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NUCLEAR
Global warming row goes nuclear as bishop quits Friends of the Earth
'Nuclear' bishop quits campaign
Iberdrola Profit Rises 13% on Nuclear, Wind Power (Update3)
Depleted uranium once used in weapons
Margaret Hassan: A personal tale
Iraqi Child Deaths
S Korean munitions violated N-accord
Killing for Christ The Destructive Power of Faith
Portugal rejects nuclear power in fight against oil dependence
Indian scientists sanctioned for assisting Iran on nukes
Iran Agrees to Consider E.U. Offer on Nuclear Program
Europeans Offers Plan to End Standoff on Iran Nuclear Program
North Korea Tops Powell's Agenda in Asia
North Korea eases tough stance against US in nuclear talks
North Korea Says Prospects Gloomy for Nuclear Talks
Brazil Fights for Right to Produce Nuclear Fuel
Taiwan shows off missile defense strength
Bush faces nuclear fallout in Nevada
MILITARY
Released Detainees Rejoining The Fight
Second-Guessing Actions in Afghanistan
Northern Uganda 'world's biggest neglected crisis'
Miami gun dealer, others charged in weapons trafficking to Colombia
No shooting please, we're British
Britain to move troops to hot spot
Deepcut Army sex attacker jailed
Firms in Iraq's Oil-for-Food Program Revealed
Halliburton may keep disputed money
U.S. to Aid Albania in Destroying Chemicals
Nervous System Anomaly Seen in Gulf War Syndrome
Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels With More Funds
Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll
CARE Official Held Hostage in Iraq Pleads for Her Life
Falluja Sheiks Demand End to Airstrikes to Save Talks
U.S., Iraqi Forces Detain Sunni Muslim Cleric
Israeli army faces a revolt from the right
Ex-ally calls Sharon 'disloyal' and warns of Israeli civil war
Israel May Have Iran in Its Sights
Bin Laden is located, says 9/11 panelist
Documents Shed Light on Iraq Prison Abuse
Russian prosecutor office rejects HR report
Russia's recruits wrecked by abuse
Goss Vows to Rebuild, Expand CIA
Aide for Times Revealed Secrets, China Charges
Pentagon Reportedly Skewed C.I.A.'s View of Qaeda Tie
DoD breaks with Bush over intel reform
U.N. hurt by scandal, Annan says
Iraqis Not Ready for Trials; U.N. to Withhold Training
Female soldiers eyed for combat
Abu Ghraib abuser sentenced
MP Gets 8 Years for Iraq Abuse
Trial Date Set for Another Reservist in Prison Abuse Case
Off to War
U.S.: Soldiers Failed to Report for Duty
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Panelists rejected in trials at Gitmo
Panel for Detainees' Cases Cut in Half
Iraqis take contractors to court over Abu Ghraib
In Test, X-Rays Scan Cars as Part of Antiterror Effort
The new COINTELPRO
Iraq purging tens of thousands of police officers
POLITICS
A Fading 'Nader Factor'?
Bush Signs $136 Billion Corporate Tax Cut Bill
Top polls prove reliable in picking election winners
U.S. Agrees to Waivers in Hatfill Suit
Campaign spending nears $4 billion, a record level
War on Terrorism Afghanistan, Iraq: Two Wars Collide
Evangelist says Bush ought to admit error
Bizarro Bush He's the exact opposite of what a president should be
ENERGY
The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror
OTHER
Russian Legislators Vote to Ratify the Kyoto Protocol
Global warming cited in storms
U.N. Split on Human Cloning Ban
ACTIVISTS
Activists seek rights for felons
-------- NUCLEAR
Global warming row goes nuclear as bishop quits Friends of the Earth
independent.co.uk
By Michael McCarthy
22 October 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=574850
He's the nearest thing Britain has to an eco-bishop, having campaigned on environmental issues for more than 30 years.
Yet now the Right Rev Hugh Montefiore, the former Bishop of Birmingham, has been kicked off the board of Friends of the Earth (FoE), the leading environmental group, for saying publicly that the fight against global warming should involve using nuclear power.
The outspoken prelate, one of the most colourful figures in the Church of England, has been an FoE trustee for two decades, and chaired the group from 1992 to 1998. But in an extraordinary and acrimonious row, he has been forced to sever his links with the organisation because of an article on climate change which he has written for tomorrow's edition of The Tablet, the Catholic weekly.
In it, Bishop Montefiore says that the dangers of global warming are greater than any others facing the planet, and that the solution is to make more use of nuclear energy. Nuclear does not produce the carbon dioxide (CO2) that comes from coal, gas and oil-fired power stations - global warming's main cause.
In doing so he becomes the second major green figure this year to advocate a radical step that is deeply unpalatable to most of the environmental movement, which opposes nuclear power as almost an article of faith. It was first put forward in May by James Lovelock, the independent scientist and green guru behind the celebrated Gaia hypothesis (the idea that the whole earth behaves like a single living organism).
Writing in The Independent, Professor Lovelock set off an international argument when he said that climate change was now proceeding so fast that there was simply not enough time for renewable energy, such as wind, wave and solar power - the green movement's favoured solution - to take the place of conventional power stations burning fossil fuels. Only a huge expansion of nuclear energy could check a possible runaway warming which would be disastrous for the world, he said.
Bishop Montefiore's article for The Tablet comes to the same conclusion in a similar way. He goes through the renewable options and says he does not believe they can do the job in time. He writes: "The real reason why the Government has not taken up the nuclear option is because it lacks public acceptance, due to scare stories in the media and the stonewalling opposition of powerful environmental organisations. Most, if not all, of the objections do not stand up to objective assessment."
The bishop, who says he has been "a committed environmentalist for many years," makes it clear at the outset that writing the piece is costing him his long-standing place on the FoE board. "I have been a trustee of FoE for 20 years and when I told my fellow trustees that I wished to write for The Tablet on nuclear energy, I was told that this is not compatible with being a trustee," he writes. "I have therefore resigned because no alternative was open to me."
He adds stingingly: "The future of the planet is more important than membership of Friends of the Earth."
Bishop Montefiore, who is retired but is still an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Southwark, has impeccable green credentials. In the 1970s, when he was a suffragan bishop of Kingston-upon-Thames, he was much involved with campaigns for environmentally friendly transport, and protested against Concorde and excessive aircraft movement in and out of Heathrow. He was also anti-nuclear. As Bishop of Birmingham from 1978-87 he had an agenda of helping the poor and was regarded as being very much an anti-Thatcherite.
He comes from a famous Jewish family and converted to Christianity when he was a pupil at Rugby School. He has been a lecturer in New Testament studies at Cambridge, and dean of Gonville and Caius College.
He declined yesterday to talk in detail about his row with FoE but he said that "of course" he felt sad about what had happened. "I have great admiration for FoE in many ways," he said. "But they don't seem to think it's appropriate to have nuclear and I do. I think it's the only way to get out of this mess."
He said he had once been an opponent of nuclear power. "I was against it. I thought it wouldn't be necessary. But I've changed my view. I just don't see it [the fight against climate change] happening without nuclear."
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said last night: "Hugh has been a very valuable member of our board of trustees for two decades, and has made an enormous contribution to Friends of the Earth's work.
"But having analysed the energy choices and different options that we have as a society, we are firmly of the view that we can and should fight climate change without relying on nuclear power, and that has led - sadly - to a parting of the ways.
"To have us saying one thing and a member of the board of trustees saying the opposite is clearly unworkable in practice. We can't have the organisation saying two things at once."
--------
'Nuclear' bishop quits campaign
BBC
22 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/3944535.stm
The former Bishop of Birmingham has been forced to leave the board of a leading environmental campaign group in a dispute over promoting nuclear power.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) says Rt Rev Hugh Montefiore's support for nuclear energy to tackle global warming is not compatible with the charity's aims.
The bishop, who believes the uptake of renewable energy sources is taking too long, says he is "sad" to be resigning.
He added it was "vital" nuclear power became more acceptable in Britain.
"I'm not objecting to having to resign, although I'm very sad about it," the bishop told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"There are organisations which stage public debates, but this is a campaigning organisation so I suppose they feel they can't do this."
The bishop, who converted to Christianity from Judaism as a schoolboy, added: "I see very little happening in terms of the reduction of CO2s.
"Exciting things are happening in terms of renewables, but they're miles away from being commercially viable.
"It's an enormous break to have to cut by 60% by 2050 to make the planet decent. And I just cannot see this happening with renewables."
FoE director Tony Juniper said the group could no longer work with Rt Rev Montefiore, who is retired but is still an honorary bishop in the diocese of Southwark.
"We offered to do a review of our policies on climate change to check their adequacy and Hugh chose instead, before we finished that review, to put his views into the public domain. That's his choice.
"The organisation is very happy to have internal debates about policies, but in practical terms, if you have two people from the organisation saying different things, they're not going to have much impact.
"But Hugh's absolutely right - renewable power is going far too slow. It needs to be boosted quickly," Mr Juniper added.
-------- business
Iberdrola Profit Rises 13% on Nuclear, Wind Power (Update3)
Bloomberg
Oct. 22. 2004
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&refer=latin_america&sid=a23jtFGhG7FI
-- Iberdrola SA, Spain's second-largest power company, said third-quarter profit rose 13 percent as higher production at nuclear reactors and wind parks compensated for a drop in supplies from its hydroelectric dams.
Net income climbed to 282 million euros ($356 million), or 31 cents per share, from 248 million euros, or 27 cents per share, in the same period last year, Iberdrola said in a filing to stock market regulators. Sales at the Madrid and Bilbao-based company rose 3.3 percent to 2.62 billion euros, from 2.54 billion euros.
Chief Executive Ignacio Sanchez Galan plans to spend 11.9 billion in the seven years ending in 2008 on natural gas-fired plants and new wind farms to complement its nuclear reactors and adapt to government-mandated limits on emissions of carbon dioxide. He also is expanding in Latin America after Spain's power and gas markets opened to full competition last year.
``They are meeting their goal of increasing profit by double digits,'' said Juan Maria Soler, who manages $2.6 billion at Sabadell Banca Privada in Barcelona. ``That, plus their higher exposure to wind energy, or lower exposure to carbon emissions, makes them well-positioned among Spanish utilities.''
To help meet the Kyoto Protocol agreement to lower production of carbon dioxide, which is linked to climate change, the European Union agreed to cut emissions by 8 percent, from 1990 levels, by 2010. Almost half of Iberdrola's production capacity comes from hydro and wind farms, which don't pollute. Nuclear reactors represent another 14 percent.
Emissions Rules
Endesa and Union Fenosa SA, Iberdrola's main competitors, may have to buy emission rights, lifting their costs, because they burn coal to produce more than half of their electricity.
``Iberdrola is the safest harbor against a tough implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in Spain,'' said Javier Suarez, an analyst with ING Bank NV in Milan.
Iberdrola shares rose 7 cents, or 0.4 percent, to 17.07 euros at 11:24 a.m. in Madrid. The company has a market value of 15.4 billion euros, making it the seventh-largest power company in Europe, after Electricite de France, E.ON AG, Enel SpA, RWE AG, Endesa SA and Electrabel SA.
Third-quarter profit also rose as Iberdrola extended the life of its nuclear plants. The change adds 17 million euros to quarterly profit this year, according to Matija Gergolet, an analyst with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization at the company's international unit accounted for 11 percent of the total, after rising 45 percent to 235 million euros in the first nine months, Iberdrola said. The increase came after Iberdrola started operating a gas-fired station in Altamira, Mexico, in the last quarter of 2003.
EBITDA at the renewable-energy unit rose by 47 percent to 178 million euros in the first nine months, or 8 percent of the company's total. Overall, third-quarter EBITDA rose 14 percent to 673 million euros, from 593 million euros last year.
More Nuclear, Less Rain
More generation from the company's nuclear stations and wind parks helped offset a decline at its hydroelectric plants on the Duero river in west-central Spain caused by lighter rain.
