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NUCLEAR
Superpower Nuclear Confrontation: A Thriller, but Real
10 big stories The mainstream media missed
A nuclear plant problem raises interest, but not among neighbors
Nuclear shutdown cost $10 million
Kyrgyzstan Blocks British Nuclear Shipments
Pentagon uses depleted uranium shells in its raid against Iraq
G-8 Nations to Meet on Iran
U.S. and Industrial Nations Meet on Iran's Nuclear Plans
Industrial powers discuss Iran nuclear tensions
EU Three to present Iran with nuclear incentives next week: US
No Evidence Iraq Sought Foreign Uranium, ISG Says
Iraq Nuclear Sites Were Stripped Methodically, Say Diplomats
Duelfer Report Omitted Long-Term U.N. Plans for Monitoring Iraq
Brazil OKs nuclear inspections
Nuclear Solutions Files Patent for New Technology
U.S. Nuclear Test Compensation Fund Going Broke
U.S. Investigating Accident That Shut Down Salem Reactor
MILITARY
This week's casualty: the legal case for war in Iraq
U.S. backs plans to convert chemical-arms plant
Ex-Troops Fill Haiti's Security Vacuum
Blasts Inside Green Zone Kill at Least 5
U.S. Military Pounds Targets in and Around Falluja
Marines begin raids on Fallujah
Rockets Deliver Daily Terror To Residents of Israeli Town
Sharon Agrees to Pull Back Troops in Gaza
Israel Ends Deadly Gaza Offensive
Palestinian children are not terrorists
Syria agrees to patrol border
Army Official Backs Ex-Abu Ghraib Officer
Army Probes Whether G.I.'s Refused a Mission in Iraq
U.S. Army Inquiry Implicates 28 Soldiers in Deaths of 2 Afghan Detainees
U.S. troops likely to face charges
Chemicals Sickened '91 Gulf War Veterans, Latest Study Finds
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Terror Threat Complicates Election Plans in Region
Intelligence Reform May Be Stalled
Border Security Measures to Tighten Next Month
Deficiencies in U.S. Screening of Cargo Are Acknowledged
Changes Needed in US Cargo Inspection-Audit
U.S. Tries to Calm Foreign Visitors Over Need for Fingerprinting
POLITICS
U.S. Hits Debt Limit After Senators Put Off Raising Ceiling
As U.S. Debt Ceiling Is Reached,
Anti-Bush registration drive stirs fraud concerns
Rove testifies before grand jury in CIA leak probe
Sept. 11 Panel's Chief Wants Help From Bush
Analysis Bush's Cartoon of Kerry Failed to Show Up
Va.-Based, U.S.-Financed Arabic Channel Finds Its Voice
Voting Rights Machinery Doubted
European election observers to check battleground states
OTHER
Male Bass in Potomac Producing Eggs
Worldwide Report Says Amphibians Are in Peril
Amphibian Extinctions Sound Global Eco-alarm, Says Study
Toxic Ghost Ships in Court Again
All Maryland Waters Polluted With Mercury
Mobile Phone Use Linked to Brain Tumors
ACTIVISTS
Platoon defies orders in Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'HIGH NOON IN THE COLD WAR'
Superpower Nuclear Confrontation: A Thriller, but Real
October 15, 2004
By RICHARD C. HOLBROOKE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/books/15BOOK.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Do we need yet another book on the Cuban missile crisis? Is there anything new to say about the most studied event of the cold war? And does it have any relevance to the post-9/11 world?
In the hands of Max Frankel, who covered the crisis in October 1962 for The New York Times, the answer to all three questions is a resounding yes. For those too young to remember the only direct nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, Mr. Frankel's short and graceful account is an excellent introduction to a vital part of our recent past. For those already steeped in missile crisis lore, Mr. Frankel offers new insights based on his personal memories and newly available archives.
And for those wondering about the relevance of a cold war crisis, consider some of the many contrasts with Iraq, which, while never mentioned by the author, jump out of his narrative:
¶In 1962, unlike 2003, there really were weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear missiles were being secretly placed off Florida by a dangerous adversary seeking a fundamental change in the balance of power.
¶In 1962, unlike 2003, American intelligence and analysis was excellent. High-altitude photographs found and identified the missiles before they were deployed.
¶When Adlai Stevenson presented the evidence to the United Nations Security Council, the world accepted America's word and its photographs without question. (This precedent led the Bush administration to its ill-fated decision to seek an "Adlai moment" at the United Nations in February 2003.)
¶In 1962, as in 2003, the president was under intense pressure from some members of his Cabinet to take pre-emptive military action, but, unlike 2003, President Kennedy saw the threat of force primarily as a tactical device to achieve a political solution.
¶In 1962, unlike 2003, Washington mobilized the United Nations and NATO into a coalition that isolated its adversary.
In the spring of 1962, Nikita S. Khrushchev gambled that he could sneak nuclear missiles into Cuba and hide them "unnoticed among Cuba's majestic palm trees." It was, Mr. Frankel observes, "worthy of the horse at Troy." But within hours after the missiles were discovered by a U-2 overflight on Oct. 15, 1962, President Kennedy decided that the deployment of such weapons was unacceptable.
During the first week of the crisis, no one but a small group of advisers known as the Executive Committee, or ExCom, knew about the missiles. The importance of this total secrecy cannot be overestimated; a rush to action under public pressure could easily have resulted in a catastrophic mistake. With great self-control, the 44-year-old president absented himself from many of the ExCom meetings to allow freer debate, but he was kept informed by his brother Robert, then attorney general, and by Theodore C. Sorensen, his brilliant alter ego, who drafted many key public statements and private messages during the crisis.
Importantly, the secret held - with an assist from The Washington Post and The Times, which both figured out what was going on a day or two before Kennedy was scheduled to make his address to the nation. They both agreed, after personal requests from Kennedy, not to print the story. (Mr. Frankel recalls listening in as the president pleaded with The Times's Washington bureau chief, James Reston, not to publish what they knew.) It was, given the stakes, the correct decision.
From material that has become public since the cold war (including remarkable secret tape recordings President Kennedy himself made of the ExCom deliberations), it is clear that, once he was caught red-handed, Khrushchev realized that the Soviet Union would have to back down. But he was not sure he could control his own military, which was more belligerent than he was.
Kennedy, to achieve his goal - a withdrawal of all offensive weapons from Cuba without the use of force - put together what Frankel calls a well-concocted "brew of dire threat and prudent action": a carefully calibrated naval blockade that gave Moscow several days to ponder the growing danger as their ships approached the quarantine line, and a very public movement of American troops to Florida to prepare for the possible invasion of Cuba.
As in other accounts, Mr. Frankel's Kennedy is the most careful person in the ExCom, always searching for a solution that would meet his absolute bottom line while giving Khrushchev a fig leaf to cover his retreat.
But what was that fig leaf? Although no one realized it at first, Kennedy himself had mentioned it before the missile crisis began: a pledge that the United States would not invade Cuba. When Fidel Castro and the Russians, in near panic, decided that the United States was indeed ready to use its overwhelming force if necessary, Khrushchev seized the no-invasion pledge as if it were a life preserver (which in a sense, it was) to "disguise his retreat."
There was one other issue, which has been denied, debated and finally revealed bit by bit. This concerned the removal of 15 Jupiter medium-range missiles from Turkey. By the time they were installed in early 1962 they were already obsolete; President Dwight D. Eisenhower said they should have been dumped at sea rather than sent to Turkey, and American nuclear submarines made them superfluous. But a public "trade" of the Soviet missiles in Cuba for the American Jupiters in Turkey would have constituted a substantial propaganda victory for Khrushchev and, Kennedy feared, encouraged future Soviet blackmail.
So Kennedy set out to construct a fully deniable "non-deal deal" on the Jupiters. The critical meeting took place between Robert Kennedy and Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin on Saturday evening, Oct. 27. On that darkest day of the cold war, a Soviet missile team in Cuba shot down a U-2, killing its pilot; the Joint Chiefs of Staff (with its chairman, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, dissenting) recommended immediate military retaliation; and Castro asked Khrushchev for urgent help against an invasion he expected within hours. Worst of all Khrushchev sent President Kennedy a letter - his second in two days - that deeply alarmed Washington. It was far more threatening than the first, and, worse, the Soviets broadcast its full text on Radio Moscow. It was a night of fear in both Washington and Moscow; Secretary of State Dean Rusk told me some years later that he went to sleep that night not knowing if he would be alive the next morning.
Ambassador Dobrynin remembers Kennedy during their meeting, the most dramatic in the Russian diplomat's long career, as "very upset." Kennedy told him that the president needed a commitment by the next day that the bases would be removed. There were, Kennedy said, generals, and not only generals, "itching for a fight." When Ambassador Dobrynin asked about Turkey, Kennedy replied, using a clever formulation devised by Rusk, that the Jupiter missiles were not an "insurmountable obstacle" but that, if removed, they could never be linked publicly to the missiles in Cuba. And it would require four to five months and full consultations with America's NATO allies.
The original records of this conversation were carefully edited to remove any hint that there was a connection, and Moscow never mentioned the issue publicly. Many observers suspected a deal from the outset, but it was only decades later that the full story emerged; the Americans had the necessary deniability.
President Kennedy's deft combination of threats and harmless fig leafs worked. The next day the Soviets issued a public statement that effectively ended the crisis. It was, as Mr. Frankel notes, a "euphoric Sunday morning."
There is no certainty that other presidents would have handled history's only nuclear confrontation between superpowers with such coolness and skill. In a world where the media are besotted with interest in the private lives of the presidents (John F. Kennedy first among them), it is well to remember that our leaders should be judged first by their deeds.
Mr. Frankel brings it all back for those who lived it, but, more important, also for a generation who did not.
Richard C. Holbrooke is a former chief American delegate to the United Nations during the Clinton administration and is a foreign policy adviser to Senator John Kerry.
-----
10 big stories The mainstream media missed
Las Vegas City Life
BY CAMILLE T. TAIARA
October 15, 2004
http://www.lvcitylife.com/articles/2004/10/15/cover_story/cover.prt
In late July, more than 600 people showed up in Monterey, Calif., to speak at a Federal Communications Commission hearing on ownership concentration in the news media. The participants were a diverse group - young and old, activists and workers - but they had a single, consistent message: The mainstream news media were doing a deplorable job of covering the day's most important stories.
That's no surprise: Consolidation of the media in the hands of a few corporate Goliaths has resulted in fewer people creating more of the content we see, hear and read. One impact has been a narrower range of perspectives; another is the virtual disappearance of hard-hitting, original, investigative reporting.
"Corporate media has abdicated their responsibility to the First Amendment to keep the American electorate informed about important issues in society and instead serves up a pabulum of junk-food news," says Peter Phillips, head of Sonoma State University's Project Censored.
Every year, researchers at Project Censored pick through volumes of print and broadcast news to see which of the year's most important stories aren't receiving the kinds of attention they deserve. Phillips and his team acknowledge that many of these stories weren't "censored" in the traditional sense of the word - no government agency blocked their publication - and some even appeared (briefly and without follow-up) in mainstream journals.
But according to Project Censored, every one of this year's picks merited prominent placement on the evening news and the front pages. Instead, they went virtually ignored.
This year's list speaks directly to the point FCC critics have raised: Stories that address fundamental issues of wealth concentration and big-business dominance of the political agenda are almost entirely missing from the national debate. From the dramatic increase in wealth inequality in the United States to the wholesale giveaway of the nation's natural resources to the Bush administration's attack on corporate and political accountability, events and trends that ought to be dominating the presidential campaign and the national dialogue are missing from the front pages.
Here are Project Censored's top 10 examples of major stories that have been relegated to the most obscure corners of the media world.
