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NUCLEAR
Proposed Irving power plant will affect N.B. decision
A Hint of a Nuclear Compromise by Iran
MPs aim to force Iran to resume nuclear activities
Iraqi Explosives Missing, U.N. Is Told
Bush Making Us Safer?
Explosives Missing from Iraqi Ex-military Site, Says U.N.
Powell Urges North Korea to Resume Nuclear Talks
S.Korea on Alert for Possible Infiltration
Top Russian Envoy Calls for Joint Projects With NK
We had power to prevent N. Korea from going nuclear
Protesters Weld Shut Entrance to Brazil Nuclear HQ
The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire
U.S. Nuclear Panel Closes Online Library
Nuclear body seeks new technology
Power outage trips alarms at Yankee
Fluor may miss DOE deadline on K Basins
Hot Waste Builds at U.S. Nuclear Plants
MILITARY
Officials Say Karzai Is Clear Winner
Politics Delay U.S. Airlift Of Peacekeepers to Sudan
Attacks on Women in West Sudan Draw an Outcry
Report Warns of Failure to Control Biological Weapons
Pentagon Probes Halliburton's Iraq Contracts
Whistle-Blower Asks for Halliburton Investigation
Powell's China Comments Anger Taiwanese
Beijing Rebuffs Powell on Taiwan
France and Germany to set up rapid reaction 'battle group'
U.N., U.S. confident in Iraqi elections
Allawi Blames Ambush on'Negligence'
Flurry of Violence Kills At Least 15
Allawi Faults U.S.-Led Forces on Execution of Iraqi Soldiers
At Tense Syria-Iraq Border, American Forces Are Battling Insurgents
Sharon defends plan to cede settlements
Israeli Parliament Begins Debate on Gaza Withdrawal
Israeli Parliament Approves Sharon's Gaza Withdrawal Plan
Analysis: Jordan's cold peace with Israel
Russian warships to join NATO exercise
NATO says no "firm evidence" of terrorist activity in Bosnia
U.S. Action Bars Right of Some Captured in Iraq
F.B.I. Saw Inmates Treated Harshly at Abu Ghraib
Carry on spying
U.S.-Led Afghan Coalition Critcized
Beijing boosts Delhi's bid for UN council seat
Pentagon responds to missing-explosives report
Inquiry ordered in massacre case
GI Janes battle Iraqi insurgents, M-60 in one hand
Embedded Reporter Saw No Explosives Search
A Soldier Speaks: Robert J. Acosta
Veterans' Voices Rise in Protest
China official asks Japan, US to consider neighbours in troop deployment
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Rehnquist's illness raises stakes in election
Military resists anti-drug role
9/11 reform bill facing 'lame-duck' congressional vote
9/11 Panel Leaders Give Warning
Mass. Governor Criticizes Flow of Terror Information
Delays on 9/11 Bill Are Laid to Pentagon
New York Police Expand DNA Testing
POLITICS
Increase in War Funding Sought Bush to Request $70 Billion More
Debt, the Greatest Threat to Our Security
Bush campaign accuses Kerry of 'fabricating' U.N. meetings
On the Campaign Trail
Final Ads Continue Trend of Negativity
Lafayette Park Blues
Judge upholds touch screens
OTHER
Environmental Proposals
Expert Criticizes Bush on Global Warming Policy
ACTIVISTS
Thailand Says 78 Muslims Died in Army Custody
The Soldiers Who Said No
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- canada
Proposed Irving power plant will affect N.B. decision about nuclear station
Canadian Press
CHRIS MORRIS
Oct 26, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20041026/ca_pr_on_bu/nb_irving_power_3
FREDERICTON(CP) - A decision on whether to dump or fix up New Brunswick's aging nuclear power plant could be swayed by a private firm's plans to build a giant gas-fired generator, says the province's energy minister.
Irving Oil, one of New Brunswick's largest industries, announced this week that it plans to build a mega power plant in Saint John, N.B., using gas from a liquefied natural gas terminal. The New Brunswick government, facing a looming energy crunch within 10 years, must soon decide whether it will spend at least $1.4 billion to upgrade the aging Candu reactor at Point Lepreau, in southern New Brunswick.
"It is an independent decision from that (the Irving) announcement," Fitch said of the decision on Lepreau.
"But we'll have to put it on the scales as we make the decision."
NB Power, the provincial Crown utility, is preparing a recommendation to the Tory government on the future of Lepreau.
Following that step, the Tories are expected to announce the fate of the Lepreau generating station, which has a maximum capacity of 600 megawatts, before Christmas.
Bob Scott of NB Power said Tuesday it's too early to say much about the Irving Oil announcement, which proposes a 500 to 750 megawatt, gas-fired station to be built somewhere in the Saint John area.
"This idea that has been put forward by Irving Oil company still requires a great deal of work before it would even get to the proposal stage," Scott said.
Tom Adams of Energy Probe, a national energy watchdog based in Toronto, said private generating stations are becoming common in North America.
"This is how most power plants get built, either by or directly on behalf of customers, rather than the old model where the utility built for itself and then customers were stuck with it."
Adams is a strong critic of NB Power which he has faulted over the years for its poor decisions and large debts. The utility has a debt of over $3 billion.
In addition to complex problems relating to the Lepreau nuclear station, the utility recently launched a $1-billion lawsuit over a failed deal with Venezuela for the purchase of a special fuel called Orimulsion for the generating station at Coleson Cove, N.B.
Adams said one of the reasons Irving Oil may want its own generating station is its concern about NB Power.
"One of the factors that may be motivating this is a loss of confidence in NB Power," he said.
Adams said that while the Irving plan may be bad news for NB Power, it should be good news for consumers in New Brunswick.
He said that a large, gas-fired power plant will help ensure a reliable supply of electricity in the future.
The Irving plant would be capable of providing as much as one-third of New Brunswick's energy needs.
-------- iran
A Hint of a Nuclear Compromise by Iran
October 26, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/middleeast/26iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Oct. 25- In a reversal, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator hinted Monday that Iran might maintain its freeze on enriching uranium to end a standoff with European countries over its nuclear program.
His remarks came one day after a Foreign Ministry spokesman had rejected a request by three European countries last week that Iran indefinitely suspend uranium enrichment in return for technical and economic assistance, saying Iran was waiting for a more "balanced" offer.
"The European proposal for an unlimited suspension of uranium enrichment can be implemented, provided it does not contradict the Islamic Republic's criteria," the ISNA news agency quoted the nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, as saying on Monday.
"We have said that we accept the suspension as long as it is voluntary,'' Mr. Rowhani said. "No country has the right to deprive us of our right."
He did not say how long Iran might be willing to forgo enrichment, but said it would "patiently take any measure towards confidence-building."
His comments were the first positive response to the proposal offered by Germany, France and Britain on Thursday. The three countries asked Iran to give up its enrichment program in return for a guarantee to help Iran build a light-water power reactor and to provide a supply of reactor fuel, as well as a package of economic trade incentives.
--------
MPs aim to force Iran to resume nuclear activities
TEHRAN (AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026143219.7cuc62n6.html
Iranian MPs have submitted a bill which would force the government to resume uranium enrichment, a key process in the nuclear fuel cycle, in defiance of the international community, a deputy said Tuesday.
"Ninety-three deputies have signed the bill," said Rafaat Bayat, a conservative MP whose faction controls the 290-seat parliament, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.
It calls for "an immediate halt to the suspension of uranium enrichment as well as to the voluntary implementation of the additional protocol" of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), she said.
Bayat added that it would be debated Sunday, but a senior parliamentary official ruled that out.
"The only text which will be examined on Sunday will be the proposed law adopted by the foreign affairs and national security committee," deputy speaker Hamid Reza Hadji-Babai told AFP.
He said 50 MPs had signed a request for the bill to be given priority.
On October 5, the committee gave preliminary approval to the bill which calls for the government "to take action for the country to master civilian nuclear technology, especially in the fuel production cycle".
But the text does not demand an immediate resumption of enrichment.
Iran's pro-reform government agreed in late 2003 to suspend enrichment and signed the additional protocol allowing more intrusive inspections by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The decisions have been implemented without ratification by parliament, which has since fallen under the control of conservatives after most reformist candidates were banned from running in February elections.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, said Monday that Tehran was ready to consider a European request to maintain the enrichment suspension, ahead of renewed talks on the nuclear standoff in Vienna on Wednesday.
Three European states last week offered Iran a deal under which Tehran would receive valuable nuclear technology if it indefinitely suspended all uranium enrichment activities, a key stage in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Britain, France and Germany hope that if Iran agrees to the deal it will be possible to stave off US demands for the nuclear issue to be sent before the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
The two sides are to meet again Wednesday in the Austrian capital, where the IAEA is based, to hear Tehran's response to their offer.
The proposed law states that "the Europeans have called for Iran to put a total halt to its activities to enrich uranium and to purchase its fuel from foreign countries".
Depending on the level of purification, enriched uranium can be used either as fuel for a civilian reactor or as the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran strongly rejects US accusations it is seeking to manufacture atomic weapons.
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraqi Explosives Missing, U.N. Is Told
U.S. Disputes Timing of Loss of Munitions Sealed by Inspectors at Weapons Facility
By Colum Lynch and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62731-2004Oct25.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 25 -- The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported Monday that massive quantities of high explosives at an Iraqi weapons facility have disappeared, including some material under U.N. seal because of its potential use to detonate a nuclear bomb.
U.N. and Iraqi officials indicated the explosives were lost while the country was under U.S. occupation. But U.S. officials suggested that the munitions may have disappeared before the U.S.-led forces established full control over the country. They said a search of the facility by U.S. troops shortly after the fall of Baghdad last year turned up no evidence of the explosives.
The conflicting accounts generated confusion over who bore responsibility for allowing the loss of the explosives that had been stored at the sprawling Qaqaa weapons facility outside Baghdad before the war. The munitions included the explosives RDX, PETN and HMX.
HMX, the only one of the three under U.N. seal, has application as a nuclear trigger. But it and the other two can also be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners and produce warheads for missiles.
The disappearance of the material raised the possibility that some could already have found its way into explosive devices used against U.S. and allied troops in Iraq -- or could do so in the future. But U.S. officials in both Washington and Baghdad played down such a likelihood, noting that the car bombs and roadside explosives that have menaced troops have tended to be made from old artillery shells or dynamite.
Pentagon and State Department officials said the matter has been referred to the Iraq Survey Group, a CIA-run agency charged with accounting for what became of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. But Charles A. Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector who heads the group, said in a telephone interview that he had received no such orders.
Duelfer also said that a U.S. team inspecting the site in May 2003 turned up no evidence of explosives under U.N. seal. "My sense is, it's been looted, it's gone missing," he said of the material. "I don't know the specifics, but it's not there now.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, presented the U.N. Security Council with an Oct. 10 letter from the interim Iraqi government reporting the loss of the explosives. Word of the letter was reported Monday by the New York Times and CBS News.
The disclosure came less than a month after ElBaradei warned the council that U.N. satellite photos had detected "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement" of buildings linked to Iraq's former covert nuclear weapons program. Those buildings "housed high precision equipment" that had been subject to U.N. monitoring during Saddam Hussein's reign.
The letter from Mohammad J. Abbas, a senior official in the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology, said that nearly 215 tons of HMX, 156 tons of RDX and 6 tons of PETN had gone missing after April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces. The letter blamed a "lack of security" for the loss.
The IAEA first discovered Iraq's stores of HMX and RDX in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War. The agency placed more than 250 tons of HMX under U.N. seal at Qaqaa. An additional ton of the explosive was housed at the nearby facility of Hatteen, about 24 miles south of Baghdad.
