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NUCLEAR
Malfunction cuts power at Fermi II
USEC Inc. Reports Results for 3rd Quarter 2004;
Mobile Armageddon
Diplomats: Nuke Report on Iran May Weaken U.S. Case
Iran can make the bomb, but doesn't want to: Iranian official
US Librarian of Congress visits Iran as nuclear tensions rise
S.Korea lobbies hard at UN nuke watchdog-diplomats
NKorea lays out terms for rejoining six-way nuclear talks: report
Weapons-Grade Plutonium Never Disappeared in Russia - Atomic Official
Russia and Iran Are to Sign Nuclear Deal in December, Says Tass
Axis of failure
Ill., Mich. Want New Federal Isotope Lab
Permit Change Bars High-Level Sludge from WIPP
Study: Nuclear shipments broke rules for testing
Future Of Hanford Initiative In Doubt Despite Voters' Approval
State to bolster oversight of WIPP
MILITARY
Karzai Win Gives Chance to Cleanse Afghan Government
Afghan Militants Extend Hostage Deadline
Karzai Formally Named Winner of Afghan Presidential Election
U.N. Accuses Sudan of Moving Refugees
UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program
BAE investigated over Saudi fraud allegations: two arrested
Britain warns EADS it could lose multi-billion dollar aircraft order
Northrop Grumman Demonstrates Key Technologies
Lockheed to Take Charge on Court Decision
Defense stocks surge after Bush win
Sarin 'Gulf war syndrome cause'
Chemical weapons disposal behind schedule
Hungary Will Withdraw Troops From Iraq
Hungary to withdraw troops from Iraq by March 2005: Gyurcsany
Hungary abandons conscription as it joins European
Marines' 'Night Walkers' Watch Over Dark Skies
Gunmen Seize Five in Two Iraq Kidnappings
Insurgents Blow Up an Iraqi Oil Pipeline
Israeli Lawmakers Back Settlers' Funding
Sharon's Gaza Pullout Plan Faces Key Vote
Israel Parliament Clears Payoffs for Gaza Settlers
India Test-Fires Brahmos Supersonic Cruise Missile From Warship
Ball Aerospace Proud Of ERBS Spacecraft That Keeps Going And Going
Annan Urges New Security Council Steps on Darfur
Air, marine operations merged
Guard revamps recruit incentives
Abu Ghraib Prison MP Pleads Guilty to Reduced Charge
G.I. in Abu Ghraib Abuse Is Spared Time in Jail
G.I. Gets Light Sentence for Desertion in '65
EU will keep the heat on war crimes suspects in Bosnia: commander
Ex-Yugoslav capitals pressed over warcrimes suspects
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court hears case about death-row defense tactics
On Alert for Terror Activity
Status of Hondurans, Nicaraguans extended November 03, 2004
Race-segregated prisons eyed
Race-Based Prison Policy Is Under Justices' Scrutiny
POLITICS
White House: Debt Ceiling Must Be Raised
The Wedge Politics of Osama bin Laden
Victorious Bush vows to reach out to Kerry voters
Bush wins race as Kerry concedes
US Election Outcome Impacts Europe
Early charges of vote fraud suggest a raft of challenges
Election 2004: Shoplifting the Presidency?
George McGovern on Daschle's Defeat
Rep. Dennis Kucinich on the Showdown in Ohio
ENERGY
Bush Likely to Renew Push for Alaska Oil Drilling
ACTIVISTS
Sole protester held after anti-war demo at Britain's Foreign Office
A Bridge Across Tears For Iraq
11 anti-war protesters arrested
SF Protesters Decry U.S. Presence In Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Malfunction cuts power at Fermi II
Glitch fixed; full operation resumed
The Toledo Blade
November 3, 2004
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041103/NEWS17/411030356/-1/NEWS
Detroit Edison Co. yesterday said its Fermi II nuclear plant in northern Monroe County experienced an unexpected loss of power Sunday night.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged the problem was a relatively simple fix and that the public was not endangered. The plant was allowed to resume operation promptly.