10. New nuke plants
If you thought nuclear energy was dead, think again: The Bush administration's energy bill - yet another product of Cheney's industry-stacked Energy Task Force - doesn't offer any incentives for companies to switch to renewable energy sources. But it does provide for taxpayer cash for companies that build new nukes. A secretly crafted provision of the bill, released late on a Saturday night in November, offers energy companies with as much as $7.5 billion in tax credits to build six new nuclear reactors - this in addition to almost $4 billion set aside for other nuclear energy programs.
"Nuclear power already has had 50 years of subsidy totaling over $140 billion," reported Nuclear Information and Resource Service's Cindy Folkers. The administration also removed terrorism protection provisions included in the House version of the bill, and reversed a previous ban on the export of enriched uranium, which may be used to construct nuclear bombs.
The press has been "woefully silent on the bill's nuclear provisions" wrote Folkers and Michael Mariotte in their update for Project Censored's book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories. And while both Democrats and Republicans managed to defeat the version of bill NIRS warned about last fall, supporters - particularly Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) - are still trying to push those provisions through, in some cases as riders on other bills. Current estimates on the amount of tax credits being considered have since risen to "as much as $15 or even $19 billion."
Sources: "Nuclear Energy Would Get $7.5 Billion in Tax Subsidies, U.S. Taxpayers Would Fund Nuclear Monitor Relapse if Energy Bill Passes," Cindy Folkers and Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Nov. 17, 2003. "U.S. Senate Passes Pro-Nuclear Energy Bill," Cindy Folkers and Michael Mariotte, WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor, Aug. 22, 2003.
9. 9/11 widow brings case against the U.S. government
As the National Commission on Terrorists Attacks Upon the United States - also known as the Sept. 11 Commission - completed its first year, Ellen Mariani and her attorney held a news conference on the steps of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to announce her own startling conclusions. Mariani, wife of Louis Neil Mariani, who died when terrorists flew United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center's south tower, had come to believe that top American officials - including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others - had foreknowledge of the attacks, purposefully failed to prevent them and had since taken pains to cover up the truth.
The administration, she argues in a federal lawsuit, allowed Sept. 11 to happen so that Bush and Co. could launch their seemingly endless, global "war on terror" for their own personal and financial gain. The suit uses the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act - a law created to go after the Mafia - to charge the nation's leaders with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wrongful death.
Her lawyer, Philip J. Berg, a former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania, filed a 62-page complaint that included 40 pages of evidence. "Compelling evidence Š will be presented in this case through discovery, subpoena power by this court and testimony at trial," he wrote in a news release sent to 3,000 print and broadcast journalists announcing the lawsuit and read at a news conference on the court steps that day.
At the very least, the case presents the potential to uncover and publicize critical documents and testimony about the Bush administration's handling of the al-Qaida threat and its aftermath. But only Fox News showed up to the news conference - and it never ran anything on the topic.
Sources: "911 Victim's Wife Files RICO Case Against GW Bush," Philip Berg, www.scoop.co.nz, Nov. 26, 2003; "Widow's Bush Treason Suit Vanishes," W. David Kubiak, www.scoop.co.nz, Dec. 3, 2003.
8. Secrets of Cheney's energy task force
As the Bush administration continues to protect the iron wall of secrecy its erected around Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, at least two documents confirm long-standing suspicions that the Bush administration's foreign policy is being driven by the dictates of the energy industry.
When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, he said that tackling the country's energy crisis would be a top priority. The United States faced nationwide oil and natural gas shortages, and a series of electrical blackouts were rolling across California. The president established the National Energy Policy Development Group and appointed former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney as its head.
One of the big issues on the table was oil, which accounted for 40 percent of the nation's energy supply and provided fuel for the vast majority of the country's transportation - as well as its vast war machine. And, for the first time in history, the United States had become reliant on foreign imports for more than 50 percent of its oil supply.
But rather than lay the groundwork for converting the economy to alternative and renewable sources, NEPDG's report - later released by Bush as the National Energy Policy report in May 2001 - promoted a central goal of "mak[ing] energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy." In other words, Cheney's group wanted to find additional sources of oil overseas, and ensure U.S. access to that oil - whatever it took.
Documents recently obtained from Cheney's Energy Task Force as the result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the public-interest group Judicial Watch indicate that Cheney and his colleagues had their sights on the black gold under the Iraqi desert well before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Last July, the Commerce Department finally turned over records that included "a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and 'Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,'" according to Judicial Watch's subsequent news release. There were also similar maps and charts for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The documents were dated March 2001.
Sources: "Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi Oilfields," Judicial Watch staff, Judicial Watch, July 17, 2003; "Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil," Michael Klare, Foreign Policy in Focus, January 2004.
7. Conservative organization drives judicial appointments
Ever since the Reagan administration, the neocons have pursued an aggressive campaign to stack the federal courts with right-wing judges. Their main vehicle: the Federalist Society of Law and Public Policy, an organization founded in 1982 by a small group of radically conservative law students at the University of Chicago.
The effort has been a resounding success. With the help of Republicans in Congress, 85 extra federal judgeships were created under Ronald Reagan and George Bush the First; Bill Clinton got nine. Now, seven out of 12 circuit courts are anti-abortion. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are Republican appointees - and it's been 11 years since a post has opened up, meaning another right-winger or two could be appointed sometime soon. During Bush the First's tenure, one White House insider boasted that no one who wasn't a Federalist ever received a judicial appointment from the president.
One of George W.'s earliest moves in office was to consolidate the Federalist Society's power even further: He "simply eliminated the long-standing role in the evaluation of prospective judges by the resolutely centrist American Bar Association, whose ratings had long kept extremists and incompetents off the bench," wrote Martin Garbus in the American Prospect. "Today, the Federalists have more influence in judicial selection than the ABA ever had."
The Society now counts Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and prominent members of the conservative American Enterprise Institute among its leadership. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Solicitor General Theodore Olson and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez - charged with approving all judicial nominations before passing them onto Congress - are all members.
As one might expect, the Federalists have consistently acted in favor of property rights over rights of the individual, business deregulation, creationist teachings and much of the rest of the right-wing agenda. But one of the principal victims has been the democratic process itself: Remember, it was the Supreme Court that stopped a hand count of 175,000 uncounted (largely Democratic) ballots in Florida, which could have cost Bush the 2000 presidential election. Conservative jurists have interfered with redistricting efforts to reverse the deliberate segregation of black and Latino voters, and have erected barriers to the participation of third party candidates in the electoral process.
Sources: "A Hostile Takeover: How the Federalist Society Is Capturing the Federal Courts," Martin Garbus, the American Prospect, March 1, 2003; "Courts vs. Citizens," Jamin Raskin, the American Prospect, March 1, 2003.
6. The sale of electoral politics
The Help America Vote Act required that states submit their blueprints for switching over to electronic voting systems by last Jan. 1, and implement those plans in time for the 2006 elections. Some regions are already using the new machines, but those who've bothered to look into the new systems are sending up serious warning flares. Critics say that if Americans don't want a repeat of the 2000 Florida elections fiasco - on a much grander scale - the administration's plans must be halted in their tracks.
A switch to electronic voting might seem innocent enough at first - until you look at who's implementing it and how. Indeed, the transfer represents the privatization of the voting process into the hands of a select few fervent GOP supporters who've insisted on keeping their operating systems and codes a trade secret - meaning that they enjoy absolute control over the entire voting process, including ballot counting and oversight. There is no paper trail.
One prime example is Diebold Inc., one of the nation's top e-voting machine manufacturers, whose equipment was responsible for the Florida debacle. Diebold already operates more than 40,000 machines in 37 states across the country. Many of these are in Georgia, which in November became the first state to conduct an election entirely with touch-screen machines. Oddly enough, incumbent Democratic governor Roy Barnes lost to Republican candidate Sonny Perdue 46 percent to 51 percent - "a swing from as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls," wrote Andrew Gumbel in the Independent. In the same election, incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland lost to his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss, thanks to "a last-minute swing of nine to 12 points."
Similar upsets occurred "in Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, and New Hampshire - all in races that had been flagged as key partisan battlegrounds, and all won by the Republican Party," Gumbel continued.
The other top two e-voting machine manufacturers, Sequoia (which is used in Nevada) and Election Systems and Software (ES&S), are equally suspect. Several of their executives have troubling track records of corruption and conflict of interest. All three companies are prominent Republican Party donors.
Sources: "Voting Machines Gone Wild," Mark Lewellen-Biddle, In These Times, December 2003; "All the President's Votes?," Andrew Gumbel, the Independent (UK), Oct. 13, 2003; "Will Bush Backers Manipulate Votes to Deliver GW Another Election?" Amy Goodman and the staff of "Democracy Now!," Sept. 4, 2003.
5. The wholesale giveaway of our natural resources
Adam Werbach, executive director of the Common Assets Defense Fund and former Sierra Club president, reviewed the Bush administration's environmental policy record and came to a disturbing conclusion: Bush's record is not only bad - it's "akin to an affirmative action program for corporate polluters," he wrote for In These Times.
Vice President Dick Cheney's infamous, secretive, industry-laden energy task force produced what can be boiled down to two main recommendations: "lower the environmental bar and pay corporations to jump over it," Werbach wrote.
For example, Congress has promised $3 billion in tax cuts to mining corporations to help them access natural gas embedded in underground coal deposits in Georgia's Powder River Basin. The Bureau of Land Management has calculated that miners will waste a full 700 million gallons of publicly owned water a year in the process - thereby sucking the region's underground aquifers dry and decimating local farms and wildlife.
The Bush administration's Healthy Forests Initiative essentially entails granting logging companies access to old-growth trees - and then subsidizing them for brush clearing. And even the giant sequoias that former president Bill Clinton sought to protect by creating a 327,000 national monument in the Southern Sierra Nevada just four years ago risk being logged at a rate of 10 million board-feet of lumber per year - a higher rate than allowed on surrounding national forest lands - in the name of "forest management."
All in all, the Bush administration has launched the greatest giveaway of public natural resources in more than a century. Yet, few in the mainstream media have bothered to analyze these plans and put the lie to the administration's rhetorical manipulations.
Sources: "Liquidation of the Commons," Adam Werbach, In These Times, Nov. 23, 2003; "Giant Sequoias Could Get the Ax," Matt Weiser, High Country News, June 9, 2003.
4. High uranium levels found in troops, civilians
Last year, Project Censored included the United States and United Kingdom's continued use of depleted uranium weapons - despite ample evidence of its acute health effects - among its top-10 underreported stories. Almost 10,000 U.S. troops died within 10 years of serving in the first Gulf War, researchers found. And more than a third of those still alive had filed Gulf War Syndrome-related claims.
In study after study, research pointed to the use of depleted uranium in American and British weaponry as the culprit. But authorities concentrated their efforts into obfuscating the problem - downplaying its reach, discrediting scientists and ailing military personnel, and erecting a smoke screen around the syndrome's root causes.
More recently, the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent group of U.S. and Canadian scientists that's conducted studies of Afghan civilians, found overwhelming evidence that the United States is also using non-depleted uranium in its weapons, which is far more radioactive than DU. "If the use of NDU indicates experimental application of new nuclear weapons, as the UMRC suggests, then it should alert the public that proliferation of small nuclear weaponry, proposed for some future use, has in fact already begun," wrote Stephanie Hiller in Awakened Woman.
At the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Tokyo in December, a team of attorneys from Japan, the United States and Germany indicted President Bush on a number of war crimes charges - among them the use of DU weapons. Leuren Moret, president of Scientists for Indigenous People, testified that a U.S. government study conducted on the babies of Gulf War I veterans conceived after the soldiers returned home found that two-thirds suffered from serious birth defects or illnesses, including being born without eyes or ears, or with missing or malformed organs or limbs. In Iraq, Moret said, the defects are even worse.