The IAEA authorized U.N. weapons inspectors to use some of the explosives in 1996 to destroy an Iraqi biological weapons facility. More than 32 tons of HMX under IAEA seal disappeared from the site from 1998 to 2002. Iraq told U.N. authorities that it had used the explosive in its cement industry.
ElBaradei informed the Security Council on Monday that the last time IAEA inspectors were able to verify the presence of the explosives at Qaqaa was in January 2003, two months before the U.S. invasion began.
Administration officials have acknowledged the inability of U.S. troops to secure the large stocks of weaponry discovered after the invasion. But officials at both the Pentagon and State Department suggested Monday that the high explosives said to have vanished from Qaqaa may have been removed from the facility by Hussein loyalists before the invasion, then hidden or sent abroad.
"We don't know that this site was looted," a senior State Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity citing department policy. "All we know is that it's not there. We don't know whether it was moved by Saddam before the war."
The official added that U.S. authorities lacked a complete list of material that had been placed under IAEA seal. "We weren't doing accounting of everything under IAEA seal. Some stuff yes, but not all of it," he said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said U.S.-led forces searched the Qaqaa facility after the invasion.
"Coalition forces were present in the vicinity at various times during and after major combat operations," he said. "The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility. While some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals."
In satellite photos of the Qaqaa site taken in November 2003 and shown to The Washington Post on Monday by senior U.N. officials, signs of damage from previous U.S. bombing campaigns and looting were evident. But the facilities that stored HMX and RDX were still largely intact, according to the officials.
Graham reported from Washington. Staff writers Walter Pincus and Robin Wright contributed to this report from Washington.
--------
Bush Making Us Safer?
Informed Comment
by Juan Cole
October 26, 2004
http://progressivetrail.org/articles/041025Cole.shtml
The complete lack of interest of the Bush administration in actually securing dangerous materials connected to the old, abandoned Iraqi nuclear program has long belied Bush's stated concern with Iraq's alleged weapons as a pretext for the war.
James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger with Khalid al-Ansary reveal in the New York Times today that the Bush administration allowed 380 tons of super-powerful explosives to disappear from al-Qaqaa, one of Iraq's sensitive military installations, after the war in spring of 2003. These are not ordinary bombs. This explosive material, HMX and RDX, can be used to detonate atomic bombs, collapse buildings, and form warheads for missiles. A pound of it brought down a passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.
A lot of the roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of US troops and maimed thousands have been made of HMX and RDX, as suggested by how infrequently the guerrillas have blown themselves up in planting them. HMX and RDX are favored by terrorists because they are stable and will only explode via a blasting cap.
Incredibly, the International Atomic Energy Commission and European Union officials warned Bush before the war that these explosives needed to be safeguarded.
Josh Marshall is suspicious that this major screw-up has been known to the Bush administration for some time, and that it may have pressured the Iraqi government not to mention it.
If Bush cannot even protect our troops from explosives at a sensitive facility in a country he had conquered, how is he going to protect the American public from terrorists who have not even yet been identified?
The disappearance of these explosives is yet one more disaster caused by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's mania to send a small military force into Iraq. Rumsfeld over-ruled the officers in the Pentagon, who wanted hundreds of thousands of troops and knew that many would be needed to secure the country after the war. Why hasn't Rumsfeld been fired? He ran Iraq for most of the last 18 months and it is beginning to be as cratered as the dark side of the moon.
Only two weeks ago, The International Atomic Energy Commission reported that not only had dual-use equipment been stripped from an old Iraq nuclear weapons facility, but even the buildings had been stripped and dismantled. Muhammad al-Baradei said that some of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Iraq has already begun showing up in other countries. But the dual-use equipment, which has applications in nuclear weapons construction, has disappeared. (Hmm. I wonder which neighbor of Iraq might be desperately at work on a nuclear bomb and might be willing to pay top dollar for such equipment?) How bad a job Bush is doing is clear when we consider that we might well be relieved to know that this equipment went to Iran, since that means Bin Laden doesn't have it.
So let me ask this again. Bush is making us safer? The American public trusts him to fight terror more effectively than Kerry? On what record? Bush appears to have all but just called up Usamah and Khamenei and told them where Saddam's old stuff was in case they needed it for their programs. And he politely made sure that no pesky US troops would be around to impede their access.
Bush administration spokesmen are being careful to say that the hundreds of tons of explosives stolen from al-Qaqaa are not themselves useful as fissile material, i.e. they are not enriched uranium or plutonium.
But the fact is that one of the first such "missing deadly weapons" scandals to break in Iraq had to do with the disappearance of radioactive materials from Tuwaitha. This theft was known already in the summer of 2003, and worries were expressed that that material could be used to make a dirty bomb.
So Bush not only failed to have al-Qaqaa guarded against theft of HMX and RDX, not only failed to guard against theft of dual-use equipment from a long-defunct nuclear program site, but also failed to do the elementary work of ensuring that the notorious al-Tuwaitha facility was secured against the theft of radiocative materials!
Since Tuwaitha was the great bugaboo impelling the Iraq war in the first place, you would imagine that Bush would have sent out a unit to secure and search it immediately. But no, he politely let the looters have a look-around first, waiting in line.
I know someone is going to write me asking whether the existence of all this equipment and dangerous explosives doesn't prove that Saddam still had an active weapons program. The answer is a categorical "no." A lot of this stuff was left over from the 1980s when there had been such active programs, but which were abandoned after the Gulf War. Ironically, the bits and pieces Saddam still had were useless to a major state. But they could be stolen and cobbled together by a small band of terrorists to deadly effect.
I just don't feel any safer with Bush in the White House. Maybe it is just me.
Reuters has the main stories of mayhem in Iraq on Sunday. The big one is of the cold-blooded murder of nearly 50 Iraqi army recruits in Diyala province. They were killed mafia-style, a bullet in the back of the head. They were unarmed and being trucked back from their training. This was obviously an inside job, since the guerrillas knew where they were and that they were unarmed. Iraqi al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, which is plausible since Monotheism and Holy War does hate Shiites, and the troops were poor Shiites from the south.
I googled Ed Seitz, the State Department security official killed by a mortar shell on Sunday. The story of his death at the hands of nativist Iraqi guerrillas is even more complicated and poignant if it is true that he was a crusader against the anti-globalization movement who tried to keep Canadian anarchists out of the US and used to ask them where Bin Laden is. The contrast of the demand for open borders for corporate purposes and for closed borders with regard to ideas is striking. In some ways, Iraq is proving highly resistant to the distinction, and is if anything turning it on its head. Companies are being chased out of Iraq, but all sorts of ideas are swirling in from Iraq's nieghbors and from the United States and Europe.
--------
Explosives Missing from Iraqi Ex-military Site, Says U.N.
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
October 26, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=251
VIENNA, Austria - Hundreds of tons of explosives are missing from a site near Baghdad that was part of Saddam Hussein's dismantled nuclear arms program but never secured by the U.S. military, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Monday.
The missing 377 tons of high explosives - monitored by inspectors from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (UAEA) until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 - could potentially be used to make a detonator for a nuclear bomb or in conventional weapons as well as in a variety of other military and civilian uses, arms experts said.
Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology informed the IAEA two weeks ago that the explosives had been "lost after April 9, 2003, through the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security," the watchdog agency told the 15-nation U.N. Security Council.
The New York Times said arms experts feared the most immediate use of the explosives would be to attack U.S. or Iraqi forces, which have come under increasing fire ahead of Iraq's elections due in January.
Diplomats at the IAEA warned that materials useful in making nuclear bombs could also easily be shipped out of Iraq and sold to countries like neighbor Iran or terrorist groups.
The IAEA has been barred from most of Iraq since the war and has watched from afar as the former nuclear sites it once monitored have been stripped by looters.
Vienna diplomats said the IAEA had cautioned the United States about the danger of the explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told U.S. officials about the need to keep them secured.
U.S. presidential challenger John Kerry accused President Bush of committing a massive blunder in failing to safeguard the explosives.
Kerry Sees "Great Blunder"
"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the greatest blunders of this administration, and the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and this country at greater risk," Kerry told supporters in Dover, New Hampshire.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Danforth said the Bush administration was investigating the matter.
"Obviously this is a serious matter. We are looking into it," he said.
ElBaradei informed Washington of the seriousness of the matter on Oct. 15, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in Vienna. Bush was informed days later, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.
Prior to the war, 215 tons of HMX explosives had been sealed and tagged with the IAEA emblem while stored at Iraq's sprawling Al Qaqaa military facility. Some 156 tons of RDX and 6.4 tons of PETN were also stored at the Al Qaqaa site and monitored by the IAEA.
The U.N. agency last verified the presence and amounts of the three types of explosive at Al Qaqaa in January 2003, ElBaradei told the Security Council.
Iraq was allowed to keep some explosives for civilian use after the IAEA completed its dismantling of Saddam's covert nuclear weapons program after the 1991 Gulf War.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA, who declined to be identified, said it was hard to understand why the U.S. military had failed to secure the facility.
"This was a very well-known site. If you could have picked a few sites that you would have to secure then ... Al Qaqaa would certainly be one of the main ones," the diplomat said.
At the Pentagon, a U.S. defense official said Al Qaqaa was "well known as a storage depot for conventional explosives" but doubted U.S. forces in Iraq made it "a high-priority location" for providing security.
The missing explosives were not weapons of mass destruction, the official said, adding that U.S. forces gave higher priority to suspected WMD sites after the invasion. No WMD were found, however.
"You just can't leave a guard force at all these places you find. If you leave a squad at all 10,000 places that are known so far, then there's 50,000 (troops) out of action," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Additional reporting by Javier E. David in New York; Patricia Wilson in Dover, New Hampshire; Will Dunham at the Pentagon in Washington; and Irwin Arieff at the United Nations in New York)
-------- korea
Powell Urges North Korea to Resume Nuclear Talks
October 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Asia-Powell.html?pagewanted=all
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell urged North Korea on Tuesday to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks if it wants international aid, while South Korea ended a high alert triggered by holes cut into a border fence.
South Korea, meanwhile, called on Washington and other participants in six-nation talks to show more flexibility in resolving the nuclear standoff -- comments that appeared to distance Seoul from U.S. proposals.
Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon urged ``all participating countries in the six-nation talks to make more creative and realistic proposals to help bring North Korea to the talks as soon as possible.''
Powell said Washington has no intention of changing its North Korea policy soon, but would work to resolve the nuclear dispute.
``We agreed to continue devoting maximum efforts to achieving this goal through multilateral diplomacy and six-party talks,'' Powell said in a joint news conference with the South Korean foreign minister.
``Clearly, everybody wants to see the next round of six-party talks get started,'' Powell said, referring to the stalled talks among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia. ``This is the time to move forward, to bring this matter to a conclusion.''
He said the goal was to help the people of impoverished North Korea have a better life, in part by providing more food aid.
``We don't intend to attack North Korea, we don't have any hostile intent notwithstanding their claims,'' he said. ``It is this nuclear issue that is keeping the international community from assisting North Korea.''
U.S. officials believe North Korea is biding its time on six-party talks, sensing that Democratic candidate John Kerry might win the election and be easier to deal with than Bush.
Powell, who was in Seoul following visits this week to Japan and China, also met Tuesday with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and South Korea's unification minister.
Powell predicted that North Korea will return to the talks after next week's U.S. election, South Korean officials said.
