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NUCLEAR
PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATION ACCIDENT AT FRENCH NUCLEAR FACILITY
Chernobyl Children Have Normal Mental Function
Two Charged in S. African Nuclear Trafficking Case
Ireland: Cullen concerned over inadequate UK response to Sellafield
France's nuclear threat
EC TO PROSECUTE OVER SELLAFIELD POND
Divisions remain between US and EU's Big Three on Iran's nuclear program
Japan nuclear accident will not affect fusion project bid: officials
South Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
S. Korea Admits Extracting Plutonium
Rumsfeld surprised by secret South Korean nuclear research
South Korea nuclear case likely to go to U.N. Security Council
S. Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
6-Party Nuke Talks Not Likely in Sept.
Bush waives nuclear sanction on Libya
U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch
Eight-Year UN Disarmament Stalemate Continues
Rocky Flats whistleblower Brever talks Colorado U
Nevada Sues Again to Block Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository
Safety board adds new rep
Board disputes Hanford cleanup safety
MILITARY
U.S. Calls Killings In Sudan Genocide
Villagers flee troops, militia fighting near Nigerian oil city
Blocked arms sales
Halliburton Unit Gets a Positive Review From Pentagon
Northrop Gets $308 Million Military Deal
U.S. Warplanes Strike Two Iraq Cities
Iraqi civilians killed in US missile strike
Violence Will Intensify in Iraq as Elections Near, Rumsfeld Says
U.S. Troops Lay Seige to Iraqi City
American and Iraqi Forces Try to Regain Control of Sunni Strongholds
Six Palestinians Killed in New Fighting in Gaza, West Bank
Israeli Forces Attack in Gaza, Killing 7 Arabs
Costa Rica seeks removal from Iraq 'coalition'
Army Says C.I.A. Hid More Iraqis Than It Claimed
'Ghost detainees' number up to 100
General Cites Hidden Detainees
Russian Leader Promises Open Inquiry Into Terror Attack
From Dismal Chechnya, Women Turn to Bombs
Witnesses Pull Out of Trial After Judges Refuse
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Keeps City on Notice Over Convention Protest Arrests
National Airport Tests Boarding Pass Screens
Secret Service Not Coddling Hecklers
U.S. to Pay Fliers $1.5 Million for Pilfering of Checked Bags
Rounding up all illegals 'not realistic'
POLITICS
General Cites Hidden Detainees
Reporters' Files Subpoenaed
'Uncovered' explores role of neocons in Iraq war
Al Qaeda Releases Tape Predicting U.S. Defeat
Row over CBS report questioning Bush military service
Democrats Step Up Attack on Bush Guard Record
Kerry Says Bush Assault Weapons Stance Aids Terrorists
Secretary Rumsfeld's Speech at the National Press Club
ENERGY
Californians Could Get $2.8 Billion in Energy Refunds
OTHER
Smelly Robot Eats Flies to Generate Its Own Power
DuPont Settles Water Contamination Lawsuit
Belgian Ship Spills 100 Tons of Oil Off Russian Far East
Hydroponic Forage Cultivation May Prevent Future Water Wars
Extinct species take others along, study finds
Genetically Modified Fish Used to Make Human Protein
FDA Urged Withholding Data on Antidepressants
Turmeric May Protect Against Leukemia - Scientist
US Report Sees Wide Health Effects of 9-11 Attacks
ACTIVISTS
Ellsberg Urges Insiders to Leak Iraq Info
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
PLUTONIUM CONTAMINATION ACCIDENT AT FRENCH NUCLEAR FACILITY
GREENPEACE DEMANDS HALT TO U.S SHIPMENT PLANS
2004 September 10th Paris...
http://greenpeace.datapps.com/stop-plutonium/en/20040910_en.php3
An accident at a plutonium fuel facility in France should lead to the cancellation of plans to ship weapons-grade plutonium from the United States next week, Greenpeace stated today. The accident occurred at the 'ATPu' plutonium fuel (MOX) manufacturing plant at the Cadarache nuclear complex in the South of France. Two workers were contaminated when a container of plutonium and uranium leaked the nuclear material into the room they were working in. CEA has admitted that the accident was due to a violation of procedures, and is trying to decontaminate the building as well as running urgent health checks on the two workers.
The facility is operated by AREVA/Cogema and the CEA (Atomic Energy Commission) and has had many problems over the years of operation. The accident at the ATPU facility comes immediately before a shipment of U.S. military plutonium that is due to leave the port of Charleston, South Carolina next week. Two British nuclear freighters are currently heading for the east coast port and are due to arrive around September 15 th . The AtPu will be used for three months to manufacture MOX fuel before shipping it back to the United States.
"This accident in addition to exposing the workers to danger, exposes risks of producing dangerous plutonium MOX fuel. There are many reasons why the United States should not send its plutonium to France next week - but this accident demands an immediate end to U.S. plans. It also requires full disclosure by French nuclear safety authorities and industry on what exactly happened," said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International/Yannick Rousselet Greenpeace France.
Greenpeace will request expertise from the nuclear consultancy WISE-Paris in France to analyse this accident, currently described as level 1 on the international accident scale (INES). WISE-Paris has researched ATPu many years warning of the poor safety standards and blurry application of licensing regulations
Greenpeace is working to oppose the shipment, and stop the production of MOX fuel
More:
US Mox "Lead Test Assembly" Controversy : Fabrication at Cadarache, France - PDF http://greenpeace.datapps.com/stop-plutonium/en/BriefLTA.pdf
U.S MOX "Lead Test Assembly" Controversy: Fabrication at Cadarache, France - If too dangerous for European fuel, why just right for U.S. weapons plutonium? Briefing for Greenpeace International. WISE-Paris, 30 July 2003, version 1 - File in PDF format (16 p., 325 Ko) http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ourbriefings_pdf/030729BriefLTA.env1b.pdf
Plutonium Investigation , "Special Cadarache", no. 20, April-May 2001. http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ournewsletter/20/contents.html
ATPu (Plutonium Technology Facility) at Cadarache WISE-Paris, 21 August 2000, version 4 - File in PDF format (11 p., 72 Ko) http://www.wise-paris.org/english/ourbriefings_pdf/000821BriefCAD1v4.pdf Annexes (only in French) : File in PDF format (12 p., 843 Ko) http://www.wise-paris.org/francais/nosbriefings_pdf/AnnexesBriefCAD1v3.pdf
----
Chernobyl Children Have Normal Mental Function
Story by Karla Gale
REUTERS USA:
September 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27047/story.htm
NEW YORK - The low level of radiation that occurred after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 did not appear to affect the mental performance of exposed children, researchers in Israel have found.
However, they observed that mothers who were pregnant at the time of the accident have children with above-average rates of hyperactivity, regardless of the level of radiation they were exposed to. The investigators therefore suggest that the hyperactivity may reflect heightened anxiety in mothers that was transferred to their offspring.
Studies of Japanese survivors of the atomic bombs during World War II showed that fetal exposure to high doses of radiation increased the risk of mental retardation and small head size. It was feared that prenatal and early childhood irradiation after the Chernobyl accident would have similar consequences, Dr. Gad Rennert and his team explain in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Rennert, of the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, and colleagues studied 1629 children who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The children were either unborn or up to 4 years old at the time of the accident.
A total of 667 came from the highly exposed Gomel region, while 408 came from Mogilev and Kiev, which were only mildly exposed. The remaining 554 were from the non-exposed cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
There was no relation between exposure to radiation and measures of intelligence or of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the researchers found. However, children of mothers who were pregnant at the time of the accident scored higher for ADHD, regardless of the exposure level.
"If you look at the accumulation of all the data, the only significant finding with regard to Chernobyl that repeats itself is the increase in thyroid cancer," Rennert told Reuters Health. "Other than that, it seems as if there was no major influence of the accident" on people's health.
"One thing we did see was this extreme degree of anxiousness among women who were pregnant at the time of accident," he continued.
"It was similar in those who were only 50 km away from the site and in those who were hundreds of kilometers away. What we see is not any influence of the exposure itself but the influence of the trauma that people experienced," he said.
The research is ongoing, Rennert noted. "We are closely following a cohort of more than 1000 individuals who were on clean-up teams. These were individuals who were put at the highest degree of risk. If they don't show any consequences of that exposure to low-level radiation, nothing will ever be shown."
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, September 2004.
-------- africa
Two Charged in S. African Nuclear Trafficking Case
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A20
Craig Timberg and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10136-2004Sep9.html
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 9 -- A German man and his colleague appeared in court Thursday on charges of violating South Africa's ban against nuclear proliferation, according to news reports.
Gerhard Wisser, 66, is accused of receiving more than $1 million to arrange for a South African firm to manufacture parts for a gas centrifuge used to enrich uranium, according to the reports. Prosecutors say the parts were intended for Libya's atomic weapons program. Wisser had been arrested in Germany in late August and released on bail pending investigation.
The nationality of the other man, identified as Daniel Geiges, 65, was not immediately known.
The men, who were arrested in South Africa on Wednesday, work for Krisch Engineering, a company in Randburg, near Johannesburg. Wisser is managing director of the company. Their lawyers say they have denied any wrongdoing.
Authorities confirmed that the charges are related to the international investigation into the nuclear arms network led by a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who helped Libya and other countries develop weapons programs.
A third man, Johan Andries Muller Meyer, 53, was arrested last week on similar allegations, but prosecutors dropped the charges against him as part of a deal in which he is expected to cooperate with the investigation, officials said Wednesday. Police seized 11 shipping containers from Meyer's company, Trade Fin Engineering, that allegedly contained components used in building gas centrifuges.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is leading an investigation into the Khan network. "We're getting very good cooperation from the South African authorities," said Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the agency.
-------- britain
Ireland: Cullen concerned over inadequate UK response to Sellafield
Friday, September 10, 2004,
Warford News, Ireland
http://www.waterford-news.ie/news/story.asp?j=15596
MARTIN Cullen, Minister for the Environment, has welcomed the decision of the European Commission to refer the UK to the European Court of Justice over concerns at Sellafield. "When the Commission gave the UK Government a June 1 deadline to respond, it vindicated the Irish Government's approach to Sellafield. The announcement that the UK is being brought to court reinforces our determination to ensure the safe closure of Sellafield," he said.