Sources: "UMRC's Preliminary Findings From Afghanistan and Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Afghan Field Trip #2 Report: Precision Destruction, Indiscriminate Effects," Tedd Weyman, UMRC Research Team, Uranium Medical Research Center, January 2003; "Scientists Uncover Radioactive Trail in Afghanistan," Stephanie Hiller, Awakened Woman, January 2004; "There Are No Words Š Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs," Bob Nichols, Dissident Voice, March 2004; "Poisoned?" Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, April 2004; "International Criminal Tribune for Afghanistan at Tokyo: The People vs. George Bush," Niloufer Bhagwat J., Information Clearinghouse, March 2004.
3. Bush administration manipulates science
Tampering with data that threatens corporate profits is much more widespread under Bush than we've been led to believe. And the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged as one of the administration's primary targets.
One of the first White House moves - on the very day Bush was inaugurated - was to fire engineer Tony Oppegard, the leader of a federal team investigating a 300-million-gallon slurry spill at a coal-mining site in Kentucky. "Black lava-like toxic sludge containing 60 poisonous chemicals choked and sterilized up to 100 miles of rivers and creeks," wrote environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy in the Nation. The EPA dubbed it "the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States."
Bush then appointed industry insiders to top posts within the EPA in charge of mine safety and health.
In another case, a week after the EPA released a study to congressional staff about the toxic effects on groundwater of hydraulic fracturing - a process of injecting benzene into the ground to extract oil and gas, used by Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company - the agency revised its findings in response to "industry feedback" to indicate that the practice posed no threat after all.
In the days and months following the World Trade Center attack, the EPA released more than a dozen statements claiming that the air quality in the surrounding "control zone" was safe - despite evidence that asbestos dust was present in quantities well above the 1-percent safety benchmark. The agency opened up the area to the public a mere week after the attacks, allowing Wall Street to reopen and cleanup activities to begin. Some 88 percent of rescue workers suffered ear, nose and throat ailments, and 78 percent suffered lung maladies as a result, according to a Mount Sinai School of Medicine study. Half suffered persistent respiratory problems up to a year later.
The problem isn't limited to the EPA. In fact, government interference in scientific research has gotten so bad that 60 of the country's top scientists - including 20 Nobel laureates - issued a statement in February citing the ways the Bush administration has distorted scientific data "for partisan political ends" and calling for regulatory action.
There have been dozens of scientists willing to blow the whistle - normally, a reporter's dream come true. But news coverage hasn't come close to reflecting the gravity of the problem.
Sources: "The Junk Science of George W. Bush," Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Nation, March 8, 2004; "Censoring Scientific Information," (no author listed), Censorship News: The National Coalition Against Censorship Newsletter, Fall 2003, No. 91; "Ranking Scientists Warn Bush Science Policy Lacks Integrity," Environmental News Service correspondents, www.OneWorld.net, Feb. 20, 2004; "Politics and Science in the Bush Administration," Committee on Government Reform - Minority staff, Office of U.S. Representative Henry A. Waxman, Aug. 2003 (updated Nov. 13, 2003).
2. Ashcroft vs. the human rights law
For decades, the United States has trained right-wing insurgents and torturers, toppled democratically elected governments and propped up brutal dictatorships abroad - all in the interest of corporate profits. But rarely are the agents of repression ever held accountable for the tens of thousands of deaths and the brutal cycles of poverty, subjugation, environmental destruction and violence they leave in their wake. Indeed, many foreign tyrants go on to enjoy plush retirement right here in the United States.
But recently, lawyers have found a way to seek at least a modicum of justice for victims. The Alien Tort Claims Act, a 215-year-old law originally passed to prosecute pirates for crimes committed on the high seas, allows non-citizens to sue any individual or corporation present on U.S. soil.
Human rights lawyers have pursued 100 cases under ATCA since 1980. Defendants have included former high-ranking government and military officials from El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, Paraguay, the Philippines (including ex-president Ferdinand Marcos), Indonesia, Bosnia, Ethiopia and elsewhere. And although the law can only be used to pursue monetary damages rather than prison time, it has often resulted in victims being awarded millions - and in the perpetrators sometimes fleeing the country rather than paying up.
Ten years ago, victims began using the act to go after corporate profiteers, too: It was thanks to ATCA, for example, that Holocaust survivors were able to seek redress from the Swiss banks and companies that profited from the slave labor of concentration camp internees during World War II.
But Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department has set its sights on the act, saying in a brief last year that the law threatens "important foreign policy interests" associated with the war on terrorism. Yet hardly a word has been written in the mainstream media about the Bush administration's attack on the one, main legal recourse left in the United States for victims to seek redress for human rights violations.
Source: "Ashcroft Goes After 200-Year-Old Human Rights Law," Jim Lobe, www.OneWorld.net and Asheville Global Report, May 19, 2003.
1. Wealth inequality
As the mainstream news media recite the official line about the nation's supposed economic recovery, a key point has been missing: Wealth inequality in the United States has almost doubled during the past 30 years.
In fact, the Federal Reserve Board's most recent Survey of Consumer Finances supplement on high-income families shows that in 1998, the richest 1 percent of households owned 38 percent of the nation's wealth. The top 5 percent owned almost 60 percent of the wealth.
"We are much more unequal than any other advanced industrial country," New York University economics professor Edward Wolff told Third World Traveler.
But that's just part of the problem. "Most Americans believe we take from people at the top to benefit those below," Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigative reporter David Cay Johnston said in a BuzzFlash interview. But our tax system is actually set up such that "people who make $30,000 to $500,000 Š give relief to those who make millions, or tens and hundreds of millions of dollars a year."
The United States is not alone: Today, almost one-sixth of the world's population - 940 million people - "already live in squalid, unhealthy areas, mostly without water, sanitation, public services, or legal security," wrote John Vidal in the Guardian. A recent UN report predicted that, absent drastic change to reverse "a form of colonialism that is probably more stringent than the original," one in every three people worldwide will live in slums within 30 years. That's a bigger threat to democracy and global stability than al-Qaida and international terrorism.
Sources: "The Wealth Divide" (An Interview With Edward Wolff), Multinational Monitor, May 2003; "A BuzzFlash Interview, Parts I and II" (with David Cay Johnston), BuzzFlash staff, www.buzzflash.com, March 26 and 29, 2004; "Every Third Person Will be a Slum Dweller Within 30 Years, UN Agency Warns," John Vidal, the Guardian (UK), Oct. 4, 2003; "Grotesque Inequality," Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor, July-Aug. 2003.
Camille T. Taiara is a staff reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Project Censored's book, Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories, will be available in bookstores this fall. For more information, go to www.projectcensored.org.
-------- accidents and safety
A nuclear plant problem raises interest, but not among neighbors
Associated Press
By GEOFF MULVIHILL
October 15, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-nj--reactormishap1015oct15,0,2492903.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire
SALEM, N.J. -- Federal regulators and the out-of-town activists who monitor the activity of the three nuclear power plants a few miles from here reacted swiftly this week when one of the plants had to be shut down because of a small leak of radioactive steam.
But in the towns nearby, where being the neighbor of a nuclear plant has been part of life for more than a quarter century, Sunday's mishap isn't exactly the talk of the town.
Ronald Coleman, 51, a Salem resident who works at the local hospital, said he's concerned about what's happening at the plants owned by Public Service Energy Group. But it's not something that his neighbors ever discuss, he said _ even this week, when the mishap was front-page news in the local newspaper.
On the street and in shops in downtown Salem, about eight miles from the Salem I, Salem II and Hope Creek plants that make up one of the nation's largest nuclear generating stations, several people said they weren't aware of any recent problems there.
Rich Gatanis, a township committeeman in nearby Carneys Point and owner of South Jersey Sporting Goods in Salem, said he has paid attention to the plant _ and that he has faith in the behemoth employer that runs it in this sparsely populated southwest corner of New Jersey.
"When they do find a safety problem," he said, "they don't deny it."
But to the activists who follow the plants, the company doesn't communicate or address safety problems as well as it should.
"What we can tell from the outside, this is one more example of the safety culture at PSEG," said Norm Cohen, a Linwood resident and the director of Unplug Salem, which advocates shutting down the plants.
Cohen said he sees a troubling trend of relatively small problems that he links to improper maintenance at the plants.
"You can't say that one of them is going to melt the plant down," Cohen said. "It's the mind-set that the plant is slowly deteriorating."
Both a company spokesman and officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that until the cause of the leak is determined, they won't comment about its cause.
On Sunday, a steam pipe, 8 inches in diameter, in the Hope Creek turbine building ruptured shortly after 5:30 p.m. There were no workers nearby and officials said while radiation levels rose, they stayed well below allowable limits.
"At no point was nuclear safety compromised," said Skip Sindoni, a spokesman for the power company.
When the rupture was discovered, company officials decided immediately to manually shut down the plant. In doing so, they struggled to find the right level of water that covers the radioactive fuel and prevents it from overheating.
Diane Screnci, an NRC spokeswoman, said the water level was never less than 10 feet above the fuel.
PSEG reported the incident immediately to the NRC, which announced on Thursday that it had sent a special team of investigators to determine the cause of the mishap.
Screnci said the agency conducts such investigations a few dozen times a year at nuclear power plants across the nation and that they normally take about a week.
Besides telling the nuclear regulators about the mishap, PSEG did not release any statements to the media or tell people who live near the plant about what had happened.
"They don't tell us much," said Coleman, the hospital worker.
But Sindoni said the company did respond to questions received from people who learned about the incident through the NRC Web site.
He said while problems that spur special NRC investigations are relatively rare, it is not unusual for one of the Salem plants to be shut down at times other than their regular stoppages every 18 months.
PSEG said Hope Creek will remain closed pending the company's own investigation of the steam leak.
--------
Nuclear shutdown cost $10 million
cbc.ca
Oct 15 2004
http://nb.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nb_lepreaushut20041015
SAINT JOHN - NB Power hopes to have the Point Lepreau nuclear plant up and running within days following the most expensive unplanned shutdown in three years.
A series of problems caused the plant to shut down unexpectedly nearly two weeks ago, costing NB Power more than $10 million.
The shutdown raises questions about nuclear power's reliability just weeks before New Brunswick must decide whether to proceed with a billion-dollar plant renovation.
The plant has produced no power since Oct. 2, and other power plants across the province have been called on to pick up the slack.
Even the Mactaquac Dam's head-pond has been drained to fill the gap.
It's an expensive failure at a critical time, as the province decides within the month whether to take another big gamble on nuclear power.
Point Lepreau has had its share of problems, but had been operating remarkably well during the last two years. The latest shutdown has lasted much longer than NB Power had hoped or predicted, and once again raises old questions about nuclear power's reliability.
The latest problem began when an electronic failure caused a shutdown system to partially start itself. NB Power immediately issued a press release predicting a two-day stoppage.
But then, a steam leak was discovered in a pipe during start-up. Then cracks were found in four other steam pipes, dragging the shutdown into one week and then two.
Rod White is vice-president of nuclear for NB Power and says Lepreau's record is good, even with the shutdown. "You recognize that you've got a plant that can perform very well but it is a complicated plant and some things may not go the way you like. Like this inspection found these things. So we'll fix it, but generally over the last three years we've had a good average," he says.
The current shutdown is unsettling because the big issue with Lepreau is whether to begin shutting it down completely, or spend a billion dollars to refurbish it for another 25 years of operation.
Two years ago the Public Utilities Board decided the Lepreau refurbishment plan was too risky, precisely because of unforeseen events that could shut the plant down.
But last June, Premier Bernard Lord was still endorsing the idea as a possibility. "I think the odds are that Lepreau will go ahead, but there are still some evaluations that have to take place."
To work financially, the renovation plan requires Lepreau to operate at an average of 85 per cent capacity for 25 years. The problem is, Lepreau has a dismal record of meeting even yearly targets.