Meanwhile, South Korea said that two mysterious holes found on the wire fence on the tense border with North Korea were most likely used not by communist infiltrators but by a South Korean defector to the North. It ordered its troops to stand down from a high alert.
About 60 miles north of Seoul, South Korean border guards had earlier found two holes in a wire fence at the buffer zone that has separated the two Koreas since their 1950-53 war. The conflict ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, and the two Koreas remain technically at war.
The highly unusual discovery of the holes -- found on the fence checked daily by troops for signs of infiltration -- had triggered fears of North Korean commandoes slipping through the border and led South Korea to tighten roadblocks and traffic checks north of Seoul.
``After investigating the way the fence was cut and the foot prints in the scene, we have concluded that an unidentified person crossed into the north,'' said Brig. Gen. Hwang Joong-sun, an operational officer of the South Korean military.
Three rounds of six-party talks, held in Beijing, have yielded little progress. North Korea skipped a fourth round that was to have taken place in September, and lashed out Tuesday at Washington.
``It is impossible to open the talks now that the U.S. is becoming evermore undisguised in its hostile policy toward the (North),'' said North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
``The Bush administration is employing a sleight of hand to mislead the public opinion at home and abroad and garner support from more electors,'' it said.
North Korea reiterated that it would rejoin the six-nation talks only if Washington is ready to roll back its hostile policy, and offer a ``reward'' for freezing its nuclear development.
The United States is seeking the permanent denuclearization of North Korea and has said it will provide the communist government with economic benefits only after it offers a credible commitment to meet U.S. disarmament demands.
Powell rejected the North's demand that Washington change its proposals.
``We modified (our proposal) for the third round of six party talks, showed flexibility and tried to accommodate the interests of other parties,'' he said. ``The way to move forward is to have the next round of six party talks, so that we can discuss that proposal and not have a negotiation with ourselves in a press conference.''
--------
S.Korea on Alert for Possible Infiltration
The Associated Press
By SANG-HUN CHOE
October 26, 2004
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/90-10262004-389521.html
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea went on high alert over possible infiltration by North Korean agents Tuesday after border guards found a hole cut in a fence. The alert came as Secretary of State Colin Powell urged the North to return to nuclear talks if it wants international assistance.
During his visit to Seoul, Powell said the United States and South Korea reconfirmed their commitment to a "peaceful denuclearized Korean Peninsula."
"We agreed to continue devoting maximum efforts to achieving this goal through multilateral diplomacy and six-party talks," Powell said in a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
"Clearly, everybody wants to see the next round of six-party talks get started," Powell said, speaking after visiting Japan and China, which also participate in six-nation nuclear talks on North Korea. "This is the time to move forward, to bring this matter to a conclusion."
He said the goal was to help North Koreans have a better life, in part by providing more food aid.
"We don't intend to attack North Korea, we don't have any hostile intent notwithstanding their claims," he said. "It is this nuclear issue that is keeping the international community from assisting North Korea."
U.S. officials believe North Korea is biding its time on the nuclear disarmament talks, sensing that Democratic candidate John Kerry might win the election and be easier to deal with than President Bush.
On Tuesday, Powell met South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun as well as South Korea's foreign minister and unification minister.
"Secretary Powell said he predicts that North Korea will come to the six-party talks after the U.S. election," Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Jong-jae said.
Powell was in Seoul to discuss a strategy for restarting the talks and a redeployment of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula, following visits to Japan and China, where officials told him they believed it possible for the nuclear talks to resume in the next few months.
About 60 miles to the north, South Korean border guards found a hole in a wire fence at the buffer zone that has separated the two Koreas since their 1950-53 war, Brig. Maj. Gen. Hwang Joong-sun said. The conflict ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, and the two Koreas remain technically at war. Click here!
The 16-inch by 12-inch hole, which was cut through two layers of wire fence yards apart, was discovered early Tuesday.
"We are conducting our military operations in case there is an infiltration by an enemy," Hwang told a news conference. He declined to elaborate.
The military's vigilance was at its highest level short of what happens when a communist infiltrator is actually spotted, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
Commenting on the border development, Powell said: "There was an apparent small breach in the wire system coming south out of the DMZ and it's being looked into. That's the extent of the information that I have."
Powell was accompanied by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, the chief U.S. delegate to the nuclear talks among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.
North Korea skipped a meeting that was to have taken place in September, and lashed out at Washington ahead of Powell's visit.
Pyongyang said U.S.-led naval exercises taking place this week in Japanese waters were a provocation, and that prospects for new six-nation talks were getting dimmer every day.
The United States is seeking the permanent denuclearization of North Korea and has said it will provide the communist government with economic benefits only after it offers a credible commitment to meet U.S. disarmament demands.
The United States announced earlier this month that it will withdraw 12,500 troops from South Korea by 2008. Once completed, 24,500 U.S. troops - two-thirds of the current number in South Korea - will remain in the country.
The United States pledged to upgrade its remaining forces on the peninsula to counter fears that North Korea might become emboldened and that investors would be deterred from the South.
South Korea recently admitted conducting a plutonium-based nuclear experiment in 1982 and a uranium-enrichment experiment in 2000.
South Korea says they were part of scientific research, and told Powell on Tuesday it had no intention of developing nuclear weapons.
"We didn't intend and will not intend to develop nuclear weapons," Chung's spokesman, Kim, quoted the minister as telling Powell. October 26, 2004 2:36 AM
-----
Top Russian Envoy Calls for Joint Projects With NK
10-26-2004
Hankooki.com
By Jung Sung-ki
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200410/kt2004102616303311990.htm
Russian Ambassador to South Korea Teymuraz O. Ramishivili yesterday called for multinational economic projects involving North Korea as part of efforts to resolve the ongoing stalemate over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs.
``What the North needs is international economic projects, including inter-Korean ones, to help the country out of its extreme poverty,'' the top Russian envoy said at the sixth Korea-Russia Forum held in Pyongchang, Kangwon Province. He added that humanitarian aid has limited effect in persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions.
``Multinational business projects involving North Korea will not produce results in the short-term, but they will surely help the country change and improve their systems, leading to a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff,'' he said.
Ramishivili stressed that international economic aid for North Korea should keep pace with developments in the ongoing six-way talks aimed at resolving the 24-month long nuclear impasse.
The Russian ambassador also argued that it is not appropriate to demand North Korea follow Libya's model for nuclear disarmament. ``North Korea and Libya have some things in common, but there are also many different aspects between the two countries,'' he said. ``Libya has grown rich under a market economy and hasn't been under communist rule.''
To peacefully resolve the nuclear issue at the multinational negotiation table, all parties concerned should refrain from making threatening remarks, Ramishivili advised.
The two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and China have held three rounds of six-way talks to seek a solution to the crisis, but no significant progress has been made. A scheduled September meeting did not happen because North Korea refused to attend it, citing Washington's ``hostile'' policy toward it and South Korea's past nuclear experiments.
The nuclear dispute erupted in the fall of 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted running a uranium-based nuclear weapons program _ a claim denied by the North. The North's alleged uranium program violated a 1994 accord under which the communist country promised not to pursue any nuclear weapons program, including its known plutonium-based one.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
-----
We had power to prevent N. Korea from going nuclear
October 26, 2004
St. Petersburg Times
By PETER D. ZIMMERMAN
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/26/Opinion/We_had_power_to_preve.shtml
NANJING, China - Senior Chinese nuclear scientists attending an international arms control meeting in this ancient capital city, as well as senior officials and scholars in Beijing, express significant fears over the twin developments on Taiwan and in South Korea. Both countries have been caught red-handed producing enriched uranium or plutonium which can be used in nuclear weapons. Both countries are also a long way from being able to build atomic weapons. But the same Chinese scientists are even more worried about the failure of the Six Party Talks intended to end the North Korean nuclear program. They do not want yet another nuclear power on their borders; Russia and India are enough.
The question most frequently asked in Chinese scientific circles is whether the Six Party Talks, including North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States have any chance to succeed. These are the talks of which George W. Bush appears to be so proud because he is reaching out to "form a coalition." My Chinese counterparts point out that the dispute over a nuclear North Korea, formally called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK, does not involve four of the six parties. Early on North Korea cast the issue as a simple one between the United States and itself, and it has stuck to that formula.
What North Korea wants, and the Chinese impressed this on me most strongly, is some kind of normal relations with the United States along with a pledge that the United States will not invade the DPRK. In principle, these should have been easy for the United States to grant. Diplomatic recognition does not state that the United States approves of a government; it merely says that we acknowledge that the government controls a specific piece of land, and that we will talk to that government should problems arise. As to the security pledge, it's obvious that we have no intention of going to war on the Korean Peninsula for a second time, so long as the DPRK does not attack our ally, South Korea. North Korea's immense artillery formations along the Demilitarized Zone could pulverize Seoul, the South Korean capital city, in a matter of hours, no matter what the United States did short of a major nuclear first strike practically on the city limits of Seoul.
Among the NATO nations, the United States stands practically alone in refusing to extend diplomatic recognition to North Korea. Most of our closest friends and allies, including France, Britain, Canada and Germany, accredit ambassadors to Pyongyang.
In the fall of 2002, long before the North Koreans broke the seals placed on its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency and months before they ejected the IAEA's inspectors, the DPRK stated officially and publicly that it would agree to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, if the United States would discuss the outstanding issues face to face.
Face-to-face negotiations are precisely what George W. Bush rejects. His first state visitor after he was sworn in in 2001 was Kim Dae Jung, then-president of South Korea and a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his attempts to build bridges to the North. Secretary of State Colin Powell, after meeting with President Kim, announced that the United States would continue to support Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" toward the DPRK and would continue the Clinton administration's policy of openness to both countries. A few hours later, President Kim had met with Bush and been told that because the U.S. president "loathed" Kim Jong Il, the mercurial and sometimes very oddly behaving "Dear Leader" of North Korea, American support for the sunshine policy and the Clinton policy was withdrawn.
While Bush was focusing on spurious intelligence to spur the United States to war with Iraq, Pyongyang was desperately sending signals that it did not particularly want to reprocess the plutonium in its nuclear reactor, but that U.S. actions were forcing just such a decision. While the Bush administration looked high and low for a nonexistent Iraqi nuclear program, Kim Jong Il's scientists were preparing to reprocess plutonium, ordering the chemicals and, finally, ejecting the IAEA inspectors from its Yong Byong nuclear installation.
The Bush administration, its attention on Iraq to the exclusion of real problems, failed to do much to meet North Korea even a quarter of the way. In the end, all the Bush team could do was convene six nations, at least three of which were impotent when it came to solving the bilateral problem with North Korea, and hold three meetings, none of which made much progress.
While Bush looked for nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq - as Condoleezza Rice suggested, to ensure that the next warning did not come as a mushroom cloud - the capability to generate plenty of mushroom clouds was being acquired by North Korea.
I cannot guess the probable outcome had the Bush administration continued the Clinton administration's initiatives on North Korea. The DPRK is a very difficult negotiating partner, and even their principal friends, the Chinese, agree. But I cannot imagine that we would have been worse off with bilateral negotiations and a few small concessions made by the United States. It would have hurt nothing to try. Indeed, my Chinese counterparts still urge such a course with China acting to interpret honestly each side's problems with the other. North Korea is now a nuclear power, with four to six nuclear usable weapons assembled on Bush's watch - built only after the DPRK told us exactly what we could have done to prevent it.
Without question, George W. Bush has failed the American people and put them and their Northeast Asian friends in harm's way so that he could avoid talking in one direction while starting an unnecessary war in the other. His statement during the third presidential debate that Six Party Talks on North Korea were better than bilateral talks because more nations were involved was self-serving and duplicitous. After all, he refused any kind of multilateral diplomacy concerning Iraq.
