, is believed to be inside pipes at the site's many processing plants, and mixed among the radioactive wastes, French said.
"We know we have plutonium-contaminated wastes,'' French said. "That's why we are cleaning up.''
Heart of America Northwest, based in Seattle, is pushing Initiative 297 on Washington's November ballot. The measure would require cleanup of existing contamination at Hanford before more waste from other nuclear weapons plants could be brought to the 560-square-mile site near Richland.
Hanford, which contains the nation's largest volume of radioactive wastes, was created by the Manhattan Project in the 1940s.
Heart of America Northwest contends that under DOE plans, 18 times more transuranic waste would be abandoned on the site than cleaned up. The new report said the Energy Department plans to abandon 152,800 cubic meters of plutonium and transuranic wastes, leaving contamination that could spread to the Columbia River.
Transuranic wastes are contaminated with plutonium and remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years.
But French said Heart of America Northwest is focusing only on DOE's plan to clean up all the wastes produced since 1970, as required by Congress.
The plan to clean up wastes generated before 1970 falls under a different federal law, and the environmental impact statement for that work is being developed now, French said. That plan should be completed by 2008.
Heart of America Northwest also contended the amount of plutonium-contaminated wastes at Hanford would nearly fill the nation's only operating repository for such wastes in New Mexico. French said the Energy Department believes that repository can handle wastes from Hanford and many other contaminated weapons production sites.
On the Net: www.heartofamericanorthwest.org
-------- africa
South Africa seizes uranium enrichment materials
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
By Manoah Esipisu,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-08/s_26947.asp
JOHANNESBURG - South Africa seized 11 shipping containers of uranium enrichment materials in a raid on a firm run by a man it has charged under laws forbidding nuclear proliferation, a government agency said on Tuesday.
The South African Council for the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction said the containers were now stored at a safe location and had been sealed by both South African police and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the two agencies would maintain control.
"IAEA inspectors will visit South Africa on a regular basis to inspect nuclear material and related equipment," the council said in a statement.
It was the first detailed description of the raid last week by police and other investigators on a small engineering firm that led to charges against 53-year-old Johan Andries Muller Meyer for manufacturing nuclear-related material and exporting goods that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.
"At the premises of Tradefin Engineering, 11 shipping containers were found containing components of a centrifuge uranium enrichment plant as well as related documentation," the council said. "Investigations are still ongoing."
Meyer was remanded in custody until Wednesday when his bail hearing will be heard.
Last week the United States embassy in Pretoria issued a statement linking him to Libya's nuclear program, which the north African country disclosed in December 2003 before agreeing earlier this year to a disarmament process.
Libya began its quest for nuclear arms in 1980 and decided in 1997 to seek centrifuge equipment via the atomic black market, established in the 1980s by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.
Meyer was accused of offences between 2000 and 2001 relating to the import and export of a flow-forming lathe without necessary permits. He was also charged with possessing and producing certain components of a centrifuge enrichment plant without authorization from the minerals and energy minister.
In court papers, Meyer was also accused of "unlawfully and wilfully possessing and manufacturing nuclear-related equipment and material" between 2002 and 2004.
"These items do not constitute a weapons of mass destruction, but they are essential components in the process to enrich uranium," the council said. Meyer denies the charges, which could result in anything from a fine to a 15-year jail sentence.
Government officials have said they knew of no link between the inquiry and al Qaeda or international terrorism.
South Africa voluntarily dismantled its nuclear arms before apartheid ended in 1994 - the only nuclear-armed state to do so - and has been eager to show support for international efforts to limit nuclear know-how with a series of new laws since 1993.
Khan's network spanned the globe and included suppliers, often unwitting, from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
U.N. atomic weapons experts say more than 20 countries were involved, though it is trying to grasp the full extent of what IAEA calls a global supermarket for countries interesting in acquiring nuclear weapons.
-------- britain
Meacher rails at 'biased' cancer report
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday September 8, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1299369,00.html
The former Labour environment minister Michael Meacher yesterday accused a government committee he set up to assess the health effects of low-level radiation of suppressing a report on the possible cause of childhood leukaemia.
He called the alleged suppression "criminally irresponsible", saying he had formed the committee so as to reflect all opinion on the contentious issue and so that a report could be published putting all the facts before the public.
Instead the final report gave a one-sided establishment opinion, he said, which did not "accommodate a full and fair representation of all views".
Mr Meacher was speaking at the launch of a minority report of the expert committee which says that radiation doses to children across Europe who developed leukaemia could have been up to 100 times larger than suggested by official estimates.
The report says that inhaled, man-made, radioactive particles such as Strontium 90 or plutonium from Chernobyl or Sellafield can lodge in the body or foetus and bombard and damage cells. This, particularly in the unborn, would be enough for children to develop leukaemia or other cancers.
The National Radiological Protection Board has always measured a tiny dose received by an individual as if it affected the entire body evenly - so the result was a dilution that appeared to do little harm. The possibility that the dose would lodge near a bone or in the brain and emit radiation inflicting localised damage leading to cancer had not been not accepted.
Mr Meacher said: "It is very worrying, for it is hard to conjecture that if the [child] leukaemia peak in Europe was real, anything other than radiation from Chernobyl could have caused it."
The main report of the expert committee is believed to say that the risks from radiation for leukaemia could be up to 10 times the current estimate. But it failed to mention the theories of the committee members Richard Bramhall and Chris Busby, who examined cancer clusters and concluded that radiation from Sellafield and other nuclear plants could be responsible.
Even before the row over the report one nuclear scientist, Marion Hill, who spent 30 years in radiological protection and was part of the committee's secretariat, had resigned alleging establishment bias and exclusion from making reports. She said the regulatory bodies were unable to offer impartial advice to the government on radiation dangers and should be disbanded.
Dr Busby said dissenters had not been allowed to defend their views. "The point is that if we are right then the issue of leukaemia in children caused by radiation is as important as... lead in water pipes and petrol. This should be examined especially if we are about to consider whether a new generation of nuclear power stations is to be built."
Mr Meacher said: "The idea was to examine all the questions, and where there was disagreement to recommend further research. It is criminally irresponsible not to allow all the evidence to come out so there can be a properly organised, informed public debate."
Dudley Goodhead, the committee's chairman, said he was unable to discuss the issue yesterday but would do so at a later date.
-------- canada
Ontario names adviser to mull nuclear unit restarts
Wed Sep 8, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6185311
TORONTO, Sept 8 - Electricity-thirsty Ontario has appointed an investment industry adviser to examine the multimillion-dollar return to service of two nuclear units on the shore of Lake Huron, the government said on Wednesday.
The government of Ontario, facing tight power supplies, said it hired David Santangeli, managing director of Energy Fundamentals Group, which specializes in energy infrastructure, to look at restarting Bruce A units 1 and 2.
The reactors were built in the 1970s and have not operated in nearly five years because they need costly upgrades.
They could add 1,540 megawatts of badly needed power to the grid in the province of 12 million people, Canada's biggest power market.
Santangeli is charged with negotiating the restart with the Bruce Power partnership, which operates the complex in a lease agreement with Ontario.
There are 8 nuclear reactors at the facility. All four Bruce B units are operating and Bruce A units 3 and 4 were returned to service late last year.
Bruce Power is conducting its own feasibility study to determine if the refurbishment, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, makes economic sense.
The decision depends, in part, on changes the Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty makes to energy sector regulations. The electricity sector had suffered through years of capricious regulation policies, which kept private-sector players from investing in new generation.
"The potential restart of Units 1 and 2 is a major decision for Bruce Power and our partners. As such, we're pleased the government has acknowledged our need to discuss this further and look forward to working with Mr. Santangeli," Bruce Power chief executive Duncan Hawthorne said in a statement.
Bruce Power's partners are Cameco Corp. (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) with 31.6 percent, TransCanada Corp. (TRP.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) with 31.6 percent, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System's BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust with 31.6 percent, the Power Workers' Union with 4 percent, and Society of Energy Professionals with 1.2 percent.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted uranium's deadly poison Making of a health disaster in Iraq
Ron Chepesiuk
Wed. September 08, 2004
Bangladesh Daily Star
http://www.thedailystar.net/2004/09/08/d409081502118.htm
Members of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York National Guard remember the place in Iraq where they were stationed as a hellhole. "The place was filthy; most of the windows were broken; dirt, grease and bird droppings were everywhere," Sergeant Agustin Matos, a member of the Guard Unit, later recalled. "I wouldn't house a city prisoner in that place."
And there were frequent sandstorms. The dust would blow right into area where Matos and his fellow company members were based. Sergeant Hector Vega, a retired postal worker from the Bronx, who had served in the National Guard for 27 years, recalled that the smoke 'was so thick, you could see it.'
Both Matos and Vega, survived the Iraq War and returned to the US But all has not been well since then. They and other members of their company now suffer from a variety of illnesses: nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, fatigue, joint pain and excessive urination, for starters.
The soldiers repeatedly asked the army to test them, but the army refused. So the soldiers went public and contacted the New York Daily News with their story. Early this year, the newspaper asked Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former army doctor and medical expert, to conduct laboratory tests on the soldiers. The New York Daily News reported Durakovic's conclusion: "four soldiers 'almost certainly' inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium."
The newspaper's investigation caught the attention of Senator Hilary Clinton (D-New York), who chastised the US Defence Depart-ment for not screening soldiers returning from duty in Iraq, "We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses," Senator Clinton said. "We have to have before and after testing progra-mmes for the soldiers." Under fire, the Pentagon reversed its decision and began to test some of the soldiers from the 42nd who had returned to the US.
But the testing may come too late not just for the soldiers of the 42nd but for other military personnel as well, both from the U.S. and other countries, who have served in wars where depleted uranium has been used indiscriminately.
Depleted Uranium (DU) refers to the uranium that's left after enriched uranium is separated from natural uranium so fuel can be produced for nuclear reactors. DU is an extremely dense metal that's used in armour penetrating shells and to strengthen tank armour. Military contractors like to use DU because it's so cheap. Indeed, governments will often make it available for free.
Those who defend the use of DU claim that most of the element's radioactive qualities have been removed before use. A growing number of critics charge, however, that mounting evidence suggests DU can pose serious health risks. CADU (The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium) reports that fifteen countries have used DU as part of their military arsenal. In addition to the US they include the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Bahrain, Thailand, Iraq, Pakistan, Taiwan, Kuwait and Israel. The US has had DU ammunition since the 1950s, but it's believed that Uncle Sam didn't use it until the Gulf War. DU has since been used in Bosnia in 1975, in the Balkan War of 1999 and, in Iraq last year.