White says this shutdown means Lepreau will reach only 78 per cent of its generation capacity for this year - and that's if it operates flawlessly for the next five months.
This is the fifth time in six years that Lepreau has failed to meet its yearly output goal, raising questions about the accuracy of NB Power's 25-year forecast for the nuclear power plant, when its yearly estimates are so often wrong.
NB Power says it understands the nuclear issue better than it used to, and a refurbished Lepreau can operate much better than the original. Despite that confidence, the current shutdown at Lepreau is a stark reminder of how unplanned nuclear events can still surprise the experts.
-------- asia
Kyrgyzstan Blocks British Nuclear Shipments
By Gulnura Toralieva
BISHEK, Kyrgyzstan, (ENS)
October 14, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-14-01.asp
A battle between environmental groups and western nuclear energy firms trying to send radioactive materials to Kyrgyzstan came to a head in recent weeks, with the government siding with locals worried about possible contamination.
On September 28, the Kyrgyz government announced it would block efforts by energy producer British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) to send uranium contaminated graphite for processing in Kyrgyzstan.
In a statement, which was re-released in English in London on October 5, the government said it had reached its decision because of safety concerns.
Kyrgyz Prime Minister Nikolay Tanaev, a civil engineer by profession, sided with the environmentalists. (Photo courtesy Office of the Prime Minister) The declaration came after state owned BNFL tried to send about 1,800 metric tons of uranium bearing graphite, a byproduct of the nuclear fuel production process, to the Karabalta mining and processing plant, KGRK.
BNFL and other western firms are struggling to dispose of these materials because of strict controls at home and growing environmental opposition in developing nations.
In the civilian sector, uranium is used to fuel commercial power plants and in certain fertilizers, among other things. Exposure to the radioactive substance has been linked to several types of cancer.
BNFL maintains that it is not looking to dump radioactive waste in Kyrgyzstan. Instead, it intends to extract uranium and send it back to the UK, leaving the remaining material in Kyrgyzstan, the company says.
Kyrgyz activists are strongly opposed to the British shipments, "We will not allow the delivery of such dangerous cargo from abroad. If this goes ahead, we demand that the government resign," said Toktaiym Umetalieva, the leader of a coalition of nongovernmental groups.
A deal between the plant and BNFL would make economic sense for the British firm, but would be bad news for Kyrgyzstan, which is struggling to cope with existing radioactive waste on its soil, said Peter Roche, a nuclear expert at global environmental campaigner Greenpeace.
"BNFL not only gets to dispose of its waste in Kyrgyzstan, but will also get back 60 tons of useable uranium in return," he said.
BNFL spokesman Alan Beauchamp rejected allegations that the company was effectively dumping uranium waste in Kyrgyzstan.
An operator in a BNFL control room moves a graphite drum from buffer store. (Photo courtesy BNFL) "We are not looking to dispose of the waste," he said, adding that the material that would stay in Kyrgyzstan is not known of as waste but "processed residue."
German contractor, RWE Nukem GmbH, which provides services for the nuclear industry, has been trying to arrange the delivery of BNFL consignments of uranium contaminated graphite to the Kyrgyz plant, but has so far failed to get an import license for it.
The contractor started negotiating with the authorities earlier this year, but in July a group of NGOs sent letters to the government protesting against an official commission's decision to support the deal.
The matter appeared to have been settled after the government gave assurances that the shipments would not go ahead. But the controversy resurfaced again in September when the British media reported that BNFL, through Nukem, was negotiating the delivery of uranium contaminated graphite - prompting a renewed outcry from Kyrgyz activists and apparently forcing the government to issue its ban.
In an interview, a Nukem spokesman denied claims that they were organizing the dumping of radioactive material, insisting that it was merely being sent for processing. He added that Kyrgyzstan has been processing uranium containing raw material for 45 years and had been receiving such consignments from Kazakstan quite recently.
For the workers in the Karabalta plant, one of the few factories in the world that separates uranium from graphite, the government's decision imperils their livelihoods.
"We haven't been paid for half a year, and we don't have raw materials to work with. Our plant was built to process uranium, nothing else. What should we do, die of starvation?" said a KGRK employee, who wished to remain anonymous.
Boris Karpachov, the head of the radiation safety service at the Governmental State Agency for Geology and Mineral Resources, lashed out at the groups trying to derail the contract with BNFL.
Students of Karabalta School at lunch (Photo courtesy Association of Christian Schools of Central Asia) "KGRK is looking for partners, trying to survive, while NGOs are busy with their intrigues and demagogy, preventing contracts from being signed, which are the only chance for the workers and for all residents of Karabalta," he said.
Karpachov argued that money made by the factory would allow the country to address economic and social problems, and pay to cleanup and maintain pits containing processed radioactive material.
The BNFL is holding out for a decision in its favor despite the government's categorical statement banning its proposed shipments.
Company spokesman Beauchamp insisted that BNFL "has not received any official notification" about the ban.
"We will find an alternative to the Kyrgyz plant if necessary but we do not have any lined up at the moment because we hope to get the [Kyrgyz import] license."
{Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. IWPR intern Eleanor Bindman contributed to this report.}
Read another perspective on the Karabalta KGRK facility on the United Nations Environment Programme Grid Arendal site at: http://www.grida.no/enrin/story.cfm?article=30
-------- depleted uranium
Pentagon uses depleted uranium shells in its raid against Iraq
Contamination caused with depleted uranium will last for 4.5 billion years
Pravda.Ru
10/15/2004
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/14451_uranium.html
Increased radioactivity was found in destroyed and abandoned Iraqi tanks. The radiation level may testify to the fact that the US army used uranium-cored projectiles in the raids. Japan's Kyodo News agency reported from Baghdad, a group of specialists had found several radioactive tanks in the area of the Iraqi town of Samawa, where the Japanese contingent was stationed.
The abandoned military hardware is dangerous to people's health, the news agency said. International coalition troops will destroy the tanks for safety reasons. The group of specialists included experts from a Japanese non-governmental organization. The experts said that the radiation level that they had registered near the tanks exceeded the norm 300 times.
Medical examinations of the US military men, who returned home from Iraq, also showed that the Pentagon used depleted uranium armor-piercing shells. American newspaper wrote before that displays of radioactive contamination were registered with the US soldiers, who had been deployed in the area of the Samawa (fierce battles took place in the town during the first two weeks of the US and British incursion in Iraq).
Depleted uranium, also known as uranium-238, is the by-product received from processing fuel for nuclear reactors. The element is 1.7 times heavier than lead. Depleted uranium is used for making projectile cores and special bombs to pierce tank armors and bunkers' concrete ceilings.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon said that uranium-238 possessed short-term harmful impact, which allowed to categorize it as the "chemical contamination" rather than radioactivity. The substance becomes environmentally harmless in seven years after it has been used, experts of the US military department insist.
The Pentagon's independent colleagues are being more precise in their judgments, though. High temperatures destroy the uranium tip of a shell, when it slams into the armored surface. Fine dust is produced as a result of the impact. The dust penetrates into blood via the respiratory system, which results in lung cancer and renal insufficiency. Moreover, regulations prohibit US military men to approach the military hardware, which has been destroyed with uranium shells. It is allowed to do it in case of emergent necessity.
American physicist Doug Rokke, who served in Iraq in 1991 cleaning the country of depleted uranium, said: "For each and every vehicle that is struck by a single uranium munition you have to take that entire vehicle, and physically remove it. Then you have to clean up all the uranium penetration that is left around that vehicle. Then you have to take a bulldozer, and go out to at least 100 metres (yards) and scrape down at least 10 centimetres (four inches) and remove all of that dirt in order to make that area safe again. If that is not done, he said, the contamination will last 4.5 billion years."
Based on the materials of Russia and foreign media outlets
-------- iran
G-8 Nations to Meet on Iran
New Plan Aims to Pressure Tehran About Nuclear Ambitions
By Robin Wright and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33834-2004Oct14.html
After weeks of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, the United States will meet here today with the world's wealthiest countries to determine a strategy for giving Iran one last chance to abandon its alleged nuclear arms program or face new international pressures.
Both Democrats and Republicans increasingly believe that Iran will be the next big foreign policy flash point -- and that action may prove necessary soon after the U.S. presidential election next month, no matter who wins.
A new proposal drafted by European members of the powerful Group of Eight nations is intended to get Iran to fully agree to a plan that will prevent it from being able to convert a nuclear energy program into an arms program. The proposal includes incentives if Iran complies and punitive measures if it balks, U.S. and European officials said. If Iran accepts such a plan, it could resolve an international standoff that has persisted since Russia resumed construction of Iran's first atomic power plant, at Bushehr, in the early 1990s.
The G-8 talks, hosted by the State Department, come a day after Russia and Iran announced that they have completed the Bushehr facility. Washington has charged it could be converted to the production of nuclear weapons.
Despite its heavy focus on Iraq and the domestic election, the Bush administration has agreed to look at one last overture to Iran, to be made as early as next week, because of mounting alarm over the Islamic republic's advancing capabilities and failure to follow through on an agreement to halt activities that could contribute to a weapons program.
"Iran is definitely the next big issue. It's the number one issue that any administration, be it Kerry or Bush, will have to face immediately because of the intelligence assessment that predicts Iran could have the know-how and capability as early as the summer of 2005," said a senior State Department official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy.
"That's a disputed intelligence claim," the official said. "But any capability in the hands of a rogue nation with a long record of supporting terror and a clear interest in challenging the U.S. and Israel makes that the clearest threat facing U.S. interests in the next administration."
Most intelligence assessments project later dates -- three to seven years -- before Iran could develop a nuclear weapon, and U.S. officials say Iran does not now have uranium or fissile material. But Tehran's failure to abide by an agreement with Britain, France and Germany last year not to work toward enriching uranium has triggered broad skepticism among Republicans and Democrats about Iran's long-range intent.
The United States is "open to all ideas" to prevent Iran from developing nuclear arms, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said Wednesday in Tokyo. But he warned that Washington is prepared to press for punishment if Tehran does not act.
"We hold the view that Iran needs to be brought to account, and we would like to move to the U.N. Security Council after the November board of governors meeting [of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency], but we're open to all ideas that people have," Armitage told reporters. He said he was returning to the United States to participate in the talks, which are scheduled to be chaired by John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
The new initiative emerged from talks on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month between G-8 foreign ministers and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The G-8 ministers outlined a two-step proposal with a deadline pegged to the next meeting of the IAEA, in Vienna on Nov. 25, U.S. and European officials said.
Given that Britain, France and Germany did not win Iran's compliance, European members of the G-8 -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia and Canada -- are seeking a broader front. That would take away Iran's ability to play one country off another and undermine Tehran's contention that the three nations were operating under U.S. pressure, U.S. officials said.
The G-8 umbrella also would give the Bush administration cover for a new international overture and deniability that it is offering incentives to Iran, U.S. and European officials said.
The other G-8 countries will approach Iran individually, but with a single message that it immediately and permanently end uranium-enrichment and processing-related activities or face punitive international action, the officials said.
"We want to make clear to Iran that it has to comply immediately, and everyone agrees we should go to the Security Council [if it does not]. If they do, we might start talking about what we might be able to offer -- in comprehensive ways, not just economic," said a European envoy who has seen the proposal.
The plan has some support within the State Department, but the Bush administration is not eager to put its name on an offer that could help Iran avoid censure by the Security Council. While it has continually suggested that the council needs to discuss Iran's nuclear intentions, the administration has held back on stating that sanctions or other punitive measures should be placed on Tehran.
The administration yesterday played down its role. "We'll be in a listening mode," said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the impending talks. "We're going to want to talk about what next steps will be taken."
There is cautious optimism among G-8 countries about the new initiative and the growing unity on Iran policy among the world's major powers.