-- Peter D. Zimmerman is professor of science and security at King's College London and a former chief scientist of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [Last modified October 26, 2004, 00:40:26]
-------- latinamerica
Protesters Weld Shut Entrance to Brazil Nuclear HQ
(Reuters)
Oct 26, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041026/sc_nm/environment_brazil_greenpeace_dc_1
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Greenpeace activists welded shut the entrance to the headquarters of Brazil's state nuclear power company on Tuesday and chained themselves together in front of the building.
The pro-environment group said it was protesting against new investments in Brazil's nuclear program, including a government plan to enrich uranium that has caused a dispute with the United Nations (news - web sites) over nonproliferation inspections.
The unfurled a banner outside the Brazilian Nuclear Industries (INB) in Rio de Janeiro demanding an end to Brazil's "nuclear adventure."
"We want to know if the population agrees with the proliferation of nuclear energy in Brazil," one protester said before firefighters cut the activists free and police led them away.
The uranium enrichment program has been in the headlines since Brazil refused to allow officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to fully inspect its new Resende uranium enrichment plant, northwest of Rio de Janeiro.
The IAEA wants full access to Resende to ensure no uranium is diverted for weapons but Brazil will not allow access to the plant's centrifuges, saying it fears industrial espionage.
Brazil, home to the world's sixth-largest proven reserves of uranium, says its enrichment operations will be entirely peaceful and small compared to other countries. Brazil has two nuclear reactors and is considering a third.
A Science and Technology Ministry spokesman said the government was revising Brazil's nuclear program and hoped to present recommendations to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by the end of the year.
A commentary by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control published in Friday's issue of the journal Science said the Resende plant had the potential to produce enough enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs every year, a claim Brazil has denied.
-------- terrorism
The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire
10. 26. 04
sierratimes.com
By Anthony C. LoBaido
http://www.sierratimes.com/04/10/26/lobaido.htm
Part 2 of 5
Think of the architect of the Tiananmen Square Massacre getting a 21 gun salute at the Arlington National Cemetery. Think of China threatening to nuke Los Angels if America comes to the aid of Taiwan. Think of Bill Clinton saying China can help America with our (America's) human rights problems. Think of Tibet and forced abortion and the "one child policy." Think America is changing China? Think again.
In other writings I predicted the rise of Nelson Mandela and his murderous ANC to power in South Africa. What I could not have foreseen was the massive killing of the white South African farmers; 1660-plus out of 40,000 with another 9,0000 recorded attacks. (Some say there have been 15,000 attacks.) On the night of Nelson Mandela's funeral it is rumored that "Operation White Clean Up" will begin and every white person left in South Africa will be killed. Will this urban myth become reality? Let's hope it won't for everyone's sake. But if it does, would anyone really be that shocked?
Sadly, I also predicted 9-11 many, many years before it occurred. I even sensed it as a small child growing up in a then pristine and even idyllic Long Island. (This was before it was completely overwhelmed and ruined by the Jerry Springerization of traditional America and the apocalyptic Third World immigration wave.) I used to plead with my parents to move away from New York. The energy in that city always frightened me.
On the morning of 9-11 my sister Carol-Donna phoned our beautiful home and exclaimed, "Anthony, you were right!"
I thought it would be a radioactive nuke on Wall Street, perhaps even a suitcase nuclear weapon placed in the editorial offices of The Wall Street Journal or some such terrible thing. Neil Livingstone wrote a book about all of this, "America the Vulnerable." No one listened to Mr. Livingstone, I presume.
Maybe a small-scale nuclear attack is still to come. Maybe that's right around the corner. It could happen when "The Last Fatwa" (an "order" probably issued by the Muslim Pope after the Abu Ghraib prison photos were made public) is carried out. And it is very possible that it will be carried out to the letter.
Consider that the Aum Shin Rikyo cult of Japan most likely detonated the world's first non-governmental nuclear bomb in the Australian Outback in the early 1990's. This was cited in The New York Times and in Bill Bryson's book on Australia, "In a Sunburned Country." In the past Aum members have worked with rouge Russian special forces from an elite unit specializing in sabotage called Vymple. (Read my article about this on WND.com.) Who is to say al-Qaida ("The Base" in Arabic) hasn't received similar help?
Indeed, Russia and China might well assist these terrorists. They are the two greatest mass murdering regimes in human history. (Stalin and Mao were quite a pair.) Cuba, North Korea, ANC-led South Africa and the drug cartels have also been helping al-Qaida. In fact, al-Qaida operatives have been using South African passports given them out of the Department of Home Affairs, where the number two man on the totem pole - a Billy Something or Other, a high level ANC intelligence operative -- worked to hamstring and undermine the conservative Zulu leader of Home Affairs. Where are Oprah!, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather on that story? Where's Good Morning America? Or should I rather say, "Good Night America?"
Moreover, a nuclear attack on New York could transpire because these Muslim jihadists can't look at the sin in their own lives. Much in the same way so many Christians feel the need to attack any and all gays. Evangelical Christians have more abortions, watch more pornography and divorce at a higher rate than the general population. But why look at the sin in our own lives when we can blame gays and Jews and others for our idolatry, which is embedded in our DNA? Many non-gay men have anal sex with their wives and or girlfriends.
What's the difference between that and gay sex? This is the MTV-raised, feminized, Playboy-reading, Howard Stern-watching America that gave you the Abu Ghraib prison debacle. (Bush Jr. was so wrong, this IS how we do things in America!) It's no accident. This is who we are. Which retard let a woman like Janice Karpinski run that Arab prison? Again, it's Allah McBeal "liberated" by Ally McBeal. And may we all ask just who feminized the American military and who is going to un-feminize it?
These atomic Muslims (who understand clearly the Abu Ghraib prison photos were for all intents and purposes the final shredding of moral America no matter what the Bush Jr. Administration's spin might be) also want to mimic America's genocidal handiwork in Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam and Laos, Sudan, Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Legions around the world will cheer their coming attack on America. Those Americans ready for a war to eradicate political correctness, the role of the Federal Reserve Bank and Hollywood's Christ-hating and debased elite might well see this as a roadmap to liberty. In reality it will be the end of our remaining freedoms and the beginning of a dictatorship in the U.S. as Army General Tommy Franks very politely informed us.
Again, will we be shocked or surprised when nuclear terror finally knocks on the door? And what about suicide bombers at our shopping malls? I was told by a pilot that one recent classified pilot's briefing spoke of suicide bombers in all 50 states going live on a very important Christmas-shopping day. Let's pray that doesn't happen. After all, half of all retail sales take place between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. What would Alan Greenspan say? Who will buy all of the toys made in Mainland China by Christians and other dissidents languishing in the slave labor laogai gulags the Politburo in Beijing is so proud of? What will it do to the economy if suicide bombers begin exploding on America's once peaceful shores? Just think of the Texas A&M bonfire as a parallel to the violence against the unborn in America has been exploding for three decades plus in our baby killing abortion clinics.
It should be more than obvious that the filth you see advertised on the billboards in Time Square is coming down one way or the other. I mean, can't you feel it? Are these rap and gang cockroaches and other assorted human filth going to be the role models for yet another generation of real Americans? Not bloody likely. Putin won't allow it. Hence his recent boarding of a nuclear submarine to practice all out nuclear attack on America, which our media and leaders, including Bush Jr. and Kerry and the Congress forgot to tell you. Just keep shopping at the mall - while you still can. We live in scary times.
Even when that statue of Saddam was being pulled down, couldn't you feel something was very wrong in Iraq? By this I mean wrong beyond the fact there were no WMD's, no link to al-Qaida and we didn't have enough combat troops on the ground. (Even though we heroically called up mothers with children to the front lines out of the reserve units. "USA! USA! USA!"
Why are we there in spite of all sanity? Fresh water from the Tigris and Euphrates. Oil. Going along with the plans of the Mossad. Destroying Islam as the last barrier to world government. The sexual liberation of Allah McBeal. Central Asian population control. Destroying America's army and youth with depleted uranium in preparation for the coming scaled down "police force" America's military machine is slated to become under the United Nations. These are the real reasons we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. To believe otherwise is the very worst kind of self-delusion.
So, will the radical Muslims unleash a nuclear hell upon New York? Will God allow this to happen? Can such an attack be prevented, or as the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA and even Vice President Cheney have all told us, "It's not a matter of if but when?"
Is this what FDR said during World War II? "Oh, the Germans and Japanese will nuke us, it's not a matter of if but when."
Back then scores of Japanese-Americans were put in internment camps. It was ugly and unfair. Their property was stolen. Yet it was necessary as many Japanese men went back to Japan and fought for their emperor when give the choice to do just that or join the American army. (Like the kind Mr. Miagi of Karate Kid fame.)
Today more than a few radical Arab/Islamic immigrants are doing fund raising in American-based mosques. They have trained in our flight schools. (Did the kamikazes training in U.S. flight schools?) It's the A&M bonfire all over again as 4,000 new faces illegally cross our borders every single day. We in America are not allowed to implement the correct solution because of our Soviet-style political correctness. No one is allowed to question the lunacy of "open borders" because of the Holy Grail of so-called "free trade" which in reality is highly regulated. No one is allowed to get their feelings hurt by the idea of internment camps - except of course if right wing Christians are the occupants. (Look at Waco and Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City. Look at Clinton speaking of The Patriot Act saying, "We've been working on this for a long time.")
The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire Part 1
Coming up Thursday: The Ashes of the Texas A&M Bonfire By Anthony C. LoBaido Part 3 of 5
Anthony C. LoBaido is an American journalist, photographer, explorer and teacher who has worked in over 40 countries. His articles have appeared in WorldNetDaily.com, CBN, Pravda, Way Press International of Belgium, (translated into French) The Arizona Republic, Soldier of Fortune, Rense.com, Sierratimes.com, the South African Mail & Guardian as well as having been cited by Court TV and the U.S. Congress' House Ways and Means Committee. His book on the Kurds was published by Times-Lerner Ltd. of Singapore. His new novel Our Name is Legion can be found on Amazon.com. LoBaido will also be releasing his life story this autumn. It is entitled Carina.
--------
U.S. Nuclear Panel Closes Online Library
ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 26, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2004/oct/26/102606799.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has shut down its online document library, pending a review to determine what potentially sensitive documents should be removed because they might be useful to terrorists, the agency said Tuesday.
While the agency's Web site does not contain classified material, the NRC "is widening its review to remove additional information that could potentially be of use to a terrorist," the agency said in a statement.
The action came after a report by NBC that among the items found on the NRC Web site were detailed information on the location of radioactive substances, generally used in medicine and for industrial purposes, that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb.
In some cases, the data included detailed building diagrams that pinpointed the location of the material in hospitals and other facilities, according to the NBC report.
As part of the review, the NRC said it temporarily closed public access to its online document library, its electronic hearing docket files, and to NRC staff documents related to NRC consideration of a high-level nuclear waste repository.
"This action, when completed, is intended to ensure that documents which might provide assistance to terrorists will be inaccessible while maintaining public access to information regarding NRC activities," the agency said.
After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, more than 1,000 documents were removed from the NRC's Web site. Additional documents disappeared in subsequent reviews.
"Agency guidelines provide that any information that could be useful, or could reasonably be expected to be useful, to a terrorist in a potential attack should be withheld," said the NRC statement.
-------- u.n.