Nuclear reactors produced 20,019 gigawatt-hours, about a third of the total, compared with 18,502 megawatts over the same period last year. Production from wind farms increased 48 percent to 3,806 gigawatt-hours in the first nine months, or 6.3 percent of the total. Iberdrola's dams produced 12,292 gigawatt-hours, down from 16,094 gigawatt-hours last year.
Iberdrola has 21,691 megawatts of installed capacity in Spain, enough to light the homes of 21 million people, and 2,690 megawatts in Latin America.
Net income in the first nine months of the year rose 13 percent to 854 million euros, from 754 million euros over the same period last year. Analysts had predicted nine-month net of 834 million euros.
To contact the reporter on this story: Elena Moya in London moya@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Timothy Coulter at tcoulter@bloomberg.net
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted uranium once used in weapons
Joins.com
October 22, 2004
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200410/21/200410212244327139900090409041.html
Representative Cho Seung-soo of the Democratic Labor Party and the environmental group Green Korea United said yesterday that the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute had produced anti-tank shells in the 1980s made from depleted uranium, alloyed with titanium.
They claimed that the Ministry of Science and Technology had hidden the fact. In response, the ministry said, "We applied for an inspection waiver for development of uranium armaments and received permission in 1987." The ministry said that it has discussed the production with the United States from an early stage.
The ministry said the shells were destroyed in 1989 with U.S. Embassy officials present when they no longer had commercial value. Depleted uranium is a dense, non-fissile metal.
--------
Margaret Hassan: A personal tale
BBC
22 October, 2004
By Felicity Arbuthnot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3764692.stm
As aid worker Margaret Hassan is held by kidnappers in Iraq, freelance journalist and long-time friend Felicity Arbuthnot describes the charity boss's heroic endeavours to help the people of Iraq.
Even in the bloodshed and turmoil of post-invasion Iraq, the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, head of Care International in Iraq, is incomprehensible.
Margaret Hassan fell in love with Iraq more than 30 years ago, when she travelled there as a young bride with her Iraqi husband Taheen Ali Hassan.
They had met while studying in London and the former Margaret Fitzsimmons, from Dublin in the "land of a thousand welcomes", fell in love for a second time with Baghdad - formerly Madinat al Salam: City of Peace - and the land known through time as "the cradle of civilisation".
She converted to Islam, learned Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.
Terrible emergency
She never considered leaving - not during the eight year Iran-Iraq war, the 42 day carpet bombing of the 1991 Gulf war, the 13 years of the grinding deprivation of the United Nations embargo, numerous bombings by Britain and America during those years, or when last year's invasion became inevitable.
Instead, she fought for the people and country, of which she had become a part.
She went to the UN in New York in January 2003, briefing the Security Council and UN Agencies that the majority of Iraqis were staggering under the weight of the embargo and the collapse of the infrastructure, due to prohibition of imported parts.
She briefed the British Parliament: "The Iraqi people are already living through a terrible emergency - they do not have the resources to withstand an additional crisis brought about by military action."
She could have stayed overseas - but with war inevitable, she returned to Iraq.
I first met Margaret Hassan in early 1992, months after Iraq had been "reduced to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come" according to the then special rapporteur to the UN.
Slender, quietly spoken, she had a will and inner core of steel.
The most obstructive official, determined not to acquiesce to any request relating to one of her projects - water, clinic, school and hospital refurbishments - would find on her departure he had given her all she had requested and suggested and agreed to more.
She is a manipulative charmer on behalf of the people of Iraq.
'Madam Margaret'
It was Iraq's children who haunted her, she called the children of the embargo "the lost generation."
Half of Iraq's population is aged below 15.
Childless herself, to see her cradle infants stricken with Iraq's myriad of illnesses which have reached epidemic proportions since 1991 - linked to the destruction of water facilities and the chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium weapons used - one felt her passion to protect all Iraq's children as her own.
"There will be a second generation of lost children now," she told the Independent newspaper's Robert Fisk despairingly, recently.
I have a memory that encapsulates Margaret and the love she inspired.
We were filming in an area of exceptional deprivation and poverty, not without its criminal element - poverty breeds desperation.
A crowd gathered. On seeing Margaret, thin, stressed faces, broke into wide smiles, children ran and hugged her round the knees chanting: "Madam Margaret, Madam Margaret...".
Iraqis protect those who help them, love them, even to their own lives. The kidnappings of aid workers, friendly journalists, bewilder them.
When Margaret drove to work last Tuesday morning, she was reportedly flagged down by two men in police uniform, and suspecting nothing, the car stopped.
Her driver and unarmed guard were pulled out and pistol whipped by gunmen who appeared.
Margaret demanded they stop the beating and said she would go with them.
Poignant demonstration
Her last act before kidnap and this terrible silence was, as always, to defend Iraqis.
The last project Care completed at Margaret's instigation, was a rehabilitation unit for patients with spinal injuries.
On Wednesday, in a poignant demonstration, those patients that could, painstakingly wheeled themselves into the street, held up banners pleading for her release, in support of an honorary Iraqi and Iraq's quiet, unassuming, determined best friend.
Margaret's kidnap has led to Care pulling out of Iraq.
Risk taking is one thing, but moving about Iraq has now become for many a suicide mission.
Their stance is understandable, but it might be the only action that may make the redoubtable, extraordinary Margaret Hassan, put her head in her hands and weep.
-----
Iraqi Child Deaths
Media Indifferent as UNICEF Reports Worsening Catastrophe
October 22, 2004
www.dissidentvoice.org
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct04/MediaLens1022.htm
On February 16, 2003, Tony Blair responded to the biggest protest march in Britain's history the previous day:
"Yes, there are consequences of war. If we remove Saddam by force, people will die, and some will be innocent. ... But there are also consequences of 'stop the war'. There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule..." (Blair, 'The price of my conviction,' The Observer, February 16, 2003)
Blair was referring to the mass death of children under sanctions reported by the UN, human rights groups and aid agencies. In a Newsnight interview Blair argued, "because of the way he [Saddam] implements those sanctions [they are] actually a pretty brutal policy against the Iraqi people". (BBC2, Newsnight Special, February 6, 2003)
In the late 1980s -- before sanctions were imposed in 1990, and before the 1991 Gulf War -- the mortality rate for Iraqi children was about 50 per 1,000 live births. By 1994 the rate had nearly doubled, to just under 90. By 1999, it had increased again to nearly 130 - 13% of Iraqi children were dying before their fifth birthday.
In response to this catastrophe, senior UN diplomats in Iraq resigned in protest. UN humanitarian coordinator, Denis Halliday, for example, resigned describing Western sanctions policy as "genocidal".
On October 11, a new global report was published by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Roger Wright, UNICEF's representative for Iraq, said:
"Since 1990, Iraq has experienced a bigger increase in under-five mortality rates than any other country in the world and since the war there are several indications that under-five mortality has continued to rise." ('Little progress on child mortality,' Integrated Regional Information Networks, October 11, 2004)
UNICEF estimates that some indications showed improvement in Iraqi child mortality between 1999 and 2002 - the death rate dropped to 125 in 2002 (from 130 in 1999). However, this trend has reversed under the occupation and child mortality is actually worsening as compared to 2002 levels. Wright added:
"Since the war more children in Iraq are malnourished, fewer children are protected from immunizable diseases and there has been an increase in the incidence of diarrhoeal disease." (Email to Media Lens, UNICEF Iraq Information, October 19, 2004)
In other words, the "coalition" is now presiding over levels of Iraqi infant mortality worse than those described by Blair himself as brutal. And this in the context of the "coalition" having spent just $29m of the allotted $18.4bn US tax dollars allocated for Iraq's reconstruction on water, sanitation, health, roads, bridges, and public safety. (Naomi Klein, 'Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us?', The Guardian, October 16, 2004)
Quoting Iraqi Ministry of Health data, UNICEF reported last month that about three out of 10 children in Iraq are chronically malnourished or stunted. This is a consequence of underlying poverty and the inadequate intake of micronutrients. Acute malnutrition among children has almost doubled since the war began, moving from 4 per cent to 7.7 percent.
On September 3, Iraq's Ministry of Health and other health professionals reported there was still "a chronic shortage of medicines in the country." Intissar al-Abadi, chief pharmacist of Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, told IRIN:
"We had a programme in which cancer and growth hormone drugs were available to patients according to their needs. The ministry used to offer a certain quantity to us every year, so there could be controlled assistance to the patient, but now all that is gone. You cannot imagine what effect the shortage of such drugs has had on patients." ('Medicine shortage continues,' Integrated Regional Information Networks, September 3, 2004, www.reliefweb.int)
The first comprehensive study on the condition of schools in post-conflict Iraq shows that one-third of all primary schools in Iraq lack any water supply and almost half are without any sanitation facilities.
The survey states that since March 2003, over 700 primary schools had been damaged by bombing - a third of those in Baghdad - with more than 200 burned and over 3,000 looted. ('Iraq's schools suffering from neglect and war UN Children's Fund,' October 15, 2004)
All of these horrors are a direct result of the illegal US-UK invasion, of the "coalition's" incompetence in failing to plan for the occupation, and of the minimal spending on health care and public works. Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times:
"As for the rebuilding of Iraq, forget about it... It's hard to believe that an administration that won't rebuild schools here in America will really go to bat for schoolkids in Iraq." (Herbert, 'A War Without Reason,' The New York Times, October 18, 2004)
The list of horrors goes on. Dr Thikra Najim, a specialist in gynecology and obstetrics, reports that the number of cases of cancer in Iraq appears to be rising rapidly, especially for breast cancer. Dr Najim said:
"Now we're seeing three or four cases every week. I think the number is increasing. This is disastrous. We have to study it." ('Iraq: Cancer cases increasing, doctors say,' Integrated Regional Information Networks, September 29, 2004)
Doctors are now seeing many more cases of cancer in general. About 4,000 patients per year used to be seen at the radiation hospital in Baghdad. Dr Ahmed Abdul Jabhar, deputy director of the hospital, reports that 7,000 patients have been seen so far this year.
A September 21 Iraqi Ministry of Environment report revealed that Iraq is afflicted by widespread radioactive pollution, especially at Tuwaitha nuclear research site, south of Baghdad. Immediately following the US-UK invasion, residents of the area looted containers holding radioactive materials. The radioactive contents were dumped on the ground at the site and the containers used to carry water, milk and other household materials and foodstuffs. The survey reported:
"This site was polluted by looting and destroying research materials. We found a number of containers which had traces of radiation. We also found it in houses and villages nearby." ('Radioactive material and pollutants widespread,' Integrated Regional Information Networks, September 21, 2004, www.reliefweb.int)
As the occupying power, the "coalition" is accountable under international law for this looting and lawlessness. Former US Proconsul, Paul Bremer, told a conference of insurance agents that Baghdad was already in chaos by the time he arrived:
"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground." (Thomas Ricks, Robin Wright, The Washington Post, October 5, 2004)
The Iraq survey also found depleted uranium in large amounts in southern Iraq, including in Hilla, the port city of Basra, and Karbala and Najaf.
Professor Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, who was tasked by the US department of defense with organizing the DU clean-up of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf War, is himself ill:
"I am like many people in Southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. The contamination was right throughout Iraq and Kuwait... What we're seeing now, respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers, are the direct result of the use of this highly toxic material. The controversy over whether or not it's the cause is a manufactured one; my own ill-health is testament to that." (Quoted, Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso, 2002, p.48)
The Media Response
So what kind of response would we expect from our media to the appalling news that an improving trend in child mortality has reversed under the Iraqi occupation, and that our government is presiding over genocidal levels of child deaths?