"Do we expect any change in U.S. policy? Probably not for the moment. But would the U.S. oppose European initiatives with Iran? Probably not either," said a second European diplomat familiar with the plan.
The first European envoy called the talks an "incredibly positive" development that reflects the administration's willingness to look beyond the potential political fallout from a deal that might appear to offer Iran any benefits on the eve of the U.S. election.
Europeans also note the growing cooperation between the United States and Russia, which have long been at odds over the Bushehr facility. To ease U.S. fears, Russia is pressing for an arrangement in which Iran would return spent nuclear fuel to Russia -- another agreement not yet signed by Iran.
--------
U.S. and Industrial Nations Meet on Iran's Nuclear Plans
October 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iran-Nuclear.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States and its European allies held inconclusive strategy talks Friday on how to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The three-hour session at the State Department ended without a communique and without plans for a follow-up meeting. A European diplomat who participated called the talks useful but said no decision was made on a proposed European package of incentives for Iran to stop its suspect program.
The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the next step was having a U.N. agency take up the Iranian situation next month.
In the meantime, Russian officials said construction had been completed at the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran and the hope was to sign agreements next month on shipping nuclear fuel to Tehran.
The United States is worried the $800 million Bushehr deal could help Iran build nuclear weapons. But Russia, dismissing the concern, maintains that having Iran ship spent nuclear fuel back to Russia will serve as a preventive.
The Bush administration sought to lower any expectations of a breakthrough before the G-8 nations met to consider whether to try to induce Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program.
At the center of the discussions was a European proposal to offer trade and fuel supplies if Tehran will stop enriching uranium, a key step toward producing nuclear weapons.
But the Bush administration stressed, instead, the shared goal of stopping the program and taking the issue to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic penalties if Iran did not comply before the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency meets in Vienna, Austria, in late November.
All G-8 nations -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia -- sent senior officials to the session. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton and Glyn Davies, who is in charge of G-8 issues at the department, headed the U.S. delegation.
Diplomats close to the talks said the European package of incentives included fuel for Iran's civilian programs and a trade arrangement with the European Union.
Even though the Bush administration was reluctant to offer any carrots to Iran, the meeting reflected a willingness to consult with allies -- a strategy Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has found in short supply under President Bush.
The package of incentives was designed by Britain, France and Germany, who have taken the lead in talking to Iran about its nuclear intentions.
--------
Industrial powers discuss Iran nuclear tensions
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Oct 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041015175134.5r0l9cct.html
Top officials from the Group of Eight powers met here Friday to discuss ways of making Iran give up its alleged nuclear weapons programme.
The meeting is to discuss measures proposed by Britain, France and Germany, which have led a European initiative to engage Iran over its nuclear activities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has set a November 25 deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities and answer all questions about its nuclear ambitions.
The United States wants the IAEA to refer Iran's case to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions action. Washington has taken an increasingly hard line on Iran, which it accuses of moving towards nuclear weapons status.
The United States is being represented at the Washington meeting by John Bolton, the State Department's under secretary for arms control and international security, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
Top officials from the foreign ministries of the other G8 members -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia -- are also taking part.
No official details have been given on what the European nations have proposed to persuade Iran to halt uranium enrichment, a key step toward the making of a nuclear bomb.
However, on Tuesday a diplomat close to the IAEA said a package offer, spearheaded by Britain, France and Germany, giving Iran access to imported nuclear fuel in return for totally suspending its own work on the nuclear fuel cycle, was under consideration.
The Washington meeting, which is being held at the State Department, just blocks from the White House, started this morning and is expected to stretch into the afternoon, diplomatic sources said.
It comes as Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely for civilian power use.
But a top Iranian lawmaker said Thursday his country would bar international nuclear inspections if debate on its nuclear programme moved to the UN Security Council as sought by Washington.
No official statements are expected at the end of the meeting which is being portrayed by the State Department as an opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas.
Diplomatic sources said the meeting has also been convened to send a signal to Tehran that the international community is seriously concerned about the Islamic republic obtaining nuclear weapons.
Armitage has said that Washington is open to proposals regarding Iran, but that the matter must be referred to the Security Council unless Tehran comes forward quickly to resolve international concerns.
US diplomats have said a softening of its hardline policy against Tehran is not being considered, but analysts believe some incentives might be in the offing if Iran shows good will on the issue.
The sources said Washington is not likely to seek a more open dialogue with Tehran on the matter until after the November 2 presidential election here, rather than risk a political storm as voters head to the polls.
Democratic challenger John Kerry has berated President George W. Bush for failing to deal with Tehran while going to war with Iraq on faulty intelligence.
Examination of Iran's nuclear program by the UN Security Council would be a first step to imposing UN economic sanctions against the Islamic republic, something Russia, which has veto power at the Council, is likely to oppose because of its deep economic ties with the country.
-----
EU Three to present Iran with nuclear incentives next week: US
(AFP)
Oct 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041015202545.481c9kdn.html
WASHINGTON - Britain, France and Germany have told the United States they will present to Iran next week a package of incentives aimed at convincing Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment activities that could be used to make nuclear weapons, the State Department said Friday.
"The EU Three have indicated they will be presenting their ideas to Iran next week," said Tom Casey, a department spokesman, after a three-hour meeting on the topic between senior diplomats from the United States and the other members of the Group of Eight industrialized nations.
"The United States listened carefully to the EU Three explanations of their approach and the EU Three agreed to inform us of the results of their efforts," Casey said, adding however that Washington did not necessarily endorse the European proposals.
Diplomatic sources say the European package would give Iran access to imported nuclear fuel in return for a total suspension of its own work on the nuclear fuel cycle.
Casey added that the United States remained convinced that Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons in violation of its international treaty obligations and refusal to abide by demands from the International Atomic Energy Agency be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
"The United States has long made clear its views that Iran's confirmed non-compliance with safeguard obligations must be reported by the IAEA board to the UN Security Council," Casey said. "We reaffirmed to our G8 partners that Iran should not be allowed to defy any longer the (IAEA) requirements."
Iran faces a November 25 IAEA deadline to suspend uranium enrichment activities and answer all questions about its nuclear ambitions or face US demands that the matter be sent to the Security Council.
-------- iraq / inspections
No Evidence Iraq Sought Foreign Uranium, ISG Says
Global Security Newswire
By Mike Nartker
October 15, 2004
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_10_15.html#7E02F26B
WASHINGTON - The Iraq Survey Group, the coalition unit that searched for evidence of prewar Iraq's alleged WMD efforts, has found no evidence that Baghdad sought to acquire uranium from abroad following the 1991 Gulf War, according to a report released last week by U.S. chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer (see GSN, Aug. 2).
Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, U.S. officials cited Iraq's alleged attempts to obtain uranium as evidence of efforts by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to relaunch his nuclear program. Citing information received from sources such as the former head of Hussein's nuclear weapons program, though, Duelfer dismissed allegations that Iraq sought uranium from Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - two countries cited as possible sources by U.S. intelligence.
"ISG has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991," his report states.
In an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, U.S. intelligence listed the two nations and Somalia as countries from which Iraq may have sought to obtain uranium. The U.S. report was preceded by a British government dossier released in September 2002 indicating that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.
U.S. President George W. Bush included the Iraq-Africa claim in his 2003 State of the Union address.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said.
The claim began to fall apart in March 2003, when the International Atomic Energy Agency determined that documents provided by the United States, purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal, were forgeries. The following July, the White House acknowledged that the claim should not have been included in Bush's address.
An inquiry by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the aftermath of the war found that U.S. intelligence had "overstated" in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate what was known about Iraq's possible uranium procurement efforts. The committee, however, also said that U.S. intelligence had been "reasonable" to assess, prior to receiving the fraudulent documents in October 2002, that Iraq may have sought to obtain uranium from Africa. A British inquiry citing separate intelligence determined that the Iraq-Africa uranium claim was "well-founded."
In his report last week, Duelfer described the claims made by the former head of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear weapons program, Jafar Jafar, regarding Iraq's two contacts with Niger after 1998. Neither involved discussions on uranium, according to Jafar.
The purpose of one visit in 1999 by Iraq's ambassador to the Holy See, Jafar claimed, was to invite Niger's president to visit Baghdad. Duelfer's report does not mention the possible purpose of the Iraqi invitation.
Jafar also claimed, according to Duelfer, that a second contact between Iraq and Niger occurred when a Nigerien official traveled to Baghdad in 2001 to discuss purchasing petroleum products. The trip did not involve, though, an offer by Niger to provide uranium instead of cash for the purchase, the report says.
In addition, there is no sign that prewar Iraq sought to obtain uranium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it may actually have rejected an opportunity to do so, according to Duelfer's report. It notes the discovery in May 2003 of a document from the Iraqi Embassy in Nairobi detailing an offer made by a Ugandan businessman to sell uranium, "reportedly" from the Congo. According to the document, embassy officials told the businessman that they did not handle such issues and explained the circumstances of international sanctions imposed against Iraq, Duelfer's reports states.
"We told him ... that Iraq is not concerned about these matters right now," says the embassy document, a copy of which is included in Duelfer's report.
Duelfer's report does not address the prewar allegations that Iraq may have sought to obtain uranium from Somalia.
The CIA refused to comment on the report, referring all questions to Duelfer. Duelfer has not responded to requests for comment.
----
Iraq Nuclear Sites Were Stripped Methodically, Say Diplomats
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
October 15, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=194
VIENNA, Austria - The mysterious removal of Iraq's mothballed nuclear facilities continued long after the U.S.-led invasion and was carried out by people with access to heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats said on Thursday.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog told the Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons had been vanishing from Iraq without either Baghdad or Washington noticing.
"This process carried on at least through 2003 ... and probably into 2004, at least in early 2004," said a Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitored Iraq's nuclear sites before last year's war.
That contrasted with statements by Western and Iraqi officials, who have played down the disappearance of the equipment. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday he believed most of the removals took place in the chaos shortly after the March 2003 invasion.
The United States and Britain said they invaded to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Both countries now admit toppled ruler Saddam Hussein had no such weapons.
Several diplomats close to the IAEA said the disappearance of the nuclear items was not the result of haphazard looting.
They said the removal of the dual-use equipment - which before the war was tagged and closely monitored by the IAEA to ensure it was not being used in a weapons program - was planned and executed by people who knew what they were doing.
"We're talking about dozens of sites being dismantled," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "Large numbers of buildings taken down, warehouses were emptied and removed. This would require heavy machinery, demolition equipment. This is not something that you'd do overnight."
Proliferation Fears
Diplomats in Vienna say the IAEA is worried that these facilities, which belonged to Saddam's pre-1991 covert nuclear weapons program, could have been packed up and sold to a country or militants interested in nuclear weapons.
The diplomats said that among the sites that had been stripped were a precision manufacturing site at Umm Al Marik, a site connected with Iraq's nuclear weapons activities at Al Qa Qaa, and an engineering facility at Badr.
One diplomat said there were "dozens of others" that gradually disappeared from satellite photos analyzed by IAEA experts at its headquarters in Vienna.
Independent expert Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest, said Iraqi nuclear and weapons-related material that was monitored by the U.N. before the invasion had since been found in Europe. Raw "yellowcake" uranium, apparently from Iraq, was found in Rotterdam last December, he said.
"It seems extremely negligent for the authorities in Iraq to allow this quantity of material to have been exported from the country," Standish said.
In 1991, the IAEA detected Saddam's clandestine nuclear weapons program and spent the next seven years investigating and dismantling it. By the time U.N. inspectors left the country in December 1998, Iraq's covert atom bomb program was gone.
After returning in November 2002 until they were evacuated in March 2003, the IAEA was confident none of the dual-use nuclear equipment in Iraq was being used in a weapons program.