Nuclear body seeks new technology
BBC
By Tracey Logan
26 October, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3954061.stm
Bushehr reactor in Iran
The UN agency aims to keep an eye on nuclear plants across the world The computer systems used to monitor the world's nuclear power installations are so outdated that they are hampering the work of inspectors.
A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its current technology could allow key information to be overlooked as it was more than 20 years old.
Such systems are the only method of tracking nuclear material worldwide.
The agency has appealed for more funds to update its hardware and software.
"A major overhaul of the system is needed to allow inspectors immediate, secure online access to information," said project manager Livio Costantini.
Inefficient search
IAEA inspectors make around 3,000 visits a year to more than 900 nuclear facilities worldwide.
They are there to verify official reports of activities in the plants, to carry out environmental checks, and also to look for any signs that nuclear material is being smuggled in or out of the facility.
Czech Temelin nuclear power plant Hundreds of nuclear facilities worldwide are inspected The computer system inspectors currently use for comparing data from earlier visits, for instance, was built in the 1970s and largely paper based.
An IAEA spokesman said this was extremely inefficient and makes searching for anomalies like searching for a needle in a haystack.
The organisation is aiming to start a system upgrade in November, aiming to provide inspectors in the field with secure online access to previous inspection data, design blueprints of nuclear facilities, even satellite images of the plant.
Where possible, it hopes to link the system with national records of the import and export of nuclear materials.
Further analysis of these could help spot potential smuggling activities or illicit technology transfers between countries, according to a spokesman.
Cash shortfall
Computer specialist at the IAEA, Peter Smith, would like to be able to incorporate state of the art visualisation techniques, more familiar to video games players, into the inspector's toolkit.
"The commercials you now see have people are moving around in a virtual world," he said.
"If we could have that on our laptops, we could be walking through the plant seeing, on the laptop, how the plant should look.
"And if there's a door in the wall that is not on our laptop, then we have a problem."
The IAEA estimates the total cost of the four-year project to upgrade its technology will be $40m. So far it has only received $11m from the US and the UK.
"Failure to replace the hardware and software, and to integrate fully all the information system components will carry large risks," said an agency statement.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Power outage trips alarms at Yankee
reformer.com
October 26, 2004
http://www./Stories/0,1413,102~8862~2492105,00.html
BRATTLEBORO -- Firefighters were called out to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, when fire alarms in the plant support building were tripped by a power outage on Monday evening.
The building's power comes from Green Mountain Power, which supplies the area surrounding the plant.
According to Dorothy Schnure, spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power, the utility's feed from National Grid was cut off and approximately 750 customers lost power at 6:23 p.m. It was restored at 8:50 p.m.
Schnure said that most of those affected live in Vernon.
The cause of the power loss is still under investigation.
-------- washington
Fluor may miss DOE deadline on K Basins
tri-cityherald.com
By Annette Cary
October 26th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5713626p-5646764c.html
Fluor Hanford is off to a problem-filled start to meet the first of the revised deadlines to clean up radioactive sludge left in the Hanford K Basins -- the leak-prone pools of water 400 yards from the Columbia River.
Fluor has notified the Department of Energy it cannot meet DOE's commitment to the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board to have the sludge in the K East Basin corralled in underwater containers by the end of December. The containers are kept in water to shield workers from radiation.
However, Fluor still believes it can meet a legal deadline of March 1 for completing the work.
The safety board provides independent oversight of Hanford, but does not have the authority to issue fines.
Fluor also faces an interim deadline under the Tri-Party Agreement, which regulates Hanford work, requiring it to start work on getting the sludge into containers by the end of this month.
Meeting that deadline appears uncertain.
Fluor Hanford expects to announce today that it is ready to begin putting sludge in containers. If an independent review team agrees, work will start to pump the sludge into containers Saturday or Sunday.
However, Fluor Hanford is prepared to delay the start of the project by a week if workers need more training, said Pete Knollmeyer, Fluor Hanford vice president. A delay now could prevent time-consuming problems in the future, he said.
Fluor had planned to have more training completed by now, but workers were delayed in starting as the fuel removal project continued for more than two months longer than planned.
The sludge retrieval project has been a source of problems for DOE for several years.
The K Basins were built in the 1950s to hold irradiated nuclear fuel until it could be processed to remove plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. But when reprocessing stopped in the mid-1980s, about 2,300 tons of fuel was left stranded in the indoor pools of the K Basins.
It decayed over two decades, creating a sludge of radioactive particles, cement from the pool walls and dust blown in from the desert in the K Basins. The sludge particles settle to the bottom of the pools, but dissipate in the water when disturbed, making them difficult to collect.
Removing the fuel that produced the contaminated sludge has been one of Hanford's success stories. DOE announced Friday that project had been completed.
But removing the sludge has been difficult and complicated. Fluor Hanford was fined $935,000 this summer for multiple and extensive safety violations as it prepared to start pumping sludge from Hanford's K Basins in spring 2003. Its predecessor, Fluor Daniel, had been fined for similar problems in 1999.
Although the Tri-Party Agreement had called for Fluor Hanford to begin pumping sludge in the K East Basin by the end of 2002, the work began this summer on a less technically challenging area of K East.
A new technical approach was adopted for the balance of the project, which is planned to speed up the treatment and disposal of the sludge by a decade and get the basins removed as much as five years sooner than proposed in past schedules.
DOE became concerned about Fluor's ability to meet new deadlines and commitments to the safety board in September, when Fluor discovered a system did not work consistently well to gather up the smallest particles of sludge dispersed in the water.
The focus on schedule created some concern by the safety board. "A similar focus on schedule in the past has resulted in insufficient preparation ... and premature declarations of readiness ... ," said a recent weekly report.
Fluor has brought in industry experts to come up with a consistent method to chemically collect the small particles of contamination that disperse in the water. In the meantime, it will proceed with collecting the rest of the sludge in containers.
But the project has run into two other problems in recent weeks.
Installation of equipment was delayed when work elsewhere in the basin turned the water too murky to see the bottom of the pool.
Then work had to be stopped last week because of a high airborne radiation reading in the K East Basin. The reason for the problem is being investigated. It could be caused by changes to a system used to clean water or by radiation becoming airborne when equipment is moved and breaks the surface of the water in the basin.
The contractor has sent DOE a list of measures to improve performance that includes identifying more activities that can be performed in parallel, more planning so work on one part of the project does not delay work on another and buying ready-made equipment when possible rather than designing it in house.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates the K Basins, has been monitoring work to start the project.
"We're carefully watching their progress and looking forward to resolution of technical and policy issues related to treatment and disposition of sludge," said Nick Ceto, EPA's Hanford project manager.
-------- us nuc waste
Hot Waste Builds at U.S. Nuclear Plants
October 26, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2004/2004-10-26-09.asp#anchor3
The rate of nuclear power plant relicensing doubled after Congress approved Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in 2002, a new analysis by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) shows. The Washington based organization warns that all the space at Yucca Mountain is already taken, so the nuclear waste generated by the license extensions will stay at the power plants where it was made.
Currently there are renewal applications pending for 18 more reactors. No application to date has been denied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nuclear power plants supply 20 percent of America's electricity.
U.S. nuclear power plants are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for 40 years, and can renew their licenses for an additional 20 years. To date, 19 have received license renewal and 32 more are expected to have their licenses renewed. Eventually, virtually all U.S. nuclear plants are expected to apply for license renewal, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry association.
The EWG says these plants "will produce thousands of tons more waste, ensuring large or larger stockpiles near local power plants, much of which - after cooling on-site for decades - will probably come to Nevada to the Yucca Mountain dumpsite."
But if Yucca Mountain opens for storage in 2010 as the Bush administration proposes, its storage space will be fully claimed.
"Shortly thereafter, an additional 9,000 tons of nuclear waste will be waiting to come to Yucca and even more waste will sit at plants around the country. Therefore, Congress must either expand Yucca Mountain from its very first day of operation or allow nuclear waste to continue to pile up at 79 sites in 35 states," the EWG warns.
"This analysis confirms what we suspected, but what the public was never told, that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is really a nuclear expansion plan in disguise," said Richard Wiles of the EWG Action Fund.
The EWG Action Fund's interactive website, at www.ewg.org, lists each reactor around the country that has been or will soon be relicensed and for how long, along with how many tons of waste it will generate while in continued operation.
Visitors to the site can see how much waste that reactor is permitted to send to Yucca Mountain, and how much will be left on site. Shipping the waste generated by power plant relicensing will take either 6,000 more truck shipments or 1,050 train shipments through communities in Nevada on their way to Yucca Mountain, the EWG Action Fund estimates.
Communities near each of the country's 103 operating nuclear power plants were the targets of public relations campaigns by the nuclear industry and the Department of Energy with the message that the Yucca Mountain repository would get rid of their waste.
The relicensing means that most of these communities will not get rid of their waste. The EWG Action Fund warns that they will see "large or larger amounts of waste sitting on-site for decades before being shipped to Nevada."
The nuclear industry points out that the additional generating capacity obtained by extending nuclear power plant licenses is required to meet the energy needs of the United States, which are expected to increase 50 percent by 2025, according to the Energy Information Administration's "Annual Energy Outlook 2004."
-------- MILITARY
------- afghanistan
Officials Say Karzai Is Clear Winner
October 26, 2004
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_ELECTION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Counting in Afghanistan's presidential election concluded Tuesday, with U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai the clear winner even though some ballot boxes were "obviously stuffed," election officials said.
Investigators were still examining about 100 ballot boxes to clear up lingering fraud allegations, but the election's chief technical officer said the count was effectively "over and done."
"It's just these last dribs and drabs to be approved," David Avery told The Associated Press. "It's really nothing that can affect the outcome."
Election officials have said they will not announce the official results of the Oct. 9 vote until investigations into irregularities alleged by Karzai's main rivals have been concluded. That could be this weekend.
The winner will be inaugurated in about a month.
Final results were not posted on the election Web site, either. But in a tally based on 98.4 percent of total votes cast, the U.S.-backed Karzai had 55.5 percent, which was 39 percentage points ahead of his closest challenger, former Education Minister Yunus Qanooni.
"If the fraud was not so serious, we would accept that Karzai has won," Qanooni's running mate, Taj Mohammed Wardak, told AP.
"I hope there was not so much fraud so our democracy is safe. If it was serious, then we are sad and it will affect the election result. We will accept the conclusion of the panel."
Karzai had to receive more than 50 percent of the votes cast to avoid a runoff and secure a five-year term. He has pledged to raise impoverished Afghans' living standards after a quarter-century of fighting.
Karzai has been the interim leader since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 after a U.S. invasion. An election victory would make him Afghanistan's first popularly chosen leader.
It also could provide a foreign policy boost to Afghanistan's main sponsor, President Bush, in his own bid for re-election next week.
"He is happy and satisfied" with his lead, presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said of Karzai. "God willing, he will hold onto it."
Karzai has racked up more than 90 percent support in many parts of the south and east, which is dominated by his fellow Pashtun tribesmen, and leads in all major cities.
But rivals have eclipsed him across much of the north and center, the heartlands of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, and charge that Karzai is ahead only through cheating.
Investigators had held back hundreds of boxes and say they have clear evidence of ballot-stuffing in some cases, though not on a scale that could overturn Karzai's majority.
"Some boxes were so obviously stuffed that we don't believe they were legitimately cast votes," Ray Kennedy, deputy chairman of the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral commission, told The Associated Press.
That was an indication the commission will acknowledge irregularities - the key condition set by Qanooni, Karzai's closest rival, for conceding defeat.
Avery said all but about 100 of the ballot boxes were released Tuesday after inspectors found no evidence of foul play. Officials were expected to complete their inspection of the remaining boxes by Thursday.