This past July (2004), RAI, Italy's national television station, reported that 27-year old Luca Sepe, an Italian veteran of the Balkan War, was the "27th Italian victim" of the DU used in bombings over the Balkans. It's estimated another 267 Balkan veterans from Italy are currently sick with cancer. It hasn't been proven yet that the Italian soldiers died for exposure to DU, but, as is the case with the governments of the US and other countries using DU, the Italian government has stonewalled any investigation of the illnesses and death.
The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) noted in a report about what it label's as today's "Balkan Syn-drome," that the " Italian Minister of Defence, refuses to give compensation to their families (the Italian soldiers), let alone to admit that depleted uranium has played a role in these cases. Hardly any information is given to soldiers currently on missions abroad about the risks they are facing, and whoever complains is treated as a traitor and marginalised...."
In the 1991 Gulf War, DU was mainly used against Iraqi forces in the desert. In the Iraq War, the Pentagon used its radioactive arsenal in Iraq's suburban areas. According to Pentagon and United Nations statistics, the US used between 1,100 and 2,200 tons of shells containing DU during the Iraq War in March and April, 2003.
Today in Iraq, parts of spent DU shells and DU-contaminated debris have been found strewn on the streets of urban areas. Contaminated sites have been marked for cleanup, but at this late date, many of the contaminated sites have yet to be cleaned up. This has created a potential health hazard for many Iraqis.
The ICBUW reports that " to minimise the risk of exposure, foreign troops have been instructed to stay away from potentially contaminated areas as much as possible, or, at least, to wear respiratory protection and gloves when it is necessary to enter such sites.'
In May 2003, Scott Peterson, an Iraq-based staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, took Geiger counter readings at several sites in Baghdad. Peterson found that the readings in some places registered more than a 1000 times the normal radiation levels. Three months later, the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper reported elevated radiation levels at six sites located between Basra and Baghdad.
Soon after the Iraq War, the World Health Organisation and other leading scientific organisations began to warn that children who come into contact with DU-contaminated shells faced health risks. Their warnings were based on expert analysis. "Children playing with soil may be identified as the critical population group, with inhalation and/or ingestion of contaminated soil as the critical pathway," the scholarly peer-reviewed Journal of Environmental Radioactivity reported in February 2003.
Since the Gulf War, the US military has denied that DU poses any health risks and has even tried to suppress the growing evidence that DU is a toxic killer that should be banned. As Ed Ericson, wrote in the May-June 2003 issue of E: The Environmental Magazine, the Pentagon, "has cashiered or attempted to discredit its own experts, ignored their advice, impeached scientific research into DU's health effects and assembled a disinformation campaign to confuse the issue."
The stonewalling began after the 1991 Gulf War, in which the US and British military forces fired about 350 tons of DSU at Iraqi tanks and other targets. After the war, Iraqi doctors began reporting shrapnel increases in cancer and birth defects in southern Iraq. The suspicion has been that DU may have caused the problems, but the Pentagon has claimed that the charge is unsubstantiated. During Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi medical researchers wanted to present their findings at international conferences but were prevented by the economic embargo of Iraq.
The US military insists that studies from the Gulf War have shown no long term problems from DU, It claims that its studies show that only soldiers who had shrapnel wounds from DU or who were inside tanks shot by DU shells and accidentally breathed radioactive dust were at risk. This would exclude any of the soldiers from the 42nd who have gotten sick after their Iraq tour.
But independent organisations say studies show DU can pose a health risk. In April, 2003, the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific organisation, said that some soldiers could suffer from "kidney damage and an increased risk of lung cancer," depending on level of exposure.
The problem is no real studies of DU's long-term effects have been done. Scientists, in effect, have just begun to measure how much uranium is actually released when uranium-tipped ammunition hits its targets. Without these studies, no way can it be determined how much uranium dust soldiers are exposed to.
Until these studies are done and the findings released, it's outrageous that the US and Britain have not moved to de-contaminate the DU affected areas in Iraq and to implement a moratorium on the military use of DU. So far, we've seen a few modest steps in the right direction. In April 2003, Congre-ssman Jim McDermott (D-Washing-ton) introduced the Depleted Uranium (DU) Munitions Study Act of 2003 to the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill calls for studies of DU's health effects, requires the Environmental Protection Agency to identify sites in the US where DU munitions have been used in test firing and recommends study of the water/vegeta-tion/soil at these sites for possible DU contamination. The bill also requires the cleanup of contaminated sites.
In May of this year, another bill cited as the Depleted Uranium Screening and Testing Act of 2004 was introduced in the House. It would require the Pentagon to identify those members of the US armed forces who have been exposed during military service to DU and to test their health.
Meanwhile, the US General Accounting Office has undertaken a study of the health of DU exposure in veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, as well as the policies of the Department of Defence and the Department of Veteran Affairs in identifying and medically treating veterans exposed to DU.
Ironically, Germany, one of the strongest critics of the Iraq War, is sending a team of environmental experts to Iraq under the auspices of the UN. The team will evaluate the policies of Saddam Hussein, the UN embargo and the impact of the two invasions on Iraq's natural resources. The US and British governments have given their blessing to the mission. "That is significant because they will also face some critical questions, such as the impact of using depleted uranium munitions." Juergen Trittin, Germany's environmental minister, told the press.
These developments, however, fall far short of what needs to be done to deal with the DU issue. Meanwhile, soldiers and civilians will continue to die from the element's radioactive poison in the wars of the 21st century. This raises a pertinent question: Does this policy constitute a war crime?
Ron Chepesiuk, a South Carolina based journalist, is a Visiting Professor of Journalism at Chittagong University and a Research Associate with National Defence College.
--------
Memory of late Nuha al-Radi lives on through her art
Iraqi artist's work shown throughout Arab world, West, including the British Museum
By Julie Flint
The Daily Star
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=8146
BEIRUT: "I must say that as occupiers the U.S. are a most inefficient lot," the Iraqi artist and diarist Nuha al-Radi wrote early last year. "Since we are to learn the American way of life, and suing is a 100 percent of it, we should start suing the U.S. and the coalition for making war under false pretences ... I don't think the Americans have a clue about this country or what to do with it."
More recently, Nuha also talked, semi-seriously, of suing for the leukaemia with which she was diagnosed at year-end. She thought it might be linked to the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium the allies fired at Iraqi tanks during the 1991 Gulf war. In making an issue of it, she felt she would be acting for all Iraqis who thought they had been damaged by the contamination released into their environment - and from there, she felt sure, into the water table and food chain.
It was not to be. Nuha died in Beirut, the place where she was happiest, on Aug. 31. She was buried lying in a bed of jasmine, with flowers in her hair. She was 63.
One of the most trenchant, yet often hilarious, critics of the "liberation" of Iraq, which she saw as humiliation, Nuha was born in Baghdad but spent most of her childhood in India, where her father, Mohammed Selim al-Radi, was ambassador. When the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown in 1958, her father retired and the family returned to Baghdad. Soon after, Nuha moved to London to study ceramics at the Byam Shaw School of Art. When her parents moved to Beirut in 1969 after the Baath Party seized power in Iraq, she enrolled in liberal arts at the American University of Beirut and, after graduating, taught art there.
In 1975 civil war erupted in Lebanon and Nuha returned to Baghdad. It was the beginning of 30 years spent shuttling hither and thither, battling for entry permits, exit permits and residence permits - all the while "trying to avoid coups and wars."
Beirut was, for Nuha, "the perfect place for political exiles," a place where "the right to grumble" had not been banned. She loved the mix of people and the ease of life. Friendship was one of her greatest gifts and her house was seldom empty. Gardening was a passion: when she felt aggressive, she cut and pruned; when she felt hopeful, she planted. But even she could not make flowers bloom on her windy, sea-facing balcony - a barren strip so different from her "beautiful" palm orchard in Baghdad.
As an artist, Nuha was incredibly versatile. Over the years, her ceramics, sculptures and paintings were shown throughout the Arab world and in the West and exhibited in collections including the British Museum. But it was as a critic of sanctions, war and occupation that she found unexpected celebrity, publishing her Baghdad Diary of the first Gulf war in the British magazine Granta in 1992 and a book, Baghdad Diaries, in 1998.
Nuha didn't think her writing was up to much, but she had a wonderful way with words (if not, it has to be said, with computers). Her cast of characters - among them her mother, "Ma", her aunt "Needles" and her dog, "Salvador Dali" - made Baghdad real to people who had never been there and who from newspapers and television would have thought that everyday life had been abolished. There's Ma mistaking the growling of a guest's stomach for an air raid; Needles stepping on cakes that Ma squishes back into shape; and Salvi, one of the great dogs of literary history, womanizing whenever he's not terrorizing guests caught fertilizing the orchard. And, on every page, Nuha, who didn't think the war would happen.
"Perhaps I simply couldn't believe that in this day and age leaders could be so childish and/or plain stupid as to think that war could resolve any issue," she wrote. "Man's follies have no limits." Typically, however, she soon made the best of it: "Day four. Made a dynamic punch tonight with Aquavit, vodka and fresh orange juice."
Ian Jack, the editor of Granta, said the magazine didn't hesitate for a moment in publishing Nuha's manuscript. "Her diaries were direct, witty, humane, so that you saw large things like wars and occupations intimately," he said. "Good diarists are rarer than many people imagine. The temptation for the diarist is to inflate himself or herself, to over-write, to have "Big Thoughts." Nuha persuaded you by her matter-of-factness."
Whatever medium she was using, Nuha drew on the people, events and materials around her. She depicted moods and events - in clear, crisp colours in her artworks and often devastating detail in her diaries. She inclined instinctively to the personal rather than the political, and to humor rather than ranting - although she could rant with the best of them when the mood took her. Not only about the Allies. Also about "the muddled East" and the "disgraceful Arabs, who have never learned the meaning of 'unity' or 'initiative.'"
Nuha was utterly original and could be quietly subversive. When intellectuals began driving Mercedes after Saddam Hussein decreed that graduates could import cars duty-free, she exhibited, in Baghdad, sculpture that had only two components - cars and brains. Model Mercedes had brains oozing from their windows; brains flew Mercedes flags. When the invasion of Iraq began, she exhibited dozens of statues made from recycled wood, painted and decked out in feathers and other defiant finery.
"They look as if they are demonstrating," she said. "I am calling them: 'We, the people.' Hopefully we will recycle ourselves and survive. "
Despite her anger at occupation, Nuha never blamed ordinary Westerners for the ways of their governments - not that it was always easy to do, as she admitted to a British friend as sanctions killed Iraqis but left Saddam ("Suds," to Nuha) in rude health. As Iraq descended into chaos, she fretted about American foot-soldiers "boiling away in the sun."