--------
Duelfer Report Omitted Long-Term U.N. Plans for Monitoring Iraq, U.N. Officials Say
GSN
Oct. 15, 2004
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2004_10_25.html#BA34DDFF
The Iraq Survey Group report, which said that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein intended to resume WMD efforts once U.N. sanctions were lifted, failed to note that the U.N. Security Council had planned to maintain long-running controls to prevent such weapons development, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 15).
"It's been a little disturbing," said chief U.N. weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos. "All the arguments say that when sanctions ended, Saddam Hussein would have had a free hand. By the council's own resolutions that wasn't so."
The report by ISG chief Charles Duelfer did not include U.N. plans to implement an Ongoing Monitoring and Verification (OMV) program in Iraq, which would have been in place at hundreds of dual-use and former WMD-related Iraqi sites, according to AP. The program had been envisioned at about a $70 million per year effort involving about 350 people, AP reported.
Inspectors would have used sensors, sampling devices, remote video systems, inspections and interviews to keep track of the facilities. Aerial surveillance, vehicle inspections and imports monitoring would also have been included in the verification program, according to AP.
The program became moot following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, AP reported.
The CIA and Duelfer did not comment on why the OMV program was not included in the Iraq Survey Group report.
Former U.S. chief weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay said the OMV program was "discounted" and left out of Duelfer's report because it was believed that "the Iraqis over time would find out how to manipulate the cameras, sampling methods, occasional visits" (Charles Hanley, Associated Press/Boston Herald, Oct. 24).
-------- latinamerica
Brazil OKs nuclear inspections
(AFP)
Oct 15, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041015/wl_afp/brazil_nuclear_iaea_041015205604
BRASILIA (AFP) - Brazil will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into a nuclear facility outside Rio de Janeiro, but will not allow inspections of certain areas, science and technology minister Eduardo Campos said.
Brazil will allow the inspection next week, Campos said. Until then, Brazil and the UN nuclear watchdog are looking for a way to inspect that will "protect the country's technological and trade secrets," Campos said.
Brazil opposes a visual IAEA inspection, claiming that it has a novel method of enriching uranium to protect.
Brazil, which has one of the world's largest uranium reserves, denied IAEA inspectors access in February and March to the uranium-enriching facility in Resende, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei has said Brazil should not be an exception to the organization's norms.
Ten days ago, US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), on a two-day official visit here, discussed with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Brasilia's disputes with the IAEA inspectors, saying Washington had no worries about the nuclear program here.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear Solutions Files Patent for New Technology to Detect Shielded Nuclear Bomb Materials
(PRIMEZONE)
Oct. 15, 2004
http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/news_releases.mhtml?d=65630
WASHINGTON, -- Nuclear Solutions, Inc. (OTCBB:NSOL) filed a patent application this week for a new nuclear material detection technology intended to screen cargo for shielded nuclear weapons.
"When fully developed, this new patent pending technology could integrate into a system that would screen inbound cargo in real time for uranium-235 and plutonium-239, the essential components of a nuclear bomb," said Patrick Herda, chief executive officer of Nuclear Solutions.
Because the levels of radiation emitted by weapons-grade plutonium and uranium are relatively low, they are easy to shield, which makes identification by radiation sensing devices unreliable and, in some cases, not possible at all.
For example, in a report issued yesterday, the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security revealed that U.S. Customs and border protection services are not always able to detect nuclear materials in ocean-going shipping containers. The investigation commenced after ABC News was able to ship 15 pounds of depleted uranium into the United States two years in a row.
While improvements in cargo inspection were made since Sept. 11, 2001, less than 5% percent of all containers are currently inspected.
The development of Nuclear Solution's new sensing concept could result in a highly sensitive, portable, and low-cost detection system that responds to minute gravitational gradient anomalies produced by high-density nuclear materials like plutonium and uranium and would be unaffected by radiation shielding techniques.
"There are over 400 tons of unsecured fissile nuclear materials loose in the world," said CEO Patrick Herda. "Recognizing this, both presidential candidates recently agreed that keeping nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands is America's top national security priority.
"I applaud their acknowledgement of this grave threat. Unfortunately, the system we currently have in place is inadequate, and reliance on highly sensitive radiation portals is not the best answer.
"It is far too easy for terrorists to shield the radiation emitted by Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239. Furthermore, when employing such highly sensitive radiation detection equipment, you are very likely to wind up with an unacceptably high rate of false positive warnings. What this country needs is a reliable and economical method to prevent a terrorist nuclear weapon from getting in. Once fully funded and developed, our approach using gravitational anomaly sensing techniques, could become a useful tool in the fight against nuclear terrorism worldwide."
Herda will also be a participant in the upcoming conference "Maritime Domain Awareness: Integrated Sensor Strategies for Port/Ship Security", being held in Washington, DC October 18th and 19th, hosted by Defense Today and King Publishing.
About Nuclear Solutions, Inc.:
Nuclear Solutions, based in Washington, D.C., is an emerging innovative technology development company. We are committed to exploring, developing, and commercializing viable product technologies that will enable partner companies to offer new and improved products in the following areas:
Nuclear Weapon Detection for Homeland Security & Defense
-- The development of advanced technology to detect shielded nuclear materials and terrorist nuclear weapons
Nanotechnology/MEMS applications
-- The development of long-lived nuclear micro-power sources, based on three U.S. Patents (5,087,533; 6,118,204; 6,238,812), to power applications in the emerging field of Nanotechnology, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, and the new generation of low power microelectronics.
Environmental Technology
-- Development of a patent pending process to remediate tritiated water via an advanced separation technique.
More information about Nuclear Solutions, Inc. may be found on its website, www.nuclearsolutions.com
Disclaimer: The matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties such as our plans, objective, expectations and intentions. You can identify these statements by our use of words such as "may," "when," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "intend," "could," "estimate," "continue," "plans," "planning," "would," or other similar words or phrases. Some of these statements include discussions regarding our future business strategy and our ability to generate revenue, income and cash flow. Additional funding is required to develop the technology described herein. The actual future results for the Company could differ significantly from those statements. Factors that could adversely affect actual results and performance include, among others, the Company's limited operating history, dependence on key management, financing requirements, technical difficulties commercializing any projects, government regulation, technological change and competition. In any event, undue reliance should not be placed on any forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this press release. Additionally, patent pending status does not guarantee that a patent will issue or that the technology will be commercially successful. Accordingly, reference should be made to the Company's periodic filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
CONTACT: Nuclear Solutions, Inc. John Dempsey, Vice-President (202) 787-1951 info@nuclearsolutions.com
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
U.S. Nuclear Test Compensation Fund Going Broke
October 15, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-15-09.asp#anchor4
A fund established by the American government to compensate Marshall Islanders exposed to radiation during 67 nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific is nearly exhausted.
The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal said that as of October 21, it will be able to make only partial payments to more than 1,700 residents suffering radiation sickness.
When it was set up in 1986, the $150 million fund was supposed to be "full and final compensation" for atmospheric nuclear weapons testing the United States conducted in the chain of Pacific islands in the 1940s and 1950s, starting after the Second World War.
The tribunal says it owes about US$15 million in personal injury awards, but there is less than US$6 million left in the account.
By the end of 2003, the Tribunal had awarded more than $83 million in compensation for such injuries with additional compensable claims being filed on a regular basis.
In addition, the Tribunal has awarded over $1 billion in property damage awards in the class actions of the people of Enewetak Atoll and the people of Bikini Atoll.
The pending property claims from the peoples of Rongelap and Utrik Atolls are near completion, while the people of Ailuk Atoll have recently filed a class action claim for compensation.
The Tribunal stopped accepting property damage claims at the end of August.
In 1991, the Tribunal first implemented a compensation program for personal injuries resulting from the nuclear testing program.
With only $45.75 million made available for actual payment of awards made by the Tribunal during the first 15 years of the Compact and less than $6 million of the initial $150 million now remaining in the Nuclear Claims Fund, it has become clear that the original terms of the settlement agreement are manifestly "manifestly inadequate," the Tribunal said.
Over the past four years the Tribunal has repeatedly sought additional funds from Congress, without success.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new jersey
U.S. Investigating Accident That Shut Down Salem Reactor
October 15, 2004
The New York Times
By JOHN SULLIVAN and MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/nyregion/15salem.html
TRENTON, Oct. 14 - Federal regulators have opened an investigation into the causes of the shutdown on Sunday of one of three reactors at the Salem nuclear station in southwestern New Jersey, a power complex troubled by management and equipment problems over the last few years.
On Sunday afternoon, operators shut down the Hope Creek nuclear reactor after a pipe ruptured, sending a cloud of radioactive steam into the building that contains the giant turbine used to generate electricity from the reactor. Federal officials said that as operators worked to shut down the reactor, a key control system malfunctioned and the employees had difficulty finally stabilizing the water that is used to cool the reactor's radioactive core.
Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and at the company that owns the reactor, P.S.E.G. Nuclear L.L.C., said the incident did not pose a threat to the public. Still, the Hope Creek reactor remains closed while a special team of federal inspectors investigates the incident. Regulators and P.S.E.G. officials said that before restarting the reactor, they wanted answers to a series of questions about how equipment functioned or failed to function, as well as about decisions made by the operators in seeking to control the shutdown. Company officials said yesterday that they did not know when the reactor would be restarted.
The company reported the problem immediately to the regulatory commission, which disclosed it this week on its Web site.
Over the last few years, federal regulators and private consultants have raised questions about maintenance and the condition of equipment at the station. In reports delivered to P.S.E.G. this spring, one consulting company criticized it for equipment problems ranging from leaky generators to unreliable backup water pumps. Regulators criticized some managers for taking actions that led employees to believe they placed concerns about production above the preservation of safety.
As a result of the findings, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission kept close scrutiny on the Salem station, which is on the Delaware River about 15 miles south of Wilmington, Del. The owner, P.S.E.G., has pledged to improve conditions at the plant in two years and has replaced many of its senior managers over the past year. The company has also vowed to spend millions to upgrade equipment. In fact, the Hope Creek reactor was scheduled to go off-line at the end of this month for an extended period of repairs.
The three reactors at Salem - Salem 1, Salem 2 and Hope Creek - make its electrical output the second largest at the country's 103 nuclear plants. The plant supplies power to 60 percent of P.S.E.G.'s two million customers in New Jersey. Company officials said service to customers would not be affected by the shutdown.
"We have a series of things we want the inspection team to look at," said Eugene W. Cobey, the supervisor in charge of inspections at Hope Creek for the regional office of the regulatory commission in King of Prussia, Pa., outside Philadelphia. "We want to independently look at the equipment problems that occurred."
Company officials said they were committed to answering questions about what went wrong on Sunday afternoon.
"We had an equipment problem, and we are going to look at it very thoroughly," said A. Christopher Bakken III, the president and chief nuclear officer of P.S.E.G. "We are going to address all that before we start the plant back up."
Regulators say the problems began at the reactor at 5:39 p.m. on Sunday, when an eight-inch metal pipe ruptured in the Hope Creek turbine building. Although the blast of steam was potentially dangerous, the break was in a part of the building that is seldom visited by workers when the reactor is running. The steam was slightly radioactive, regulators said, but was not a long-term contamination threat to the building. They said the radioactive steam was confined to the building and did not escape.
As soon as they detected the leak, regulators said, operators began to shut down the reactor. As they did, the water level in the reactor began to drop. The deep pool of water in the reactor covers the radioactive fuel and prevents it from overheating, and if the water drops below the level of the fuel, it could cause a severe accident.
To deal with the dropping water level, operators turned to one of the reactor's safety systems for such problems. But a circuit breaker tripped, shutting off a critical pump on the system. As a result, operators had to turn to other systems to stabilize the water level. For 12 hours, the water level fluctuated. According to regulators, it went above safe operating limits twice and fell below safe limits four times. At its lowest point, the water was about 50 inches below the level set by federal safety guidelines. Still, Mr. Cobey said, that is more than 10 feet above the fuel.