It ascended back to full power at 11:47 p.m. Monday, 27 hours after the malfunction was diagnosed at 8:45 p.m. Sunday.
"They had a troubleshooting problem with some equipment and were able to fix it right away," said Jan Strasma, NRC spokesman.
The malfunction involved an electronic circuit card on one of two major pumps used to control the flow of coolant water over the nuclear reactor. When the circuit card failed Sunday night, the pump that it's associated with slowly lost power.
"It happened suddenly and unexpectedly," John Austerberry, utility spokesman, said. "When one pump [slowed] down, it caused the other to slow down."
Neither pump became idled. They just weren't able to run at full speed until the repair was made, he said.
Operators held the reactor at 62 percent power until the circuit card was replaced. Then, the gradual ascension back to full power began. The plant remained in stable condition at all times, Mr. Austerberry said.
Detroit Edison is days from shutting down Fermi II for normal refueling and maintenance, a outage that all 103 operating nuclear plants have on average once every 18 months to two years. The upcoming outage at Fermi II will last about a month.
Mr. Austerberry yesterday acknowledged the outage will begin in early November, but said the utility is not divulging the date in advance.
-------- business
USEC Inc. Reports Results for 3rd Quarter 2004;
$3.4 Million Quarterly Loss in Line with Guidance; USEC Increases Full-Year Guidance to $18 to $20 Million
(BUSINESS WIRE)
Nov. 3, 2004
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20041103005785&newsLang=en
BETHESDA, Md.---USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU) today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2004 of a net loss of $3.4 million or $.04 per share compared to net income of $3.4 million or $.04 per share in the same quarter last year. For the nine months ended September 30, 2004, USEC reported a net loss of $2.9 million or $.03 per share compared to net income of $9.8 million or $.12 per share in the same period last year. These results are consistent with previous guidance for a loss in the quarter; however, USEC is increasing its full-year 2004 earnings guidance to $18 to $20 million, reflecting higher margins in SWU and uranium sales.
The Company's results continue to be impacted by its investment in the future, the American Centrifuge technology. For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2004, USEC expensed $36.4 million to support the American Centrifuge demonstration, which had the effect of reducing net income by about $23 million or $.27 per share in the period. In the same period of 2003, USEC expensed $32.7 million, which had the effect of reducing net income by about $20 million or $.24 per share.
As anticipated in the Company's guidance, revenue from the sale of Separative Work Units (SWU) in the first nine months of 2004 was significantly lower than in the same period of 2003. This reduction was due to lower prices in the first quarter of the year as some customers took orders under low-priced contracts signed during the late 1990s, and lower sales volume as customers take delivery of higher-priced SWU later in the year. SWU volume in 2004 is also negatively affected by lower contractual commitments and postponed refuelings due to the shutdown of a Japanese customer's reactors for special inspections. This lower revenue was partially offset by an improved gross profit margin in both the three and nine-month periods. SWU prices billed to customers showed improvement in the third quarter. USEC expects approximately half of its SWU deliveries for 2004 to occur in the fourth quarter.
USEC's customers generally place orders under their long-term contracts tied to reactor refuelings that occur on a 12- to 24-month cycle. Therefore, short-term comparisons of USEC's financials are not necessarily indicative of the Company's longer-term results.
"The long-term nature of our customer contracts, coupled with the essential role that nuclear fuel plays in generating 20 percent of America's electricity, gives us clear visibility into near-term revenue. Customer orders to be delivered in the fourth quarter are firm, and we have high confidence in our revenue, earnings and cash flow projections for the remainder of 2004," said William H. Timbers, president and chief executive officer.
Revenue and Cost of Sales
Revenue for the third quarter was $252.2 million, compared to $341.1 million for the same quarter a year ago. USEC's revenue is primarily related to the sale of the SWU component of low-enriched uranium. This quarter's 29 percent reduction in SWU volume was responsible for the 26 percent reduction in total revenue compared to the third quarter of 2003. The average SWU price billed to customers increased 3 percent quarter over quarter.