Election managers say they will reserve overall judgment on whether the election was "free and fair" until they issue their final report.
While irregularities detected during the counting process are being examined by the electoral board's legal experts, a panel of foreign election specialists is looking separately into problems on polling day.
The three-member panel was established after Qanooni and 14 other candidates threatened to boycott the poll because of a mix-up in which washable, instead of permanent, ink was used to mark people's fingers in an effort to prevent multiple voting.
Associated Press reporters Matthew Pennington and Amir Shah contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Afghan election results: http://www.afg-electionresults.org
-------- africa
Politics Delay U.S. Airlift Of Peacekeepers to Sudan
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62798-2004Oct25.html
KIGALI, Rwanda, Oct. 25 -- Well before the sun rose over the city's winding hills Monday, Col. Charles Karamba was wide awake, ready to give his 120 Rwandan army troops an energetic send-off to western Sudan.
They were to be the first troops airlifted to Darfur on U.S. military planes as part of a two-week mission to move African Union peacekeepers quickly into the war-torn region, where 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes and where violence, hunger and disease have killed tens of thousands.
Two C-130 transport planes, sent by the U.S. Air Force from Ramstein Air Base in Germany, stood ready on the rain-soaked tarmac outside the Rwandan capital. Karamba sat by his phone, waiting for the orders to board.
Instead, just after 10 a.m., word came that the Rwandans would not be leaving quite yet. According to diplomats, that was because Nigeria, whose president heads the African Union, had demanded to go first. Although the airlifts from Kigali were planned last week, diplomats said, Nigerian officials wanted their troops to arrive first as a matter of prestige.
"We had more people ready than we had seats," said Karamba, noting that 237 Rwandan troops were trained and ready to go. "But we will wait. When they are ready, we will be there."
Both Nigerian and African Union officials declined to comment on the confusion, saying only that the Nigerians are now scheduled to deploy before the Rwandans, possibly on Thursday. But Rwandan officials suggested that logistical problems had caused the delay.
"There is no food and no tents, and you don't just throw soldiers out into the desert to fend for themselves," said Foreign Minister Charles Murigande.
The Bush administration has called the atrocities in Darfur genocide, but the airlift is the first American military operation aimed at curbing the violence. No Western countries have been willing to send troops to the region.
The African Union last week approved an expansion of its military presence in Darfur, from 300 to 3,000 troops. Despite an uneasy truce, which is being observed by 150 African Union monitors, violence between rebel and government forces continues to unfold, including reports of rapes and killings.
Last week alone, officials said, 200,000 people were driven from their villages. At the same time, two new rebel factions have emerged in Darfur, including one that African Union officials said attacked a government convoy Oct. 6.
The United Nations, which feeds more than 1 million people in western Sudan, said the African Union mission was urgently needed to protect aid routes. Rebel groups as well as the government-backed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed are accused of blocking aid convoys, and two relief workers were killed last week.
The promised increase of African troops is viewed as a test of the willingness and ability of African governments to help solve the region's problems. Rwandan officials have said they are especially eager to help because of their own country's experience with genocide 10 years ago, in which more than 800,000 people were slaughtered.
Diplomats expressed concern that the dispute over who should be airlifted first could delay getting troops on the ground and saving lives in Darfur. Officials have said that without the airlift and other help, it could take up to a year to deploy the troops.
"Obviously this is holding up the mission," said a Western diplomat in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. The diplomat said it was up to African Union officials to negotiate "who's going to be first."
The latest round of peace talks between rebels and Sudanese officials resumed in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. But U.N. officials worried that the new rebel groups, who are not participating in the talks, could further derail peace efforts. On Friday, President Bush committed $2.5 million in military services to support the mission, and the U.S. government awarded $20.5 million in contracts to two U.S. companies to provide tents, electricity and other support. The European Union also announced it would spend $125 million to support the peacekeepers, but the promised aid falls short of the African Union's request for $220 million.
The conflict began in early 2003, when two rebel groups launched a revolt in western Sudan, saying they faced discrimination. They have accused the government of bombing villages and arming the Janjaweed militia to crush them. Sudanese officials blamed the rebels for starting the war and said the Janjaweed is made up of miscreants largely out of their control.
--------
Attacks on Women in West Sudan Draw an Outcry
October 26, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/international/africa/26sudan.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KEBKABIYA, Sudan - Even with the eyes of the world on this burned-out swath of western Sudan, threats of oil sanctions against the government and the trickle of African Union monitors into the countryside, one brutality has apparently continued undeterred: violence against Darfur's women. Women were insulted, beaten and raped as their families were chased from their homes at the height of the war in this region. They continue to be insulted, beaten and raped as they try to eke out a living far from home in the miserable camps of the displaced across Darfur.
Judging from the accounts by victims themselves, as well as those of aid workers, human rights monitors and African Union military observers posted in Darfur, the victims are overwhelmingly women who belong to African communities here, and those who committed the acts are armed men who belong to Arab tribes.
Since early 2003, the war in Darfur has pitted the Arab-led government of Sudan against rebels who are led by members of African tribes.
Whether violence against women constitutes a war crime or whether it is part of a campaign of genocide remains unanswered. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has appointed a panel of experts to determine whether the violence in Darfur meets the international legal definition of genocide. If previous United Nations inquiries are any guide, this one is not likely to offer swift answers.
Definitions aside, the more pressing question for people here, not to mention the credibility of the international community, is this: Can anything be done to stop it and then bring a measure of redress?
"Depending on the magnitude of it, it can constitute a crime against humanity," said Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. Investigators in Darfur have not yet determined the magnitude. Eight of them are in the region, spread across an area the size of France.
For now the victims are left to the whim of local law enforcement, in which, it is apparent, there is little or no confidence. A recent inquiry by the Sudanese government turned up two cases of rape during the entire 18-month-long war in Darfur. Ms. Arbour, of Canada, rebuked the government, saying it was "in denial." [On Oct. 23 the agriculture minister of Sudan, its chief negotiator in peace talks mediated by the African Union, described reports of widespread rape as "a lot of fabrication."]
Violence against women in this conflict is not limited to rape. They are also verbally abused, threatened, robbed and beaten with whips, the reports say. These days they are most vulnerable when they trek out to do women's work - fetch firewood.
Some of them bear gunshot wounds to the ankle, a sign that their attackers tried to keep them from fleeing. Others are marked as violated women. One woman in a refugee camp in eastern Chad lifted her veil not long ago to reveal a violent gash on her right cheek, and then she began weeping. She was sexually assaulted by five men, all in military garb, she said, during an attack on her hometown, Karnoi.
A report by Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, says some women have been raped in front of their relatives.
Fear and distrust in local law enforcement authorities runs so deep that the crimes are rarely reported to officials. When they are, victims and independent human rights observers say, little is done.
No international legal mechanism has been set up. Military observers from the African Union cease-fire commission take reports of abuse, but all they can do is report the cases to the United Nations human rights agency. "It's a little bit ambiguous," the United Nations official said.
The evidence on the ground has been overwhelming.
In January, during the height of the war, refugees fleeing into Chad said in interviews that attacks on their villages by the Sudanese military and the Arab militiamen whom they call janjaweed - or marauders on horseback - were frequently accompanied by sexual violence against women as they tried to flee.
In August, a refugee woman in a camp called Kounoungo in eastern Chad described vividly how two men on horses had hunted her down as she tried to run away from an attack on her village. One held a gun to her head while the other raped her. She was pregnant at the time. In the same camp, another woman held up the product of a violent assault: a baby boy with wavy hair, whom she called the son of a janjaweed.
Sexual violence has been a tried-and-true way for armed men to sow terror among civilians in wartime, from the Balkans to Colombia and Congo to the genocide in Rwanda. The latter offers a particularly trenchant lesson for Sudan: Ten years later only a handful of allegations of rape have been investigated and prosecuted, according to a recent report by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.
Here, even after women have fled attacks on their hometowns and villages, they have not found refuge.
In early September, investigators with the United Nations refugee agency tracked down 13 women who said they had been raped in a period of 10 days just beyond a displaced people's camp near Nyala, the state capital of southern Darfur.
In late September, a 13-year-old girl was taken by donkey cart to the African Union cease-fire commission's office here with a chilling tale. Three men in uniform found her one afternoon as she was gathering firewood on the edge of town.
They called her Tora Bora, a reference to the place in Afghanistan that once was a stronghold of Al Qaeda. The pro-government militias here use the name to refer to the rebels or anyone they deem to be their sympathizers. The men took turns raping her. African Union monitors found blood caked on the dry earth.
Another woman, Hawa Ishak Mahmood, said she was on her way to seed someone else's farm on the outskirts of Kebkabiya in the summer when four men on camel and horseback stopped her in her tracks. They accused her of looking like a member of the Zaghawa tribe, which dominates the chief Darfur rebel group.
Despite her denials, they beat her with the butt of their guns and wrestled her to the ground, she said. Then they took turns raping her.
She no longer ventures out to work on anyone else's farm. She no longer collects firewood. Her children, ages 4 to 15, subsist on aid rations. "Always, when people go out, they get beaten, they get raped," she said.
Reports like this no longer surprise Seth Appiah-Mensah, the African Union sector commander here. "It's very common, almost on a daily basis," he said. "When you report it the authorities say it's not true. They always insist their soldiers are disciplined, they're under Shariah, they won't do this." The Shariah is the Islamic legal code.
Who is committing the assaults remains unclear. Men in uniform here can be regular soldiers or members of pro-government militias. The lines are blurry.
Besides, the African Union's mission is to monitor violations of the cease-fire between the government forces and the rebels. Rapes and other attacks against women are criminal offenses, and the organization has no law enforcement authority.
In early October, the police arrested a man who had gone to file a complaint with the African Union cease-fire commission about attacks on several women outside a displaced people's camp near El Fasher, the state capital of northern Darfur. He was freed only through the intercession of a United Nations human rights investigator.
-------- biological weapons
Report Warns of Failure to Control Biological Weapons
Reuters
By Jeremy Lovell
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62567-2004Oct25.html
LONDON, Oct. 25 -- Biological weapons that can wipe out entire populations pose one of the biggest threats to the world today, yet remain almost completely uncontrolled, the British Medical Association said on Monday.
The association urged the United States to end what it called efforts against strengthening the 1972 international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention when it comes up for renewal in 2006.
"This technology could be used by sub-state terror groups and eventually by deranged individuals," Malcolm Dando, author of the association's study, said at a news conference.
He warned that the development of biological weapons designed to target specific ethnic groups was becoming increasingly possible, and said it was already theoretically possible to re-create devastating viruses such as the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 that killed as many as 40 million people.
The convention, which banned the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling and retention of germ weapons for offensive purposes, contains no monitoring or enforcement mechanisms. "The best way of describing it is as a gentleman's agreement," said Dando, who is head of peace studies at the University of Bradford.
He said there were strong international mechanisms controlling nuclear and chemical arms, but nothing to control what he termed the "riotous development" of biotechnology.
Dando said the Bush administration had turned its back on many international accords, which he asserted was the key reason the convention remained weak.
The powerful U.S. biotechnology industry has put pressure on the administration not to back strong international monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, arguing that they could stifle research, Dando said.
Russia, which was known to have developed a major biological weapons capability, has also kept a very low profile on the issue, he said. "There are still several of its military laboratories that have not been opened up for inspection. You have to wonder why," he said.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said it was vital for scientists to get involved in self-regulation to ensure that experiments and information not be misused.