The Minister was commenting on the European Commission's decision which followed the inadequate response by the UK to concerns over the storage of nuclear material at the B30 pond at the Sellafield facility.
"I am also disappointed that, yet again, the UK is resisting the bringing of openness to the operations at Sellafield. It shows the UK's reluctance to change without been subjected to determined legal, political and diplomatic action.
"This attitude only adds to the mistrust of all operations at Sellafield," Minister Cullen continued.
"It is unacceptable that the UK has not assuaged European Commission concerns regarding the plutonium held at Sellafield and I will be asking the Attorney General what action we can take to support the Commission's case in court.
"The issue of access to information at Sellafield has been central to Ireland's two legal challenges to the UN Court of Arbitration. The decision is further evidence that the UK Government is struggling to cope with the legacy of 50 years of nuclear power," he concluded.
-------- europe
France's nuclear threat
10 SEPTEMBER 2004
Expatica
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=773&name=France's+nuclear+threat+
Millions of people in France unknowingly share the same fate as the TV cartoon family The Simpsons: they have a nuclear power plant in their back yard. Pat Brett reports on the history and the risks of France's civil nuclear industry. France has 58 nuclear reactors housed in 19 plants dotted around the country, making it the second largest producer of nuclear power in the world, second only to the United States.
In December 1999, two days of severe storms swelled the river Gironde near Bordeaux until it finally broke a dike protecting the nuclear plant at Blayais. The area housing the primary cooling system, a vital part of each reactor's security apparatus, became flooded. The four reactors in the plant had to be urgently shut down.
A subsequent report by the government body responsible for nuclear plant security noted poor compliance with emergency safety procedures. More worrying still, it concluded that similar accidents were possible at 15 out of France's total of 19 nuclear plants.
The combined French authorites controlling nuclear power activities recently set up a scale to describe the gravity of any accident ocurring at a nuclear power station, ranking incidents from a minor "level -1" to a major "level -7". There are so many of these banal bulletins issued each year that they mostly pass unnoticed.
Many of the incidents described are minimal, but there are some significant anomolies which put a lie to the nuclear industry's argument that a major accident in France is unthinkable - and every major city in France lies close to a nuclear power plant.
The French government is now debating the building of a second generation of nuclear reactors, which would replace the existing systems due to end active service by 2020, with the introduction of a prototype European nuclear reactor (EPR) model for testing within the next eight years.
While officially no decision has been taken to continue with nuclear power, Junior Industry Minister Nicole Fontaine has publicly stated that "another choice would hardly be responsible".
It was the 1973 oil crisis, involving rationing and high prices, which spurred French politicians, across party lines, to clamour for energy independence. Nuclear power was unanimously declared as the one and only way to achieve that goal. In the process, it became a symbol of France's industrial might.
Today nuclear power supplies 75-80 percent of the French electricity board's output and about 20 percent of nuclear power produced is exported, even across the Channel to Britain.
Unstoppable in the 1970s and early 80s, every aspect of the nuclear industry flourished in France, spawning Framatom (constructor of reactors), the Cogema (which handles the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining, to uranium enrichment, to waste reprocessing), and Andra, (responsible for resolving one of the thorniest issues to face the industry : disposal and storage of radioactive waste).
Tucked away in a remote tip of the Cotentin coastline, at La Hague, in Normandy, France boasts the world's largest spent nuclear fuel (never say waste) reprocessing plant. With an annual capacity of 1,700 tonnes, the plant treats waste shipped not just from around France but also from other countries such as Germany or even Japan.
Anti-nuclear activists have been vocal with their claims that La Hague has made France "the nuclear waste dump of the planet". The Cogema, which runs the plant, argues that 97 percent of the reprocessed fuel is returned to the country of origin. But environmentalists dismiss this, claiming that the remaining 3 percent has the highest concentration of plutonium, hence of long-term, high-level radiation.
The powerful influence of the French nuclear industry took its first major blow with the explosion, in 1986, of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. The French authorities deliberately failed to notify the public that the radiation-filled cloud had fallen over France. No warnings were given that the highly dangerous radioactive pollution was, literally, raining over east and south eastern France.
The staggering excuse given for the information black-out was the fear of mass panic. It was only years later that the true extent of the cover-up, hidden by the shadow of the powerful nuclear lobby, was revealed through a parliamentary enquiry.
Following 1986, environmentalists established independent watchdog laboratories and nuclear monitoring bureaux, questioning official measurements.
The French nuclear industry is currently being restructured, largely into a single company called TOPCO. Led by the all-powerful nuclear industry "godfather", the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, the industry is now redefining its strategy beyond the French market. EDF has recently moved investment into foreign energy distributors, witnessed by its controversial bid for capital of Montedison, in Italy.
Besides France's 58 reactors, there are several experimental reactors, radioactive mines, enrichment plants, storage areas, and CEA research facilities that have mushroomed across the French countryside.
Not forgetting the waste-laden truck and train convoys, often travelling under escort at night on a route kept secret until the last minute and which, to get back to The Simpsons, could be crossing near anyone's backyard - as you read this.
Updated November 2003
----
EC TO PROSECUTE OVER SELLAFIELD POND
Whitehaven News (UK),
Friday, September 10th, 2004
http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/business/viewarticle.asp?id=133663
WILD WEATHER: Harrington Pier, the scene of the tragedy at Harrington on March 15 THE murky waters of a radioactive waste pond at Sellafield are the subject of a legal row with the European Commission.
They have accused BNFL of failing to draw up an adequate plan to enable inspection of the B30 nuclear fuel ponds.
The European Commission is expected to start legal action before the European Court of Justice, claiming that the UK failed to provide proper information about material stored in Sellafield and did not give EU inspectors adequate access to the site.
Under the Euratom treaty, the UK is supposed to allow inspection of its nuclear materials, including the hundreds of magnox spent fuel rods corroding in the B30 ponds.
BNFL referred questions on the issue to the Department of Trade and Industry.
Nick Turton from the DTi said: "We share the commission's wish to ensure that the process of retrieving waste material from B30 includes appropriate arrangements to ensure nuclear materials can be accounted for and verified by the Commissions Safety Inspectorate."
He declined to be drawn further on why BNFL had been unable to satisfy the requests for inspection of B30.
MEANWHILE anti-nuclear campaigners CORE were last week monitoring the departure of an armed BNFL ship leaving Barrow to sail to the USA.
CORE claims the ship will be used to ferry plutonium from the USA to France, where the ex-weapons plutonium will be used to make MOX nuclear fuel assemblies.
Sellafield's own MOX facility is still being commissioned.
French company Areva issued this statement on Friday: "The Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, two UK-registered ships dedicated to the transport of nuclear materials, are leaving Barrow today for Charleston (United States).
"Their journey is part of a program being implemented by the United States Department Of Energy (USDOE) for the disposition of former weapons plutonium, by using it in a nuclear reactor for generating electricity.
"The programme starts with the manufacturing of four nuclear fuel assemblies in France.
"In Charleston, the plutonium for these assemblies will be loaded on board, in casks specially designed for the safe and secure transport of plutonium oxide.
"The ships will then leave for France, where the plutonium will be fabricated into nuclear fuel at the COGEMA sites of Cadarache and Marcoule.
"The shipment, as with all operations in this program, complies with national and international regulations. The shipping company involved has safely transported nuclear material over 4 million nautical miles without a single incident involving the release of radioactivity.
"The cargo will be protected by armed guards throughout its journey and the ships are equipped with naval guns."
-------- iran
Divisions remain between US and EU's Big Three on Iran's nuclear program
GENEVA (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910183246.3e7h2zg2.html
The United States and three major European countries were unable Friday to agree on how to tackle Iran's nuclear activities, but will continue talking over the weekend and at a UN atomic agency meeting next week, a top American official said.
A "tactical gap" between Washington and the so-called Euro 3 of Britain, France and Germany, over Iran -- which the United States believes is secretly developing nuclear weapons -- was narrowing, said John Bolton, US Under Secretary of State for arms control and international security.
But "we have a ways to go," he told a news conference in Geneva, following a US-hosted meeting with his counterparts from the other Group of Eightindustrialised countries.
"The objective that the United States has been pursuing has been to ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapons capability and that is an objective shared by all of the G-8 countries," Bolton said.
"There is no disagreement on our broad objective. What we have tried to do here today and yesterday was to close the tactical gap that has existed between the United States and ... Britain France and Germany," he said.
"We made progress in that regard here ... I think discussions will continue over the weekend and into next week and we will see what we are able to do."
The US envoy declined, however, to say exactly what advances had been made.
"I do not want to really get into the specifics because the questions of closing the tactical gap I think are best addressed in private consultations," he said, adding that emails and telephone calls would follow Friday's talks.
The United States and the Euro 3 are preparing resolutions for Monday's meeting in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that highlight their different approaches to dealing with Iran.
The Euro 3, which stress constructive engagement, want to avoid setting a deadline for Tehran to fully suspend uranium enrichment activities while the United States takes a harder line as it seeks to bring Iran before the UN Security Council.
"If we close the tactical gap we increase the likelihood that we can achieve our overall objective, which is to preclude the Iranians from achieving nuclear status and that really is what we want to focus on," said Bolton.
Iran's controversial bid to generate nuclear power at its Bushehr plant is seen by arch-enemies Israel and the United States as a cover for nuclear weapons development, allegations that Iran denies.
Government officials from the G8 countries -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- as well as other nations met in Geneva on Thursday to discuss non-proliferation issues.
This was followed by a regular monthly gathering on Friday of G8 members, who form a self-titled Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, hosted by Bolton.
Bolton said he was due to travel to Israel on Saturday for talks with officials about the upcoming IAEA meeting before returning to Washington.
Asked why Israel was treated differently to Iran with regard to the question of nuclear weapons development, Bolton said cases were incomparable as the United States has put Iran a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"The case of Iran is very different to Israel," he said.
"It is discrimination when you treat two like things in a dissimilar fashion. It is also discrimination when you treat two unlike things in the same fashion," he said.
Most foreign experts believe Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, although it has stuck for the past 40 years to a policy of "strategic ambiguity" of neither confirming nor denying its nuclear arsenal.
-------- japan
Japan nuclear accident will not affect fusion project bid: officials
TOKYO (AFP)
Aug 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040810075215.tbbfurwc.html
Japan's latest accident at a nuclear power plant will have no impact on its bid to host the world's first prototype nuclear fusion reactor, Japanese and French officials said Tuesday.