"When Britain occupied India they invented the bush shirt as a uniform to cope with the weather," she wrote. "The US must invent something for these poor soldiers. I asked a marine yesterday whether there was a cooling substance in his helmet. 'No,' he said. 'It's hot.'"
Long before she knew she had leukaemia, Nuha was concerned by the sudden ubiquity, or so it seemed to her, of cancer in Iraq. Although the absence of serious, systematic research means that evidence is largely anecdotal, doctors in southern Iraq especially have reported a marked increase in cancers - and suspicion has grown that they are caused by depleted uranium contamination from tank battles on farmland west of Basra.
"Everyone seems to be dying of cancer," Nuha wrote in November 1994. She was worried, too, by changes in the natural world. May 1995: "Killed a hunchback cockroach today. If the cockroaches are becoming malformed, what could be happening to us?" June 1995: "Isabel said it is the bad environment that is making the oranges fall off the tree; a result of bombs (with barium) dropped during the war ... What about us, will we die too?"
Nuha's main concern was depleted uranium (DU), a by-product of uranium enrichment which is both radioactive and toxic. Although scientific opinion is divided over the effects of DU, some researchers are beginning to suspect that radiological and chemical damage might reinforce each other in subtle, unforeseen ways, making DU more carcinogenic than initially thought.
Nuha may have been a victim of DU. She may not have been. We shall never know. But even probability is impossible to assess while those who could finance a proper investigation refuse to admit that there might, just might, be something to worry about.
-------- india / pakistan
India, Pakistan push ahead with CBMs despite Kashmir
By Indo-Asian News Service
Wednesday September 8, 2004
http://in.news.yahoo.com/040908/43/2fyfi.html
New Delhi, Sept 8 (IANS) Their differences over Kashmir notwithstanding, India and Pakistan Wednesday announced 13 far-reaching confidence building measures (CBMs) that could redefine their bilateral ties.
The new CBMs covered areas as diverse as conventional and nuclear fields to discussions on de-escalation of tension on Siachen, the Himalayan glacier dubbed as the world's highest battlefield, enhanced people-to-people contact through promotion of tourism to a bus service between the divided parts of Kashmir and a rail link between India's Gujarat state and Pakistan's Sindh province.
The CBMs were announced in a joint statement on the talks between External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri who met here for two days from Sunday and reviewed the progress of the composite dialogue that the two countries initiated early this year to normalise relations.
"The foreign ministers expressed satisfaction at the progress made so far, and positively assessed the developments in bilateral relations over the past year," the statement said.
It said they agreed that the two foreign secretaries would meet in December to discuss overall progress of the eight-point composite dialogue, including "Peace and Security including CBMs, and Jammu and Kashmir."
"They would also work out the schedule of meetings on the other six subjects, ranging from Siachen to a dispute over navigation in Wullar lake in Jammu and Kashmir and Sir Creek to terrorism and drug trafficking and economic and commercial cooperation.
Though differences remained over Kashmir and both sides forcefully reiterated their respective positions on the issue during the talks, it was clear from the joint statement that they would not allow that to hamstrung progress in other areas.
While the joint statement did not make any specific reference to Jammu and Kashmir, it said both sides "reiterated their commitment to the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, and their determination to implement the Simla Agreement in letter and spirit."
"Recalling the reassurance contained in the Joint Press Statement of January 6, 2004, they exchanged views on carrying the (composite dialogue) process forward in an atmosphere free from terrorism and violence," it added.
It said the ministers held detailed and substantive discussions and reiterated the confidence that the composite dialogue will lead to peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues, including Jammu and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both sides.
"They agreed to continue with the serious and sustained dialogue to find a peaceful negotiated final settlement. They expressed their determination to take the process forward," it added.
The statement noted that the Pakistan foreign minister called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and met National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit and said the two sides agreed to continue high level meetings and visits.
It noted that Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September and that Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would visit India in November in his capacity as the chairperson of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
Manmohan Singh and Musharraf would again meet in Dhaka in January on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit.
Significantly, the two sides "recognized the importance of availability and access to energy resources in the region around South Asia," a reference to possible cooperation in a gas pipeline project to transport Iranian natural gas to India through Pakistan.
The statement said the petroleum and natural gas ministers could meet to discuss the issue in its "multifarious dimensions."
The following were nine CBMs announced in the joint statement:
-- Expert level meetings on conventional and nuclear CBMs, including discussions on a draft agreement on advance notification of missile tests;
-- Meeting between railway authorities for establishing a rail link between Munnabao in Rajasthan and Khokhrapar in Sindh.
-- Biannual meeting between Indian Border Security Force (BSF) and Pakistan Rangers in October.
-- Meeting between narcotics control authorities, including for finalisation of an MoU in October-November;
-- Meeting between the Indian Coast Guards and the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency in November to, among others, discuss the MoU for establishing communication link between them;
-- Establishment of a committee of experts to consider issues related to trade;
-- Implementation of the agreement reached between the defence secretaries in their talks in August to discuss "modalities for disengagement and redeployment" on Siachen, the Himalayan glacier that is the highest battlefield in the world;
-- Joint survey of the boundary pillars in the horizontal segment (blue dotted line) of the international boundary in the Sir Creek area, a muddy estuary that separates Gujarat from Sindh
-- Meeting on all issues related to commencement of a bus service between Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir and Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir.
-- Add a new category of tourist visa in the visa regime between the two countries, and to promote group tourism;
-- Set up a mechanism to deal with the issue of civilian prisoners and fishermen, effectively and speedily;
--Measures for facilitation of visits to religious shrines, and upkeep of historical sites; and
-- Enhanced interaction and exchanges among the respective foreign offices, including study tours of young diplomats/probationers to each other's country.
----
What India, Pakistan Won't Talk About
By J. Sri Raman truthout | Perspective
Wednesday 15 September 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091504I.shtml
You cannot really describe them as talks to end talks. A dialogue to dodge the most important issues - that would better sum up the series of India-Pakistan parleys since the beginning of the year.
The talks go on. The series have moved rapidly through official-level rounds to talks in New Delhi on September 5-6 between the two External Affairs Ministers, India's K. Natwar Singh and Pakistan's Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri. The process is to culminate in a meeting of India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session later this month.
Marked by polite smiles and prolonged handshakes, the process continues without making the least progress on the two life-and-death issues for the sub-continent's people.
The more frightening and fundamental of the issues has, in fact, been forgotten, with both side tacitly agreeing to leave it untouched. The ministers have not wasted time over the minor problem of nuclear weapons. Their officials had disposed of it before, while discussing nuclear "confidence-building measures" (CBMs). These "measures" - like notification of each other before tests of nuclear-capable missiles - were somehow supposed to create confidence that the people of the two countries were safe even when such missiles stayed in military deployment and on hair-trigger alert.
General Musharraf has added his own reassurance in this regard. Addressing officers and soldiers at a garrison in Quetta on September 11, he reiterated his regime's resolve never ever to roll back its nuclear-weapon program. He added: "My government has spent more money in the last three years on enhancing Pakistan's nuclear capability than (spent for this purpose) in the previous 30 years."
The Indian government has not been forthcoming with a similar figure. There is little doubt, however, that it swells with the same pride over its own misuse of taxpayers' money to build mass-murder weapons. Or that it is as sternly resolved not to reverse its own program against South Asian peace. Remember, the joint document on CBMs desisted from mentioning regional nuclear disarmament even as a distant goal. Instead, it recorded the joint resolve of New Delhi and Islamabad to seek parity with the nuclear powers - or to join the 'nuclear club'.
Within months of India and Pakistan's nuclear-weapon tests in May 1998, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee surprised many with a bus ride to Lahore to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. The peace mission turned out to be a public relations exercise. The aim was to convince the international community that India and Pakistan could be counted upon to conduct themselves as 'responsible' nuclear-weapon states. The CBMs, too, it would seem, were meant to serve the same purpose.
The talks have run an almost identical course on the other issue, which both sides recognize as important and intractable.
An immediately striking parallel is President Musharraf's equally ringing statement on this issue in the same speech. "We will not give up Kashmir," he told the soldiers. "We have fought wars over it. Pakistan will have to ensure the interest of the Kashmiris." No such statement has emanated from New Delhi thus far. No doubt, however, that Natwar Singh was as uncompromising on India's 'national interest' as Kasuri was on Pakistan's. And it appeared incompatible with the interests of regional peace, in either case.
The ministers ended their meeting with emphatic assertions of irreconcilable stands on the issue. Singh identified the Kashmir problem with "cross-border terrorism" and Kasuri with human rights violations. They made no progress on the one proposal on people-to-people relations in Kashmir. India and Pakistan had restored a rail link between Attari and Lahore and a bus route between Amritsar and Lahore. But neither of these passed through disputed territory. Political constraints acted as a brake on the plan for a bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capitals of India-administered State of Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-controlled Azad Kashmir.
Differences on the required travel document proved an insuperable roadblock. India's idea of passports as such documents was unacceptable to Pakistan, This, Kasuri and colleagues feared, would legitimize the Line of Control (LoC) as an international border. The LoC was a result of the Bangladesh war of 1971 and, therefore, a painful reminder of Pakistan's dismemberment and rout by India.
Clearly, the talks on Kashmir, on which neither side was ready to compromise, were also targeted at an international audience. Days after the ministers' meeting, both sides widely publicized a "secret" session of talks in Amritsar between the National Security Advisers of India and Pakistan. They were to discuss a document on Kashmir by UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and it is anybody's guess if the paper reflected the views of only the Tony Blair regime.
The talks will go on. The participants, however, cannot hear the voice of the vast millions who want them to make genuine efforts for peace in South Asia.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to truthout.
-------- iran
Iran confirms new nuclear offer
Tehran is accused of covertly seeking to build a nuclear bomb
AFP
Wednesday 08 September 2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/872E9D73-3BBE-4929-B4C1-94A74CB3DD7F.htm
Iran has confirmed it has offered new concessions on its controversial nuclear programme in talks with the European Union.
However, the Islamic Republic also warned of a "response" if the Europeans and the UN's atomic watchdog again took a tough line against the Islamic republic.
"If the Europeans do not respect their commitments or present an illogical or harsh resolution, Iran has already decided its response," said top national security official Hassan Rowhani on Wednesday.