We recall, after all, that the Observer's Nick Cohen wrote in March 2002:
"I look forward to seeing how Noam Chomsky and John Pilger manage to oppose a war which would end the sanctions they claim have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of children who otherwise would have had happy, healthy lives in a prison state (don't fret, they'll get there)." (Cohen, 'Blair's just a Bush baby', The Observer, March 10, 2002)
The Sunday Telegraph declared, "it is the neighbourly duty of the West to liberate the Iraqis from their captivity at the hands of Saddam: the war would be just because of the suffering it would end." (Matthew d'Ancona, 'The Pope's disapproval worries Blair more than a million marchers', Sunday Telegraph, February 23, 2003)
A search using the Lexis-Nexis website shows that the UNICEF report received brief mentions in four British newspapers.
The Financial Times reported matter-of-factly:
"In 11 countries, under-five mortality has risen since 1990, the report notes. They include Cambodia, Iraq, Ivory Coast and four southern African nations - Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe - where Aids has been most rampant." (Frances Williams, 'Unicef warns on child mortality targets,' The Financial Times, October 8, 2004)
That was that! No mention of the tragedy that has befallen Iraq under the British and US occupation. Not a word of comment on the significance of the disaster for the claims that the invasion would relieve the suffering of ordinary Iraqis.
In the Guardian, Rory Carroll wrote:
"Unicef said that even... 'alarmingly slow progress' had bypassed southern Africa, Iraq and countries of the former Soviet Union... In addition to southern Africa, infants were now more likely to die in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Iraq, Cambodia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan." (Rory Carroll, 'Bucking world trends, Africa's child death rate is rising,' The Guardian, October 8, 2004)
Iraq was presented as just another item on a list. Of the fact that Britain invaded Iraq illegally and is therefore morally responsible for the mass death of children, not a word appeared in the paper.
The Independent's Jeremy Laurance noted of the report:
"It charts the drastic decline in the health of the [Iraqi] population and the catastrophic deterioration in health services during Saddam Hussein's era, one which has accelerated since the war."
Again, no attempt was made to highlight the significance of the fact that the decline in health services "has accelerated since the war".
Laurance continued:
"One third of the health centres and one in eight of the hospitals was looted of furniture, fridges and air conditioners or had equipment destroyed in the immediate aftermath of the war."
Laurance then reviewed child mortality figures in the 1990s, adding:
"Adult death rates have risen and life expectancy has fallen to below 60 for men and women. Overall, Iraq's state of health is now rated on a par with the impoverished countries of the Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, where once it was ranked alongside Jordan and Kuwait, the report says." (Jeremy Laurance, 'Iraq: the aftermath: Iraq faces soaring toll of deadly disease,' The Independent, October 13, 2004)
Again, no conclusions were drawn on the moral status of the 'liberators' of Iraq.
Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. Visit the Media Lens website (www.medialens.org) and consider supporting their invaluable work (www.medialens.org/donate.html).
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S Korean munitions violated N-accord
October 22, 2004
The News International
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2004-daily/22-10-2004/world/w7.htm
SEOUL: South Korea produced anti-tank munitions in the 1980s using depleted uranium imported for non-military use and failed to make required disclosures, a South Korean lawmaker and an environmental group said on Thursday.
A government official said depleted-uranium munitions were produced for five years and the government had told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1987 when the programme was ended.
Depleted uranium is a by-product of nuclear fuel production. It can be used to strengthen ammunition and enable it to penetrate armour.
The disclosure comes at a sensitive time for South Korea, which said in September some of its scientists had enriched a small amount of uranium in 2000 and separated plutonium in 1982.
The government said scientists purely out of curiosity conducted those tests, although the IAEA said the failure to disclose them was a matter of serious concern.
South Korea is involved in international efforts to get communist North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions but the North has said it would not resume talks until an investigation of the South's tests was complete.
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Killing for Christ The Destructive Power of Faith
counterpunch.com
By WILLIAM A. COOK
October 22 / 24, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.com/cook10222004.html
A pall hangs over this election, a shroud of darkness that oppresses the heart because its outcome guarantees no change, only the certainty of continued chaos if Bush should win and the unknown direction a Kerry victory might take, a direction that could continue the chaos America's mired in, a darkness, then, to appall. I read each day the crippling accounts of soldiers caught in a maelstrom of unseen death lurking on roof tops, in narrow alleys, behind cement walls and black windows, beneath tires littering the streets. I see pictures of burned out buses, sidewalks and curbs bathed with blood, faces twisted in pain, bits and pieces of flesh scattered about like fallen leaves, blown helter-skelter by the wind. Faces, I see suffering on so many faces, mothers weeping over their dying children, old women and men huddled in the debris left of their bulldozed home, medics carrying the lifeless body of a man whose hand rests beside his face held there by the torn shred of his sleeve, his arm gone, his body black with grime.
This is a world gone mad, a madness on all sides, the madness of greed that sees in oil the riches of Sultans and Kings, the madness of arrogant pseudo-philosophers who conjure beliefs of personal superiority that gives them license to conquer and enslave, the madness of ancient minds that dreamt of power and glory in covenants with gods, the madness of fanatics that fabricate fantasy out of indecipherable images lodged in pages of metaphors, the madness of little minds that grab onto faith as the golden ring that will bring them salvation, the madness of those born again to the child's world of impossible dreams forgoing in their new world the reality of this.
Today I read of depleted uranium, 1000 metric tons made from the deadly U238 isotope dropped on America's killing fields, that wafts on the wind like aerosol spray, a toxic death that sticks in human lungs, bringing a slow and painful death. I saw pictures of new born children bloated and bruised by scars, eyes missing, a nose of scar tissue and nostrils, no lips, the detritus of our advanced civilization scattered on hospital beds in Baghdad. I read of soldiers twisted in mind and spirit by no visible symptom except the phantom of our cursed nuclear waste that encircles them in their tank and haunts them the remainder of their lives. Our young return from this nightmare of devastation devastated themselves courtesy of our Commander in Chief.
And I read today that 24,010 Americans have been evacuated with wounds and injuries from our "war" zones, that 37,000 innocent men, women, and children in Afghanistan and Iraq have died and more than 500,000 have suffered wounds. And I hear the silence, the deafening silence of indifference that our compassionate conservative leader offers to those who suffer the consequence of his acts, and feel with them the utter helplessness of their plight. And I wait for a word from Kerry that he, too, hears their pain, that he will stop the slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine ... and I wait in vain; there is no condemnation, no plan to end the conflicts, no recognition that states terrorize, no acceptance of the right of people to fight the oppressor, no confession of wrong waged against the innocent that had not the intention or the means to threaten America.
I have heard these men, both Bush and Kerry, attest to their deep rooted religious principles, the depth of their faith in the teachings of Jesus, comforting the citizenry that they are fit for the White House because they believe. But I see nothing of Jesus in their behavior, nothing of the compassion that attended his ministry, nothing of the inclusiveness of his teachings, nothing of the love he proffered as the binding source of peace throughout the world.
I look in vain for this Christ in the Christianity practiced by the right wing, fanatical sects that preach the Book of Revelation, reveling in the glory they perceive to be their reward if they destroy the enemies they identify as the enemies of God. I wonder where in this acclaimed Christian land of TV Evangelists and literalist ministers is there a man who acts as Christ would act? I see none. I see only a God forsaken Tele-Evangelist land of vitriol and bigotry where none could say I "love the Lord my God with my whole heart and mind and soul, and my neighbor as myself." They have buried the teachings of Jesus in the quagmire of a malevolent and malicious God of the Old Testament, a God that would order one Semitic tribe to exterminate another. We have not moved beyond the racist hatred that blotted the landscape 2500 years ago.
I would have thought the founding fathers' voices would have turned us against such barbarity, for they knew that such religions were anathema to the rights of the people and to the fledgling Democracy they desired to create. They expunged such organized zealots of religion from civil discourse precisely because they knew its inherent destructive nature. But, no, we have the airwaves turned into streams of venom that flow from the mouths of the heralded self-worshipers whose mantra is hatred for their fellow man, the likes of Pat Robertson, Pastor John Hagee, Franklin Graham, Hal Lindsey, and, now, even our blessed generals who defile the houses of worship not with coins but with cursed bigotry in the person of General Boykin.
I wonder how any person can stand against the tribes that follow these accursed men? What voice can reach the soul of men, if soul they still have after their life of crime, that has been lodged deep in their bloody wallets made fat with their racist hatred for their fellows whose only sin is their belief in a God different from their own? They mount their campaigns on fear, fear lodged in a word that defies definition because it slips and slides, nay, it slithers through meaning like molten lava over rock burying it beneath layers of hot and passionate rhetoric, a word without substance or sense, a word seething with diffidence, anxiety, suspicion, even horror, the word is faith. No word evokes more fear and mistrust; no word has caused more chaos and wanton destruction, as the Crusades and the Conquistadors, rampaging through Central America, attest; no word can put people in such a state of doubt that they acquiesce to prophets of doom century after century; no word has been and continues to be more destructive in the mouths of fanatics. That is the destructive power of blind faith!
Fanatics have a way, whether they be the Imams guiding Hamas or the robed ministers of Robertson's TV Club or the ultra right Zionists in Israel, with those who abdicate responsibility to think for themselves, those who hand over their minds and conscience to them as they thunder their prophetic curses in dramatic tirades, bathing their flocks in fear and loathing. These fanatics in America, who exist through the courtesy of a democratic secular system that tolerates their presence if not their message, fetter the minds of their laity with absolute truths generated out of myths, negating thereby the very semblance of democratic thought that is premised on individual responsibility; and the lambs they lead to slaughter do not know it. These fanatics defy the laws of the secular state by determining for their congregations what political party they must support, what candidates they must vote for, and what policies they must accept. And for this defiance they pay no taxes!
But it's worse than that. These same fanatics literally compel their congregants, on fear of eternal damnation in Hell's fire, to strap themselves in the swaddling clothes of death and bring that gift to all around them, to support terrorists in the occupied territories of Palestine, to proclaim an enemy identified in the Book of Revelation, an Arab enemy who worships in the Islamic faith. And for this incitement to murder they pay no taxes and suffer no incarceration. What else do we call it but killing for Christ, killing for Allah, killing for Yahweh!
This is our dilemma. We Americans pay the bill; they act in our name. How can we, who speak with the conviction of our conscience, hope to remove the hatred a Hagee or a Robertson breeds against God's creatures? The pictures I saw today of dead and dying children in Iraq, pictures too horrific to be put in main stream newspapers or shown on TV, pictures that cry to the human soul that the pain and suffering must stop also cry out to every true Christian that Jesus' teachings never allowed for such wanton slaughter. Yet these are the innocent victims of our fanatical dependence on the preaching of these men who sit safely ensconced on their splendid chairs amidst tall vases of flowers, smiling beatifically for the cameras.
How can we witness Bush's acceptance, indeed his encouragement, of Ariel Sharon's savagery and not condemn his acts as anathema to the teachings of the Christ he proclaims as his God? How can we suffer in silence the ferociousness of Sharon as he spreads his hatred and nihilism over the bloodied landscape of the unholy lands of ancient Palestine? Our indifference, our silence blessed the rape of Rafah in May, God's month of renewal; our indifference and our silence blessed a summer of slaughter in the season of God's increase; and today, our indifference and our silence acquiesce to a season of harvest that gathers in the dead and maimed in Gaza.
Where is the voice of America that should cry against these killing fields, these American supported killing fields, these murderous rampages that defile the love Jesus begged we have for our neighbor, a love equal to that we have for ourselves?
Where are the Priests, the Rabbis, the Imams, the quiet Buddha monks, all who claim to love humankind? Why does silence reign? Whose voice are we afraid of? Where are the voices of our leaders, where is Kerry, where is Dean, where is Edwards? Why do we hear words of condemnation when we witness the wanton slaughter in Beslan of children in school yet hear not a word when the IDF slaughters the children in the kindergarten in Jabaliya or our missiles miss their intended target and destroy the lives of innocent people? Does one mother's weeping reach our ear and another goes unheard? I would that every mother's cry would reach our ears as it rents the sky that we might know what Christ meant when he said, "Love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and mind and soul, and thy neighbor as thyself."