A science and technology ministry official said the non-radioactive accident, in which four workers were killed by escaping steam, was unrelated to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) bid.
"This is totally unrelated," Takashio Hayashi told AFP. "These are two completely separate things."
Seven workers were also injured, two critically, by super-heated steam when a pipe burst Monday in the turbine room of the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in central Japan.
Japan and the European Union are vying to host the 10 billion dollar experimental test-bed for what is being billed as a clean, safe, inexhaustible energy source of the future, in a project that also includes China, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The European bloc wants to host the project at the southern French town of Cadarache, near Marseille and has reportedly won support from China and Russia.
South Korea and the United States appear to prefer the Japanese site, in the northern village of Rokkasho-mura.
Dominique Ochem, the nuclear counsellor at the French embassy in Tokyo, also said the Mihama accident would have no bearing on the outcome of the competition to host ITER.
"I do not believe that this will prejudice the Japanese bid," he said.
The decision on the winner, which must be by consensus among the six partners, would be a "political decision, not scientific, and the partners are not ready to change their mind," Ochem said, referring to the deadlock in discussions.
The choice of the site must be made by consensus, and not by a simple majority, partly because all parties will be required to fund the reactor which will cost roughly five billion dollars to build and another five billion to run over 20 years.
-------- korea
South Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
Eastday
September 10, 2004
http://english.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper1/1388/class000100006/hwz211295.htm
Again astonishing the world, South Korean government admitted Thursday several scientists secretly extracted a minimal amount of plutonium during a research experiment in 1982.
The acknowledgment came one week after Seoul's announcement that few South Korean researchers conducted enriched uranium separation experiment four years ago.
The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology confirmed on Thursday afternoon that "several milligrams" of plutonium were extracted from about 2.5 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel rods at a 2-megawatt research reactor in the state-run (South) Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) between April and May in 1982.
The chief scientist of the experiment was already dead, other participants said they wanted to study "post-irradiation characteristics" of material and that the purely academic experiment had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
The ministry also said the amount of extracted plutonium was too little to be related to nuclear weapons. However, there was no record on the exact amount of the plutonium extracted by the scientists, according to the ministry.
However, the reactor located in Nonwon District of Seoul is in the final stage of dismantlement, said the ministry.
Plutonium and enriched uranium are the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
After receiving reports from the South Korean government on the two experiments, the IAEA dispatched a seven-member inspection team to visit South Korea last week.
It investigated the plutonium case as well as the uranium enrichment experiment. Scientists who participated in the plutonium extraction were also questioned.
Although South Korean senior officials and related authorities underscored both of the two experiments are academic ones and had nothing to do with any nuclear weapon development program, international and local media still paid great attention to the two cases.
Media widely wondered why the two group of scientists could conducted such kind of experiments restricted by the IAEA without informing the Seoul government.
The two cases also aroused various speculation over Seoul's nuclear capability, although the South Korean government stressed either the uranium or the plutonium made in the experiments was much lower than the weapon grade.
Some media speculated that the experiment might have been part of an established uranium enrichment program or even a nuclear arms program.
South Korea has categorically denied those speculations, saying as a member of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and IAEA Safeguard Agreement, South Korea will firmly stood by its non- proliferation commitment and maintained a high level of transparency in nuclear activity.
South Korea once had a clandestine nuclear weapon program in the 1970s, when the United States slashed the US Forces Korea from 60,000 to 40,000.
Then South Korean president Park Chung-hee instructed several scientists to secretly develop nuclear weapons thus to enhance South Korea's deterrent power against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
But South Korea stopped the program both due to US heavy pressure and the death of Park in 1979.
According to the ministry, the plutonium case is also likely to be reported to the IAEA's Board of Governors meeting scheduled for next week, along with the uranium case.
Local media also worried the exposure of the two experiments may cast a shadow on the six-party talks which aim to solve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
The DPRK's envoy to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, told the South Korean national news agency Yonhap that Pyongyang found the United States "worthless" as a dialogue partner because it was applying "double standards" to South Korea and the DPRK on the nuclear issue.
"We see South Korea's uranium enrichment experiment in the context of an arms race in Northeast Asia," Han was quoted as saying.
However, the South Korean government expressed confidence over the nuclear talks. "I don't think Han Song-ryol's remarks indicate that North Korea (DPRK) will not attend the fourth round of the six-way talks," Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said at a weekly press briefing earlier Thursday.
----
S. Korea Admits Extracting Plutonium
Acknowledgment of '82 Test Follows Disclosure on Uranium
By Anthony Faiola and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9761-2004Sep9?language=printer
SEOUL, Sept. 10 -- The South Korean government acknowledged Thursday that it extracted a small amount of plutonium during a 1982 research experiment, a declaration that came a week after the country acknowledged its scientists had secretly enriched uranium.
Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said the agency had begun to suspect that South Korea was conducting nuclear experiments more than six years ago and said South Korean officials had worked hard to hide the experiments from inspectors.
"They had a fairly elaborate plan involving denial and deception in order to evade detection by inspectors," said one diplomat who would discuss the agency's investigation only on condition of anonymity.
South Korean Foreign Ministry officials called those accusations "groundless and unsubstantiated" and said they had fully cooperated with inspectors and would continue to do so.
In Washington, U.S. officials said they gave a clear message to South Korea this week that they consider the charges to be serious and would apply the same standards to any country found to be violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
That message, which diplomats said would be repeated next week in Vienna at a board meeting of the IAEA, was meant to assuage concerns that the United States was applying a double standard by pushing for tough action against North Korea and Iran, which have also been accused of conducting clandestine nuclear work.
The IAEA believes that South Korea's work on plutonium and uranium -- the key ingredients for nuclear weapons -- seriously violated the treaty and that the matter could be referred to the U.N. Security Council in November, diplomats said.
One diplomat familiar with the IAEA's work said that despite South Korea's official denials, uranium was secretly enriched in 2000 to nearly bomb-grade levels and the other experiment was optimized to produce bomb-grade plutonium. On Friday, South Korean officials again disputed that their experiments had reached anywhere near bomb-grade levels.
South Korea, which derives 40 percent of its energy from nuclear power, contends that all the tests were one-time research efforts unrelated to weapons programs.
The IAEA announced last week that it had launched an intensive investigation after South Korea belatedly admitted to enriching a small amount of uranium during three experiments in January and February of 2000 -- tests that diplomats and experts said the South Korean government was required to report under terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
North Korea, which has been pressured by the United States about its nuclear program, reacted quickly to the report on South Korea. On Wednesday, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, said the Bush administration had a "double standard" on the Korean Peninsula and warned of a budding "nuclear arms race" in northeast Asia.
North Korea expelled international inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty about two years ago, and U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe the North Koreans have now amassed an arsenal of up to eight nuclear devices. After three rounds of six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear program in Beijing, the Pyongyang government and the Bush administration have not significantly changed their negotiating positions. Analysts are concerned about progress in the talks, predicting they may be delayed until after the U.S. presidential election in November.
"This gives another reason for North Korea to raise the issue of fairness with the international community," said Jhe Sung Ho, professor of law at Joongang University in Seoul. "They are going to claim that Washington is pressing them while giving South Korea a break."
South Korea conducted nuclear weapons research during the 1970s but is believed to have abandoned it under U.S. pressure before the end of the decade. One South Korean official familiar with the government's report to the IAEA on the 1982 plutonium experiment said details of the test remained sketchy but insisted there was no indication it had been related to a weapons program.
"This experiment was conducted by a small group of scientists to analyze the chemical characteristics of plutonium," the Science and Technology Ministry said in a statement. "We have no written data left on the result of the experiment and the amount of plutonium extracted, but we estimate that a very minute amount in the range of milligrams was extracted." But one South Korean official familiar with the findings said if the experiment had taken place today, "the government would not have allowed it."
The first indication of a plutonium experiment came to light in 1998 after international inspectors detected traces of the substance at a government-run nuclear research center in Seoul, according to the South Korean science ministry. IAEA sources said the samples were inconclusive, and inspectors began additional testing in other areas of the country. The South Korean government said the IAEA made only a "casual inquiry" by fax in 1998 and submitted an official request about the incident in 2003.
During that work, the South Koreans allegedly dismantled a test site, moved equipment and failed to notify the IAEA about the experiments while they knew the agency was trying to determine whether such tests had been conducted, according to the diplomats. By 2003, inspectors had collected irrefutable evidence of plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, and they confronted the South Koreans with it last December.
The Seoul government submitted a report on the plutonium incident this March, but the report faced delays and problems, officials said, because the key researcher on the project had died. An official familiar with the case would not identify the researcher and could not cite the date of his death.
The IAEA has identified six violations by the South Koreans that could be reported to the Security Council.
The plutonium experiment took place during political turmoil in South Korea following the 1980 military coup by former president Chun Doo Hwan, who left office with the return to democracy in 1987. The South Koreans said they were unsure if the IAEA would declare the plutonium test in violation of international laws. They disclosed information about the plutonium experiment after the Associated Press quoted an unnamed senior Bush administration official in Washington, who gave details.
"We haven't found out the accurate purpose of the experiment, because the head of the research project at that time has passed away," said one South Korean official familiar with the plutonium test.
But Shin Sung Tack, a nuclear expert at the government-run Korean Institute for Defense Analysis, said, "You need at least 10 kilograms of plutonium to make low- level weapons grade." That is far beyond what the South Koreans said their scientists produced. High-ranking South Korean officials insisted they did not know about the uranium enrichment experiments until lower-level government administrators informed them in February.
Linzer reported from Washington. Special correspondent Johee Cho contributed to this report.
----
Rumsfeld surprised by secret South Korean nuclear research
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910203210.ns88u1kr.html
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday he was surprised to learn that South Korea once had clandestine programs to enrich uranium and extract plutonium but said he doubted Seoul now had any secret nuclear capability.
The South Korean government revealed the secret nuclear research on key ingredients for nuclear weapons in a series of embarrassing public admissions over the past week.
The research, conducted as recently as 1982, is the subject of an investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"I was surprised," Rumsfeld told an audience at the National Press Club here.
"It does not make any difference at all in terms of the security situation on the peninsula," he said.
"And I would certainly doubt that the current government has any clandestine nuclear capability in South Korea. We know that the North Koreans have announced that they do," he said.