Rowhani confirmed Iran was in talks with the EU ahead of a 13 September meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with one concession on the table being a renewed suspension on the assembly of centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
Civilian purposes
In high-level talks with the current EU presidenct the Netherlands, Rowhani denied that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons, but said it would not abandon its programme to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes.
On Tuesday, diplomats at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna said Iran was ready again to suspend its efforts to assemble centrifuges in order to avoid being brought before the UN Security Council.
Britain, Germany and France have been negotiating with the aim of getting Iran to "fully suspend any uranium enrichment activities, including making any components for centrifuges", said a Western diplomat in Vienna.
Fuel
Enriched uranium can be used to provide fuel for reactors working to produce electric energy, as well as nuclear warheads.
"If the Europeans do not respect their commitments or present an illogical or harsh resolution, Iran has already decided its response"
Iran recently resumed production of centrifuges, in reaction to a critical resolution adopted by the IAEA board of governors after its last review of the Iran dossier in June.
At the beginning of September, Tehran also announced that it planned to convert 37 tonnes of "yellow cake" uranium into uranium hexafluoride gas, an element necessary for the enrichment of uranium.
Nuclear experts have said that such a large amount could in theory be used to make one or more nuclear warheads.
The United States accuses Iran of covertly trying to develop a nuclear bomb and has sought to have the IAEA refer Tehran to the Security Council for possible sanctions.
Tehran maintains that it is merely trying to meet increasing domestic energy demands and free up its vast oil and gas reserves for export.
----
Iran Wants Dialogue to Resolve Nuclear Standoff
REUTERS IRAN:
September 8, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26999/story.htm
TEHRAN - Iran's top nuclear negotiator said on Monday talks, not threats, would resolve a standoff over a nuclear program Washington says is a cover for developing atomic weapons.
Iran was ready to remove concerns over its nuclear ambitions by fully cooperating with the IAEA United Nations nuclear watchdog, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rohani told Iran's state television.
"The only way to resolve Iran's nuclear problem is steady dialogue, not putting pressure or threatening us," Rohani told Iran's state television on a visit to the Netherlands, which currently holds the rotating EU chairmanship.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly working on an atomic bomb and has been pushing for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions.
Tehran rejects the charge and says its ambitions are limited to generating electricity from nuclear reactors.
"Iran has never pursued nuclear arms but we are serious about having peaceful nuclear technology," Rohani said.
EU foreign ministers last week criticized Iran for not fully cooperating with the IAEA.
Foreign Minister of France, Germany and Britain last year convinced Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment-related activities.
But Tehran in June ended the deal with the EU trio by resuming the production and testing of nuclear centrifuges, which can enrich uranium to the arms-grade level needed for use in nuclear warheads.
"We assure the world that our enrichment-related activities are for peaceful purposes," Rohani said.
The EU trio will draft a resolution to be presented to the IAEA's 35-member Board of Governors which will meet on Sept. 13 to discuss Iran's nuclear case.
Iran believes the IAEA would give its nuclear program a clean bill of health in its September report as Iran has removed the agency's major ambiguities over Tehran's nuclear activities.
----
Iran faces 'nuclear ultimatum'
Iran denies it wants to build nuclear weapons
By Paul Reynolds
BBC News Online world affairs correspondent
Wednesday, 8 September, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3639132.stm
Iran is likely to be given an ultimatum that it must suspend all uranium enrichment activities or face being reported to the United Nations Security Council, according to senior British officials.
Speaking in advance of a board meeting of UN nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna on 13 September, the officials said: "At its last meeting in June, the IAEA laid out what Iran had to do and it has done only part of that."
"Iran has to give the international community the assurances we need and only a full suspension will do that."
However, any decision on going to the UN Security Council would not be taken at this meeting but at the following one scheduled for November.
The officials strongly implied that Britain would support reporting Iran to the council if it did not comply.
"It is a serious option which we would consider seriously," they said.
Iran's 'offer' dismissed
The US would prefer an immediate decision to go to the Security Council. But Britain, France and Germany, which have been acting together over Iran, believe that unity in the IAEA requires that Iran be given a final chance.
We don't want Iran to develop any part of the fuel process Senior British officials Iran previously agreed with the three European governments to suspend enrichment but has since said that this no longer applies.
The British officials dismissed reported Iranian offers this week to return to a policy of suspension.
"This kind of thing should not come days before an IAEA meeting," they said.
The officials also said Britain wanted to go beyond suspension and was demanding that Iran give up any ambitions to make fuel for a nuclear reactor.
This is also a position taken by the US and, the British officials suggested, was supported by France and Germany as well.
Western mistrust
The reason for this is that once a country knows how to enrich uranium to make fuel, it could go on to enrich it further to make a nuclear bomb.
"We don't want Iran to develop any part of the fuel process," was the comment.
Such a demand goes beyond what is covered in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This does not ban a country from making fuel but says that it has to be under inspection.
The problem is that Iran has evaded inspections in the past and western governments now do not trust it.
The US has said publicly that it believes that Iran wants to make a nuclear bomb.
To get round the NPT Treaty, western governments would look to the UN Security Council to demand that Iran give up fuel enrichment as the only way to restore confidence in its peaceful intentions.
Iran has stated that it intends to develop fuel enrichment because it cannot rely on outside suppliers. It says that it has no intention of making a nuclear weapon.
--------
Iran Negotiates Deal to Curtail Nuclear Work
U.S. Sees Offer as Bid to Stall Sanctions
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3588-2004Sep7.html
A series of secret weekend meetings in Vienna between Iranian and European diplomats led to a promise from Tehran yesterday to suspend some nuclear activities in exchange for improved trade with Britain, France and Germany, according to U.S and European diplomats.
But the offer, just days ahead of a meeting on Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency, does not include work in a key area of uranium conversion, a process that could accelerate Iran's chances of developing a nuclear weapon, if it chooses to do so.
France, Britain and Germany are still mulling over the offer, officials said, giving the Bush administration less than a week to try to convince them that the time for incentives and deals is over. U.S. officials, who saw the Iranian offer as a stalling tactic, still acknowledged a tough week ahead and said Group of Eight meetings in Geneva tomorrow and Friday would be critical.
As of yesterday, the Bush administration and the European trio had drawn up separate and competing resolutions to be presented to the IAEA board when it meets next week in Vienna, according to officials involved in both sides of the negotiations.
The U.S. resolution would find Iran in noncompliance of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and would refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions or oil embargoes.
The European plan, which is favored by a majority of the IAEA's 35-member board, would call for a full suspension of Iran's suspect nuclear program but delay the possibility of Security Council action until late November, when the board is to meet again. The European proposal would call on the IAEA to complete a full review of Iran's nuclear efforts, which the board would judge in November.
So far, the United States has received indications from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan that they would support the U.S. position if the Europeans could be brought on board. U.S. officials, who would discuss tactics only on the condition of anonymity, said that would be their goal. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, the administration's point man on nonproliferation issues, is meeting his G-8 counterparts in Geneva tomorrow and Friday, and Iran is expected to feature prominently in the discussions.
If the United States is successful, it will take the unusual step of calling for a vote at next week's IAEA board meeting. The board traditionally operates by consensus, but if opinion could be more evenly divided, a vote could achieve the administration's goal of getting the matter to the Security Council.
As an incentive, U.S. diplomats have been quietly promising they would not seek sanctions or other punitive resolutions inside the council. Instead, they are looking for a unified statement of support for continued IAEA inspections in Iran. The softer approach is meant to ease concerns by other countries worried that the Bush administration may be using the council as a steppingstone toward military action against Tehran.
Iran, rich in oil and natural gas, insists that its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at securing a stable energy source. The nuclear work it has been conducting is allowable under the nuclear NPT, but the United States and others believe Iran is using the treaty as a cover for clandestine work.
Over the past 18 months, IAEA inspectors have found inconsistencies and unanswered questions in Iran's account of its program and intentions. But last week, the agency reported that Iran had improved cooperation and that inspectors had found plausible answers for some of the suspicious activity.
Still, the IAEA will not give Iran a clean bill of health. The board, which passed a resolution in June calling on Iran to halt all nuclear work that could be used in a weapons program, is to review the latest IAEA report and Iran's current offer when it meets next week.
On Monday evening, after two days of negotiations with European diplomats, the Iranians told IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei that they would halt all work related to centrifuges, the equipment that can enrich uranium for weapons. In response, ElBaradei dispatched a new team of inspectors to inventory Iran's centrifuge parts and equipment.
State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher dismissed Iran's latest promise as a ploy it had tried in the past.
"You don't have to look back too far to find Iranian officials saying that they were going to suspend production of centrifuge and use of centrifuges, and then to find them saying that, no, they were going to go ahead anyway," Boucher said.
Last year, Iran cut a deal with the Europeans ahead of an IAEA meeting that prevented the board from taking any tough action against Tehran. But the deal eventually fell apart, and Iran announced in June that it had restarted programs it promised to suspend.
-------- israel
Sharon: World Needs to Stop Iran Nukes
(AP)
Wednesday September 8, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4480506,00.html
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Wednesday that the world is not doing enough to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons and that Israel is taking its own measures to protect itself.
Sharon said to The Jerusalem Post that ``there is no doubt'' that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and that ``they are doing it by deception and subterfuge.''
Global efforts to halt Iran's nuclear advancement, including inspections by the U.N. nuclear watchdog and threats by the United States to seek international sanctions, are not enough, Sharon said.
``I don't see that the activity against them (the Iranians) is enough to stop them from obtaining nuclear weapons,'' Sharon said.
Israel feels especially threatened because Iran has already successfully tested a long-range missile that can reach Israel, Sharon said, adding that even moderates in Iran have called for the destruction of Israel.
Israel, Sharon was quoted as saying, ``is taking its own measures to defend itself.'' He did not elaborate.
In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor before it began operating.
On Monday, the launch of Israel's latest spy satellite, Ofek-6, failed. The satellite was meant to monitor, among other things, Iranian nuclear activities. The rocket that thrusts the satellite into outerspace failed.
-------- korea
North Korea Nuclear Plant Suspended Again - Report
REUTERS JAPAN:
September 8, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27000/story.htm
TOKYO - The United States, South Korea and Japan have agreed to suspend work on the construction of nuclear reactors in North Korea for a second year but stopped short of scrapping the project, a Japanese newspaper said.
The decision, which the Yomiuri Shimbun daily said was likely to be formalized at a meeting of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) in New York on Oct. 13, comes as Washington and its allies try to get Pyongyang to hold another round of talks this month on its nuclear arms programs.