Regulators say there was never any danger of exposing the radioactive fuel, but they still want to discover the causes of the fluctuation, as well as the reason the pump failed.
Mr. Bakken said that even with the circuit breaker tripped, the high-pressure system was functional. He said operators made a conscious decision to use other systems to deal with the problem.
The regulators also want to make sure that operators made the correct decision when they chose alternate equipment to stabilize the water level in the reactor.
Regulators are also exploring why the metal pipe cracked in the turbine building. Mr. Cobey said that a support connecting the pipe to the building was disconnected and that regulators believe that might have contributed to the break. He said regulators do not yet know why the pipe was disconnected. Mr. Cobey said regulators wanted to know if anyone knew there was a problem with the pipe before it ruptured.
"That is what our inspection has to determine," he said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- britain
This week's casualty: the legal case for war in Iraq
It can only be a matter of time before the invasion is challenged in court
The Guardian
Robin Cook
October 15, 2004
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,1327944,00.html
When I met Zaneb in Brighton during the Labour party conference she could only walk with the help of crutches. One of her legs had been amputated after she and the children with whom she was playing were caught in the bombing around Basra at the time of the invasion. Seventeen members of her extended family were killed that day, including her mother.
It is a characteristic of modern, aerial warfare that it leaves behind more casualties among civilians than among combatants; and in a developing country such as Iraq where half the population is under 14, many of them will be children. Any decision to go to war, in full knowledge of the casualties that will follow, therefore has to be born out of necessity and built on cast-iron certainty. The awful truth that is now clear is that the Iraq war was not necessary and was based, in the Joint Intelligence Committee's own words, on "sporadic and patchy" intelligence which has turned out to be wholly false.
The formal admission this week that the 45-minute claim was bunkum comes 18 months too late to save Zaneb and her family, or to influence the vote on war in parliament. Whitehall knew long before that vote that much of the intelligence in the September dossier was unsound. They knew because Hans Blix and his inspectors had visited sites it identified and drawn a blank. They knew because SIS had already developed doubts about the credibility of the source of the 45-minute claim. Andrew Gilligan was only in error about timescale when he claimed Whitehall knew that intelligence in the September dossier was wrong. They did not know it at the time of its publication, but they did know when they asked parliament for authority for war.
The political dilemma for Downing Street is that it desperately wants the nation to move on from the controversy over the origins of the war, but is also determined to avoid anyone taking the rap. Yet it is impossible to see how the government can achieve closure on the biggest blunder since Suez without first achieving a catharsis which attributes responsibility and apportions blame.
At prime minister's questions, Tony Blair again pleaded the defence of good intentions - he acted in good faith but was misled by wrong information. This leaves a conundrum: why is he not more angry with those who misled him? John Smith, for example, would have been incandescent with an intelligence agency that had so badly misinformed him, and with a private office in Downing Street that apparently did not ask elementary questions, such as whether they were talking about battlefield or strategic weapon systems. Tony Blair is curiously indulgent to all those who led him into the most damaging episode of his premiership. We even read that all the key players in preparing the false prospectus for war are to be rewarded in a special honours list. A parade of the relevant officials down Whitehall in sackcloth and ashes would provide a more convincing demonstration that Downing Street is really sorry.
There is another awkward question that has become more acute with each new revelation, and which will not go away until it is answered. What does the government now think was the legal basis for war?
The initial opinion of the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, was that invasion would require a second UN resolution. This was an opinion that he only revisited when it became evident that there would be no second resolution. At this point Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, resigned and subsequently protested that "the conflict in Iraq was contrary to international law". This week we learned that two other colleagues resigned along with her, which must have left a lot of empty desks in the legal department.
The attorney general himself still appeared unsure of his ground, but his dilemma was eased by the suggestion from Downing Street that he outsourced the drafting of his opinion to a law professor with a record of support for war. As a result the nation went to war against the advice of Whitehall's experts in international law and on the strength of an opinion from a professor at the LSE.
The government has resisted publishing the text that resulted, presumably because even it would reveal awkward reservations and legal quibbles, but a precis was produced as a parliamentary answer. What is striking is the centrality that disarmament plays in it as the justification for war. Thus Iraq is held to be in material breach of the ceasefire resolution because it had not fulfilled "its obligations to disarm". There is a logical, inescapable conclusion from this chain of reasoning. If Iraq had in reality fulfilled its disarmament obligation there was no legal authority for the invasion.
Tony Blair appeared conscious of this problem when he answered questions this week. He does not now rely on the need to disarm Iraq, but on other breaches by Saddam of UN resolutions. But the only breach that could have justified a war would have been failure to disarm. To be sure, Saddam was in breach of his obligation to keep proper paperwork on the destruction of his chemical and biological weapons, but that hardly justifies an intensive bombing campaign and a ground invasion by a quarter of a million troops. Any international court would be certain to rule by its first coffee break that such a response was not legitimate when weighed against the twin tests of proportionality and necessity. We are left with the unsettling conclusion that the legal case for the war collapses among the rubble of false intelligence in the same way as the political justification.
Lord Goldsmith is a decent, able lawyer. It may be that he was just as duped as parliament by the assurances from Downing Street that the evidence of the intelligence was much firmer than it has turned out to be. Maybe they also withheld from him the growing evidence from the UN inspections that our intelligence was simply wrong. If so, the attorney general owes it to himself, never mind the rest of us, to state what would have been his opinion on the legality of the war if he had been given the true facts. It may be prudent on his part to prepare a revised opinion, as now it can only be a matter of time before the legality of the war is challenged in the British or international courts.
Does the legality of the war still matter over a year after the event? The only responsible answer must be yes.
In the first place we are still struggling with the legacy of our decision to conquer Iraq and the incompetence of an occupation that has compounded the original misjudgment. Iraq may have been no threat to us at the time of the war, but we have certainly turned it into one as a base for international terrorism. Instead of delivering a modern Iraq as a model for the region, we have made Iraq a source of instability in a Middle East that looks much more precarious than two years ago.
But it also matters because the fabric of orderly relations between nations, the strength of human rights law and cooperation against terrorism are built on respect for international law. We cannot demand that respect from other nations if we ourselves do not give it a higher priority than we appear to have done in reaching our decision to go to war in Iraq.
-------- chemical weapons
U.S. backs plans to convert chemical-arms plant
October 15, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041014-093952-3021r.htm
Libya has found an unlikely ally - the United States - in a bid to convert a chemical-weapons plant into a factory making life-saving drugs to battle AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases.
The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons yesterday approved, in principle, "technical changes" to the global treaty on chemical arms that would make such conversions possible.
The council has yet to grant Tripoli's request.
The Bush administration said it is "very supportive" of Libya's effort and urged the 41-member council to endorse the Rabta facility's conversion "to produce low-cost pharmaceuticals to treat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, for use mainly in Africa."
"The United States supports the proposal both because it makes sense in this particular instance - we strongly support redirecting this equipment to pharmaceutical production for the benefit of the developing world - and because it provides a means of dealing with similar situations if they arise in the future," the State Department said.
"The process of conversion, and the facility once converted, will be subject to international verification to ensure that no materials are misused for chemical weapons purposes," it said.
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) regulations allow its signatories to convert chemical-weapons plants for peaceful purposes, but gave them up to six years after the treaty entered into force, in 1997, to do so.
Because the deadline expired last year, the conversion option is not available to Libya, which did not join the convention until February.
The change adopted yesterday would allow up to six years for conversion after a country becomes a party to the treaty - or, in Libya's case, 2010.
The amendment, which was sponsored by 17 countries, including the United States, was approved by consensus during an Executive Council meeting at The Hague, a senior State Department official said.
Iran, Cuba and Sudan are among the council's members.
The council's recommendation has to be endorsed by a conference of all 166 state parties to the CWC, which is scheduled for late November.
The senior official said he expected a positive outcome, although some members could raise objections in the process.
The next step will be for Libya to present a detailed proposal of how it plans to transform the Rabta facility, what old equipment it wants to keep and what new equipment it would bring in.
"It has already contracted an Italian firm to do the conversion," the official said.
The Rabta plant was part of Libya's weapons program, which Tripoli agreed to scrap in December, after secret negotiations with Britain and the United States.
Since then, Washington has improved relations with Tripoli and lifted most economic and trade sanctions, although Libya remains on the State Department's blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism, which keeps in place an arms embargo.
On Wednesday, prosecutors in Switzerland opened an investigation into two Swiss citizens suspected of illegally exporting nuclear bomb-making technology to Libya.
One of the suspects is thought to be engineer Urs Tinner, who was arrested in Germany last week. He is thought to have been part of the clandestine international network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, which helped Libya's nuclear program.
-------- haiti
Ex-Troops Fill Haiti's Security Vacuum
Promised U.N. Force Under Half Strength
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33615-2004Oct14?language=printer
PETIT-GOAVE, Haiti -- Dozens of soldiers in camouflage fatigues control security in this coastal city of 125,000 people. They carry automatic weapons, and their base is a former police headquarters with a freshly painted sign that reads, "General Headquarters of the Haitian Armed Forces."
The trouble is, the Haitian Armed Forces don't officially exist.
The force, which arrived in late August and chased away the town's eight police officers, includes mainly former soldiers from the army, disbanded by former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1994. The men were also part of the armed rebellion that led Aristide to resign in February and flee the country. Now they are demanding that the new government reconstitute the army and have appointed themselves the law in Petit-Goave and a handful of towns across Haiti.
"We are determined to make our voice heard," said Felix Wilso, a spokesman for the soldiers in this city 40 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
The fact that an unofficial army controls Petit-Goave, unchallenged by the government and U.N. peacekeepers, illustrates how volatile Haiti remains eight months after Aristide's departure. The interim prime minister, Gerard Latortue, said in an interview that his U.S.-backed government was struggling to maintain order in the hemisphere's poorest nation.
"We are just trying our best to keep the country alive," Latortue said. "It is a miracle that we have been able to keep peace. It is a miracle that we are where we are now."
The national police force of 2,500 officers is outmanned and outgunned by groups of ex-soldiers and armed gangs that control many areas of this country of 8 million people. U.N. officials said fewer than half of the 8,300 U.N. soldiers and police promised in April had arrived and that the current force was insufficient to guarantee order in the country.
Adding to the unrest and misery, Haiti has also been battered by devastating natural disasters since Aristide left. Floods in May killed at least 1,300 people, and a tropical storm last month killed about 3,000 more.
The nation remains bitterly divided between supporters and opponents of Aristide, who is in exile in South Africa. That has resulted in a new round of political violence that has left 46 people dead in the past two weeks, including five policemen, three of whom were beheaded. Two U.N. soldiers have been shot and wounded in recent days, the first casualties since the force arrived this summer.
The U.N. troops took over from a contingent of 1,000 U.S. Marines, who had arrived in February following several weeks of fighting between rebels, most of whom were former soldiers, and armed gangs loyal to Aristide. At least 300 people died in the fighting. It was the second U.S. military action in Haiti in a decade; in 1994, 20,000 U.S. troops restored Aristide to power after he had been ousted in a military coup in 1991.
U.S. confidence in Aristide slipped after he was reelected in 2000. The president was dogged by allegations of corruption, although his allies said the Bush administration was demonizing Aristide, a populist former Catholic priest who was the first freely elected president in the country's 200-year history.
In March, a U.S.-backed council of Haitian citizen leaders appointed Latortue to lead a government until new presidential and legislative elections next year. Latortue, a former U.N. development official, was living in Florida and working as a business consultant.
International officials in Haiti say that Latortue has made important strides, winning pledges of just over $1 billion in aid, including $230 million from the United States, at a conference in Washington in July.