"The real key to biosecurity, to not having to deal with deliberately spread epidemics, is to make sure that these materials are not produced," she said. She argued for a code of ethics covering scientists and governments and the enforcement of sensible international laws. -------- britain
Kennedy: Ministers using terror threat to erode civil liberties
independent.co.uk By Marie Woolf 26 October 2004 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=576072
Charles Kennedy accused the Government yesterday of contributing to a "climate of fear" about terrorism and of exploiting it to erode historic civil liberties in Britain.
In a stinging attack, the Liberal Democrat leader accused David Blunkett of responding to the terrorist threat with "the abandonment of some of the liberties that generations of Britons have relied on."
He blamed the Home Secretary for pushing through a raft of measures which increase the power of the state to interfere in ordinary people's lives. Stop-and-search powers brought in under the Terrorism Act had been "misused by the police" and "led to a 300 per cent increase in the number of Asian people being stopped".
Mr Kennedy also warned that some of the freedoms removed by the Government to defend the country against terrorism may never be restored.
"Extraordinary threats - like those posed by international terrorism - may require us, in times of emergency and for limited periods, to find a different balance between our hard-won liberties and our security," he said in a speech at the National Liberal Club in London. "But the correct response to such threats should not be, as the current Home Secretary appears to think, the abandonment of some of the liberties that generations of Britons have relied upon. Hard-won rights, once lost, may never be regained."
He warned that some of the measures brought in by the Government to combat crime and terrorism were so draconian that they "run the risk that interference with individual liberty outweighs the benefits in terms of crime detection."
Mr Kennedy singled out the detention of foreign terrorist suspects without trial in Belmarsh prison. "We need Government to protect our rights and freedoms too. We need a system of government that is genuinely accountable to an effective, democratically elected parliament," he said.
The Government's trust rating had been eroded by its response to the terror threat, Mr Kennedy said. "If the Government shows little enthusiasm for trusting the people, how in return can it expect trust?" he asked. "In 1998, 58 per cent of people felt that Tony Blair's government was honest and trustworthy. By March this year, it was only 25 per cent. When trust is breached, that contract is broken."
Mr Kennedy said the Liberal Democrats would also resist government interference in people's lives and caution against eroding personal freedoms. "We must apply our natural Liberal Democrat caution to an over-mighty state when it threatens to undermine individual freedoms," he said. "We must be sure that the Government, at whatever level, will not abuse its powers and ride roughshod over people's rights as it addresses the new challenges that face our society."
He said that the Liberal Democrats supported many measures to enhance police powers to fight terrorism but he cautioned against curbing personal freedoms permanently: "Any curtailment of our civil liberties should only be justified in exceptional circumstances and then subject to strict review."
-------- business
Pentagon Probes Halliburton's Iraq Contracts
Associated Press
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62570-2004Oct25.html
The Pentagon's internal watchdog is looking into claims by a top Army contracting official that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary unfairly won no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars for support services in Iraq and the Balkans.
The complaint alleges that the award of contracts without competition to restore Iraq's oil industry and to supply and feed U.S. troops in the Balkans puts at risk "the integrity of the federal contracting program as it relates to a major defense contractor."
It also seeks protection from retaliation for the whistle-blower, Bunnatine Greenhouse, chief contracting officer of the Army Corps of Engineers.
A letter from an Army lawyer to Greenhouse's attorney said the matter is being referred to the Defense Department's inspector general for "review and action, as appropriate."
It also said the Corps had been ordered to "suspend any adverse personnel action" against Greenhouse "until a sufficient record is available to address the specific matters" in her complaint.
Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Halliburton, said company subsidiary "KBR doesn't have any information on what Bunny Greenhouse may or may not have said to other Pentagon officials in early 2003. Certainly, we can't address any threatened legal action she may be considering against her employer."
"On the larger issues, the old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," Hall said.
--------
Whistle-Blower Asks for Halliburton Investigation
Reuters
By Sue Pleming
October 26, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=247
WASHINGTON - The Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official has demanded an investigation into contracts given to Halliburton, citing improper action that favored Vice President Dick Cheney's old company.
According to documents made available Monday by congressional sources, Army Corps whistle-blower Bunny Greenhouse complained of repeated interference in billions of dollars of contracts given to Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) for work in Iraq and the Balkans.
"This interference was largely focused on multibillion-dollar contract issues pertaining to a Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root," said a letter faxed to Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee by lawyers for Greenhouse.
"As set forth below, employees of the U.S. government have taken improper action that favored KBR's interests," the letter said.
An Army attorney said the matter was being referred to the Defense Department's inspector general and the Corps was asked not to act against Greenhouse until a sufficient record was available.
The Corps said it supported the right of employees to use established procedures to ensure governmental actions complied with applicable laws but declined further comment.
The Pentagon inspector general's office said it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.
A decision could take months or even years.
Fear of Losing Job
Greenhouse lawyer Michael Kohn said his client went public after the Corps tried to remove her from her post as principal assistant responsible for contracting and not because she wanted to influence next week's election by raising questions about Halliburton, which Cheney ran from 1995-2000.
Halliburton, which is already under investigation for overcharging for work in Iraq, has been a target of Democratic criticism ahead of the Nov. 2 election, with suggestions the Texas firm got special treatment because of Cheney.
A spokesman for Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg said the New Jersey senator would introduce a resolution after the election to create a special committee to look into the contracts given to KBR.
"When Halliburton is sitting in on the drafting of its no-bid contract, you know lines have been crossed," said Lautenberg, referred to complaints by Greenhouse that KBR officials were allowed to attend military planning meetings before it was awarded a sole-source Iraq contract.
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said KBR did not have any information on what Greenhouse may or may not have said to Pentagon officials in 2003 when a no-bid contract worth up to $7 billion was given to KBR to rebuild Iraq's oil industry.
"On the larger issues, the old allegations have once again been recycled, this time one week before the election," said Hall.
Greenhouse said the Iraq oil contract given to KBR, which was later replaced by a competitively bid deal, as well as another to feed and house U.S. troops in the Balkans, put at risk the "integrity of the federal contracting program."
Kohn said KBR contracts were awarded despite his client's reservations, which she expressed in hand-written notes on official documents, a tactic her superiors asked her to stop.
In one case, he said Army Corps officials bypassed getting a signature from Greenhouse to grant a waiver for KBR to be relieved of its obligation to provide cost and pricing data for bringing fuel into Iraq.
That waiver was granted after a draft Army audit said KBR may have overcharged the military by at least $61 million to bring in fuel to Iraq to ease a shortage of refined oil products.
-------- china
Powell's China Comments Anger Taiwanese
October 26, 2004
By WILLIAM FOREMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TAIWAN_US_CHINA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell has angered Taiwanese officials and lawmakers by making unusually strong comments denying that the island is an independent nation and suggesting Taiwan should unify with China.
Washington usually avoids weighing in on the touchy split, which arose when Mao Zedong's communist army won control of the Chinese mainland in 1949 and anti-communist forces took refuge on Taiwan.
But Powell waded into the unification question Monday in interviews with CNN and Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television during a one-day visit to China.
According to a State Department transcript, Powell told Phoenix: "There is only one China. Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy."
That was a departure from the U.S. government's longtime "one China policy," a purposely fuzzy approach that merely "acknowledges" people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree there is one China. Washington also insists differences should be settled peacefully and in recent years has emphasized that the Taiwanese people should have a say in the matter.
Taiwan is highly sensitive to any kind of language - especially from Washington - that might suggest their democratic island is part of the communist mainland. Taiwanese view China's government to be repressive and have spent decades resisting rule by Beijing, which occasionally threatens to use force to bring the island under its sway.
Rebuking Powell without mentioning him by name, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian told visiting former South Korean President Kim Young-sam on Tuesday that the island is a separate nation.
"Taiwan is absolutely a sovereign, independent nation. It's a great nation, and it absolutely does not belong to the People's Republic of China. That is the present situation, that is the reality," Chen said. Using the island's official name, Republic of China, Chen said no country had the right to tell Taiwan it isn't independent.
"Other countries, whether they have official diplomatic relations with our country or not, have no way of influencing or deny the present situation and the fact that the Republic of China or Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation," Chen said.
Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun made a terse response to Powell's comment. "Taiwan is a sovereign, independent nation. This is reality," Yu told reporters Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Mark Chen told lawmakers that Powell used "heavy language" that left "a deep impression" on Taiwan. He also complained Washington didn't warn Taiwan that Powell would depart from long-standing policy.
"They (America) hope that we'll try hard not to give them any surprises. They've really dropped an extremely big surprise on us," said Chen, adding that Taiwan had asked for explanations from U.S. officials in Washington and Taiwan.
Lawmakers with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party also complained.
"This kind of talk ignores reality. The Democratic Progressive Party's legislative caucus absolutely won't accept it," lawmaker Tsai Huang-liang said.
In an interview with CNN, Powell appeared to suggest Taiwan and China both favor unification. He said he didn't want to see either side "take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking."
The Taiwan issue is extremely awkward for the United States. Washington doesn't want to appear to be forcing Taiwan to become part of the communist mainland. But the United States doesn't want Taiwan to provoke a war with China - a conflict that would likely involve U.S. forces.
On the Net:
Powell's Phoenix interview: http://usinfo.org/wf/041025/epf105.htm
Powell's CNN interview: www.state.gov/secretary/rm/37366.htm weapons
--------
Beijing Rebuffs Powell on Taiwan
U.S.-China Dialogue On Rights to Resume
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62655-2004Oct25.html
BEIJING, Oct. 25 -- Chinese officials rebuffed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's suggestion that they use a possibly conciliatory speech by Taiwan's president, Chen Shui-bian, to restart cross-strait discussions, telling him in strong terms Monday that they are not impressed by Chen's words and are worried about his actions.
After a series of meetings with top Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao, Powell told reporters that the Chinese had agreed to reopen a dialogue with the United States on human rights that had been halted for seven months. He also indicated that Chinese officials planned to use their influence to prod North Korea to return to talks on ending its nuclear programs.
But Powell received a noncommittal answer when he inquired about the recent arrest of a New York Times researcher and he came away empty-handed on Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
In a National Day speech on Oct. 10, Chen proposed the resumption of long-suspended talks on the basis of a 1992 meeting in Hong Kong, at which Taiwanese and Chinese officials papered over differences by agreeing there is only one China but acknowledging that each side has a different understanding of what that means. Chen's gesture was regarded as a concession in Taiwan, which is in the midst of a campaign for parliamentary elections Dec. 11. Previously, Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party had rejected such ambiguity, insisting that Taiwan is a separate country.
"The United States thought there might be some elements [in the speech] the Chinese could work with in improving cross-straits dialogue," Powell told reporters. "The response I received from Chinese leadership today was that they are still concerned about President Chen Shui-bian's actions and they did not find his statement to be that forthcoming." A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of diplomatic talks, put it more bluntly, saying Chinese officials "were uniformly downbeat in their assessment of Chen's speech."
China had rejected Chen's speech, which called for dialogue and other "concrete actions," shortly after he delivered it.
Some experts have described Chen's speech as a ruse in which he used clever language to suggest more flexibility.
The State Department official said Powell chose to visit Beijing at this time because "the president and vice president, because of their campaign, were unlikely to be able to have the kind of meetings that in other years they have had with the Chinese."
During Powell's tour of East Asia, he has pressed for a resumption of six-nation talks on North Korea. He told reporters that China shared the Bush administration's interest in quickly restarting the talks, which the North Korean government has balked at attending.
The State Department official said he believed China, North Korea's main benefactor, "will use a combination of influences" to bring North Korea back to the table.