A State Department spokesman earlier said the United States did not regard the South Korea research as nuclear weapons activities, only "laboratory experiments."
----
South Korea nuclear case likely to go to U.N. Security Council
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Carol Giacomo,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-10/s_27106.asp
WASHINGTON - South Korea is likely to be referred to the U.N. Security Council for conducting an unsanctioned uranium enrichment experiment four years ago, according to U.S. officials.
South Korea acknowledged last week that scientists from the state-run Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute enriched a trace amount of uranium in three laser tests conducted in January and February 2000.
Western diplomats in Vienna have said the level of enrichment accomplished was close to weapons-grade, but South Korea's top nuclear scientist said that was speculation.
Although Seoul's activities are still being investigated and the Bush administration has not made a final decision on possible action, "I don't see any way not to refer South Korea to the Security Council," said one senior official.
The goal is not to punish one of Washington's key allies but to ensure a consistent approach on nonproliferation, he and other officials said.
The United States has been urging the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, to send Iran's case to the Security Council as a means of forcing Tehran to abandon its suspect nuclear activities. Washington charges Tehran uses its civilian atomic energy program as a front to develop the bomb, which Iran vehemently denies.
The IAEA board meets next week in Vienna, with Iran the main topic. South Korean officials are also expected to be present.
The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty calls for signatories who engage in impermissible activities to be declared in noncompliance by the IAEA and their cases referred to the Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
New Acknowledgment
On Thursday, the South Korean government acknowledged its scientists had extracted a small amount of plutonium in a one-time experiment in 1982. Plutonium is used to make nuclear weapons.
A senior State Department official, explaining the U.S. view, said, "Our understanding is that in the early 1980s the South Koreans did some experiments involving trace amounts of plutonium."
But officials and experts said the United States intervened at the time and the program was shut down.
Seoul has insisted it has no nuclear weapons program. But the revelation is awkward because the South has been a partner with the United States in six-party talks aimed at persuading rival North Korea to abandon nuclear programs that U.S. officials say may have produced material for eight nuclear weapons.
A North Korean envoy told the South's Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday Seoul's uranium experiment is a "dangerous movement" that could trigger a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia.
U.S. officials said once an IAEA investigation of South Korean activities is completed, the administration would make its final judgment.
"If there is no evidence that the experiment was associated with a weapons program, then (the IAEA) would report the violation (to the U.N. Security Council) for informational purposes, not for action," one official said.
Another U.S. official said this process "may result in a mild rebuke (of South Korea) by the president of the Security Council and a slap-on-the-wrist type of thing. That would be something we could live with as long as it's not anything punitive."
The Security Council took similar action with Libya this year and Romania in the 1990s after both countries admitted to nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty violations.
To treat South Korea differently "would be inconsistent because technically, they were in violation" of the treaty, one U.S. official said.
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters the U.S. "understanding is that all these activities were in the past," but it is important for the IAEA to "do a thorough job" in its probe and make "clear they have not occurred again and that they will not occur again."
----
S. Korea admits extracting small amount of plutonium 20 years ago
2004-09-10
Xinhuanet,
By Wang Mian
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-09/10/content_1964035.htm
SEOUL, Sept. 9 -- Again astonishing the world, South Korean government admitted Thursday several scientists secretly extracted a minimal amount of plutonium during a research experiment in 1982.
The acknowledgment came one week after Seoul's announcement that few South Korean researchers conducted enriched uranium separation experiment four years ago.
The South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology confirmed on Thursday afternoon that "several milligrams" of plutonium were extracted from about 2.5 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel rods at a 2-megawatt research reactor in the state-run (South) Korean AtomicEnergy Research Institute (KAERI) between April and May in 1982.
The chief scientist of the experiment was already dead, other participants said they wanted to study "post-irradiation characteristics" of material and that the purely academic experiment had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
The ministry also said the amount of extracted plutonium was too little to be related to nuclear weapons. However, there was no record on the exact amount of the plutonium extracted by the scientists, according to the ministry.
However, the reactor located in Nonwon District of Seoul is in the final stage of dismantlement, said the ministry.
Plutonium and enriched uranium are the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
After receiving reports from the South Korean government on thetwo experiments, the IAEA dispatched a seven-member inspection team to visit South Korea last week.
It investigated the plutonium case as well as the uranium enrichment experiment. Scientists who participated in the plutonium extraction were also questioned.
Although South Korean senior officials and related authorities underscored both of the two experiments are academic ones and had nothing to do with any nuclear weapon development program, international and local media still paid great attention to the two cases.
Media widely wondered why the two group of scientists could conducted such kind of experiments restricted by the IAEA without informing the Seoul government.
The two cases also aroused various speculation over Seoul's nuclear capability, although the South Korean government stressed either the uranium or the plutonium made in the experiments was much lower than the weapon grade.
Some media speculated that the experiment might have been part of an established uranium enrichment program or even a nuclear arms program.
South Korea has categorically denied those speculations, sayingas a member of the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and IAEA Safeguard Agreement, South Korea will firmly stood by its non-proliferation commitment and maintained a high level of transparency in nuclear activity.
South Korea once had a clandestine nuclear weapon program in the 1970s, when the United States slashed the US Forces Korea from60,000 to 40,000.
Then South Korean president Park Chung-hee instructed several scientists to secretly develop nuclear weapons thus to enhance South Korea's deterrent power against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
But South Korea stopped the program both due to US heavy pressure and the death of Park in 1979.
According to the ministry, the plutonium case is also likely tobe reported to the IAEA's Board of Governors meeting scheduled for next week, along with the uranium case.
Local media also worried the exposure of the two experiments may cast a shadow on the six-party talks which aim to solve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
The DPRK's envoy to the United Nations, Han Sung Ryol, told theSouth Korean national news agency Yonhap that Pyongyang found the United States "worthless" as a dialogue partner because it was applying "double standards" to South Korea and the DPRK on the nuclear issue.
"We see South Korea's uranium enrichment experiment in the context of an arms race in Northeast Asia," Han was quoted as saying.
However, the South Korean government expressed confidence over the nuclear talks. "I don't think Han Song-ryol's remarks indicatethat North Korea (DPRK) will not attend the fourth round of the six-way talks," Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said at a weekly press briefing earlier Thursday.
----
6-Party Nuke Talks Not Likely in Sept.
09-10-2004
By Yoon Won-sup
Korea Times Staff Reporter
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200409/kt2004091017021110510.htm
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said Friday that the next round of six-party talks on North Korea's nuke crisis, slated for late this month, are looking more and more unlikely to take place this month as originally expected.
``Under the current situation, it is hard to be optimistic about whether the six-nation talks can be held in the near future,'' Ban said in a meeting with a group of political editors of major newspapers and broadcasters at the Press Center in central Seoul.
Ban's statement came amid the current strained relations between Pyongyang and Washington despite ongoing efforts to keep the multilateral talks afloat.
Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck, Seoul's chief negotiator of the talks, met with his Japanese counterpart Mitoji Yabunaka and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly to coordinate their position on the nuclear issue in Tokyo Sept. 9-10.
The preparatory meetings for the main six-party talks were originally planned for last month to work out details ahead of the fourth round of nuclear discussion but Pyongyang had refused to attend the working-level meeting.
At the last six-way talks in June, South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia agreed to meet again before the end of September to solve the North's nuclear weapons program.
However, doubts have grown recently over the outlook of the multilateral discussion as Pyongyang issued a series of statements accusing Washington of trying to use the dialogue as a means to overthrow its government. According to experts, Pyongyang is seeking to delay the nuclear negotiations until after the U.S. presidential race, hoping that President George W. Bush is voted out.
The foreign minister, however, urged North Korea to make its own decision on how to resolve the nuclear deadlock considering that the United States' stance over the communist regime will not drastically change regardless of who is elected in the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election.
Another stumbling block to the six-way talks emerged recently as Seoul admitted it had conducted secret nuclear experiments: plutonium-based nuclear experiments in 1982 and uranium enrichment tests in 2000.
North Korea accused the South of accelerating a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, indicating it may make use of the issue to delay or boycott the six-party talks. Han Song-ryol, the North's envoy to the U.N. in New York went further, saying, ``The U.S. is worthless as a dialogue partner as it has clearly applied double standards to the two Koreas.''
In response, Ban said, ``South Korea has never had a nuclear development programs and has never conducted research on nuclear weapons. We provided all the details involving the tests to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).''
South Korea's nuclear experiments have nothing to do with the North's nuclear weapons programs because the South, as a member state of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has been open to IAEA's inspection, Ban added.
The minister also objected to some foreign media's reports that Seoul's nuclear test should be reviewed by the U.N. Security Council, hoping the issue is dealt with by the IAEA as the international agency will hold a Board of Governors meeting Monday.
-------- mideast
Bush waives nuclear sanction on Libya
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AFP)
Sep 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040910201942.d4fe2kdy.html
US President George W. Bush on Friday rewarded Tripoli for pledging to abandon its nuclear weapons quest by giving the green light to monies for promoting US exports to Libya.
In a memorandum for US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Bush acknowledged that Libya was in violation of a US law that would curtail such aid because Tripoli received technology meant to help it produce atomic weapons.
"I hereby determine and certify that the continued termination of assistance, as required by this section, would have a serious adverse effect on vital United States interests and that I have received reliable assurances that Libya will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons or assist other nations in doing so," the president wrote.
"It is in the national interest for the Export-Import Bank to guarantee, insure or extend credit or participate in the extension of credit in support of United States exports to Libya," he said in the statement, which the White House made public.
The United States hopes to wrap up, this month, ongoing talks that could effectively lead to declaring Libya free of weapons of mass destruction, a State Department official said September 1.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States hoped to tell Tripoli that it had a "reasonable degree of confidence" that Libya had met the commitment it made in December 2003 to dismantle its nuclear, chemical and biological warfare programs.
Bush lifted most sanctions against Libya in April and there is now a permanent US diplomatic presence in Tripoli for the first time since the early 1980s.
In May, Libya drew warm US praise when it announced it had decided to renounce all arms trade with states accused of weapons of mass destruction proliferation.
However, US sanctions related to Libya's alleged support for terrorist groups remain in place as the country remains designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism."
-------- u.n.