The three countries, along with the European Union, formed the power consortium KEDO as a reward for North Korea's pledge in 1994 to freeze its nuclear development programs. The United States had agreed to provide fuel oil as part of the deal.
Quoting unidentified Japanese government sources, the Yomiuri said the United States had wanted to scrap the project entirely, but gave in to persuasion from South Korea and Japan to leave room to resume construction.
South Korea and Japan have covered 90 percent of the $1.5 billion construction costs so far.
More than 100 workers are still maintaining the site of the two partially built reactors.
KEDO suspended construction work on the light-water reactors for an initial one year last December, after the United States said in October 2002 that North Korea had admitted working on a secret uranium-enrichment project.
An attempt by North Korea to have the project restarted was rejected by KEDO's board in May.
Six-way talks between North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia aimed at solving the nuclear stand-off have so far failed to make significant progress.
Washington has called for Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.
----
S Korea admits failure to report uranium test
SEOUL (AFP)
Sep 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040908040200.lrlvn2kq.html
South Korea will admit Wednesday that it should have reported an unauthorized experiment to enrich uranium four years ago to international arms control officials, Yonhap news agency reported.
The experiment conducted in January 2000 at the country's state-run nuclear research center produced a miniscule amount of enriched uranium.
Until now, the government has argued that it saw no wrongdoing despite its failure to report the experiment that produced 0.2 grams (0.007 ounces) of uranium to the UN's nuclear watchdog.
The government is now stepping back from that position, an official told Yonhap.
"The 0.2 grams of extracted uranium should have been reported although the experiment itself and facility had not to be reported," the unnamed official was quoted as saying ahead of a briefing to journalists later in the day.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) staff inspected the research center in South Korea last week where the experiment took place and returned to Vienna with a sample of the enriched uranium.
South Korea will dispatch a team of officials to Vienna to attend a four-day board meeting of the IAEA starting Monday that will consider the case.
They will argue vigorously that the experiment was conducted for purely academic purposes and was in no way linked to nuclear weapons ambitions.
"The government has maintained transparency and reliability in its non-proliferation policy by voluntarily declaring it and fully cooperating with the IAEA inspection," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said in a weekly briefing.
Ban said he expected "the IAEA to handle the case in a factually-correct and balanced manner" at its board meeting.
Revelations that scientists in South Korea engaged in clandestine uranium enrichment embarrassed officials here at a time when Seoul is playing a leading role in efforts to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
However, the government until now has rejected charges it violated its international obligations, claiming that there was no stipulation at the time under the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to report the enrichment activities.
Seoul argued it was only obliged to report the enrichment activities after new, tougher safeguards came into force under an additional protocol to the treaty that came into force in February.
In any case, the government said that it was not told about the experiment at the time and was only informed in August by scientists at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Daejeon, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of the capital.
The experiment using laser isotope separation technology was a "one-off" case and South Korea has no interest in running a nuclear weapons programme, the government maintained.
----
S. Korean Official Attempts to Ease Nuclear Concerns
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3571-2004Sep7.html
TAEJON, South Korea, Sept. 8 -- South Korea's top nuclear energy official on Tuesday denied claims that scientists in his country had produced near-bomb-grade uranium, seeking to ease concern that the previously undisclosed experiments were in apparent violation of international law.
"Yes, we did enrich uranium, but an amount so small it was almost invisible and to levels that were not close" to weapons grade, Chang In Soon, president of the government Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute, said in an interview. "This was an academic exercise, nothing more. We have no ambition beyond science. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong."
His description of the experiments appeared to be at odds with testimony that South Korean officials are said to have provided last week to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Diplomats familiar with the testimony said the South Korean officials had reported that they enriched uranium to levels of almost 80 percent -- close to those used in nuclear weapons and far above the single-digit levels typically used in nuclear energy production.
Chang, however, insisted there had been a "misunderstanding." He said the three tests had yielded an average enrichment level of only 10 percent -- with the highest levels not exceeding the average by a large amount. Diplomats familiar with the case, however, said they preferred to await the results of IAEA testing.
Chang said he personally authorized the experiments -- a costly procedure that employs a laser to isolate certain uranium isotopes -- in January and February of 2000. The Seoul government reported the experiments to the IAEA last week.
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requires that signatories report any uranium-enrichment activities to the IAEA immediately. Not doing so is considered a serious violation. The IAEA, which is based in Vienna, dispatched a team to South Korea last week. Investigators collected half of the uranium that had been enriched -- about 100 milligrams -- and the IAEA said complete analysis was expected to take at least a month.
Several pounds of highly enriched uranium are required to build a bomb, according to experts. "If we had wanted to do it, we could have done it in another, more efficient way," Chang said. "But that wasn't our goal."
Even if South Korea is found to have enriched uranium to relatively low levels, the Seoul government may still face problems.
"On the surface, it appears to be a violation no matter what the enrichment level was," said a Vienna-based diplomat familiar with the matter. "But the consequences have a range, depending on what is found."
Officials at South Korea's Foreign Ministry said other high-ranking government officials were informed of the experiments in February by Chang, adding that the tests were not "government-sanctioned." But they deferred to Chang on the details of the experiments, which they reiterated had been quickly halted. Neither Chang nor the researchers involved had been disciplined, the officials said.
Chang said he chose to inform his superiors after reviewing an IAEA protocol adopted by the Seoul government this year that, according to his interpretation, had called for a higher level of accountability at South Korean nuclear facilities.
Chang said he authorized the tests after five South Korean scientists -- all of whom received their doctorates in the United States and who worked at the sprawling campus here 110 miles south of Seoul -- approached him for permission to enrich uranium. They were interested, he said, in "seeing what they could as scientists" with the institute's high-tech lasers and related equipment, all of which Chang said was about to scrapped. "As a scientist myself, I could not say no to them," he said.
"And I did not think this was a violation," he said. "This was such a small amount."
The case could complicate six-party negotiations over North Korean nuclear plans, as well as U.S. demands that the Iranian government disclose hidden portions of its nuclear programs.
The public and news media in South Korea, an important U.S. ally, have largely rallied around their scientists, with most newspapers condemning what was being portrayed here as an overreaction to the South Korean experiments. The country gets 40 percent of its power from nuclear energy but so far has refrained from enriching uranium itself, instead importing enriched uranium from the United States, Russia and elsewhere to feed its 19 nuclear power plants.
-------- russia
Russia Wakes Up to a Nuclear Threat
By MARTIN SCHRAM
Sep 8, 2004,
Scripps Howard News
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5205.shtml
As fears of new terrorist attacks jolted Russia, President Vladimir Putin last week issued a first-time-ever order that should have been front page news everywhere.
Especially here in the United States. For it told as much about the security gap in America's homeland security as it did about Russia's. But no U.S. newspaper or television network put the news anywhere where you'd see it.
Belated News Flash: Putin has just dispatched Russian military troops to guard all of his country's far-flung, frighteningly under-secured nuclear weapons facilities. Yes, the same facilities his government always insisted were perfectly secure. Putin was forced to drop his government's Potemkin-false-front assurance because the latest Chechnyan terrorism in Russia (schoolhouse slaughter, subway bombing, two airline crashes) proved terrorists were capable of buying or stealing Russia's vulnerable nuclear weapons and materials - and launching a nuclear terror attack inside Russia.
That gut-check reality apparently demanded a new level of truth-telling far beyond what was acceptable back when Russia's vulnerable nukes were seen as just potential weapons for terrorists targeting Americans.
Putin's order is powerful confirmation of what some of us have been warning for years: Russia's so-called loose nukes pose a security threat for the entire planet. That warning has been sounded for more than a decade by a few bold political leaders such as former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn and his colleague Sen. Dick Lugar, as well by a number of smart nuclear-weapons experts and a handful of nuclear-concerned journalists (that's where I fit in, in a bit role).
In 2002, in Moscow, I interviewed Minister of Atomic Energy Aleksandr Rumyantsev about Russia's under-secured nuclear facilities (while researching my recent book, "Avoiding Armageddon" and serving as managing editor for the PBS series of the same name). I'd gathered stories of two Russian nuclear thieves, a civilian and a Navy captain, who'd stolen nuclear fuel and were caught only after bungling efforts to sell it on the nuclear black market.
"I can guarantee you total security of those materials and the sites of its storage today," said Rumyantsev. I asked about a member of Russia's Duma (parliament) who'd just entered a Russian nuclear site by sneaking through some unguarded barbed-wire. No big deal, Rumyantsev dead-panned, the barbed wire was only intended to keep out "stray people and stray animals who might approach the facility."
Putin's rushed troop deployment says otherwise. It is the boldest effort to address the problem since the Soviet Union's collapse left its arsenals unsecured _ leading Democrat Nunn and Republican Lugar to forge the historic Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act, providing U.S. funding to destroy much of Russia's nuclear arsenal and secure the rest of it.
Bizarrely, after 9/11, when al Qaeda was clearly seeking weapons of mass destruction to use against us, President Bush froze all Nunn-Lugar funding for a year over a technicality. At the present rate, Russia's vulnerable nuclear arsenals won't be secured until well into the next decade. Which means that, while Russia's new nuclear troops are on guard, America's homeland is still at risk.
What now? In separate interviews, Nunn and Lugar, being clear-eyed visionaries, offered next-step solutions. While Putin has recognized the "extreme vulnerability" of many Russian nuclear facilities, Nunn said, both countries must respond to terrorist threats with new urgency: "We need to secure all materials."
Lugar noted that in recent months, Russia's Duma has been the party that has dragged its heels by delaying a ratification vote of an agreement to facilitate new funding by the world's industrialized nations to secure Russian weapons of mass destruction. "Russia's Duma and the Russian hierarchy felt this (effort to secure vulnerable arsenals) was interesting but not very essential," Lugar said. "Perhaps now they should ... act with urgency."
Nunn focused upon the now crucial need to safeguard the homelands of both Russia and the United States by safeguarding small nuclear weapons _ "weapons that one man can carry that can wipe out a good part of a major city." Neither country has been keen on sharing info with the other about these weapons, but Nunn said that must change in light of the new terrorist threats. "Both countries should have transparency to assure that small weapons that can be transported easily are secured," he said.
Nunn proposed one more common-sense solution. Russia's nuclear arsenal is spread over its vast land that spans 11 time zones. Dispersal was once a security precaution, assuring some survival of a U.S. attack; today it is a security problem, since some arsenal somewhere will surely be vulnerable to terrorists.
"We should offer to help Russia consolidate their nuclear weapons in a few areas," Nunn said. "And then guard the heck out of them."
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service.)
-------- u.n.