William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms for the 21st Century, was published by Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
-------- europe
Portugal rejects nuclear power in fight against oil dependence
LISBON (AFP)
Oct 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041022135218.g3pai1u9.html
Portugal's centre-right government said Friday it had ruled out using nuclear energy to reduce the nation's high dependency on oil.
A government report outlining options for Portugal's energy future, which was analyzed by the cabinet Thursday, proposed using nuclear power and reviving a giant dam project in northern Portugal.
But both options were unanimously rejected, the government said in a statement.
Portugal currently does not produce any nuclear energy. The country is one of the most oil-dependent members of the European Union along with Spain, Ireland and Greece.
Earlier Friday daily newspaper Publico reported that the government was still considering recommendations contained in the report that it use nuclear energy and resume work on a large-scale dam at Foz Coa to reduce the nation's oil dependency.
The planned dam was abandoned in the 1990s after pre-historic cave art was found in the region that would be submerge if it was built.
Earlier this week France announced it will build the first of a new generation of pressurised water nuclear plants.
-------- india / pakistan
Indian scientists sanctioned for assisting Iran on nukes
October 22, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041021-113330-3749r.htm
The Bush administration has imposed sanctions on two Indian scientists for selling nuclear technology to Iran and is planning additional arms-related sanctions, U.S. officials said.
The two scientists were identified by the Bush administration as Shri Ch. Surendar and Y. Sivaraman Prasad, both former directors of the Nuclear Power Corp. of India, the state-run utility.
The scientists were among 14 persons and companies that were listed in the Federal Register for their role in transferring nuclear weapons-related technology to Iran in violation of U.S. counterproliferation laws.
Officials said additional sanctions have been approved and could be imposed on India in the near future in response to other Indian transfers of weapons-related goods to Iran.
The additional sanctions were slated to be discussed in New Delhi during meetings this week between senior Indian leaders and Christina Rocca, assistant secretary of state for South Asia.
Miss Rocca is in India as part of a program known as Next Steps in Strategic Partnership. The talks are focused on ways of loosening controls on the transfer of U.S. high-technology goods to India, which have been restricted because of India's nuclear arms program and its 1998 underground nuclear tests.
The sanctions on the scientists, which were listed in the Federal Register Sept. 29, are largely symbolic. They bar the scientists from doing business with the U.S. government or acquiring U.S. goods requiring export licenses.
Officials said the Indian scientists were involved in helping Iran's nuclear program. Tehran has refused to halt production of highly enriched uranium, which can be used for weapons.
However, public identification of the scientists and their role in arms proliferation can be a deterrent that will make further exchanges more difficult, the officials said.
Officials compared the Indian scientists to Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan, who ran a covert network that provided weapons equipment, namely centrifuges, to Iran, Libya and North Korea. But officials said the Indians' activities were not as damaging as Mr. Khan's.
U.S. plans for expanding cooperation with India in the area of high-technology and defense goods have been made more difficult by India's trade with Iran, the officials said.
India and Iran signed an agreement in January 2003 that called for science and technology and defense cooperation. Last month, India's state-owned Bharat Electronics Ltd. announced that it sought government permission to sell Iran several upgraded Super Fledermaus air-defense radars.
The Bush administration is opposing the radar transfer as it could be used to guard Iranian nuclear facilities.
A U.S. trade official said the technology dialogue with India has produced assurances that New Delhi will not provide weapons-related technology to Iran. Also, the government has agreed to allow a U.S. export-control official to be posted at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, to monitor sensitive U.S. technology transfers.
The official said the two scientists' activities did not appear to be sanctioned by the Indian government. "There are problems and we're trying to address them in our dialogue," the official said.
U.S. officials said evidence of the scientists' involvement in the Iranian nuclear program comes from intelligence information.
Officials would not provide details on the pending sanctions against India but said they involved weapons-related technology transfers to Iran.
U.S. and Indian officials reported making progress in the talks on advanced technology cooperation yesterday. The two nations are hoping to cooperate on civilian nuclear and space technology, high-technology trade and missile defense, a State Department official said.
-------- iran
Iran Agrees to Consider E.U. Offer on Nuclear Program
By Louis Charbonneau
Reuters
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52699-2004Oct21.html
VIENNA, Oct. 21 -- Iran will consider a European Union proposal under which the Islamic republic would receive civilian nuclear technology and fuel if it abandons its uranium enrichment program, an Iranian official told reporters Thursday.
"It is just at the initial stage. The matter has to be considered on both sides," said Sirus Naseri, a member of the Iranian delegation that heard the proposal at a meeting here with senior French, British and German officials.
European governments depicted the offer as a last chance for Iran to avoid escalation of a months-long dispute over its nuclear program. If Iran rejects the offer, diplomats said, most European governments will back U.S. demands that the International Atomic Energy Agency report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions. That action could come at a meeting of the IAEA in November.
Asked if Iran was afraid of being reported to the Security Council, Naseri said, "We are not threatening each other."
Diplomats said the three E.U. countries had the reluctant blessing of the United States in making the offer to Iran, despite U.S. officials' belief that Iran was using talks with the Europeans to buy time to work toward building nuclear bombs.
"At this point Iranian compliance doesn't seem likely . . . based on Iran's history and their current expressions and the things that they're saying and doing right now," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said on Wednesday.
Iran has said its nuclear program is only for electric power generation and that it will never give up uranium enrichment, a process that can make fuel for nuclear reactors or material for bombs.
The IAEA, the U.N. atomic monitoring body, has been investigating Iran's nuclear program for more than two years. It has uncovered many hidden activities that could be related to a weapons program but no positive proof that one exists.
President Mohammad Khatami said on Wednesday that if Iran was guaranteed the right to develop peaceful nuclear technology, it would "present everything necessary to prove that Iran will not produce an atomic bomb. But we will not give up our rights."
Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani reinforced the message on Thursday as the talks were beginning, saying: "We have announced our stance repeatedly. It is irreversible."
Some diplomats said Iranian officials had never clearly explained why their oil-rich state needs nuclear energy or why they are so intent on producing nuclear fuel, years before any Iranian atomic power facilities would need such fuel.
Khatami said on Wednesday, "We cannot rely on other countries to supply our nuclear fuel, as they can stop it any time due to political pressures."
A Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said acceptance of the E.U. offer could protect Iran from Security Council action. "If Iran accepts it, it could strengthen their hand in November" at the IAEA meeting, he said. The Europeans are offering to support construction of light-water reactor systems, which are less suited to developing fissile material for nuclear weapons, if Iran will scrap plans to build a heavy-water research reactor. Other incentives in the European offer include resumption of talks on a trade pact and guarantees of Russian fuel.
--------
Europeans Offers Plan to End Standoff on Iran Nuclear Program
October 22, 2004
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/22/international/22CND-IRAN.html
PARIS, Oct. 22 - Britain, France and Germany are working to give Iran a last chance to avoid confrontation with the West over its nuclear program by offering incentives to curtail its most sensitive activities.
But Iran, which the United States believes is using its nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons, has given no indication that it would accept the plan.
"The two sides are now engaged in a dialogue with a view to identifying an agreed way forward through diplomatic means," a French foreign ministry spokeswoman said today.
Representatives from the three European countries and the European Union pressed their case with Iran's representatives in Vienna Thursday. The spokeswoman said the Europeans and Iranians had agreed to meet again soon, probably next week.
Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board of governors urged Iran to suspend all activities related to the enrichment of uranium - a process for making nuclear reactor fuel that can be adapted for making weapons - or face unspecified action at the agency's next board meeting, Nov. 25.
At that meeting, the United States will push the board to refer Iran's past breaches of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to the United Nations Security Council, which could decide to impose sanctions.
So far, European board members, led by the three countries that met with Iran Thursday, have favored dialogue and negotiation, fearing that a confrontation with Iran could trigger its withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty and end the country's cooperation with the U.N. nuclear agency.
Many people believe the country will wait at least until after the American presidential elections before giving the Europeans a concrete response, believing that if there is a new administration, the transition in Washington will buy it more time.
"My understanding from talking to Iranian officials is that anything that requires indefinite suspension is unacceptable," said Gary Samore, a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He doubts the Iranians will do more than offer to broaden the temporary suspension of their activities, arguing that the Iranians feel that they are in a strong position with the United States bogged down in Iraq, oil prices high and the Iranian government's domestic political situation stronger than it was before.
"In particular, they think the Russians and Chinese will protect them because of those countries dependence on Iranian oil and gas," Mr. Samore said, adding that even if the United States does succeed in referring Iran's case to the Security Council, the Iranians seem confident that the council won't be able to agree on any serious sanctions.
While details of the European offer have not been disclosed, diplomats in Vienna say they include resumption of trade talks and support for Iran's acquisition of a light water research reactor. The European offer also includes some guarantee that Iran will receive a supply of low-enriched uranium to fuel the power-generating reactors it is building.
It is this last point that has split the international community and led to a diplomatic standoff between Iran and the West.
Iran, which is pursuing a 30-year-old plan to develop nuclear power, insists that it cannot rely on Western fuel guarantees, pointing to the embargo that followed the country's 1979 Islamic revolution. The country says the embargo forced it to breach its obligations under the non-profliferation treaty by secretly enriching small amounts of uranium on its own in an effort to develop nuclear self-sufficiency.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment after Britain, France and Germany offered it a similar deal a year ago. But it has continued with some enrichment-related activities, like preparing the uranium feedstock for enrichment, and resumed others, like the assembly of high-speed centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
The atomic energy agency has urged Iran to stop all of those activities, and Thursday's European proposal seeks to win its compliance in order to avoid a showdown at the agency's November meeting.
-------- korea
North Korea Tops Powell's Agenda in Asia
Trip's Aim Is to Convince Allies of Bush's Commitment to Talks Over Pyongyang's Nuclear Programs
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52579-2004Oct21.html
Four years ago this weekend, then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright visited North Korea, in what appeared to be a breakthrough in U.S. relations with the reclusive Stalinist government. Today, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell leaves on what may be his last official visit to East Asia -- hopping through Japan, China and South Korea over three days -- with the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions at the top of his agenda.
Since President Bush took office four years ago, a deal to keep North Korea's nuclear materials under international inspection collapsed -- after the administration discovered a clandestine nuclear program -- and the government in Pyongyang appears to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to build at least six more nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, senior members of the Bush administration have been deeply split over its policy toward North Korea, limiting U.S. diplomatic flexibility.
Powell, despite misgivings by other senior officials, who wish to confront and isolate North Korea, has tirelessly promoted a six-nation negotiating track. But the talks appear to have reached a stalemate, with North Korea refusing to attend another meeting -- at least until after U.S. presidential election yields a winner.
Powell's trip, his first in the region in 18 months, represents an effort to convince allies that the Bush administration is committed to a negotiated approach, even in a second term. Powell does not appear to be bringing a new proposal, but he clearly hopes that other countries in the region, such as China, will prod North Korea to return to the negotiating table before the momentum of the talks, last held in June, dissipates.
The Bush administration's handling of the North Korean threat was the subject of sharp exchanges during the first presidential debate, with Democratic challenger John F. Kerry harshly criticizing Bush for allowing North Korea to become more dangerous while he was preoccupied with Iraq. For Powell, North Korea has been the Moby Dick of foreign policy, with his preferred approach often tempered by his detractors in the president's Cabinet.
On North Korea, "I would say the administration has constructed a railroad track headed for a cliff," said Charles "Jack" Pritchard, until August 2003 Powell's special envoy for the North Korea talks. "The train is going down a steep slope, 80 miles an hour, and Powell has gotten the train down to 40 miles an hour. But it's still going off a cliff."