U.N. nuclear agency asleep at the switch
September 10, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://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.
----
Eight-Year UN Disarmament Stalemate Continues
by Gustavo Capdevila
Inter Press Service
September 10, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/capdevila.php?articleid=3540
GENEVA - The stalemate continues in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), which for the eighth year in a row ended its annual sessions this week without reaching an agreement on a working program among its 66 member states.
The CD works by consensus, which means it cannot undertake new work without the agreement of all of the member states.
The deadlock in the multilateral negotiating body reflects the current imbalance in international relations, in which the United States enjoys immense political and military power.
In terms of military arsenals, a wide gap separates the United States from the rest of the countries in the world, which is reflected in the negotiations within the CD, said a Latin American diplomat who asked not to be named.
Patricia Lewis, director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), said the continuing impasse in the CD has to do with the expectations surrounding the Nov. 2 presidential elections in the United States.
In May, at the third session of the preparatory committee for the 2005 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was held in New York, the Arab countries were reluctant to grant concessions to the United States "on the grounds that if they are changing government in November, why give anything now," said Lewis.
She also noted that the Democratic Party presidential candidate, John Kerry, has clearly indicated that if he wins, there will be a change in the U.S. attitude towards the negotiations in the CD. She added, however, that "there would have to be a change" in Congress, especially the Senate, to get any treaty ratified.
The United States holds the key to overcoming the stalemate in the CD, which is waiting for a decision by Washington to jump-start a process that came to a standstill in 1996, after the successful debate on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) - the last document agreed at the Conference.
Authorities in the United States must decide whether they support the negotiation of a treaty banning the production of fissile material (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons (the Fissile Material Treaty or FMT), although they do not want a regime for verification of compliance.
The U.S. delegate, Jackie Sanders, confounded the CD when she announced on July 29 that her government had reached the conclusion that an effective FMT verification regime was not feasible.
Since then, the U.S. delegates have not explained to the CD just how they envision an FMT without a verification regime - the point that continues to paralyze talks on the rest of the issues.
When the Cold War came to an end, the United States vigorously pushed for the FMT, because like other nations, it shared the concern over where the stocks of fissile materials in the arsenals and laboratories of the countries of the former Soviet Union, which fell apart in 1991, would end up.
But after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, the United States modified its arms control policy and began to downplay the importance of verification regimes for international treaties.
The Moscow Treaty, which in 2002 required Russia and the United States to reduce their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds by 2012, has no verification regime.
The same is true of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, because the United States blocked agreement on a verification regime in November 2001.
Lewis pointed out to IPS that the United States was "not interested in the verification of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" - a reference to the March 2003 invasion of that country led by Washington, based on the supposed existence of weapons of mass destruction, which have never been found.
The head of UNIDIR also believes the United States is no longer even interested in the FMT, which is currently bogging down progress in the CD.
"Another thing that is quite clear from the U.S. approach is that they - this particular administration - are not interested in treaties," she argued.
Adoption of the FMT would primarily affect countries with nuclear arsenals: the five nuclear powers - China, the United States, France, Britain and Russia - as well as India, Israel and Pakistan. The rest of the world's countries are controlled by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
If the FMT or a similar accord goes into effect, the five nuclear powers would be allowed to keep their weapons, but on the condition that they cut off production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, on which there is already basically a de facto moratorium among the five, Lewis pointed out.
But India and Pakistan "are still producing fissile material for weapons," she added. "So the question is how long it will take for them to build their stocks."
Israel, meanwhile, is a different case, because "as far as we know it is not producing weapons," she added. But if the FMT were to enter into effect, the verification regime would require it to open up its records on its decades-long nuclear program
That "would be very dangerous for Israel. I think this may be one of the key points that people are concerned about," said Lewis.
"Israel is very sensitive on this issue because India and Pakistan have declared themselves to have nuclear weapons. Israel has never done that," she noted.
The FMT is holding up progress in the CD on an issue that is very costly for China and Russia: the prevention of an arms race in outer space.
Nor has there been progress on the most pressing issues for the non-aligned countries, like nuclear disarmament and security guarantees for non-nuclear-weapon states.
The inertia of the negotiations has hurt the prestige and credibility of the CD, which does not strictly belong to the UN system, but uses the services of the world body's secretariat in its Geneva headquarters.
Critics say the CD acts like "an exclusive golf club, or like a gentlemen's club in London or New York," said Lewis.
In his closing message to the period of sessions Tuesday, the rotating president of the CD, Burmese delegate U Mya Than, said he believed that it is "the best club in the city" because it has "the best brains" representing the most refined traditions of multilateral diplomacy.
But Chilean delegate Juan Martabit acknowledged that an eight-year impasse has hurt the reputation of the CD, and that "legitimate questions about its future" have been raised.
He also stated that security and peace are not achieved by building up nuclear arsenals.
The real threats to peace, said Martabit, are the developing world's lack of funds to confront poverty and hunger.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Rocky Flats whistleblower Brever talks Colorado U
By RICHARD VALENTY
Colorado Daily Staff Writer
September 10, 2004
http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2004/09/03/news/news02.txt
The former Rocky Flats plutonium trigger production site could be open for human recreation as a National Wildlife Refuge in the near future, and while many government officials say the site will be safe for visitors or employees, one former Flats employee says the site should be closed forever.
Jacque Brever began working at Rocky Flats in 1982, and on Thursday visited CU-Boulder as a guest speaker before CU instructor Adrienne Anderson's "Environmental Ethics: Race, Class and Pollution Politics" class.
On June 6, 1989, Brever was working at the Flats when FBI agents raided the facility in search of information about alleged plutonium-related environmental crimes.
"It was mass chaos," said Brever, adding that she and many other employees didn't know why the FBI paid its early-morning visit.
Brever said she learned that one reason for the raid was to investigate alleged illegal plutonium waste incineration at Building 771, and became concerned that she might be in legal trouble because she took part in the burning as an employee.
According to Brever, she asked Flats management for documented records of her activities, and the managers took her into an office and asked her which documents she needed.
"Inadvertently, I was giving them an idea of which documents they needed to destroy," said Brever.
Brever cooperated with FBI agents on site, leading some Flats employees to believe she be responsible for the plant's closure and cost them their jobs. Brever said somebody within the plant sabotaged her "glovebox," exposing her to radiation. Her phone was tapped, she said, and people threw rocks at her windows.
A special grand jury Flats investigation ended in 1992, and Rockwell International, the plant operator at the time, was fined $18 million, a sum that Brever described as equal to the bonus money Rockwell received from the federal government while the plant was under investigation.
Brever said she then had "resignation papers shoved in my face," and went into hiding shortly thereafter.
In 2001, Brever said she got a phone call from attorney Caron Balkany, who was trying to get Brever to talk about the Flats. Brever said she didn't want to do it, but Balkany told her there were plans to turn the Flats into a refuge, which made Brever decide to become active in opposing the project.
Balkany and grand jury foreman Wes McKinley wrote a book called "The Ambushed Grand Jury," released in 2004, with Brever's story featured prominently.
Today, Brever is trying to raise awareness about the possibility Flats visitors could still be exposed to radiation after a DOE / Kaiser-Hill Company site cleanup is completed.
Brever said she believes there are at least two areas on the Flats site that DOE has excluded from the cleanup. She said she and other employees used to dump "four-liter bottles" of contaminated water into an area called the 771 "Duck Pond" because employees called the activity "feeding the ducks."
A Sept. 1 DOE release said the Duck Pond is the same pond referred to as "Bowman's Pond," which DOE says is being "remediated." Brever does not believe the two ponds are the same.
Brever submitted a 2004 document to DOE about possible contaminated areas, and a Sept. 1 response from DOE project director Joseph Legare said, "no new information about ... environmental contamination at the site is contained in your paper."
Brever disagrees, and suggested to Anderson's students that they should study the issue and oppose opening the refuge to humans.
"If we accept one inch, we accept it all. I think we should shut it down now," said Brever.
-------- nevada
Nevada Sues Again to Block Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository
September 10, 2004
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2004/2004-09-10-03.asp
Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval filed a new lawsuit Wednesday in another bid to derail the federal government's plan to build a massive nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The suit directly challenges the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) transportation plan for nuclear waste shipments to the proposed repository.
The suit contends the plan violates the National Environmental Policy Act, the Interstate Commerce Act, and regulations set forth by the Council on Environmental Quality, the Surface Transportation Board and the Energy Department itself.
The plan, announced by the DOE in April, would bring nuclear waste mostly by train from 127 sites across the nation to the repository in Yucca Mountain.
The facility, some 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the intended destination for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from Defense Department sites and spent nuclear fuel from the 103 operating nuclear reactors across the United States.
In order to connect the Yucca Mountain site with an existing rail line, the plan will require the construction of a rail spur at Caliente, Nevada and a 319-mile rail line between the two sites.
Caliente is located 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas in the eastern portion of Nevada near the state's border with Utah.
The DOE has no right to take the lead in the new rail project, according to the suit.
The department did not even contact the federal Surface Transportation Board "before plunging ahead with the largest rail project in decades," Sandoval said. "Given DOE's track record at building anything, the Board is a far better agency than DOE to run a project of this magnitude. It is also far less biased."
In addition, the suit challenges DOE's evaluation of the environmental impacts and land use conflicts within the one-mile swath of the 318-mile Caliente Route.
"No landowners were contacted or given any notice that DOE was about to appropriate their land," said Sandoval, who added that the DOE has already applied to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to have set aside 308,600 specifically itemized acres for the new track.
"DOE stood the mandatory review process on its head," according to the Nevada Attorney General. "First, DOE unilaterally proclaimed a new route, then it applied to withdraw the land, and only now has it announced it will begin to evaluate environmental impacts along that route. The whole point of environmental review is to study the impacts before you make the decision, not after."
The suit also contends the plan wrongly relies on transporting the waste in lightweight truck casks.
"It is uncanny how the DOE manages to do precisely the wrong thing," Sandoval said. "With no public input whatsoever, the DOE chose a new transport mode that the DOE itself had rejected for study because it is the most expensive by a billion dollars, the most impractical, and has the highest health and safety risks."
The DOE declined to comment on the new lawsuit, which is another potential blow to a project that has been mired in controversy since its inception and looks unlikely to met its 2010 deadline.