U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch
September 10, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040909-115659-4549r.htm
The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum).
Last of three excerpts
Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's new foreign minister, delivered a memorable address to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Dec. 16, 2003.
Zebari, an Iraqi Kurd, began his remarks by noting the historic capture, three days earlier, of Saddam Hussein. Then, after laying out a plan for Iraq to become a democracy, the foreign minister lowered the boom on the assembled diplomats.
"One year ago," Zebari said, "this Security Council was divided between those who wanted to appease Saddam Hussein and those who wantedto hold him accountable. The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today, we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.
"The United Nations must not fail the Iraqi people again," he said.
It was clear to whom Zebari was referring: France, Germany, Russia and China, among others in the world body, fought U.S.-led efforts to end Saddam's bloody dictatorship.
But the organization's failure was far more significant than failing the Iraqi people. The United Nations had failed in its founding purpose: to preserve peace and international security.
It appeased Saddam for years before the United States called for decisive action.
And Saddam's Iraq is just one of many rogue regimes that the United Nations has failed to keep in check. Again and again, dangerous states have built up their militaries and weapons programs right under the world body's nose, despite sanctions and anti-proliferation agreements.
Sleeping watchdog
Three times, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency missed the covert nuclear-arms programs of rogue regimes, allowing those states to build deadly weapons capability under the guise of generating nuclear power.
Disclosures of the nuclear progress of North Korea, Libya and Iran came in rapid succession, within the space of about a year. If the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not detect these programs, one must wonder what purpose the U.N. branch serves.
The United Nations established the IAEA in 1957 to help countries build nuclear facilities for generating electricity. Its initial program, Atoms for Peace, quickly became "Atoms for Bombs." And not much has changed in the past five decades, except the size of the program.
Today, the IAEA has about 2,200 staff members at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, and at four regional offices in Geneva, New York, Toronto and Tokyo. Its budget for 2004 was $268.5 million.
The IAEA's statutory purpose is to assist in transferring expertise and equipment for the "peaceful" use of nuclear power. The international agency also is charged with making sure that nations do not divert equipment or material for nuclear-energy development into weapons programs.
Specifically, Section 5 of the empowering statute directs the IAEA to "establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities and information made available by the agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose."
But the IAEA has not administered appropriate safeguards. And as a result, it has been fooled again and again by states such as North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria and Iraq.
The centerpiece of the IAEA's work has been the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, which went into effect on March 5, 1970.
Korean threat
Rogue states generally sign international agreements only if doing so is expedient. Nothing better illustrates this point than North Korea.
The NPT provided cover for North Korea's secret nuclear-weapons programs, allowing Pyongyang to purchase equipment, train technicians and build reactors.
North Korea was one of the agreement's 188 signatories when, in the fall of 2002, the communist regime of Kim Jong-il revealed that it secretly had been developing nuclear weapons.
The IAEA failed to anticipate or uncover North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. The agency admitted as much last year, when it reported: "The agency has never had the complete picture regarding [North Korean] nuclear activities."
Pyongyang froze plutonium production as part of a 1994 pact with the United States known as the Agreed Framework. But the CIA noted in 1995, in a classified Special National Intelligence Estimate: "Based on North Korea's past behavior, the [intelligence] community agrees it would dismantle its known program [only] if it had covertly developed another source of fissile material."
Sure enough, North Korea's disclosure in October 2002 of its uranium-enrichment activity confirmed that Pyongyang was trying to build nuclear bombs. In essence, Kim and the North Koreans were announcing that membership in the NPT had been a ruse all along.
Still, the IAEA did not take a hard line with Kim. It responded to the disclosure by sending faxes requesting "clarification." The North Koreans ignored the request.
Saber-rattling
The IAEA adopted a resolution calling on Pyongyang to cooperate. The North Koreans responded with a letter saying that they rejected the U.N. agency's unfair and unilateral approach.
The director of North Korea's nuclear program, Ri Je-son, stated in a letter dated Dec. 4, 2002, that Pyongyang would resume nuclear work if the United States did not resume oil shipments to North Korea.
Then, on Jan. 10, 2003, North Korea unceremoniously abandoned its partners in the NPT. In a broadcast on Kim's state radio, government commentator Jong Pong-kil said the decision to pull out was a defensive measure:
"The United States trampled on the NPT and the [North Korean]-U.S. Agreed Framework and is trying to crush us by all means," Jong declared. "By even mobilizing the IAEA, the United States is compelling us to give up the right of self-defense. Under such conditions, it is clear to everyone that we cannot let the country's security and the nation's dignity be infringed upon by remaining in the NPT treaty."
Jong then added a threat: "If the U.S. imperialists and their following forces challenge our republic's withdrawal from the NPT with new pressure and sanctions, we will respond with a stronger self-defensive measure."
In other words, the North Koreans, who already had shown that their membership in the NPT was a ruse, were announcing that they would keep building nuclear arms.
The IAEA's response to Jong's announcement was tantamount to appeasement. Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian, said North Korea must return to the NPT.
Then, during a meeting with U.S. senators, ElBaradei said: "If North Korea were to show good behavior, they need to get some assurance as to what to expect in return for good behavior, and I think that's very important in articulation of what to expect in case of compliance."
It did not matter that the North Koreans openly admitted defying the IAEA for years; ElBaradei sent the message that the international arms-control agency would impose no penalty.
The matter was sent to the U.N. Security Council, but that body did little more than express "deep concern" for the violations. The United States picked up its diplomatic approach, which produced no results. North Korea continues its drive for nuclear arms.
Iran and Libya
The United Nations also failed to confront the nuclear threat from Iran, which, like North Korea, used the NPT to acquire equipment and materials to make nuclear bombs.
When Iran's weapons work was discovered, showing that the Iranians knowingly ignored obligations to their treaty partners, the IAEA essentially ignored the violations. The agency sought only an additional "protocol" from Iran as a new safeguard.
"This is a good day for peace, multilateralism and nonproliferation," ElBaradei declared after Iran signed the protocol. "A good day for peace because the [IAEA] board decided to continue to make every effort to use verification and diplomacy to resolve questions about Iran's nuclear program."
But "verification and diplomacy" failed to stop Iran from developing nuclear arms in the first place. Despite pressure from security officials within the Bush administration, ElBaradei refused to cite Iran for breaking its obligations.
Moreover, the IAEA did not keep careful watch over Libya's nuclear-weapons program, which was further along than both U.S. intelligence or the U.N. agency had known.
When Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi publicly disclosed his weapons program in December 2003, the IAEA knew nothing about it. The agency said Libya should have reported its activities to the IAEA.
The IAEA was happy to report Tripoli's decision to eliminate "materials, equipment and programs which lead to the production of internationally proscribed weapons."
But the agency tried to minimize its failure to discover the program. It noted that a Libyan official characterized his nation's uranium-enrichment program as "at an early stage of development" and that "no industrial-scale facility had been built, nor any enriched uranium produced."
Algeria long since had launched its own nuclear-arms program in response to the military buildup by neighbor Libya, with which it had tense relations, reflecting how weapons proliferation only breeds further proliferation.
U.S. intelligence agencies in the spring of 1991 detected the first signs that Algeria was developing nuclear weapons with the assistance of China.
'New urgency'
The ultimate threat to peace is nuclear weapons in the hands of international terrorists.
There is a real danger that terrorists could use nuclear materials in radiological attacks, or "dirty bombs." Worse, terrorists would use them in a nuclear blast that could kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
To his credit, the IAEA's ElBaradei has begun to worry about this threat.
"[Nuclear] source security has taken on a new urgency since 9/11," the U.N. arms agency's director general said in a speech last year. "There are millions of radiological sources used throughout the world. Most are very weak. What we are focusing on is preventing the theft or loss of control of the powerful radiological sources."
The fact is, al Qaeda and the world's other most lethal terrorist organizations are trying to acquire nuclear arms.
The United Nations' record of failure to detect and halt nuclear threats posed by rogue states, however, casts doubt on its ability to grapple with such arms in the grip of shadowy terrorist groups.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
State sues over Yucca rail line
By Suzanne Struglinski <suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
September 08, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2004/sep/08/517475800.html
WASHINGTON -- Nevada sued the Energy Department once again today, this time over its plan to build a new rail line in the state to move spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain.
Attorney General Brian Sandoval claims the department did not follow federal environmental policy and other laws when it proposed the 319-mile railroad through through Lincoln County and it is shutting out important outside regulators on the project. It filed the suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, the same court that last month threw out the nuclear waste storage project's 10,000-year radiation standard.
The department announced its intention in April to use the its " Caliente Corridor" route to move nuclear waste to Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Caliente was one of five routes proposed for a railroad because no rail line exists in the state to move waste containers to the mountain. The department said last December it preferred the mostly rail option over the mostly truck alternative for shipping the waste to Yucca.
Several public meetings took place throughout the state earlier this year to help the department gather information on what it should include in a draft environmental study to be completed next year on the Caliente route but Nevada claims the whole process was done out of order.
"The whole point of environmental review is to study the impacts before you make the decision, not after," Sandoval said.
In the suit, Nevada claims the department violated the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that requires an environmental analysis of federal projects before they are finalized.
Sandoval said the department did not contact land owners in advance to let them know their land would be used in the construction project, even though the department asked the Bureau of Land Management for more than 300,000 acres to study. He said the department proclaimed the route, applied for the land but only now is evaluating the environmental impacts.
Nevada also claims the department moved ahead with the largest railroad construction project in 80 years without consulting the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that oversees rail projects.
"Given DOE's track record at building anything, the Board is a far better agency than DOE to run a project of this magnitude," Sandoval said in a statement. "It is also far less biased."
The state also complains the department intends to use truck casks on rail cars to move the waste, a method which has not been analyzed for safety. The department has only evaluated using trucks casks on truck or rail cars using stronger containers specifically made to be used on trains.
"The proposed railroad through Caliente is a billion dollar boondoggle," said Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. "Rather than follow regulations to protect Nevada's environment, the White House is barreling down the tracks with absolute disregard for the law and the people of Nevada."
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis was not aware of the lawsuit this morning, so he declined comment on it. The department generally does not discuss pending litigation anyway.
-------- new york
Group Says Terror Attack on Indian Point Would Be Apocalyptic
September 8, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/nyregion/08nuke.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - A group campaigning to shut the Indian Point nuclear plant is firing new broadsides against the reactors, releasing a report on Wednesday that asserts that a successful terrorist attack could cause apocalyptic damage.
The group, Riverkeeper, is also appearing in a documentary to be broadcast on HBO on Thursday that makes the same arguments.