For the nine-month period ended September 30, 2004, revenue was $750.8 million compared to $1,030.8 million in the same period of 2003, on 34 percent lower SWU volume this year. The average SWU price billed to customers declined 1 percent compared to the same nine-month period of 2003, with most of the decline coming in the first quarter of 2004. USEC anticipates that over the full year, the average SWU price billed to customers will be flat year over year.
Although revenue from natural uranium sales declined in the quarter, it was $7.6 million higher on 16 percent lower volume during the first nine months of 2004 compared to the same period last year. The average price billed to customers increased 28 percent during the period. USEC's natural uranium inventory is being supplemented with uranium available as a result of underfeeding operations at the Paducah, Kentucky enrichment plant. Underfeeding uses less uranium in the enrichment process but requires more SWU, which requires more electric power. Underfeeding results in incremental uranium available to USEC to sell at today's higher prices, which have increased approximately 50 percent in 2004. Revenue from these sales exceeds the incremental power cost incurred during the underfeeding process.
The decline in SWU sales volume produced a corresponding reduction of $263.7 million or 33 percent in the cost of sales for SWU and uranium in the nine-month period. The unit cost of SWU sales was 2 percent lower than in the same period of 2003, reflecting the impact of lower production and purchase costs in previous periods.
The average unit cost of production and purchases increased by 3 percent during the nine-month period compared with the corresponding period in 2003. The cost of electricity, labor and benefits increased compared to 2003. The Company's purchase costs per SWU increased under a market-based formula with Tenex, the Russian government's executive agent, which reflects the impact of higher SWU market prices since 2001. Under the average inventory cost method, coupled with USEC's inventory position, an increase or decrease in costs will have an effect on cost of sales in future periods.
The gross profit margin for the quarter was 14.1 percent compared to 12.0 percent in the same period last year, due to improved margins on SWU and uranium. For the nine-month period, the gross profit margin was 14.2 percent compared to 11.4 percent in the same period last year.
Selling, general and administrative expenses totaled $15.3 million in the quarter, about the same as last year, and are $2.9 million higher in the nine-month period compared to last year. The increase is due to higher compensation and employee benefit costs, legal and consulting fees, insurance expense and new costs incurred to ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley.
Outlook
USEC continues to project revenue for 2004 at approximately $1.4 billion, with about half of its revenue from deliveries of SWU and natural uranium coming in the fourth quarter. Revenue includes the sale of natural uranium, which is expected to total approximately $210 million. While the revenue projection is virtually unchanged, USEC expects its cost of sales to decline below its previous forecast, resulting in a one-half percent improvement to its gross profit margin.
USEC raises its earnings guidance for 2004 to $18 to $20 million, or $.21 to $.24 per share. The previous guidance given for the year was $14 to $16 million.
USEC expects to invest approximately $70 million in the American Centrifuge technology in 2004. The Company has reassessed its allocation of costs for 2004 between expense and capital, and now anticipates that approximately $60 million related to demonstration activities will be expensed, which has the effect of reducing net income by about $37 million or 44 cents per share. USEC's earnings guidance reflects the effect of American Centrifuge expenses on net income. Approximately $10 million related to the American Centrifuge Plant is expected to be capitalized in 2004.
USEC expects cash flow from operating activities to improve from its earlier forecast. Cash flow from operating activities will be in a range of negative $45 to $55 million, and capital expenditures will total approximately $25 million, including expenditures related to the American Centrifuge. The Company anticipates ending the year with a cash balance in a range of $115 to $125 million.
American Centrifuge Continues to Exceed Milestones
USEC is in the process of demonstrating its next-generation American Centrifuge uranium enrichment technology. USEC expects to begin operation of the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility in Piketon, Ohio in 2005 and to begin construction of the American Centrifuge Plant in 2007, reaching an annual production capacity of 3.5 million SWU by 2010. Expenses during the quarter were $16.4 million, or $4.3 million more than in the third quarter of 2003.