During the first presidential debate, Kerry noted that in the early months of the Bush administration, Powell suggested that Bush would follow the approach of the Clinton administration, which believed that it had been close to a deal limiting North Korean missiles. But "the president reversed him publicly," Kerry said, leaving the president of South Korea "bewildered and embarrassed."
The episode was indicative of the conflicting signals the Bush administration has sent about its policy toward North Korea.
In April, Vice President Cheney visited the region and told an audience in Shanghai that "time is not necessarily on our side." He asserted that North Korea, given its past behavior, could peddle nuclear technology to terrorist groups. Moreover, he warned that, as North Korea's neighbors face the reality that it has a stockpile of nuclear weapons, "we [may] have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia."
While Cheney expressed clear frustration with the pace of diplomacy, Powell said this week that "this is an area where you have to have patience and determination."
Aides close to Powell insist that, notwithstanding interagency squabbles, the president has privately made it clear that he supports a diplomatic approach. Powell said that publicly this week, in a Far Eastern Economic Review interview released yesterday. "All I know is what the president has decided," he said. "And he's the only one I'd listen to. And he's decided this: He's decided it repeatedly over the last year that we would try to solve this diplomatically."
Powell added: "We'll have to be patient. We will not change our policy."
While Bush had initially blocked talks with North Korea after he came into office, U.S. officials reached a consensus in early 2002 that representatives of the two countries should meet. But over the summer of 2002, U.S. intelligence determined that North Korea had a secret program to enrich uranium, in violation of a 1994 deal to freeze its nuclear programs, which had been reached with President Bill Clinton.
That discovery ended the prospect of any improvement in U.S.-North Korean relations. Bush's foreign policy advisers quickly agreed that the discovery amounted to a "material breach" of the 1994 deal, and that they needed to confront the North Koreans.
During an October 2002 meeting with U.S. officials in Pyongyang, North Korea unexpectedly acknowledged the clandestine program. The United States cut off deliveries of fuel oil provided under the 1994 agreement, and in response, North Korea kicked out international inspectors and restarted a nuclear facility that had been shuttered by Clinton's deal -- giving Pyongyang access once again to a key ingredient of nuclear weapons.
Democrats have charged the Bush administration with dropping the ball by allowing North Korea to produce the weapons-grade plutonium -- an act that Clinton had warned would prompt a military attack. But administration officials say the clandestine program demonstrated that the 1994 agreement was already worthless. "The fact of the matter is that things had deteriorated before this administration came in, but they didn't know it," Powell said in the magazine interview.
The first two rounds of the six-nation talks, held in Beijing, did not produce much movement. In June of this year, the Chinese and the South Koreans began to press for a more concrete U.S. proposal. On June 15, Powell outlined to Bush's senior foreign policy advisers a plan seeking "points of flexibility" in the next round of talks.
Under the proposal, if North Korea agrees to terminate its nuclear programs, South Korea and other U.S. allies could provide immediate energy assistance to North Korea, which would have three months to disclose its programs and have its claims verified by U.S. intelligence. The United States would then join its allies in giving written security assurances and participate in a process that might ultimately result in direct U.S. aid.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld won Bush's approval for one significant change: Powell had proposed to immediately offer security assurances to North Korea as South Korea starts fuel shipments, but instead the security assurances would be offered after the North Korean declaration is verified.
North Korea rejected the offer. In recent weeks, South Korean officials have pressed the United States to modify the proposal to include some sort of symbolic commitment to assisting with the fuel oil shipments, such as paying the administrative expenses. But U.S. officials have opposed that idea.
--------
North Korea eases tough stance against US in nuclear talks
SEOUL (AFP)
Oct 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041022133828.yy2amsh5.html
North Korea on Friday eased its tough stance against the United States, saying it is willing to resume stalled six-way talks on its nuclear weapons if Washington is ready to consider its demands.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman demanded Washington drop its hostile policy towards Pyongyang and provide rewards for having frozen its nuclear activities.
The resumption of talks depended on whether Washington was "ready to fully consider" Pyongyang's demands, he said in a statement published by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.
"(North Korea) is approaching the six-party talks strictly in its interests. In other words, it will attend the talks if they prove helpful to it as it realized them to settle the nuclear issue."
The spokesman also demanded South Korea's past nuclear experiments be discussed "before anything else" at the six-nation talks.
Seoul revealed in September that its scientists secretly enriched a tiny amount of plutonium in 1982 and uranium in 2000 just for scientific research. It opposes bringing its own nuclear issue to the six-way talks.
The North's statement followed a three-day trip by North Korea's second-ranking leader Kim Yong-Nam to China this week.
North Korea took park in three inconclusive rounds of the talks which also involved the United States, South Korea, Russia, China and Japan.
But the Stalinist country boycotted a fourth round of six-party talks scheduled to open in September.
The nuclear stand-off flared in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement.
North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear activities in return for various concessions including its removal from the list of terrorism sponsors.
Washington says North Korea must offer to scrap its nuclear weapons drive before concessions can be discussed.
-----
North Korea Says Prospects Gloomy for Nuclear Talks
REUTERS
October 22, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27805/story.htm
SEOUL - The prospects for more six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programs are gloomy because the United States has pushed the negotiations to a stalemate, the North's official KCNA news agency said yesterday.
China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States have held three rounds of talks and agreed to a fourth in September, but that meeting failed to materialize because Pyongyang said Washington should drop its hostile policy first.
"Its prospect remains gloomy," KCNA said of the proposed fourth round.
"The Bush administration deliberately laid a stumbling block in the way of settling the nuclear issue and pushed the talks to a stalemate as it had no willingness to seek a negotiated peaceful settlement of the issue," it said in an analysis marking the 10th anniversary of the bilateral Agreed Framework deal.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon said this week more six-way talks could be held soon after the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election.
South Korea and the United States have told the North not to wait for the result of the election because a win by Democratic candidate John Kerry over President Bush would bring little change in U.S. policy.
KCNA said Bush's administration had made previously agreed deals worthless, sparked off another nuclear crisis and driven "bilateral relations to catastrophe."
The 1994 Agreed Framework froze the North's nuclear plans in return for fuel but Pyongyang later secretly restarted its atomic program and the accord subsequently collapsed.
This week, North Korea's parliamentary leader and nominal head of state wrapped up a rare trip to China during which he said Pyongyang would stay engaged in the stalled talks on its nuclear ambitions.
Kim Yong-nam, the reclusive North's second-most senior figure after leader Kim Jong-il, came under heavy pressure from China's leaders to re-engage in the talks. KCNA said China pledged aid to the North, a tactic diplomats in Seoul say Beijing has used in the past to sweeten the pill.
The latest nuclear crisis erupted two years ago when U.S. diplomats said North Korea had said it was running a covert uranium enrichment program. Pyongyang has since denied this.
KCNA said the new North Korean Human Rights Act, signed into law by Bush on Monday, was part of Washington's hostile policy to "realize its wild ambition for regime change" in the North.
The law earmarks $24 million a year to bolster human rights and market reforms in North Korea.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil Fights for Right to Produce Nuclear Fuel
(Inter Press Service)
by Mario Osava
October 22, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/osava.php?articleid=3834
RIO DE JANEIRO - The publicity stirred up around the inspection of a Brazilian uranium enrichment plant is a "fabricated controversy" that could be aimed at hindering the national development of the nuclear power industry.
This allegation, put forward by physicist Aquilino Senra Martínez, is based on his contention that the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could monitor Brazil's production of nuclear fuel without visually inspecting all of the equipment involved in the process.
At the moment, Brazil's refusal to allow inspectors access to certain equipment in the plant could prevent it from receiving the IAEA approval it needs to move forward with its nuclear power program.
Past experience has also contributed to these suspicions. Martínez, a graduate school professor of engineering at the University of Sao Paolo, told IPS about the difficulties faced by Brazil in the 1980s in purchasing supercomputers, due to claims that they could be used for the production of long-range nuclear weapons.
The U.S. ban on the sale of this technology to Brazil seriously hampered the development of the South American nation's aeronautical industry. The country was also forced to install the headquarters of its meteorological forecasting center outside Sao José dos Campos, the Brazilian aerospace technology capital, 100 km (62 mi.) from Sao Paolo, in order to have access to a supercomputer.
Brazil has developed new technology for enriching uranium that is still at the pilot, not commercial, stage, Martínez stressed. In order to produce enough fuel to supply all of the country's nuclear power plants, thousands of the new Brazilian-designed centrifuges would be needed, and this would require importing a great many components, he added.
The doubts raised as to the purely peaceful objectives of Brazil's nuclear program could hinder its ability to import the necessary equipment and components, and this, Martínez believes, is the whole reason behind the "fabricated controversy."
Three IAEA inspectors concluded a three-day visit to Brazil's nuclear facilities on Wednesday. They held meetings with the country's National Nuclear Energy Commission, and spent over six hours on Tuesday at the plant in Resende, 160 km (99 mi.) from Rio de Janeiro, where uranium is enriched to produce fuel.
The Brazilian government, however, would not allow a visual inspection of the centrifuges used in the enrichment process, arguing the need to protect industrial secrets. The innovative, cost-reducing technology was hidden behind panels during the inspectors' visit so as not to reveal the number, size and shape of the machines.
Now the IAEA will have to decide, based on the inspectors' report, whether it will accept the restrictions imposed by Brazil and move on to the next stage, a more detailed inspection two weeks from now to fully determine that the plant is used solely to produce energy, and not for nuclear weapons.
Brazil has been refusing an unrestricted inspection since April, and this has led to speculation over possible irregularities, such as the illegal acquisition of "black market" components from Pakistan. The government hopes that the small concessions made to the inspection team will be enough to satisfy the UN agency.
Without IAEA approval, which the government hopes to receive next month, Brazil would not be able to produce fuel for its two nuclear power plants.
Edson Kuramoto, the director of the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Association, which represents 1,200 technicians from this sector, told IPS that Brazil has the right to protect its technology. The country has never opposed an inspection, he explained, but is simply negotiating the procedures involved, something that is perfectly normal in the case of new facilities.
The initial goal for Brazil's uranium enrichment program is to achieve self-sufficiency in supplying fuel for its own nuclear power plants, which would allow it to save the $14 million annually that is currently spent on importing fuel.
The construction of a third nuclear power plant, currently under study by the government, would increase domestic demand to a scale that would make it economically viable to carry out the entire nuclear cycle, from mining to enriching the uranium for use as fuel, right in Brazil. This has long been a goal of the sector, Kuramoto noted.
Brazil has been insisting on the right to keep its new technology a secret because it claims that the centrifuges it has developed are more efficient and consume less energy.
There are currently only five countries in the world - the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and Russia - that produce nuclear fuel, Kuramoto noted, and their plants have been in operation for many years.
Because Brazil's uranium enrichment plant is much more recent and uses brand new technology, it is only natural that it would be more efficient, he asserted.
For his part, Martínez paraphrased, "He who does it last does it best," whether in computers or any other industry. As a result, the entry of a new competitor like Brazil into this exclusive club poses a threat to those who currently control the market, and will obviously meet with resistance, he added.
Given its large uranium deposits, Brazil has the potential to be a major player in the world nuclear fuel market, he said.
-------- missile defense
Taiwan shows off missile defense strength, highlights China's threat
Oct 22, 2004
WANLI, Taiwan (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041022085031.9fpixqz6.html
Taiwan showed off its missile defense system to the media for the first time Friday, but said it badly needed more advanced weaponry to counter a military threat from rival China.
The defense ministry opened one of its three Patriot missile bases to reporters in a rare move apparently aimed at trying to win parliament's support for a controversial 18 billion US dollar special defense budget.
"The missiles can be used to shoot down incoming enemy aircraft, ballistic and cruise missiles," General Ku Feng-tai, head of Taiwan's missile command, told reporters.
The military said it was confident in the ability of the three PAC-2 anti-missile batteries but it needed more advanced versions to match the increasing number of ballistic missile that China had targeted at the island.