The report claims that a terrorist attack on the reactors, in Buchanan, N.Y., 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, could kill 44,000 people in a few days, at a range of up to 60 miles, and 500,000 more over decades through cancer, and cost $2.1 trillion.
The report discusses several possibilities, including a kamikaze jet attack that weakens the containment dome and damages enough equipment to interfere with cooling at the same time as the emergency diesel generators are disabled and the plant is disconnected from the electric grid.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff said that the Riverkeeper report misused commission studies on radiation transport and that a significant radiation release, especially one that spread contamination more than a few miles, required multiple failures that were highly unlikely to occur.
Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the commission, said: "We think that there are some serious flaws in the logic and analysis of the Riverkeeper study. Even the title sort of suggests this is intended for sensationalism, not sound science." The Riverkeeper report is titled "Chernobyl on the Hudson?" A spokesman for Entergy, which owns the two operating reactors at Indian Point, also dismissed the report.
The report is a more detailed statement of a case presented in a documentary that is scheduled to be broadcast by HBO at 8 p.m. on Thursday, "Indian Point: Imagining the Unthinkable." The documentary was produced by Rory Kennedy, whose brother, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a lawyer who works for Riverkeeper. It was written by Edwin S. Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who appears in the documentary.
A spokesman for the group said that Mr. Kennedy had planned to send a light plane over the plant on Tuesday to demonstrate its vulnerability to air attack but had to settle for releasing about 30 rubber ducks from a boat near the cooling water intake on the Hudson because of bad weather. They were meant to show that the plant is a "sitting duck."
The report says radiation doses could be reduced if the commission broadened its plans for evacuating or sheltering the public to a distance of 50 miles, up from the 10 miles in the current plan. That distance increases the population to be evacuated to about 20 million, compared with about 300,000 in the current plans.
But Alex Matthiessen, the executive director of Riverkeeper, said that expanding the evacuation area was not the real goal. "Evacuating an area with 17 to 20 million people in it seems fairly hopeless to me," he said. "It begs the question, why do we still have a nuclear power plant 24 miles from New York City, given this new terrorist era?"
The commission bases its requirements for planning for evacuation and sheltering within 10 miles in part on the low probability of a mechanical failure or error, but Mr. Lyman's report dismisses this basis.
"N.R.C. can no longer shy away from confronting the worst-case consequences of terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants," he writes. "And perhaps the most attractive target in the country, where the consequences are likely to be the greatest, is Indian Point."
In an interview, Mr. Lyman said that emergency planning for evacuation and shelter had been limited to 10 miles because of the commission's "fear that going any further would turn public acceptance or toleration of Indian Point against them." He said that after the attacks of 9/11, that attitude was dangerous.
But Dan Dorman, the commission's deputy director of nuclear reactor security, said that the high radiation doses postulated in the study depended upon an unusual weather pattern at the time of release from the plant, and that to have the release in the first place, no matter what the weather, required "what-if, upon what-if, upon what-if."
He and others on the commission staff said that Mr. Lyman's worst-case sequence of events would require clouds and rain to deliver extremely high doses of radiation that was released from the plant. But clear weather would be needed for a plane to find the plant, and to prevent the radioactive material from being washed out of the air until it reached more densely populated places. They also said that physical security at the plant had improved, and that terrorists were unlikely to be able to hijack another big jet.
A key part of the Riverkeeper argument is that a major radiation release during an accident would require multiple failures that are unlikely to be simultaneous, but that a well-organized terrorist attack would seek to disable back-up systems.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
A Taboo Issue in Afghan Campaign
As Millions of Women Prepare to Vote, Debate on Their Other Rights Is Dampened
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3566-2004Sep7?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 7 -- When Latif Pedram, a left-leaning writer who wears casual Western clothes under a silk Afghan cape, recently returned home from France to run for president, he introduced a volatile topic to the country's new experiment with campaigning: marital politics.
Is it fair that Afghan men may divorce their wives on the spot, while Afghan women must obtain their husband's permission for a divorce and risk losing their children if they leave? Is it right for a man to marry four women at once? And can he possibly make all of them happy?
Last week, Pedram suggested at a women's forum that the issue of divorce "ought to be debated" and said that it was "impossible" for a husband to treat four wives equitably.
Pedram's comments, taped and then aired on state television, touched on issues that are culturally taboo in traditional Muslim society and politically explosive in a country just emerging from a decade of violent rule by Islamic militias. Accordingly, they raised a furor among some conservative Islamic scholars in the capital.
The chief justice of the Supreme Court, an elderly religious cleric, sent a letter to the government election commission, as well as to the U.N. political mission here, demanding that Pedram, 41, be expelled from the race. The court's chief clerk, Waheed Mojhda, explained that the justices had "received many calls from people saying a candidate was speaking against Islam.
"There was an urgent meeting, and the justices watched those parts of the tape 15 times. They decided he had questioned the Koran and spoken against [Islamic law], and therefore he should be prosecuted and struck from the list of candidates."
Several official sources said that the court's letter had no legal validity and that the issue might be solved informally. So far, neither the election commission nor the prosecutor's office has taken any formal action against Pedram. As of Monday, he was still one of 17 candidates registered to challenge Hamid Karzai, the interim president, in Afghanistan's first national election, set for Oct. 9.
"What I said was not against religion or Islamic law," Pedram said. "I was just expressing an opinion about women's rights. This is only happening because the fundamentalists want to sabotage my campaign."
Whatever its legal outcome, the contretemps has demonstrated how volatile the issue of women's personal rights remains in Afghanistan, even as women are being officially urged to participate in national politics on an unprecedented scale. More than 4 million have registered to vote in October, and hundreds are expected to run for parliament in the spring.
No prominent Afghan women have come to Pedram's defense. Even liberal professional women expressed shock and disapproval this week at his comments, suggesting he had crossed a line dividing acceptable social debate from religious heresy.
"We do not want to touch such issues. We are all Afghans and Muslims, and we know the sensitivity of it," said Safia Siddiqui, a political activist and member of the professional women's group that sponsored the forum. "These are our Islamic values, and society will accept us only if we respect those values."
Masooda Jalal, a physician and the only woman among the presidential candidates, also declined to discuss the issue of marital rights in Islam or Afghan culture. She preferred, she said, to focus on "practical rights" for Afghan women, such as access to education and health care.
Jalal, 44, who chooses her words carefully and campaigns in a tight head scarf and voluminous coat, has tried to strike a balance between traditional and progressive ideas in her campaign. Her running mate is a turbaned tribal elder from a conservative southern province whose six daughters all have graduate degrees and live abroad.
On Monday, Jalal spoke to a group of destitute widows at a nonprofit bakery, telling them, "Your dignity is my dignity," and promising, if elected, to improve their lot. The women all said they had registered to vote but that their primary concerns were obtaining adequate food and shelter for their children.
"I believe I can do a lot to support women, to bring them into leadership roles and raise their concerns," said Jalal, a mother of three. "The Afghan constitution says men and women are equal before the law, and I intend to implement the constitution." But any discussion of women's rights under Islam, she said firmly, "should be left to scholars."
In Afghan culture, a strictly traditional view is taken of women's marital rights under Islam. Marriages are arranged, and engaged couples do not meet alone. Girls live with their parents until marriage and then immediately go to live with their husband's parents. Men often have two wives and sometimes up to four, as Islam allows in some cases.
Divorce is not common, but it is far easier for a man to obtain one than it is for a woman. Married women face strong pressure from relatives and judges to remain with their husbands -- even an abusive one. If a woman insists on a divorce, courts generally award the children to the husband. In dividing inheritances, male heirs receive double the property female heirs do.
Over the past two decades, moreover, Afghan society has become more conservative, not less. Movements to embrace modernization and communism in the 1970s led to a decade-long occupation of the country by the Soviet Union and eventual civil war among Islamic factions, culminating in the repressive rule of the extremist Taliban movement between 1996 and late 2001.
"We are coming out of mujaheddin and Taliban culture, and conservative tradition has become the norm," said Jawad Luddin, Karzai's chief spokesman. He said the president had tried to be respectful of all views and suggested that Pedram should have been more circumspect. "This has always been a bombshell issue, and a good politician has to suppress himself," he said.
"Women should not be abused, but we should not ignore our traditions either," said Hafiz Mansour, a conservative presidential candidate who spoke at the women's forum. "In the West, women are used to sell lipstick and shampoo. We want them to become educated, to become professionals, but not to be used as a thing and thrown out."
He also said that Islam allowed women more marital rights than critics might think. For example, men may marry several wives but only under limited conditions, such as when one wife is chronically ill or cannot bear a son, and even then only if the husband is able to treat all of them fairly. Islam also allows a woman to sue for divorce if her husband abuses her, fails to support her or forces her to be involved in crime.
"Marriage does not make a woman hostage for life," Mansour said. "What Pedram said is already in the Koran."
While no one is rushing to endorse Pedram's statements, other candidates are scrambling to develop reasonable-sounding policies on women's rights. But, as Jalal points out, Afghan women are just beginning to discover and exercise their political voice -- and they have far more urgent priorities than the right to divorce.
"Women need better health care, better education, better jobs. If a woman has no education, how can she defend her rights?" Jalal said. "The fact that I am a candidate at all is a revolution. If we can get women into office to serve other women, then we can start to bring real change."
-------- africa
U.S. Report Finds Sudan Promoted Killings
Use of Term 'Genocide' Debated Ahead of Powell Testimony on Darfur Atrocities
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3568-2004Sep7?language=printer
A State Department report detailing atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan concludes that the Sudanese government has promoted systematic killings based on race and ethnic origin, but officials said Tuesday that there was strong debate over whether Secretary of State Colin L. Powell should classify the violence as genocide.
State Department lawyers reviewing the report, based on 1,136 interviews collected in 19 refugee camps in neighboring Chad last month, said the evidence of rape, killing of male babies, use of racial epithets, burning of villages and displacement could easily meet the legal definition of genocide. Powell visited Darfur in June and requested the investigation.
A draft of the report, which was obtained by The Post and which will be issued in its final form Thursday, says the Sudanese government in coordination with the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed sought victims who were non-Arabs. Assailants often shouted racial and ethnic epithets such as "Kill the slaves" and "We have orders to kill all blacks."
Use of the word genocide is "a political question now," a high-ranking State Department source said. "Not a legal one."
On one side of the debate, some human rights officials contend a declaration of genocide would be a powerful statement that would draw world attention to Darfur and promote efforts to halt mass killings there. However, some in the U.S. government argue that the explicit use of the word might alienate the Sudanese government and limit the United States' ability to pressure its leaders to halt marauding Arab militias, who have killed, raped and tortured black African refugees in the region.