On human rights, State Department officials said dialogue has been stalled for months, largely because of Chinese anger over a resolution the Bush administration sponsored in April at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva condemning China's human rights practices. As a result, U.S. officials have not been able to ask questions about particular prisoners, and U.S. groups promoting religious freedom have faced difficulties getting trips to China approved.
China's decision to restart human rights discussions will now allow those diplomatic exchanges to begin within three or four weeks, the official said.
In a meeting with Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, Powell expressed concern about the detention in September of a New York Times researcher, Zhao Yan, on suspicion of divulging state secrets. Zhao was formally arrested last week, but officials have not specified the allegations against him. Speculation has centered on Zhao's role in a Sept. 7 article by the Times disclosing plans by former president Jiang Zemin to leave his post as head of China's military, resolving a power struggle among China's leaders.
Powell said he asked Li to look into the matter and suggested that Zhao be released quickly. But the foreign minister noted that Zhao is a Chinese citizen who is being handled "in accordance with Chinese law," Powell said.
-------- europe
France and Germany to set up rapid reaction 'battle group'
BERLIN (AFP)
Oct 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041026163037.z366u2aw.html
Germany and France agreed at a bilateral summit here on Tuesday to increase their defence cooperation by setting up a "battle group" unit to help improve the European Union's rapid reaction capabilities.
A joint declaration after the summit said this tactical group would be drawn from the existing Franco-German Brigade and "would be open to other contributions, mainly from the nations involved in Eurocorps".
Troops from Eurocorps, which was set up in the 1990s, are currently leading the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.
The declaration said that planning for the new "battle group" had already begun.
"France and Germany play an important role as a catalyst for the development of Europe's capacity in the rapid reaction to crises," the statement added.
"They will therefore continue with determination to develop the Franco-German Brigade to make it the core of an 'initial entry force' for the European Union and NATO, principally within the framework of Eurocorps.
"Our two countries underline that the concept of tactical groupings and the NATO rapid reaction force are complementary and reinforce each other."
Ten "battle groups" are in the process of being set up across the European Union. The aim is that each will be able to deploy 1,500 troops within 15 days to trouble spots.
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U.N., U.S. confident in Iraqi elections
October 26, 2004
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041026-122112-1020r.htm
Iraqi elections scheduled for January will go ahead and will represent the popular will, thanks in large measure to the courageous efforts of Iraqi politicians and organizers, both U.N. and American election advisers say.
But much of the hard work of registering voters, organizing and training parties and setting up polling places must take place in near secrecy for fear of attracting the attention of terrorists bent on derailing the process, the experts said.
"I think elections can be credible," said Carlos Valenzuela, the top U.N. elections adviser in Iraq, in an interview yesterday with Reuters news agency. "It is a difficult situation, but when you have a transitional election by definition it is conducted in an environment that is less than ideal."
A Washington spokesman for the International Republican Institute (IRI), which advises political parties around the world on how to organize elections, agreed.
"It isn't going to be smooth and pretty. There's going to be controversy, fighting and challenging of results, and plenty of credible evidence that here or there, there were some kind of shenanigans or cases of violence," said the IRI official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"But it's going to happen, and people will say it was what it was. It's going to be messy, it's going to take a while to sort it out. But I think they are going to do it."
Nevertheless, the threat of violence is so great that officials on all sides are reluctant to discuss in detail how they are preparing for the election of a 275-member national assembly that in turn will draw up a new constitution.
The United Nations, which suffered 22 deaths in a bomb blast a year ago, has limited its non-Iraqi staff in the country to no more than 35 persons, of whom only 10 are working to prepare for elections.
Officials with IRI and its counterpart, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), said they each have roughly a dozen expatriates directing larger staffs of Iraqis, and conceded their movements have been severely restricted by the level of violence.
"Lots of meetings are canceled, and a lot of what we do is close to Baghdad," the IRI staff member said. "But the greatest risk in all of this would seem to be borne by the Iraqis who are working most closely with us.
"These people can only be under our security umbrella for certain portions of time. When they move out from under it, they are extremely vulnerable. The terrorists regard them as collaborators and high-value targets," he said.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized the United Nations this week for not doing more to help, pointing out that its staff in Iraq falls far short of the 300-member contingent it sent to East Timor for an independence referendum in 1999.
"It is unfortunate that the contribution and participation of U.N. employees in this process is not up to expectations," Mr. Zebari said.
U.N. officials said that member nations had not responded to an appeal for troops to guard U.N. workers and facilities so more staffers could be sent in. But the IRI official in Washington said the United Nations could and should do more.
"I know the Iraqis have been appealing to the United Nations to come in and lend a hand, and it seems to me there is a lot of politics in this," said the IRI official.
"One would hope the U.N. could see beyond that, and look into its international obligations and its obligation to the people of Iraq. Iraqis see them a little as missing in action."
Mr. Valenzuela told Reuters that even the small number of experts in his team was adequate to meet the U.N. mandate, which was simply to advise the Iraqi electoral commission on how to organize the vote.
"From the very beginning, in February when we first came, the U.N. said this should be an Iraqi-led process," he said. "Now people say, 'You are letting the Iraqis do this all by themselves,' but it was always meant to be like that."
Mr. Valenzuela said the nine-member Iraqi commission, on which he sits as a nonvoting international commissioner, would be ready to begin voter registration Monday.
Voters will sign up at established food-distribution points that have existed since Saddam Hussein's time - logistically the most practical way forward, but a security nightmare.
The closer the election date gets, the more violence is predicted by security experts working in Iraq. Registration centers and voting booths present especially easy targets.
Iraqis have said they are not sure they are willing to risk their lives to cast a ballot. But officials say the fear of attacks is not discouraging election workers.
"The people we have working with us in Iraq, Iraqi and expatriate, they are charging away believing they can make a difference. We are optimistic - but Iraq presents the greatest challenge," said Les Campbell, an NDI official in Washington.
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Allawi Blames Ambush on'Negligence'
October 26, 2004
By TINI TRAN
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's interim prime minister blamed U.S.-led coalition forces Tuesday for "great negligence" in the ambush that killed about 50 American-trained soldiers, and a U.S. airstrike in Fallujah killed an aide to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said.
An Iraqi insurgent group, meanwhile, said on a Web site it had taken 11 Iraqi National Guard soldiers hostage.
They were seized on a highway between Baghdad and Hillah, according to the Internet posting by the militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army. The posting included the names of all 11.
The authenticity of the posting could not immediately be verified. The movement claimed responsibility for a number of attacks and hostage takings, including the kidnap and murder of 12 Nepalese, who were seized in August. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi blamed the coalition for poor security in Saturday's ambush about 95 miles east of Baghdad.
"It was a heinous crime where a group of National Guards were targeted," Allawi said. "There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces. It seems there was sort of determination on doing Iraq and Iraqi people harm."
The attack on the soldiers, who were returning home on leave, occurred on a remote eastern highway when their buses were stopped by insurgents at a fake checkpoint, police and defense officials said.
Some of the bodies were found in rows - shot execution-style in the head, the Defense Ministry said. Other bodies were found on a burned bus nearby.
Allawi told the Iraqi National Council: "You should expect an escalation in terrorist acts."
The U.S. military said the early-morning raid in Fallujah struck a safe house used by al-Zarqawi's group. U.S. forces have stepped up aerial and artillery assaults on Fallujah in recent weeks in an attempt to root out insurgents.
Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, fell under rebel control after the Bush administration ordered Marines to lift their three-week siege of the city in April.
The United States has offered a $25 million bounty for the capture or killing of al-Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility in numerous suicide bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including three Americans.
"Recent strikes and raids targeting the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi network have severely degraded its ability to conduct attacks," the U.S. statement said. It did not identify the slain al-Zarqawi aide.
In London, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the interim government is working to achieve a political solution to the military standoff around Fallujah.
"We are trying to exhaust all political channels and avenues before any final decision is made," Zebari told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "Fallujah is one hot spot that we need really to resolve before getting to elections" scheduled for January.
A masked gunman, meanwhile, warned in a videotape that insurgents will attack all Iraqi and multinational military and civilian targets with "weapons and military tactics they have not experienced" if U.S. troops try to storm the city.
In the videotape obtained by Associated Press Television News, the gunman, dressed in an old-style Iraqi army uniform, read the statement on behalf of the "factions of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq."
The speaker, who appeared with seven other masked, armed men, accused the Iraqi government of "aborting a peaceful solution with the people of Fallujah."
He warned all Iraqi military personnel and government employees to quit their jobs, otherwise they "will be permissible targets for our fighters."
In Ramadi, insurgents attacked two U.S. Army convoys Tuesday with roadside bombs, the military said. No U.S. troops were injured but some Iraqi civilians were wounded, Lt. Col Lyle Gilbert said.
Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, is in the insurgent-heavy Sunni Triangle.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials said an investigation was launched into the deadly ambush of about 50 U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers Saturday.
"The investigation is mainly to know whether there was any information leakage," Defense Ministry spokesman Salih Sarhan said.
Iraqi police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted by insurgents, mostly with car bombs and mortar shells. However, the fact that the insurgents were able to strike at so many unarmed soldiers in such a remote region suggested the guerrillas may have had advance word on the soldiers' travel.
"There was probably collusion among the soldiers or other groups," Diyala province's Deputy Gov. Aqil Hamid al-Adili told Al-Arabiya television. "Otherwise, the gunmen would not have gotten the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed."
Last week, a U.S. defense official in Washington described Iraq's security forces as "heavily infiltrated" by insurgents, saying some Iraqi soldiers and police have developed sympathies and contacts with the guerrillas. In other instances, infiltrators were sent to join the security services, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Al-Zarqawi's group, renamed al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack on an Islamic Web site, but there was no way to verify its authenticity.
Dozens of suspect police officers and Iraqi soldiers have been arrested for insurgent ties, although U.S. and Iraqi officials declined to release numbers.
In September, U.S. troops arrested a senior Iraqi National Guard commander, Lt. Gen. Talib al-Lahibi, for insurgent ties. Al-Lahibi was arrested in Diyala province near where Saturday's massacre occurred.
Also, U.S. troops arrested an Iraqi National Guard battalion commander, Col. Daham Abd, allegedly for providing ammunition, money and information to the insurgents near the northern city of Kirkuk.
A mortar attack Oct. 19 on an Iraqi National Guard compound near Baghdad is being viewed as a probable inside job. The attackers apparently knew when and where the unit's members were gathering and dropped mortar rounds in the middle of their formation. At least four Iraqis were killed and 80 others were wounded.
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Flurry of Violence Kills At Least 15
Across Iraq Hundreds Rally for Aid Worker's Release
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61021-2004Oct25.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 25 -- A rash of bombings and skirmishes killed at least 13 Iraqis, a U.S. soldier and an Estonian soldier Monday, according to reports from around the country. Meanwhile, several hundred Iraqis staged a street demonstration in Baghdad to demand the release of Margaret Hassan, the veteran aid worker who was kidnapped last week.
Three Iraqi civilians were killed on a central Baghdad street when explosives apparently hidden in a parked car exploded beside an Australian military convoy. The force of the 8 a.m. blast, which occurred near the Australian Embassy, knocked an armored vehicle off the pavement. It was the first attack directed against an Australian force that protects the country's diplomats in Baghdad. Three Australian troops and six Iraqis were wounded.
In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and wounded five, the U.S. military said.
The Estonian was killed when an explosive charge detonated beneath a convoy in western Baghdad. He was the second soldier from the Baltic country to die in Iraq this year. Estonia maintains 45 troops here.
Fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar pr