"The foremost threat from the Chinese communists is their some 600 ballistic missiles," said Admiral Chen Pang-chih, head of the political warfare bureau.
The ministry estimated the number of China's ballistic missiles aiming at Taiwan would amount to 800 by the end of 2006.
Taiwan plans to acquire six PAC-3 batteries to protect the central and southern parts of the island, and to upgrade the existing PAC-2s.
Each PAC-3 will be able to track 18 targets simultaneously and cover a defense area of 400 square kilometers (160 square miles), Ku said.
The PAC-2s in place are designed to track nine targets simultaneously and cover an area of 225 square kilometers.
They have successfully destroyed mock targets in two live-fire drills since they were put into service in 1996 to protect the northern greater Taipei area.
Friday's display came as Taiwan debates whether to spend 18 billion US dollars on an arms package made up of eight conventional submarines, 12 P-3C submarine-hunting aircraft and the six PAC-3 missile systems.
The cabinet on June 2 approved the special budget to buy weaponry from the United States. It needs final approval by parliament.
Critics of the deal warn the hefty spending could further provoke China. Others say the government would be forced to incur more debt or cut social welfare and education budgets.
US President George W. Bush approved the arms package in April 2001 as part of Washington's most comprehensive arms package to the island since 1992.
Tensions between Taiwan and China have been growing following the re-election of President Chen Shui-bian, from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
China claims Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to invade the island should it take further steps towards formal independence.
-------- us nuc waste
Bush faces nuclear fallout in Nevada over £60bn mountain of radioactive waste
The Guardian
Dan Glaister
October 22, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1333145,00.html
Roadworks slow progress along the strip in Las Vegas. In the distance, poking between the mock Eiffel Tower and the mock pyramid at Luxor, cranes stand out against the autumn sky, building the next phase of America's seemingly permanent boom town.
But 95 miles north-east of this city, the powerhouse of Nevada with 36 million visitors a year, lies another construction site.
Yucca Mountain, projected to cost around $60bn (£32.8bn), has been chosen by the Bush administration to be the nation's nuclear waste repository, set to hold the existing 40,000 tons of waste produced to date by the country's nuclear power stations.
"This material is the deadliest substance known to mankind," said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, a local group that has campaigned against the repository. "It's one million times more radioactive when it comes out of the reactor core than when it went in."
In February 2002, just over a year after taking office, President Bush recommended the Yucca Mountain site to Congress. But many voters remembered that, as a candidate in September 2000, Mr Bush promised not to approve the site until it had been "deemed scientifically safe", a formulation that is credited with helping him win the state.
Four years on, and with the project stalled by legal challenges to its scientific justification, those words may come back to haunt the president in what has become a swing state. A recent poll showed that Yucca Mountain was the top issue for 3% of registered voters. "Given what's going on in this country, 3% is huge," said Ms Maze Johnson.
The polls in Nevada have ranged between a 10% lead for Mr Bush to a 1% lead for Mr Kerry. In 2000 Mr Bush won the state by 3.5%, or 22,000 votes, but Nevada has changed since then. The fastest-growing state in the US in 2003, its population has risen by 300,000 in the past four years to reach 2.4 million. For this election, there will be 1.1 million registered voters, 66,000 of them Hispanics, who traditionally lean toward the Democratic party. The increase in population means that Nevada now contributes five votes to the electoral college, one more than in 2000. Accordingly, the state has become an increasingly important and hard-fought battleground in this year's electoral race.
"In 2000 there was no campaign here; the Democrats conceded," said David Damore, assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "But this year there's been a strong effort to get new voters registered. The electorate looks very different to the way it did four years ago."
While voters in the state are likely to be swayed by the same big issues as the rest of the country - the economy, the war in Iraq - Nevada is one swing state where the debate about the environment, thanks to Yucca Mountain, is being aired.
John Kerry has been swift to side with opponents of the plan. In an article published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal in May, Mr Kerry accused Bush of "placing the profits of the nuclear power industry above the safety of Nevada families ... I voted against the plan to dispose of waste at Yucca Mountain," he wrote, "and as president I will fight against it."
Republicans chose to use the Yucca Mountain issue as an opportunity to depict Mr Kerry as a "flip-flopper", pointing out that he had voted in favour of a 1987 bill, nicknamed the Screw Nevada bill, which authorised consideration of Yucca Mountain as the nation's repository for nuclear waste.
In August Mr Kerry defended his position, saying: "Back in 1987 the idea of a national repository seemed like a reasonable thing ... [but] the more I have looked at the issue, the more I have learned about it, the less safe, the less comfortable I am with the possibility."
Also in August, Mr Bush told a rally in Las Vegas: "I said I would make a decision based upon [sound] science, not politics ... and that's exactly what I did."
Ms Maze Johnson said: "The president called it sound science. I call it botched science. We're not partisan, but Kerry has been with us when we've needed his vote, which isn't easy for someone from the north-east."
The north-east of the US is home to the bulk of the country's nuclear energy industry. At present nuclear waste is stored on site: across the US, 161 million people live within 75 miles of temporarily stored nuclear waste.
Local residents and politicians are keen to see it moved as far away as possible, and the sparsely-populated deserts of Nevada seemed as good an idea as any. Those opposed to the repository are also concerned about the transport of waste. It is, critics say, a disaster waiting to happen, mobile Chernobyls offering the perfect terrorist target.
"We are a one-industry state," said Ms Johnson, referring to Nevada's dependence on tourism. "If something stopped people coming, what would that do to the economy?"
At the Yucca Mountain Information Centre, videos and wallcharts trumpet the efforts to ensure that the site is safe.
No mention is made of the native American name for the mountain, Moving Hill, nor scientists' nickname for it, Old Leaky. Nor is there space for a Geological Society of America report which warned that should moisture enter the mountain where nuclear waste is stored in bundles of rods, "radioactive volcanoes could form on the surface".
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Released Detainees Rejoining The Fight
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52670-2004Oct21.html
At least 10 detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay prison after U.S. officials concluded they posed little threat have been recaptured or killed fighting U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
One of the repatriated prisoners is still at large after taking leadership of a militant faction in Pakistan and aligning himself with al Qaeda, Pakistani officials said. In telephone calls to Pakistani reporters, he has bragged that he tricked his U.S. interrogators into believing he was someone else.
Another returned captive is an Afghan teenager who had spent two years at a special compound for young detainees at the military prison in Cuba, where he learned English, played sports and watched videos, informed sources said. U.S. officials believed they had persuaded him to abandon his life with the Taliban, but recently the young man, now 18, was recaptured with other Taliban fighters near Kandahar, Afghanistan, according to the sources, who asked for anonymity because they were discussing sensitive military information.
The cases demonstrate the difficulty Washington faces in deciding when alleged al Qaeda and Taliban detainees should be freed, amid pressure from foreign governments and human rights groups that have denounced U.S. officials for detaining the Guantanamo Bay captives for years without due-process rights, military officials said.
"Reports that former detainees have rejoined al Qaeda and the Taliban are evidence that these individuals are fanatical and particularly deceptive," said a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico. "From the beginning, we have recognized that there are inherent risks in determining when an individual detainee no longer had to be held at Guantanamo Bay."
The latest case emerged two weeks ago when two Chinese engineers working on a dam project in Pakistan's lawless Waziristan region were kidnapped. The commander of a tribal militant group, Abdullah Mehsud, 29, told reporters by satellite phone that his followers were responsible for the abductions.
Mehsud said he spent two years at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in 2002 in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban. At the time he was carrying a false Afghan identity card, and while in custody he maintained the fiction that he was an innocent Afghan tribesman, he said. U.S. officials never realized he was a Pakistani with deep ties to militants in both countries, he added.
"I managed to keep my Pakistani identity hidden all these years," he told Gulf News in a recent interview. Since his return to Pakistan in March, Pakistani newspapers have written lengthy accounts of Mehsud's hair and looks, and the powerful appeal to militants of his fiery denunciations of the United States. "We would fight America and its allies," he said in one interview, "until the very end."
Last week Pakistani commandos freed one of the abducted Chinese engineers in a raid on a mud-walled compound in which five militants and the other hostage were killed.
The 10 or more returning militants are but a fraction of the 202 Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been returned to their homelands. Of that group, 146 were freed outright, and 56 were transferred to the custody of their home governments. Many of those men have since been freed.
Mark Jacobson, a former special assistant for detainee policy in the Defense Department who now teaches at Ohio State University, estimated that as many as 25 former detainees have taken up arms again. "You can't trust them when they say they're not terrorists," he said.
A U.S. defense official who helps oversee the prisoners added: "We could have said we'll accept no risks and refused to release anyone. But we've regarded that option as not humane, and not practical, and one that makes the U.S. government appear unreasonable."
Another former Guantanamo Bay prisoner was killed in southern Afghanistan last month after a shootout with Afghan forces. Maulvi Ghafar was a senior Taliban commander when he was captured in late 2001. No information has emerged about what he told interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, but in several cases U.S. officials have released detainees they knew to have served with the Taliban if they swore off violence in written agreements.
Returned to Afghanistan in February, Ghafar resumed his post as a top Taliban commander, and his forces ambushed and killed a U.N. engineer and three Afghan soldiers, Afghan officials said, according to news accounts.
A third released Taliban commander died in an ambush this summer. Mullah Shahzada, who apparently convinced U.S. officials that he had sworn off violence, rejoined the Taliban as soon as he was freed in mid-2003, sources with knowledge of his situation said.
The Afghan teenager who was recaptured recently had been kidnapped and possibly abused by the Taliban before he was apprehended the first time in 2001. After almost three years living with other young detainees in a seaside house at Guantanamo Bay, he was returned in January of this year to his country, where he was to be monitored by Afghan officials and private contractors. But the program failed and he fell back in with the Taliban, one source said.
"Someone dropped the ball in Afghanistan," the source said.
One former detainee who has not yet been able to take up arms is Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Dane who also signed a promise to renounce violence. But in recent months he has told Danish media that he considers the written oath "toilet paper," stated his plans to join the war in Chechnya and said Denmark's prime minister is a valid target for terrorists.
Human rights activists said the cases of unrepentant militants do not undercut their assertions that the United States is violating the rights of Guantanamo Bay inmates.
"This doesn't alter the injustice, or support the administration's argument that setting aside their rights is justified," said Alistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty International.
--------
Second-Guessing Actions in Afghanistan
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A15
Barton Gellman
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53187-2004Oct21.html
Soon after arriving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1, 2001, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers raised doubts about the war plan -- days from execution -- to topple the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, then chief of U.S. Central Command, planned a single thrust toward the Afghan capital from the north.
Franks anticipated, correctly, that resistance from Taliban and al Qaeda fighters would collapse. He did not, however, position a blocking force to meet them as they fled. Some Bush administration officials now acknowledge privately they consider that a costly mistake.
In the presidential campaign, Democrat John F. Kerry has revived a debate on whether U.S. forces missed a chance to catch Osama bin Laden and his top aides at the battle of Tora Bora. Kerry accuses President Bush of "outsourcing" the job to Afghan tribal leaders. Recent interviews with military participants shed new light on the period beginning two months earlier, before bin Laden left Kabul for Tora Bora.
Myers urged Franks, in a series of discussions that have not been reported before, "to look at opening a southern front . . . to cut off the withdrawal of the Taliban and al Qaeda," according to a senior flag officer who participated in the debate. A brigade of the Army's 10th Mountain Division in Uzbekistan and two Marine Expeditionary Forces in the Arabian Sea "were prepared to go in there -- they'd done the planning, the load preps," said the flag officer, whose account was confirmed by a second participant. Neither agreed to be identified because of political sensitivity.
Franks did not accept the advice. Kabul fell on Nov. 13. Bin Laden and Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader, took their best fighters southeast, largely unscathed. Three weeks later, most escaped a second time from a warren of manmade tunnels at Tora Bora. "It was the difference between defeating the enemy and destroying the enemy," said a subordinate describing Myers's views.