The "primary cleavage is ethnic: Arabs against Africans," according to the eight-page report, which will be released as Powell testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Powell said Tuesday he was focusing on efforts to enhance relief operations in Darfur. "We've seen improvement with respect to humanitarian access," Powell said at a State Department briefing. "The security situation isn't as improved as we would like it to be."
But "with respect to the issue of what to call it -- genocide or not," he said, "it doesn't open any new doors that are not available to us now."
The 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined the act as a calculated effort to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. The convention calls on signatories, including the United States, to prevent and punish genocide.
Earlier this year, Congress urged the Bush administration to call the situation in Sudan genocide. Organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights have also called it genocide.
The European Union and Amnesty International, among other groups, have said they do not have enough information to determine if the situation in Darfur meets the definition of genocide.
The office of the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan said that the expulsion of 1.2 million mainly African ethnic groups from their homes was deliberate and systematically carried out by the Sudanese government, according to a recent briefing paper on the Darfur crisis.
Tens of thousands of civilians face disease and death in squalid government camps; thousands more lack shelter and aid in hard-to-reach rebel-held areas.
As attacks continue in Darfur, the emotional debate over using the word genocide has evoked memories of inaction during previous episodes of violence.
In Rwanda a decade ago, Hutu extremists slaughtered an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus as various factions argued over the use of the word.
"We all had the Rwanda experience, and we all have to live with ourselves," said Charles Snyder, the State Department's senior representative on Sudan and the former acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs.
Meanwhile, analysts have said the United States is reluctant to antagonize Sudan because the Bush administration does not want to jeopardize a U.S.-backed peace deal to end a separate civil war with rebels in southern Sudan. In addition, Sudan, which once harbored Osama bin Laden, now plays a role in the war on terrorism.
High-ranking Sudanese officials, including the head of National Intelligence Security Services and the former external affairs intelligence chief, are among the key figures ordering and coordinating the violence in Darfur, State Department sources said.
"Senior Bush administration officials appear reluctant to publicly identify senior officials involved in the atrocities in Darfur, including First Vice President Osman Taha and NISS chief Salah Abdala Gosh, because these officials are also in charge of the counterterrorism efforts and have been cooperating with U.S. officials," said Ted Dagne of the U.S. Congressional Research Service. "Targeting these officials could end cooperation on counterterrorism."
Human rights analysts said that describing killings in Darfur as genocide does not prescribe a specific U.S. course of action.
"Just calling it a genocide does not open a magic book," said Jerry Fowler, staff director on the Committee on Conscience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "But it raises the moral and political stakes. You can't just say it's genocide and then not get involved."
Members of the State Department who contributed to the new report also worked in Kosovo and Bosnia. After touring the camps, they likened their experiences there to their experiences in Sudan and discussed the need for additional international pressure to end the violence in Darfur.
"If you have women without their men, that changes the face of the future society," said Jan Pfundheller, a retired police officer from Brewster, Wash.
"I was shocked by the scope of the tragedy," said Pfundheller, an expert on sexual violence. "What happened in Kosovo was evil. This is more vast and equally as evil."
-------- arms sales
French connection armed Saddam
September 08, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040908-123000-1796r.htm
The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book "Treachery" (Crown Forum). In this excerpt, he details France's persistence in arming Saddam Hussein.
New intelligence revealing how long France continued to supply and arm Saddam Hussein's regime infuriated U.S. officials as the nation prepared for military action against Iraq.
The intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the late winter of 2002 helped explain why France refused to deal harshly with Iraq and blocked U.S. moves at the United Nations.
"No wonder the French are opposing us," one U.S. intelligence official remarked after illegal sales to Iraq of military and dual-use parts, originating in France, were discovered early last year before the war began.
That official was careful to stipulate that intelligence reports did not indicate whether the French government had sanctioned or knew about the parts transfers. The French company at the beginning of the pipeline remained unidentified in the reports. France's government tightly controls its aerospace and defense firms, however, so it would be difficult to believe that the illegal transfers of equipment parts took place without the knowledge of at least some government officials.
Iraq's Mirage F-1 fighter jets were made by France's Dassault Aviation. Its Gazelle attack helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which became part of a consortium of European defense companies.
"It is well-known that the Iraqis use front companies to try to obtain a number of prohibited items," a senior Bush administration official said before the war, refusing to discuss Iraq's purchase of French warplane and helicopter parts.
The State Department confirmed intelligence indicating the French had given support to Iraq's military.
"U.N. sanctions prohibit the transfer to Iraq of arms and materiel of all types, including military aircraft and spare parts," State Department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said. "We take illicit transfers to Iraq very seriously and work closely with our allies to prevent Iraq from acquiring sensitive equipment."
Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, declared that France's selling of military equipment to Iraq was "international treason" as well as a violation of a U.N. resolution.
"As a pilot and a former war pilot, this disturbs me greatly that the French would allow in any way parts for the Mirage to be exported so the Iraqis could continue to use those planes," Stevens said.
"The French, unfortunately, are becoming less trustworthy than the Russians," said Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "It's outrageous they would allow technology to support the jets of Saddam Hussein to be transferred."
The U.S. military was about to go to war with Iraq, and thanks to the French, the Iraqi air force had become more dangerous.
The pipeline
French aid to Iraq goes back decades and includes transfers of advanced conventional arms and components for weapons of mass destruction.
The central figure in these weapons ties is French President Jacques Chirac. His relationship with Saddam dates to 1975, when, as prime minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris.
"I welcome you as my personal friend," Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq.
The French put Saddam up at the Hotel Marigny, an annex to the presidential palace, and gave him the trappings of a head of state. The French wanted Iraqi oil, and by establishing this friendship, Chirac would help France replace the Soviet Union as Iraq's leading supplier of weapons and military goods.
In fact, Chirac helped sell Saddam the two nuclear reactors that started Baghdad on the path to nuclear weapons capability.
France's corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war.
By 2000, France had become Iraq's largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified.
Saddam developed networks for illegal supplies to get around the U.N. arms embargo and achieve a military buildup in the years before U.S. forces launched a second assault on Iraq.
One spare-parts pipeline flowed from a French company to Al Tamoor Trading Co. in the United Arab Emirates. Tamoor then sent the parts by truck through Turkey, and into Iraq. The Iraqis obtained spare parts for their French-made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters through this pipeline.
A huge debt
U.S. intelligence would not discover the pipeline until the eve of war last year; sensitive intelligence indicated that parts had been smuggled to Iraq as recently as that January.
"A thriving gray-arms market and porous borders have allowed Baghdad to acquire smaller arms and components for larger arms, such as spare parts for aircraft, air-defense systems and armored vehicles," the CIA said in a report to Congress made public that month.
U.S. intelligence agencies later came under fire over questions about prewar estimates of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But intelligence on Iraq's hidden procurement networks was confirmed.
An initial accounting by the Pentagon in the months after the fall of Baghdad revealed that Saddam covertly acquired between 650,000 and 1 million tons of conventional weapons from foreign sources. The main suppliers were Russia, China and France.
By contrast, the U.S. arsenal is between 1.6 million and 1.8 million tons.
As of last year, Iraq owed France an estimated $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects, according to French government estimates. U.S. officials thought this massive debt was one reason France opposed a military operation to oust Saddam.
The fact that illegal deals continued even as war loomed indicated France viewed Saddam's regime as a future source of income.
Telltale chemical
Just days before U.S. and coalition forces launched their military campaign against Iraq, more evidence of French treachery emerged.
In mid-March 2003, U.S. intelligence and defense officials confirmed that exporters in France had conspired with China to provide Iraq with chemicals used in making solid fuel for long-range missiles. The sanctions-busting operation occurred in August 2002, the U.S. National Security Agency discovered through electronic intercepts.
The chemical transferred to Iraq was a transparent liquid rubber called hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, or HTPB, according to intelligence reports.
U.S. intelligence traced the sale to China's Qilu Chemicals, "the largest manufacturer of HTPB in China," one official says.
A French company, CIS Paris, helped broker the sale of 20 tons of HTPB, a controlled export that was shipped from China to the Syrian port of Tartus. The chemical solution was sent by truck from Syria into Iraq, to a missile-manufacturing plant. The Iraqi company that purchased the shipment was in charge of making solid fuel for long-range missiles.
HTPB technically is a dual-use chemical, because it also can be used for commercial purposes such as space launches. However, Iraq often disguised military purchases as commercial ones, as documents found later in Iraq would confirm.
In a report to Congress, the CIA said Iraq had constructed two "mixing" buildings for solid-propellant fuels at a plant known as al-Mamoun. The facility originally was built to produce the Badr-2000, a solid-propellant missile also known as the Condor.
The new buildings "appear especially suited to house large, U.N.-prohibited mixers of the type acquired for the Badr-2000 program," the CIA report stated.
French denials
Despite controversy over prewar intelligence on Iraq, the CIA said its estimates of Iraqi missiles were on target.
Representatives of the French and Chinese governments went on the attack when The Washington Times asked about the chemical sale.
Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng did not address the specifics, but said "irresponsible accusations" about China's exports had been made in the past.
"These accusations are devoid of all foundation," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau declared. "In line with the rules currently in force, France has neither delivered, nor authorized, the delivery of such materials, either directly or indirectly."
By that point, many in the U.S. government were fed up with French denials.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called in the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, to complain about France's covert and overt support for Saddam's regime.
"Twelve years of waiting was too costly in terms of the growing threat from Baghdad," Wolfowitz told the ambassador, according to a U.S. official who was present.
Made in France
The war in Iraq, which began March 19, 2003, provided disturbing evidence that France's treacherous dealings come at a steep cost to the United States.
On April 8 came the downing of Air Force Maj. Jim Ewald's A-10 Thunderbolt fighter over Baghdad and the discovery that it was a French-made Roland missile that brought down the American pilot and destroyed a $13 million aircraft. Ewald, one of the first U.S. pilots shot down in the war, was rescued by members of the Army's 54th Engineer Battalion who saw him parachute to earth not far from the wreckage.
Army intelligence concluded that the French had sold the missile to the Iraqis within the past year, despite French denials.
A week after Ewald's A-10 was downed, an Army team searching Iraqi weapons depots at the Baghdad airport discovered caches of French-made missiles. One anti-aircraft missile, among a cache of 51 Roland-2s from a French-German manufacturing partnership, bore a label indicating that the batch was produced just months earlier.
In May,