Federal officials have raised an array of concerns about the project, including a finding that the manufactured storage containers in which the government plans to store nuclear waste at the facility will probably leak.
The site is also on a fault line and sits above a freshwater aquifer that provides drinking water to residents of Nevada and California.
In July the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected Nevada's constitutional challenge to the repository, but ruled the federal government's 10,000-year federal safety requirement for the highly radioactive waste is illegal because it is inconsistent with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.
Nevada has also asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reject the DOE's application for a license to open the facility.
Last month the NRC said the Energy Department must make more documents available to the public before it can apply for the license.
The Commission said the DOE's certification that it made available to the public all of its documentary material on the proposed Yucca Mountain repository failed to meet NRC regulations.
The debate over Yucca Mountain has also seeped into the Presidential campaign.
President George W. Bush is anxious to see the project progress - Democratic challenger John Kerry is opposed.
Kerry says the safe storage of the waste has not been scientifically proven and the safety, security and economic risks of sending nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain site are too great for the plan to proceed.
The Democratic nominee recommends creating a National Academies advisory panel to determine how best to deal with the nation's nuclear waste.
That problem is growing in scope and expense.
As of 2003, nuclear reactors in the United States had generated some 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and by the year 2035, the United States will have produced more than twice that amount.
Sustained delay to or failure to proceed with the Yucca Mountain project would force state governments to deal with the waste.
In several court cases judges have ruled that the federal government is liable for the costs of storing the nuclear waste until the Yucca Mountain site is ready.
The industry says that total bill could be some $56 billion - the first of several cases that could determine that figure began last month.
Last month, Exelon Corporation, which operates 17 nuclear reactors in the United States and provides some 20 percent of the nation's nuclear power, said it had agreed to settle its case with the DOE.
Under the settlement, Exelon will immediately receive $80 million in reimbursements for costs incurred for storing spent nuclear reactor fuel.
That figure will total some $300 million if a national repository opens by 2010 and the DOE begins accepting spent nuclear fuel.
View an interactive map of highway, rail and barge routes for transport of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain at: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/maps2002/roadrail/index.htm
-------- new mexico
Safety board adds new rep
Los Alamos Monitor
Friday, September 10, 2004
by ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com, Assistant Editor
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/08/31/headline_news/news02.txt
Even before the current suspension of operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory began, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board saw a need to step up its oversight activities here.
DNFSB is an independent federal agency charged with overseeing health and safety in the nuclear weapons complex. The board has had a full-time representative, Charles Keilers, at LANL for three years.
In June, the board announced that Thomas D. Burns Jr., at that time site representative at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. would join Keilers. Burns began work on Aug. 23.
In an interview Monday, he said he was still on a learning curve, focused on getting checked out and getting the lay of the land locally.
"The state of resumption makes that more difficult," Burns said, who talked about his background and the general principles behind the board's safety work.
Burns went to college and graduate school at the University of Virginia, eventually receiving his PhD in nuclear engineering and applied mathematics. He was also a star linebacker for the Virginia Cavaliers football team.
In 1993, he was the third winner of the Draddy Awards given by the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame.
The award, including a $25,000 scholarship, recognizes the top scholar athlete in the nation. Professional quarterbacks Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts and Chad Pennington of the New York Jets are among other college football players who have won the prize.
During graduate work, Burns had a tour of duty at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, where he worked in nuclear medicine. Research at UVA included dynamic analysis of accelerator-driven sub-critical nuclear systems.
He joined the safety board in 1997 with responsibilities for staff activities related to plutonium pit management, tritium processing and storage, critical safety and general safety analysis issues - all of which have local relevance.
"The goal is to get work done safely," Burns said. He described his approach as "constructive interaction, not trying to embarrass anybody, but to facilitate things" and "to be firm and unwavering in the demand for safety."
"Never underestimate the power of rebuttal. There may be something you've missed. Don't jump to conclusions," he added.
He said the "conduct of engineering issues," at Los Alamos had caught the attention of the board, leading to his appointment as a second site representative.
"Two representatives will cover more waterfront," he said, and will "add bandwidth" in reporting capability.
Last week, the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington public interest organization leaked an e-mail from Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration to LANL Director G. Peter Nanos and others, suggesting that the DNFSB was concerned about a drawn-out suspension of activities at the laboratory.
POGO and others interpreted the message as suggesting that the board might not object if safety were compromised in the interest of speed and convenience in the current circumstances.
Burns said he was not yet prepared to discuss the fine points of the resumption activities, but that anyone doubting the board's commitment to safety or its willingness to stand up to DOE, need only look at its record over the last decade.
Burns expects to close on a house and be living on the Hill shortly with his wife Robin and daughter Grace.
SIDEBAR
As the laboratory endeavors to restart all operations by the end of September, safety talk is food for thought.
Here are a few observations by Tom Burns, the new site representative for the Defense Nuclear Facility
"Safety should not be stovepiped. It's a part of good engineering and science itself.
"You are responsible for your community, yourself and your environment. It requires an internal commitment to do the right thing. That means thinking about what can reasonably go wrong and how you can prevent it.
"The first cut is thinking safely. Trying to beat safety in from the back end is difficult. The board's goal is to inspire DOE to design safety into every process."
-------- washington
Board disputes Hanford cleanup safety
This story was published
Friday, September 10th, 2004
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5531438p-5466558c.html
A board that has independent oversight of the Hanford nuclear reservation is questioning whether environmental cleanup contractors at the site are adequately following a rigorous safety program at the tank farms.
It also has raised concerns about safety problems at the $5.7 billion vitrification plant under construction at the site.
Both programs have been plagued with safety problems in the past year, John Conway, chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, wrote in a letter to the Department of Energy.
"The number of serious events at the tank farms is not to be expected at a project with a mature and effective ISM (integrated safety management) system," Conway wrote.
"While compensatory and corrective actions taken by the Department of Energy and its contractor have yielded temporary successes or addressed specific issues, lasting success in implementing an effective ISM System at the tank farms has not been apparent," he wrote.
The Wednesday letter was addressed to Paul Golan, acting assistant secretary for environmental management at DOE.
Work is hazardous at Hanford's tank farms, where about 53 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes are stored in underground tanks. The wastes remain from 50 years of producing plutonium for the nation's weapons program.
The safety system used calls for each work project to be defined and any hazards considered and controls established before work begins. After work is completed, feedback is required on any difficulties to prevent a reoccurrence in future work.
The system was initiated by the safety board, which cited examples of it not being used as rigorously as it should at Hanford.
In one incident this spring, work was done on the wrong set of pipes in a system used to transfer radioactive wastes because blueprints were wrong. The blueprints were known to be inaccurate before the work started, according to DOE. A hole was drilled into a pipe thought to be idle, and radioactive liquid spilled when it was later pumped through the pipe.
The next step of the process, assessing and avoiding hazards, is supposed to be done in a pre-work meeting.
But the safety board report says, "These sessions often are little more than informal discussions among the planner, supervisor and work crew about how the work steps are to be worded and organized. During the sessions, an actual hazard analysis is seldom performed, and the words 'what if' are seldom spoken."
Inadequate hazard analysis has been responsible for some accidents at the tank farm in the past year.
In one case, workers' clothes were contaminated when a highly contaminated pump was wrapped in a single layer of plastic when it was moved. In another, a worker's finger was contaminated with levels of radiation above established limits when workers moved equipment that was later found to be more contaminated than expected.
The board also criticized tank farm operators for not providing feedback on completed activities, thus not passing on lessons learned to others.
Safety drills also are generally inadequate, using obvious and simple scenarios, the board said.
Safety problems at the tank farms this year recently caused DOE's Office of River Protection to dock $300,000 from the fee paid to CH2M Hill Hanford Group, which operates the waste site cleanup.
"It's evident the organization is not learning at the pace we want it to," said John Swailes, DOE's assistant manager for tank farm projects.
DOE generally agrees with the safety board on the problems at the tank farms, "but we may disagree on the extent of the weakness," said Robert Barr, director of environmental safety and quality at the Office of River Protection.
Weaknesses need to be corrected before more serious incidents occur, he said.
CH2M Hill responded with a prepared statement that said the safety board's letter reinforces the company's commitment to improve and ensure that concerns are immediately addressed.
The safety board's letter also cited an increase this year in safety problems at the vitrification plant construction site.
A key part of the plant's safety system is a checklist to identify potential hazards. But the safety board warned that when a checklist is used, workers may have a tendency to quickly check off boxes rather than seriously consider hazards. The board recommended use of the lists be reviewed.
Bechtel Hanford, the contractor in charge of the vitrification plant construction, stopped work for a day this summer to address safety concerns and has brought in a motivational speaker.
Problems were mostly near misses, such as dropping heavy pieces of metal. Since the day to refocus on safety, a tractor and flatbed trailer carrying a crane overturned and five counterweights weighing a total of 16,000 pounds landed up to 30 feet away.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.S. Calls Killings In Sudan Genocide
Khartoum and Arab Militias Are Responsible, Powell Says
By Glenn Kessler and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8364-2004Sep9.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said for the first time yesterday that genocide has taken place in Sudan and that the government in Khartoum and government-sponsored Arab militias known as Janjaweed "bear responsibility" for rapes, killings and other abuses that have left 1.2 million black Africans homeless.
Powell's long-awaited declaration -- the result of months of investigation and discussion within the State Department -- is intended to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region. But refugee organizations and aid groups said it also will make it much harder for the Bush administration to step away from the problem if its diplomatic efforts are unsuccessful.
Speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Powell said: "We concluded -- I concluded -- that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility -- and genocide may still be occurring."
Powell's statement came as the United States began negotiations at the United Nations on a Security Council resolution that threatens to consider new sanctions against Sudan if it fails to crack down on the militias, and calls for the establishment of a U.N. commission of inquiry to determine whether Sudan and the militia are responsible for genocide. A finding of genocide does not impose obligations on the United States, but as a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the United States is committed to preventing and punishing genocide.
Sudanese officials reacted angrily to Powell's announcement, saying it will only make it more difficult to resolve what they describe as an internal problem. At the United Nations, officials from a number of Security Council member nations expressed concern that Powell's statement would complicate efforts to win broad support for a new resolution. Both the African Union and the Arab League have said there is no genocide. The European Union said it does not have enough information.