Franks said later, without referring to Myers, that he sought to avoid estranging Afghanistan's Pushtun majority by allowing its militias to take the lead in the south. He also said, more recently, that he would have needed months to dispatch enough U.S. forces to make a decisive difference.
Al Qaeda's consecutive escapes from Kabul and Tora Bora marked the last time the Bush administration had so large a concentration of jihadists in its sights. The subsequent global manhunt has often sought men believed to have been at one of those battles, or both.
A high-ranking war planner likened the result to throwing a rock at a nest of bees, then trying to chase them down, one by one, with a net.
-------- africa
Northern Uganda 'world's biggest neglected crisis'
Associated Press
October 22, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1333363,00.html
Northern Uganda, where around 20,000 children have been kidnapped and many forced to serve as combatants, is the world's biggest neglected humanitarian crisis, the head of UN humanitarian affairs said yesterday.
Jan Egeland, the under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, said he had rhetorically asked the UN security council where else in the world 80% of the fighters in a rebel movement were children, and where else 90% of the population had been displaced from their homes.
"Northern Uganda to me remains the biggest neglected humanitarian emergency in the world," he told journalists after briefing the 15-member council on Uganda and Sudan. "For me, the situation is a moral outrage, but I'm heartened that the security council devoted so much time to northern Uganda."
Britain's UN ambassador, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, speaking after the meeting, described Uganda as "one of the great crises out there which is not recognised enough".
He called on the international community to support the African Union's peace efforts and respond to UN appeals for donations, and said the council planned to meet in Nairobi, Kenya, between November 18-19, where it would discuss the conflicts in southern and western Sudan and peace efforts in the region.
Sir Emyr said there were positive signals from Uganda's government - including forces helping to protect humanitarian efforts - and recognition of the scale of the problem.
"We hope, on the humanitarian side, that we are now seeing a beginning of an end to this 18-year endless litany of horrors where children are the fighters and the victims in northern Uganda," he said.
His hopes, he said, rested on increased international attention and efforts to resolve the two decades of conflict in southern Sudan that have spilled into northern Uganda.
Since 1986, the Lord's Resistance Army has waged a brutal insurgency in northern Uganda, targeting civilians and abducting children for use as fighters, labourers or sex slaves. The rebels are believed to have bases in southern Sudan, and in recent months have launched attacks on Sudanese civilians, reportedly killing dozens.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese government and southern rebel movements have been making progress towards peace in the conflict.
Speaking about western Sudan's Darfur region, Mr Egeland said relief efforts were bringing food, water and sanitation to well over one million people.
"We're exceeding many of the goals we set ourselves two months ago," he said. "However, the goalposts have been put miles ahead of us because so many more people have been affected. We thought we would need to feed one million people by now, but we have to feed two million people ... there are hundreds of thousands in desperate need," he added.
Insecurity has become the biggest constraint on humanitarian efforts, he said, adding that aid workers had been kidnapped and killed.
Mr Egeland said donations to the relief efforts in Darfur were around £120m short of what was needed, and that the international community needed to provide more logistical support to the African Union in the deployment of forces in the conflict area.
At least 70,000 people have died, and more than 1.5 million have been forced from their homes, in the Darfur crisis. It began in February last year, when two rebel groups took up arms over what they regarded as unjust treatment by the government and ethnic Arab countrymen.
The pro-government Janjaweed militia responded by unleashing attacks on Darfur villages. Peace talks between the Sudanese government and representatives of the rebels yesterday reopened briefly in Abuja, Nigeria, after a month's suspension, but were again suspended until Monday.
-------- arms
Miami gun dealer, others charged in weapons trafficking to Colombia
MIAMI (AFP)
Oct 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041022185136.9fkyb2l5.html
A Miami gun dealer was charged Friday with supplying large quantities of military-type weapons and ammunition to a ring that sold them to left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitary fighters in Colombia.
The 13-count indictment returned by a grand jury in Miami comes on top of other charges issued earlier this year against gun store owner Joseph Ruiz and six members of an alleged weapons trafficking ring.
The indictment alleges that Ruiz used his business to supply military-type weapons and ammunition to traffickers, the US Attorney's Office in Miami said.
The ring then sent the weapons by sea to Venezuela, where many of them were sold to buyers acting on behalf of the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC.) Both groups are on the US list of international terrorist organizations.
Ruiz was arrested in late September after authorities seized 200 weapons and more than 700,000 rounds of ammunition at a Miami warehouse.
Another defendant, Rodney Sharp, remains at large.
-------- britain
No shooting please, we're British
The storm over the movement of Black Watch troops in Iraq suggests the British elite is happy to support a war so long as it doesn't have to fight one.
spiked-online.com
by Brendan O'Neill
22 October 2004
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA74E.htm
'Just say no.' That was the Guardian's considered advice to the UK government over the redeployment of British Black Watch troops from Basra to central Iraq to take the place of Americans who have to go off and fight insurgents. Defence secretary Geoff Hoon confirmed yesterday that 500 troops and 350 support personnel will move to the US sector, freeing up US soldiers to (allegedly) launch a new offensive against Fallujah (1).
But it wasn't only sceptical-about-war newspapers that urged a 'no' to the movement of Brits to a reportedly riskier part of Iraq; so did many of those who said 'yes' to invading Iraq in the first place, including members of parliament who voted for the war and military officials who have overseen much of the war. Some in the British establishment seem happy to support a war, so long as they don't have to fight in it.
The stink over the Black Watch redeployment reveals far more about the state of mind in Westminster than it does about the state of affairs in Iraq. Ministers, officials and journalists complain that the Brits will be at greater risk in central Iraq than they were down south - but what is the job of a soldier if not to take risks in a war setting, especially one that his own leaders helped to create? It is a profound uncertainty about the war at home, rather than any real rise in danger in Iraq, that has caused such consternation about the Black Watch movement.
The Black Watch troops are not being asked to do anything especially hairy, at least not by wartime standards. For all the talk of being dragged into a quagmire or, in the words of one report, being 'sucked into a Vietnam-style war' (2), in fact the soldiers are making a temporary move, expected to last around two months, to patrol an area 25 miles south of Baghdad. The US sector may be less pleasant than Basra, but the Black Watch are unlikely to come up against anything they haven't been trained for.
One reason why such standard postwar ugliness - whether it's insurgents firing at US troops in Fallujah or British troops being asked to patrol hostile territory south of Baghdad - can be discussed in such apocalyptic terms is because the coalition thought Iraq would be a walk in the park. They prepared for a war without much fighting or bloodshed or military engagement at all, with a strategy that stressed avoiding risky action and hand-to-hand combat. As a result of such wishful thinking, any kind of danger can come across as terrifying.
Consider Basra, where most of the Brits have been based for the past 18 months. Before the war coalition officials talked about Basra as a pushover. They hoped that the city's Shias would welcome Western forces with 'open arms', allowing the coalition to 'capitalise on any scene of liberation and beam it to a sceptical world' (3). The reality - a sometimes hostile and disgruntled population, with pockets of resistance here and there - now appears overbearing, not because these forces are any match for the British, but because the British didn't expect to encounter many hostile forces at all.
Indeed, the British response to hostility in Basra has been to retreat to barracks. In August and September, when there were clashes between British troops and supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the Daily Telegraph reported that 'after three [British] deaths in as many weeks, the British army has stopped patrolling the streets of Basra'. They took to moving around in armoured vehicles, 'on patrols not more than 100 yards from base'. When Basra residents demanded the expulsion of 'al-Sadr's people', British Major Ian Clooney said: 'I can understand what the Iraqis are saying, but confronting violence with violence is not going to work....' (4)
President Bush apparently said before the war started that 'we're not going to have any casualties' One American general has reportedly denounced the British approach as 'risk-averse' and 'institutionalised cowardice' (5). Yet for all the claims that US forces are imposing their imperialist will on Iraq, their campaign too has appeared faltering and defensive. Much of America's occupation has been conducted from behind high walls or from helicopter gunships.
One report describes how hundreds of American troops spend their time in Saddam's old palaces or guarding the 'Green Zone' in Baghdad, a cordoned-off part of the city centre, massively guarded and for the exclusive use of coalition officials, only occasionally venturing out. Earlier this year a poll asked Iraqis what they thought of coalition forces - 77 per cent said they had never had an encounter with a soldier from the coalition (6). Indeed, it is striking that the supposedly more gung-ho Americans should need 850 Brits as back up. The Americans have 135,000 troops in Iraq. Where are they all? What are they doing?
In both the American and British camps, the talk of quagmires, of new Vietnams, of unacceptably risky redeployments, is not a rational response to what's happening on the ground, which is not any more grisly than what has occurred in other wars. Rather it's a product of the coalition's misguided belief that it could fight a war with the war bit taken out. This week the Los Angeles Times reported that President Bush apparently told televangelist Pat Robertson in private before the war started that 'we're not going to have any casualties' in Iraq; if this is true, it is hardly surprising that casualties, or injuries or risky redeployments, are seen as both unexpected and unacceptable.
The fuss over the Black Watch redeployment also points to deep divisions within the British elite over the war in Iraq. It appears that news of the redeployment was leaked by the military itself to the BBC, a week before the government planned to make an announcement, because military commanders are concerned about the 'prospect of a movement of [British] forces into the Sunni triangle', or of a 'sharp increase in military fatalities' (7). (Perhaps they also believe, like Major Ian Clooney in Basra, that violence solves nothing.)
Behind the Black Watch controversy lurks a clash between the government and the military. According to John Kampfner, political editor of the New Statesman: 'For all the public show of agreement between officers and their political masters, rarely in the recent history of the British armed forces can the disdain of the top brass towards ministers have been so open as it is now.... What exercises them more than anything is the idea that they are seen as willing tools of a prime minister who uses the military as the vehicle for his "delusions of international grandeur". These last words are not mine.' (8)
This is a quite extraordinary state of affairs - a government that apologetically redeploys troops while its apparently anti-violence military tries to scupper the plan. This shows the extent to which it was doubt and uncertainty at home that made the movement of a few hundred troops abroad into the storm of the month.
--------
Britain to move troops to hot spot
October 22, 2004
By Ed Johnson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041021-105234-7861r.htm
LONDON - Britain agreed yesterday to send 850 of its soldiers from relatively peaceful southern Iraq to a volatile area near Baghdad, freeing U.S. troops to step up attacks on insurgent strongholds west of the capital.
The move is part of a coalition effort to bring order to Iraq before elections in January. But British lawmakers, many of whom opposed the war, are angry, fearing a major increase in British casualties. And some are grumbling that London is "bailing out" President Bush in his bid for re-election next month.
The Bush administration welcomed the redeployment, with White House spokesman Scott McClellan saying, "We appreciate the contribution," and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher praising Britain's key role in the U.S.-led coalition.
"It just demonstrates, once again, the kind of role that Britain is prepared to play in a matter that affects their security and our security, the security of all of us, and that is stabilizing Iraq and helping the people of Iraq take control of their destiny and reconstruct their country," Mr. Boucher said.
Meeting a request from U.S. commanders, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said an armored battle group from the 1st Battalion Black Watch would move from its base around the southern port city of Basra into a U.S.-controlled sector close to the capital. Sunni insurgents have been carrying out daily attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqis in the area.
The battalion, complete with support units of medics, signalers and engineers, would stay for a limited time, "weeks rather than months," Mr. Hoon said. Britain's chief of defense staff, Gen. Michael Walker, later said the deployment would last a maximum of 30 days.
Mr. Hoon declined to give further details of the "location, duration or specifics of the mission," citing security reasons, and did not say when the move will take place.
The American military wants the British to assume security responsibility in areas close to Baghdad so U.S. Marines and soldiers can be shifted to insurgency strongholds west of the capital, including Fallujah.