Latortue's government has been responsible for some basic improvements in quality of life, such as better trash collection on Port-au-Prince's filthy streets. With help from the United States and Canada, it is also providing electricity for about 14 hours a day in the capital, up from two or three hours a day when it took over.
Latortue said his main problem was a lack of resources, alleging that members of Aristide's government had looted millions of dollars from state coffers. "We found the treasury at zero when we arrived," he said. He said his main hope for job creation was legislation in the U.S. Congress that would lift tariffs on some Haitian textile imports, which he said could create 50,000 jobs.
Latortue also said that international funding was just starting to arrive. "Until the money comes, what can we do?" he asked.
In the meantime, he added, the national police force is not capable of maintaining security across the entire country.
"There is a true security vacuum here," said one foreign diplomat in Haiti, citing what he called "an amazing slowness, an astonishing slowness" on the part of the United Nations to send troops and police.
"We do not have the manpower to do the job," said Adama Guindo, the deputy chief of the U.N. mission to Haiti.
Guindo said that several nations, mainly Brazil, which is leading the force, had honored their commitments, but he did not know why other nations had delayed sending promised troops and soldiers. All forces were supposed to be in place by the end of December, but that date "has slipped so much we don't know when they will arrive," he said.
Much of the current instability stems from the government's strained relations with Aristide's Lavalas political party, which draws support from Haiti's majority poor. Latortue and Lavalas leaders accuse each other of unwillingness to negotiate the party's role in the government and the upcoming elections.
The current violence started on Sept. 30, when a march by about 20,000 Lavalas supporters ended with the deaths of three police officers. Two days later, Sen. Gerard Gilles and two other Lavalas members went on a popular radio talk show to accuse the government of inciting the violence and to deny that Lavalas was behind it.
Gilles, in an interview, said police surrounded the radio station, burst into the studio and arrested him, two other legislators and his attorney. He said he was handcuffed and jailed for four days and that the other two, including the president of the Senate, Yvon Feuille, remained in jail, accused of planning the recent violence.
Gilles and Leslie Voltaire, a senior official in Aristide's government, said they believed the government had hired armed thugs to stir up violence as a pretext for cracking down on Lavalas. They also said the government feared continued calls for Aristide's return to power.
"This is a government that just wants revenge against Lavalas," Gilles said.
Latortue said he believed Gilles was a moderate, nonviolent man whose arrest was a mistake, but that police had claimed to have evidence that Feuille had organized the violence.
In another sign of escalating tensions, the Associated Press reported Wednesday that Remissainthe Ravix, who commands the Petit-Goave soldiers, and other ex-military leaders were planning to enter the capital to help end the recent outbreak of violence, setting up a potential confrontation with police and U.N. peacekeeping forces.
In Petit-Goave, many residents interviewed said the soldiers were providing better security than the force of eight police officers had done. One recent day, at least 20 of them helped dig a drainage ditch in a severely flooded neighborhood.
Mayor Sandra Jules, 21, who was appointed by Latortue's government in August, watched the soldiers working. As she spoke with a reporter, two armed soldiers came up to listen, one of them carrying an Uzi. Jules was asked what she thought of having her town under the control of the unofficial soldiers.
"As mayor, I know this is illegal," she said, looking at the two soldiers monitoring her. "But whatever is good for the security of the people here, I accept."
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Blasts Inside Green Zone Kill at Least 5
Fortified Area in Baghdad Hit by Likely Suicide Attacks
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33566-2004Oct14?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 14 -- Bombs exploded within moments of each other at a handicraft market and a popular cafe inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone on Thursday, killing at least five people, including three American civilians. It was the first time insurgents had penetrated the heavily protected area that is the seat of the Iraqi government and home to American officials.
The explosions occurred around 12:40 p.m. and appeared to be caused by suicide bombers, witnesses and a senior Iraqi official said. A waiter at the Green Zone Restaurant and Coffee Shop said he saw two Arab men with black bags enter the cafe, order tea, then sit for 25 minutes while one of the men talked continuously to the other, appearing to reassure him.
The explosion at the bazaar occurred five minutes after the man who was talking got up and left, said the waiter, Abdul Razak Mohammed. The man's companion, still seated, then detonated a bomb, shredding the canvas-enclosed restaurant, which Mohammed said contained 17 or 18 lunch patrons and four workers.
The Americans killed included at least three employees of Dyncorp Inc., a security firm with a large presence in the Washington area, a spokesman said. A fourth Dyncorp employee was missing and two were wounded. At least 20 people were wounded in all, including a U.S. soldier, a U.S. airman and two American civilians, the military said.
DynCorp identified its employees killed in the attack as John Pinsonneault, 39, of North Branch, Minn.; Steve Osborne, 40, of Kennesaw, Ga.; and Eric Miner, 44, of South Windham, Conn., according to the Associated Press. Ferdinand Ibaboa, 36, of Mesa, Ariz., was said to be missing and presumed dead. The two wounded employees were identified as John Jenkins, 39, of Meridian, Ga., and Michael Cannon, 34, of Holly Springs, N.C.
Within hours of the bombings, U.S. warplanes, attack helicopters, field artillery and tanks launched strikes against targets in Fallujah, the U.S. military said. The city is believed to be the base of operations for Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose organization, Monotheism and Jihad, asserted responsibility for the Green Zone attacks.
The U.S.-led assault, which the military said also involved Iraqi forces, was of a magnitude well beyond what U.S. officials call the "precision airstrikes" that had become routine in recent weeks. Terrified residents said the sustained attacks began around 10:30 p.m. and grew deafening inside the city near midnight, as buildings in four neighborhoods were targeted.
The Associated Press, citing officials at Fallujah General Hospital, reported at least five people killed and 16 wounded.
"The operations were designed to target the large terrorist element operating in the area of Fallujah," the U.S. military said in a statement. "Operations in Fallujah will continue so long as terrorists remain in the city."
The statement underscored a demand by Iraq's interim government that Fallujah residents hand over Zarqawi or be "smashed," as a senior Iraqi minister put it at a news conference Thursday. Peace talks with a delegation from the city broke off Thursday, with one Fallujah negotiator calling the government's demand "impossible."
The U.S. military is braced for a rise in violence as Iraq prepares for elections scheduled for January. The coordinated bombings inside the Green Zone, which is organized as a safe and comfortable slice of Americana in central Baghdad, was evidence of the insurgents' growing reach.
The U.S. military said it intended to increase security around the Green Zone and bases in and around Baghdad. The new measures will include increased armed patrols around the capital as well as combat air patrols, the military said, and were decided upon after intelligence showed that insurgents were planning to launch new strikes.
In separate attacks Thursday, two U.S. soldiers were killed in Baghdad, one by a roadside bomb in the morning and another when a convoy was ambushed by small-arms fire around 1:45 p.m., the U.S. military said. The combined attacks raised the American death toll in Iraq to 1,086.
"We have intelligence to be prepared for and to expect an increase in activity for attacks on the International Zone," said Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, using the official name of the Green Zone, adopted when political power was transferred to an interim Iraqi government on June 28.
Mohammed Obeidi, whose right hand was struck by a piece of flying glass in the cafe explosion, said the timing of the bombings was linked to the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when resistance to the American presence in Iraq has increased. "It's definitely because it's the start of Ramadan," Obeidi said, adding, "This is not what the Koran says."
Monotheism and Jihad used an Islamic Web site to assert responsibility for Thursday's Green Zone bombings. The statement said "two lions" from the group's "Martyrdom Brigade" had managed to penetrate the Green Zone.
First Sgt. Steven Valley, a U.S. military spokesman, said outside the mangled cafe that the bombs had been brought in by hand. "Were they suicide attacks?" he said. "We can't say definitively."
But Qasim Dawood, the Iraqi state minister, said "initial information" indicated that the attacks were suicide bombings. Although insurgents lob mortar shells inside the Green Zone with growing frequency, the bombs were the first to explode inside the compound's four-square-mile perimeter. The zone contains the U.S. and British embassies and effectively serves as the heart of the interim Iraqi government.
The Green Zone is encircled by 12-foot blast walls, five-foot sandbags, coiled razor wire, tanks, machine gun towers and checkpoints manned by U.S. and Iraqi troops. Entry of people and vehicles is restricted and visitors must display identification and pass through multiple body searches and X-ray machines.
But security can be uneven, with some checkpoints limiting access only to people with pre-arranged escorts and others allowing access to anyone carrying a U.S. passport.
Until recently, the Green Zone was an oasis that included Saddam Hussein's ornate palaces, lush green lawns, Chinese restaurants and Internet cafes. Western officials jogged along its wide boulevards and even hailed taxis -- unthinkable acts in the rest of Iraq, which, by contrast, was termed the Red Zone by U.S. officials.
Obeidi, a 25-year-old Iraqi who owns another Green Zone eatery, Mo's Restaurant, said security in the zone had deteriorated as the U.S. military shifted authority to Iraqi security forces in recent weeks.
"Before, it was really safe," Obeidi said. "They passed it over to the Iraqis, the ING [Iraqi National Guard], the Iraqi police. When they see someone they know, it's just 'Go on in.' They don't understand it's for our safety."
Last week, the U.S. military removed what it said was an unexploded bomb outside the Green Zone cafe. U.S. officials issued a warning advising residents to avoid the popular restaurant and the handicraft market, which featured about 20 stalls with Iraqis selling virtually everything from Persian rugs to DVDs.
Valley, the military spokesman, said business at the cafe had dropped dramatically because of the warning.
On Thursday afternoon, the cafe, a large canvas tent built on the site of a former gas station, was a pile of twisted metal. A two-foot crater could be seen inside the restaurant. All that stood was the tent's frame. Around it lay shattered glass, pieces of plastic chairs, small pools of blood and bits of food and flesh that had been blown about 50 feet away into the street.
Uniformed military investigators and dazed and injured workers milled around the scene. One man sat against a nearby wall, his head wrapped in a white bandage. Another had a bandaged chest.
Mohammed, the waiter in the Green Zone Restaurant, said two Arab men, both about 25, entered the restaurant together. One wore a gray shirt, the other a yellow shirt and jeans. Both men carried black bags slung over their shoulders. One got up and walked across the restaurant to the cashier and ordered tea. Mohammed said none of the workers recognized the men.
The cashier asked the man if they were Iraqi. "No, we're Jordanian," the man replied, according to Mohammed.
Mohammed said the man in the gray shirt kept one hand inside his bag and the other on the table while the other man spoke to him. The man in the yellow shirt "kept talking and talking and talking," Mohammed said, speaking through an interpreter. "We think he was brainwashing him, telling him what to do."
After about 25 minutes, the man in the yellow shirt threw his bag over his shoulder and left. Mohammed said he was told by another worker that the man got into a taxi.
Five minutes later, he said, he heard the first explosion at the handicraft market, more than a quarter-mile away.
Seconds later, the man in the gray shirt detonated the bomb, he said.
Obeidi said he had been visiting his cousin, who owns the restaurant. He said he had walked outside, sat on his black Camaro and called his fiancee. After he finished, he said, he walked back inside and went to the cashier to order tea. Then, he said, the bomb went off.
"People were screaming; I was on the floor," he recalled. "People were stampeding, trying to get out."
Mohammed said the attacks violated the principles of Islam. "In Islam we don't have this," he said. "Especially on Ramadan. We don't kill anyone."
Correspondent Karl Vick contributed to this report.
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U.S. Military Pounds Targets in and Around Falluja
October 15, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/international/middleeast/15CND-IRAQ.html?hp&ex=1097899200&en=621565c971d3435b&ei=5094&partner=homepage
American jets, helicopters and artillery pounded insurgents today in and around Falluja, which the military says is home to a terror network headed by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The operation, which was supported by American marines, soldiers and Iraqi forces, came as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began, and a day after Mr. Zarqawi claimed responsibility for twin