Powell cited a report released by the State Department yesterday that found a "consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers." The report, based on 1,136 interviews with refugees this summer, said 61 percent had witnessed the killing of a family member and 16 percent had been raped or had heard about a rape victim. About one-third had heard racial epithets while they were being attacked, the report said.
For the moment, a declaration of genocide by the United States has little practical effect. But coming in the midst of continuing attacks, it puts the imprimatur of the world's most powerful nation on a serious and grave charge against Sudan, possibly setting in motion an inquiry that ultimately could result in war crimes tribunals. Other recent instances of genocide, such as in Rwanda and Cambodia, were recognized only long after the crimes.
When Powell visited Darfur in June, he resisted questions about whether the abuses amounted to genocide, saying "what we are seeing is a disaster, a catastrophe, and we can find the right label for it later." The U.S. Congress has since passed a resolution urging the administration to label the Darfur situation a genocide, and the Sudanese government has failed to comply with a U.N. resolution passed July 30 calling on it to end the suffering.
State Department officials familiar with Powell's deliberations said he decided last week he needed to make a clear statement at the Senate hearing. Over the weekend, he took home the State Department report and concluded that Khartoum was complicit in genocide because he had put the government on notice two months ago, laying out what officials needed to do to end the violence, and they had not acted.
Another factor in Powell's decision was that Sudan is a signatory to the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as a calculated effort to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. The convention calls on signatories to prevent and punish genocide.
"The acts are clearly genocidal," said one senior U.S. official familiar with the debate. "The question was the intent" of the government.
Security Council members Britain, Spain and Germany back U.S. efforts to establish a commission of inquiry. But some European diplomats expressed concern that Powell's statement would complicate efforts to win broader support. China warned that it may veto the resolution, noting that it does not believe genocide has occurred. "There are problems in Darfur, but we don't see it as that category," said Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations. The council should "come up with constructive ideas to help solve the problem, not to make the problem more complicated."
Pakistan's ambassador, Munir Akram, said Powell's statement has weakened Washington's case for the commission because it prejudged the outcome. "If you already brand it as genocide even before an inquiry, I think that might be more difficult."
Lynch reported from the United Nations.
--------
Villagers flee troops, militia fighting near Nigerian oil city
Friday, September 10, 2004
By Dulue Mbachu,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-09-10/s_27112.asp
PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - Nigerian troops battled militia forces Thursday in the creeks and mangrove swamps of Africa's leading oil region, the Niger Delta, pressing an offensive that has forced thousands of villagers to flee their homes for this petroleum hub.
Burned houses and twisted corrugated iron roofs, strewn flat over an area of a football field, bore witness Thursday to the savagery of militia attacks on one slum district in Port Harcourt, a city of 3 million and Nigeria's most important oil center.
A few refugees made their way through the streets, carrying bundles of belongings. Most of the people killed here had no known tie to any militia faction, said Daniel Wogu, a resident.
The crackdown, with soldiers sealing off river approaches to Port Harcourt and helicopter gunships patrolling overhead, is the latest in yearlong clashes between Nigeria's military and criminal gangs and ethnic militias for control of oil wealth from the Niger Delta.
Violence in the Niger Delta over the past year has killed more than 1,000 people and at times shut down up to 40 percent of oil production in Nigeria, the world's No. 7 oil-producing country. One U.S. oil company alone, ChevronTexaco, is estimated to have lost at least $1.75 billion in production losses and sabotaged equipment since March 2003.
The army and navy launched their latest offensive last week in response to deadly militia raids in August into Port Harcourt. Militia leaders and Nigeria's military said fighting continued Thursday outside the city.
The military is aiming to keep the waterways around Port Harcourt safe and open and to "stop the fighters from coming into the city," said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Authorities have given no casualty figures in the current military offensive.
Asari Dokubo, a militia leader whose movement is the main target of the crackdown in the districts outside Port Harcourt, said he expected civilian casualties to be light since many villagers in targeted areas already have fled.
Thousands of villagers have abandoned their homes since last week, streaming into Port Harcourt to take shelter with relatives and friends.
"I fled from Tombia two days ago when the army began bombing the place again and killed two people," one refugee, Dagogo Harry, said Thursday. Harry said he was among the last to leave his town of more than 5,000. Most others fled after the first army raids in April.
President Olusegun Obasanjo's government accuses Dokubo's group, the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, in a series of attacks on Port Harcourt in the past month that have killed at least 50 people.
The attacks were aimed at members of a rival militia group that Dokubo says is supported by the government. The government denies the charge.
Dokubo, who claims to have 2,000 armed fighters, also admits illegally tapping and selling crude oil from pipelines.
Troops have been called in to maintain a 24-hour patrol in the Port Harcourt, a base for international oil companies, which pump Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels of normal daily exports.
About 5 percent of production is now off-line because of the violence. About 40 percent was off-line in March 2003.
-------- arms
Blocked arms sales
September 10, 2004
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
The Bush administration is bowing to pressure from China to curb arms sales to Taiwan at a time when the Pentagon is urgently trying to get the island's government to buy U.S. defensive arms.
According to U.S. officials, Taiwan's government has sent the administration formal letters stating that it plans to buy eight diesel submarines, 12 P-3 aircraft and six new Patriot anti-missile batteries and associated PAC-3 interceptor missiles.
"All three items were approved by the U.S. government several years ago and Taiwan's legislature is currently considering a special budget of $18 billion to fund the programs," one official tells us.
The Pentagon has done the needed paperwork to put the sales in motion, but the White House has decided to put it off by delaying formal notification of Congress. The move was ordered by the National Security Council staff, where pro-China official Dennis Wilder recently took charge of the China portfolio.
The NSC told the State Department and Pentagon to delay congressional notification until after Taiwan passes the special budget, which may not happen until October.
Putting off the notification follows National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's recent trip to Beijing, where Chinese leaders urged her not to sell arms to Taiwan.
Officials tell us the notification delay appears related to the Chinese appeals.
The White House is claiming the notification is being put off until after Taiwan's legislature approves a special budget of $18 billion to fund the arms, something that has not been done for other U.S. allies.
The delay will prevent defense contractors from getting to work on arms that the Pentagon says Taiwan urgently needs to meet the growing military imbalance, namely China's 650 short-range missiles and new warships.
Officials said the Taiwanese legislature is unlikely to pass its budget until October and that means the window for notifying Congress will close. Congressional notification then could be pushed back until March.
One official said the Pentagon has warned for years that "the threat to Taiwan will become critical in the 2005-2008 time frame" and is a major reason the administration has been pressuring Taiwan to invest in missile defense and anti-submarine warfare.
"There is literally no time to lose in providing these badly needed deterrents," the official said.
Politically, pro-China officials are suspected of putting off the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan until after the election, when a possible administration of John Kerry likely would cancel the arms sale package altogether.
President Bush stated in April 2001 that the United States would do "whatever it takes" to help Taiwan defend itself. But since then pro-China officials have blocked all significant U.S. arms transfers.
-------- business
Halliburton Unit Gets a Positive Review From Pentagon
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9654-2004Sep9.html
After months of criticism from Democrats in Congress and government auditors for allegedly misspending and overcharging, Halliburton Co. got some good news yesterday.
The giant oil services company announced that a Pentagon review found that its purchasing-system practices "are effective and efficient and provide adequate protection of the Government's interest."
The news came in a letter from the Defense Contract Management Agency to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., which has received about $4.5 billion for providing fuel, housing and other troop support in Iraq and Kuwait. "KBR has repeatedly said that its purchasing system provide the flexibility and responsiveness necessary to meet the needs of its customers in a war zone," the company's statement said.
"While expected, this is clearly good news," Andrew R. Lane, president and chief executive officer of KBR, said in a news release.
The letter in effect gives KBR wider latitude, under federal acquisition regulations, to award subcontracts without prior approval of a contracting officer. But it has no effect on other pending investigations and audits of the company's work.
Still pending, for example, is the decision whether the Army will withhold 15 percent of future payments to KBR because auditors concluded that the company has not provided basic data supporting at least $1.8 billion in bills.
Also not addressed in the new letter are questions about overcharging that have been raised by Pentagon auditors. In July a report by the staff of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said Halliburton charged the government $167 million more than necessary to import gasoline into Iraq.
Halliburton contends that it is being picked on for political reasons -- because Dick Cheney was the company's chief executive before being elected U.S. vice president in 2000.
"We will continue to work with all Government agencies to establish that our contracts are not only good for the United States, but also the company is the best and most qualified contractor to perform these difficult and dangerous tasks," the company statement said.
--------
Northrop Gets $308 Million Military Deal
September 10, 2004
(AP)
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/N/NORTHROP_GRUMMAN_AIR_FORCE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
MELBOURNE, Fla. -- Northrop Grumman Corp. said Friday it had been awarded a $308 million contract to develop an airborne command and control system for large military aircraft.
The company, which won the contract after a 15-month bidding process, will develop a system that has the ability to track cruise missiles and ground targets, and then relay their coordinates to strike units by air or ground.
"This is a key win for Northrop Grumman, one that reaffirms our position as a premier battle-management...system supplier and puts us in a good position to offer similar technology for future platforms," said chief executive Ronald D. Sugar.
Shares of Northrop Grumman closed down 25 cents at $50.22 on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------- iraq
U.S. Warplanes Strike Two Iraq Cities
43 Killed in Bid to Retake Fallujah and Northern City From Insurgents
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7667-2004Sep9.html
BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 -- After a week of violence that killed 19 Americans and challenged the authority of Iraq's interim government in vast areas of the country, U.S. commanders launched airstrikes Thursday on two cities controlled by insurgents and sent troops into a third to reinstall a deposed local government.
The Iraqi Health Ministry said at least 43 people were killed and 111 wounded during air attacks on Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and Tall Afar, a northern city near the Syrian border. U.S. troops massed outside Tall Afar, in apparent preparation to move in and restore the local government there.
In Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers accompanied deposed city council members across a bridge into the city and stood guard while they elected an interim mayor. The transition was peaceful and conducted under an agreement with community leaders, but insurgents were not required to disarm, according to Army Maj. Neal O'Brien, spokesman for the Army's 1st Infantry Division.
O'Brien said U.S. troops, who have stayed out of Samarra in the nearly three months since insurgents used bombs, kidnappings and other methods of coercion to wrest control from U.S.-installed officials, would continue to help maintain order.