U.S. and Iraqi officials want to restore government control to Fallujah, Ramadi and other Sunni Muslim cities in that area and have warned that they will use force if negotiations with community leaders there fail.
Yesterday, Fallujah leaders called on the interim Iraqi government to pursue a peaceful solution to the military standoff around the city and order a halt to frequent U.S. air strikes. But clashes erupted last night between Marines and insurgents in the rebel bastion.
In Baghdad, gunmen ambushed a bus carrying Iraqi women working for Iraqi Airways to their jobs at Baghdad International Airport, killing one and wounding 14. Three persons who worked in Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office were killed, and one was wounded in an ambush in western Baghdad.
In Mosul in the north, several mortar shells fell about two blocks from Mr. Allawi's convoy during a visit, setting off a small blaze and plumes of smoke. No casualties were reported.
The redeployment of British troops is politically sensitive for Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose popularity has plummeted because of his support for the Iraq war.
Britain's 8,500 troops are based around Basra, and sending British soldiers into the more dangerous U.S.-controlled sector carries a risk of higher casualties. Sixty-eight British soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began last year, the Defense Ministry said.
Fifty-eight lawmakers from Mr. Blair's 407-strong Labor Party have signed a motion demanding a House of Commons vote on whether the troop repositioning should go ahead.
--------
Deepcut Army sex attacker jailed
BBC
22 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/3634474.stm
A former training instructor at Deepcut Army barracks in Surrey has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for sex attacks on young male soldiers.
Leslie Skinner, 46, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court last month.
Skinner, who served with the Royal Logistics Corps, admitted five indecent assaults between 1992 and 1997 on four male soldiers.
Deepcut features in the ongoing row over the deaths of four recruits.
'Vulnerable young men'
The Army maintains the recruits all committed suicide, but their families have demanded a public inquiry.
The separate police inquiry into Skinner's crimes began when one of his victims watched a discussion on the BBC's Kilroy programme which prompted him to speak about the abuse for the first time.
Skinner's victims were aged between 17 and 21. Three victims were at Deepcut while the fourth victim was at Arnhem Barracks in Aldershot.
Skinner, who kept canes and a riding crop in his locker which he used for sexual kicks, had been due to stand trial at Kingston Crown Court in September facing nine charges of indecent assault and one of male rape.
But he changed his plea and admitted five counts of indecent assault. The outstanding charges were quashed by the judge on Friday.
The married father of two, who is no longer in the Army, was a training instructor when he served at Deepcut with the Royal Logistics Corps.
He was sent to Deepcut and reduced to the rank of private after being convicted by a court martial for indecently exposing himself in a car park in Lisburn, Northern Ireland.
'Swept under carpet'
Judge Charles Tilling told Skinner on Friday: "For some reason best known to itself the Army then placed you in a position where you were in contact with and had influence over young recruits.
"Far from heeding the warning that your reduction in rank should have given you, you proceeded to indecently assault another three young vulnerable soldiers."
The court heard that following the incidents for which he was sentenced on Friday he was also court martialled for a further indecent assault and jailed for six months before being discharged from the Army.
Outside court on Friday, the victim of that further assault said: "After being court martialled and demoted he should never have been put in a place of authority and a training regiment with young men and women."
'Sexual predator'
Diane Gray, the mother of Geoff Gray, 17, from Durham, one of the four recruits who died at Deepcut, said outside court on Friday that the Army needed to make changes.
"The Army knew what was going on with Skinner and it was all swept under the carpet," she said.
"Public confidence needs to be restored."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: "This has been a traumatic case and the Army fully condemns any case of abuse.
"All complaints are thoroughly investigated.
"The Army fully co-operated with Surrey Police as soon as the allegations were received."
He said the Army had subsequently changed its procedures to ensure soldiers convicted of a similar offence were not posted to training establishments.
Surrey Police welcomed the sentence.
"Skinner was a sexual predator who preyed on young men in his care," said Det Ch Insp Peter O'Sullivan.
"We hope that the justice achieved today enables the victims to move on and acts as a closure to these dramatic events in their lives."
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Firms in Iraq's Oil-for-Food Program Revealed
Corruption Probe Names 4,734 Companies That Traded Under U.N. Arrangement
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52682-2004Oct21.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 21 -- A U.N.-appointed investigator probing corruption in the world body's oil-for-food program in Iraq published today a list of all 4,734 companies that traded with Saddam Hussein's government through the arrangement. The 300-page list provides the most comprehensive public account to date of Iraq's business dealings under the former program, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil to purchase humanitarian supplies.
Paul A. Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman who heads the investigation, said he hoped the list would provide governments and investigators the data required to pursue their own evaluations of the program. He also noted that it was legal for the companies listed to trade with Iraq through the program.
Volcker also said his team is preparing to begin discussions with former U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer, whose recent report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction detailed Iraq used the oil-for-food program to take in more than $1.7 billion in kickbacks from companies. Duelfer alleged that Iraq demanded that firms exporting Iraqi oil after September 2000 were required to deposit kickbacks in Iraqi bank accounts in Jordan and Lebanon.
Volcker said his investigators had made "substantial progress" in tracking down and "assessing the allegations of maladministration and corruption" in the program, but he declined to provide any details. He would not produce a substantial report until the fall of 2005, he said.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said revelations of misconduct in the program had damaged the United Nations. "That's why we want to get to the bottom of it and clear it as quickly as possible," he said.
Volcker said the French bank BNP, which handled most of the U.N. oil-for-food business, has not cooperated adequately with his investigators, but he said he expected that the dispute will be resolved. He also said the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, which is conducting its own probe for the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, had withheld vital information.
Robert S. Bennett, who is acting as BNP's lead counsel, said the French bank was "fully cooperating" with Volcker's panel. "I really think there must be this disconnect, because we have from time to time had difficulty clearly understanding what they want," he said. Charles Perkins, a spokesman for Ernst & Young, said, "All parties involved are in continuing discussions to work out the sharing of documents."
The latest data provide the most authoritative account to date of Iraq's business dealings. Firms based in Russia, France, Switzerland, Britain and Turkey purchased about $32 billion of Iraqi crude through the U.N. oil-for-food deal, about half of all oil sold by Hussein's government under the U.N. program, according to the list. Four U.S. companies are listed as having purchased $482 million worth of Iraqi crude.
Russian oil traders captured nearly one-third of Iraq's oil export market. Three Russian companies, Zarubezhneft and J.S.C. Alfa Eco and an unnamed company, bought more than $7.3 billion in oil. Two French firms, Total International Ltd. and SOCAP International Ltd., bought more than $3 billion. And a London-based Chinese firm, Sinochem International Oil London Co., bought $2.2 billion in crude.
The list includes direct sales to Texaco, which bought $28.3 million in oil, and Mobil Export Corp., which paid $152 million. Purchases by Chevron Products Co. and Phoenix came to $140.2 million and $162.25 million, respectively. The overall U.S. stake in Iraq's oil market was far greater. But U.S. oil companies, which consumed more than 40 percent of Iraq's exported oil, were forced to purchase through foreign traders.
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Halliburton may keep disputed money
Army may let company retain billions of dollars from Iraq work, despite auditors' questions.
(Reuters)
October 22, 2004
http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/22/news/fortune500/halliburton.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
NEW YORK - The Army is laying the groundwork to let Halliburton Co. keep several billion dollars paid for work in Iraq that Pentagon auditors say is questionable or unsupported by proper documentation, according to a report published Friday.
According to Pentagon documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Army has acknowledged that the Houston-based company might never be able to account properly for some of its work, which has been probed amid accusations that Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root unit overbilled the government for some operations in Iraq.
The company has hired a consulting firm to estimate what Halliburton's services should cost, the report said.
The newspaper, citing the documents and internal memorandums, said that officials are considering using the estimate to serve as the basis for "an equitable settlement,'' under which the Pentagon could drop many of the claims its auditors have made against the company.
But the Journal added that some disgruntled Pentagon officials see the effort to broker an outside settlement with the company as unusual because the contract is so large.
According to the report, Kellogg Brown & Root has so far billed about $12 billion in Iraq, and about $3 billion of that remains disputed by government officials.
The Journal also cited Pentagon records showing that $650 million in Halliburton billings are deemed questionable. An additional $2 billion is considered to have insufficient paperwork to justify the billing, the report said.
A representative for Halliburton (Research) did not immediately return a call seeking comment early Friday.
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U.S. to Aid Albania in Destroying Chemicals
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52695-2004Oct21.html
A 16-ton cache of material for chemical weapons left behind by Albania's former Communist government will be destroyed beginning next year with U.S. help, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) announced yesterday, describing the move as a breakthrough in the elimination of such stockpiles around the world.
A U.S.-Albanian agreement to destroy the chemicals marks the first expansion of a key U.S. nonproliferation program -- the Cooperative Threat Reduction initiative -- into a country outside the former Soviet Union, Lugar said. The program already has destroyed or dismantled more than 6,400 nuclear warheads and hundreds of other weapons in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
"We now have latitude to work with other countries who will know we have the willingness and the funds to cooperatively eliminate weapons of mass destruction," said Lugar, who co-founded the program 12 years ago with Sam Nunn, then a Democratic senator from Georgia. "If we do not continue to pursue this avenue . . . accidents and misappropriations will occur."
Late Wednesday, the Bush administration formally authorized the release of $20 million to fund the destruction of the Albanian cache, which consists of barrels of an unspecified chemical stored in a small brick depot in a rural area.
U.S. officials declined to divulge details about the cache for security reasons, but said the chemicals were acquired more than 15 years ago by the leaders of what was once Europe's most isolated and rigidly Marxist government. Albania became a multi-party democracy following the overthrow of communism in 1990, and its leaders have since sought close ties with the United States.
In theory, the Albanian chemicals could be loaded into bombs or artillery shells for use in a military conflict, or dispersed by terrorists in an attack against civilians, weapons experts said. The presence of such a cache in Albania was a violation of the country's commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Albania ratified in 1994.
Albanian leaders have said they discovered the chemicals while surveying the country for hidden small-arms caches placed in remote areas by the former government. The United States has already helped Albania install fences and surveillance gear, and will now provide money and technical support for the destruction of the chemicals over the next two years, Lugar said.
Nunn, now chief executive of a nonproliferation advocacy group, Nuclear Threat Initiative, said the case underscored the need for the global expansion of U.S. nonproliferation efforts approved by Congress last year. "We need to use this and other tools to move faster to keep dangerous weapons and materials out of the hands of the most dangerous people," Nunn said. "We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe."
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Nervous System Anomaly Seen in Gulf War Syndrome
REUTERS
by Anne Harding
October 22, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27804/story.htm
NEW YORK - Veterans with Gulf War syndrome appear to have subtle damage to the involuntary part of the nervous system, likely caused by low-level exposure to the chemical warfare agent sarin, according to a new study.
The findings tie together past research in both animals and humans on the syndrome, and neatly explain its symptoms, Dr. Robert Haley of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas told Reuters Health. "This study is sort of the missing link," he said.
The parasympathetic nervous system works in balance with the sympathetic nervous system to control many body functions, from heart rate and blood pressure to digestion. While the sympathetic nervous system kicks in during emergencies, activating the "fight or flight" response, the parasympathetic nervous system is active during rest, digestion and other restorative activities.
During sleep, activity of the parasympathetic nervous system increases. But in Gulf War vets with the syndrome it does not activate properly, Haley and his colleagues report in the American Journal of Medicine.
Haley's team followed 19 healthy vets and 22 with Gulf War syndrome over a 24-hour period, measuring several indicators of nervous system function. While the healthy vets showed a normal increase in parasympathetic activity during sleep, resulting in a decline in heart rate, the ill vets did not. Sick vets' nighttime heart rates were, on average, eight beats per minute faster than those without the syndrome.
Symptoms of Gulf War syndrome include chronic diarrhea, night sweats, unrefreshing sleep, fatigue and sexual dysfunction, a