The simultaneous operations in three provinces signaled an aggressive effort to reassert control after the recent spasm of violence. During the past week, a suicide car bomb killed seven U.S. Marines outside Fallujah, heavy gunfire sounded for a day in a Baghdad slum, roadside bombs exploded and two female Italian aid workers were kidnapped in daylight in the capital.
The violence pushed the death toll for Defense Department personnel in Iraq past 1,000 since the conflict began 18 months ago.
U.S. officials and leaders of the interim government contend that re-establishing authority over regions controlled by Sunni and Shiite insurgents is critical to a plan to hold nationwide elections in January.
The Fallujah airstrikes targeted a building occupied by three associates of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian linked to al Qaeda, at a time when no other people were in the area, the U.S. military said in a statement.
"The clear and compelling intelligence leading to this mission was derived from multiple Iraqi sources," the statement said. "Terrorists of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network have been responsible for multiple acts of terror including the killing of innocent Iraqi citizens, Iraqi Police and Iraqi security forces as well as Multinational forces."
One doctor, Rafi Hayad, said four of those killed were children and two were women, according to the Reuters news agency. U.S. officials offered no information on casualties.
U.S. troops have stayed on the city's periphery since an April agreement was reached after three weeks of fighting. The U.S. military has said it suspects that Zarqawi uses Fallujah as a base to launch attacks against Americans. The car bomb that killed the seven Marines outside the city was the deadliest attack on Americans since April 29.
In Tall Afar, U.S. military officials said the operation was aimed at ridding the city of a "terrorist threat" that had led to "dozens of the attacks" in recent weeks.
The U.S. military denied reports that its forces were stopping ambulances from reaching the city. The ambulances were allowed to enter and exit after being searched, the military said. "This precaution is necessary because terrorists in Tall Afar have used ambulances to move about the city," a statement said.
In a statement Thursday night, the military said the operation was continuing after insurgents took cover in a mosque. The regional government's television station reported military operations would continue "until the city is liberated from outsiders and saboteurs so that peace can be restored," the Associated Press reported.
But Samarra had a peaceful turnover. Members of the city council gathered Thursday morning at a bridge leading across the Tigris River into the city. According to O'Brien, they were met by Col. Randel Dragon, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat team of the 1st Infantry Division, and Lt. Col. Eric Schacht, commander of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, and accompanied by U.S. troops.
The city council members then "escorted us into the city," O'Brien said. There was no violence.
Once in Samarra, the council elected an interim mayor who would be replaced after the January elections. U.S. troops and members of the reconstituted 202nd Iraqi National Guard battalion, which effectively dissolved after many of its troops deserted or declined to take part in battle last April, then assessed the condition of eight local police stations, some of which had been bombed by insurgents.
The U.S. troops will stay in Samarra "until the job is done and Iraqi security forces are in position to have control of the entire security situation," O'Brien said. "This is just the first step."
The 1st Infantry Division, which maintained a base on the periphery of the city, treated Samarra as essentially off-limits because of the danger. U.S. officials said the security situation changed after about 50 insurgents were killed in battles with U.S. forces during fighting last month.
O'Brien said local officials and religious leaders then opened negotiations with U.S. commanders. He said the local leaders also held separate meetings among themselves to reach a deal by which the former government would be brought back.
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Iraqi civilians killed in US missile strike
Sunday 12 September 2004,
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B13F5DC7-E9A9-4D86-8C05-235CBF641973.htm
At least 10 Iraqis have been killed and 35 others injured after US helicopters fired missiles at a crowd in a central Baghdad street on a day marked by attacks across the country.
The missile attack, which also killed a Palestinian journalist, followed fierce clashes which began when US military vehicles, firing stun grenades, entered Haifa street in the centre of the capital at about 2am (1100 GMT) on Sunday, an Iraqi journalist told Aljazeera.
A US armoured vehicle was set ablaze and as a group of Iraqi men gathered around the burning vehicle, US helicopters swooped in and fired machine guns and missiles at the crowd, killing up to 10 Iraqis and injuring 35 others.
Twenty-eight year old Palestinian television journalist, Mazin al-Tumaisi, was also killed and two photographers wounded, when the US missiles struck.
Al-Tumaisi, who worked for Saudi television Akhbariya and as a fixer for the Arab satellite channel al-Arabiya, was killed covering the fighting in Haifa Street, said Al-Arabiya reporter Ahmad Salih.
Journalists killed
An Iraqi cameraman working for Reuters and an Iraqi photographer working for Getty Images were also wounded slightly by flying shrapnel, said a source at the London-based news agency.
Several vehicles were also set ablaze and the sound of heavy machine gun fire reverberated for three hours from the vicinity.
US forces withdrew from the area at around 7.30am.
All the casualties were civilians, the journalist said, adding that bodies were left in the street for more than half an hour before an ambulance was able to remove them.
A number of residential buildings were also damaged and US helicopters have continued to hover over the area, opening fire repeatedly, the journalist added.
Policemen targeted
Meanwhile, more than a dozen explosions shook central Baghdad at dawn on Sunday and thick plumes of smoke rose above the Green Zone compound housing Iraq's interim government, the US embassy and other consulates.
In other unrest, at least two Iraqi Civil Guard officers were killed when armed assailants attacked a convoy bringing foreigners from Baghdad airport to the city centre.
Several vehicles in the convoy caught fire during the attack which occurred on a highway overpass in the Yarmuk neighbourhood.
Three other members of the guard were killed and seven others injured in Jibla city north of Hilla in central Iraq when an explosive device targeting their patrol detonated on Sunday, Aljazeera has learnt.
Abu Ghraib blast
Outside Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a car bomb exploded on Sunday morning, wounding at least three people, the Iraqi Health Ministry said.
According to reports, an internet statement, reportedly signed by the "military branch of the Tauhid wal Jihad" group claimed responsibility for the attacks on the prison and the Green Zone. The group is linked to al-Qaida linked operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In central Ramadi city, west of Baghdad, seven Iraqis were injured during clashes between US forces and unknown armed men on Sunday morning, Aljazeera has learnt.
The clashes coincided with a mortar bomb attack targeting a US military base west of the city.
Meanwhile, three Iraqi policemen were killed and four others injured after the driver of a vehicle the policemen were pursuing blew himself up.
The explosion took place on a road near the main highway in Amiriya, west of Baghdad.
An Iraqi journalist told Aljazeera Iraqi police explained that as the patrol approached the vehicle, the driver blew himself up.
Elsewhere in the Iraqi city of Falluja, armed fighters claimed to have shot down an unmanned US Marines reconnaisance aircraft.
Unmanned aircraft - also called drones or Remote Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) - are used by the US army to relay video surveillance of enemy positions to commanders.
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Violence Will Intensify in Iraq as Elections Near, Rumsfeld Says
September 10, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10CND-CAPI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that violence would intensify in Iraq as elections scheduled for January approached, but he and another senior adviser to President Bush said that the United States was determined to insure that voting takes place as planned.
"There's no question but between now and the end of the year, the terrorists are determined to try to prevent the elections from taking place, and from taking place on time," Mr. Rumsfeld said in response to questions after a luncheon speech at the National Press Club. "They're going to be going after coalition countries; they're going to be looking for weak spots; they're going to be going after people who are running for office."
Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, in an interview, asserted that Iraqi and American forces would regain control of several important parts of central Iraq, like Fallujah and Ramadi, now held by militants. But neither offered specific details or timing.
"We know what will take place in Fallujah, and that is that it will be restored as a - something under the control of the Iraqi government eventually," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "What we don't know is whether it will be done peacefully or by force. But one way or another, it will happen."
The comments by two of Mr. Bush's senior advisers on national security, in a week where the number of American military deaths in Iraq passed 1,000, seemed intended to try to quell growing concern among some lawmakers here and commanders in Iraq that the United States was ceding safe havens to militants until Iraqi security forces were sufficiently trained and equipped, or until after the American elections on Nov. 2.
"Nobody has ceded any area," said a senior administration official, who said the strategy in Iraq for the next few months is, "straight ahead, keep the political process on track, keep the insurgents at bay. We've been doing a lot of damage to the safe houses of the terrorists and will do more."
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U.S. Troops Lay Seige to Iraqi City
September 10, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. troops handed over medical supplies to Iraqi relief workers Friday amid a siege of a northeastern ethnic Turkish city where Iraqi and American forces are trying to root out hundreds of militants.
Despite criticism from Turkey and Shiite leaders, U.S. commanders insisted they will the maintain their blockade of Tal Afar for as long as it takes to subdue what they said were foreign fighters holed up there. The campaign was part of a recently launched American effort to restore government authority to lawless areas of the country -- either through negotiation or by force.
``We are going to apply the necessary pressure to make sure that we are able to root out the enemy,'' said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, spokesman for the Army's Task Force Olympia. ``How long it takes is really dependent on them.''
But the siege of Tal Afar, which the Americans describe as a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms from Syria, was criticized from within and outside Iraq.
A leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said the Americans' use of heavy force in the city caused ``catastrophes'' that could have been avoided if Iraqis were in charge of security. The Americans have said they were fighting ``a large terrorist organization.''
``Since the first day after (Saddam Hussein's) regime collapsed, Tal Afar had terrorist groups, and this is not new,'' al-Hakim told The Associated Press on Friday. ``The new thing is that the military operations are huge.''
Al-Hakim leads the biggest Shiite political party in Iraq and is close to Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Turkey also said the United States should end its military operations in Tal Afar quickly, saying the attacks have caused casualties among the mostly ethnic Turks living there.
Turkey has asked U.S. officials ``not to harm the civilian population and avoid using excessive and non-selective force,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said, according to the semiofficial Anatolia news agency.
In Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City slum, meanwhile, fighting resumed between U.S. forces and militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, wounding seven Iraqis, hospital officials said.
Al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and bullets at U.S. patrols, which immediately returned fire, said Capt. Brian O'Malley of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. There were no American casualties, he said.
Elsewhere, about 1,000 protesters marched through Najaf's old quarter demanding that the cleric and his aides leave the devastated holy city, raising tensions a day after a 60-member Iraqi force raided his offices.
The demonstrators -- who chanted, ``Muqtada, the trash, is a leader of looters!'' -- walked past buildings wrecked by weeks of fighting that ended with last month's peace deal, insisting that al-Sadr's office be shut down. Ira