In August, USEC applied for a construction and operating license for the American Centrifuge Plant from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and on October 7 the NRC accepted the application for detailed review. NRC's acceptance of the application comes seven months ahead of schedule and completes the seventh milestone in the Company's June 2002 agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). NRC has established a 30-month schedule for conducting its detailed review, which will include an extensive safety and environmental analysis. USEC is optimistic, however, that the commission will be able to complete its review and issue the construction and operating license in 24 months given the NRC's familiarity with the American Centrifuge technology and the Piketon site gained during the licensing process for the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility.
The application seeks a license term of 30 years for the American Centrifuge Plant with an initial production capacity of 3.5 million SWU per year. USEC's environmental report submitted with the license application also evaluates the potential expansion of the commercial plant to an annual production capacity of 7 million SWU.
Engineering, assembling and testing of centrifuge components and the initial centrifuge machines will continue at USEC's test facilities located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Under a license granted in February 2004 by the NRC, USEC has begun construction and refurbishment activities at the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility, and USEC expects to begin operations there in 2005.
USEC has signed agreements with the Boeing Company and Honeywell International to support the manufacture of centrifuge machines for the American Centrifuge program. Both companies have extensive experience in building centrifuge machines through their involvement with DOE's original centrifuge program. During the two-year term of the current agreements, centrifuge components will be manufactured, tested and assembled into full-size machines. As reported previously, USEC has also engaged Fluor Enterprises to provide engineering, procurement and construction management services for the American Centrifuge Plant over the next two years.
Cash and Cash Flow
At September 30, 2004, USEC's cash balance was $15 million. Cash flow from operating activities for the nine-month period, as anticipated in the Company's guidance, was negative $197.2 million compared to negative $52.4 million in the same period a year ago. The $144.8 million difference between the two periods was primarily due to decreased SWU deliveries and SWU inventory that increased by approximately $300 million in 2004 in preparation for fourth quarter sales. Inventory levels fluctuate based on timing of anticipated deliveries and seasonal production schedules. Other factors affecting cash flow included a $33.2 million payment to resolve the termination of a power contract in 2003. The Company had no short-term debt at September 30. USEC anticipates drawing funds under its bank credit agreement in the fourth quarter with the expectation of repaying the loan before year's end. As previously reported, net cash flow from operating activities is expected to return to positive levels in 2005.
Other Business Matters
-- As of September 30, 2004, USEC had processed and cleaned 5,357 metric tons of out-of-specification uranium contaminated with technetium (Tc99), or 56 percent of the total. The remaining amount of uranium inventory to be replaced or remediated is 4,193 metric tons. In October 2004, USEC and DOE entered into an agreement that obligates DOE to transfer title and custody of 2,116 metric tons of uranium to USEC in exchange for 2,116 metric tons of out-of-specification uranium, subject to certain conditions, including inspection and acceptance by USEC. Separately, in October 2004 DOE approved a work authorization for USEC to continue processing out-of-specification uranium for DOE through November 20, 2004. USEC and DOE are negotiating contract terms for USEC to continue processing out-of-specification uranium for the period November 21 to December 31, 2004, as well as contract terms for additional years. As part of the uranium transfer agreement, USEC has begun cleaning contaminated uranium belonging to DOE.
-- In July, the U.S. Department of Commerce concluded administrative reviews of its 2002 orders that established countervailing and antidumping duties for imports of low-enriched uranium. The reviews resulted in substantially lower duties applied to imports from USEC's European competitors than initially estimated, indicating a reduction in dumping and subsidization following the granting of trade relief by the Commerce Department. The ruling demonstrates that the duties are working and that the government's investigation has successfully returned stability to the low-enriched uranium market.
This news release contains forward-looking information that involves risks and uncertainty, including certain assumptions regarding the future performance of USEC. Actual results and trends may differ materially depending upon a variety of factors, including, without limitation, market demand for USEC's products, pricing trends in the uranium and enrichment markets, deliveries under the Russian Contract, the availability and cost of electric power, implementing agreements with the Department of Energy (DOE) regarding uranium inventory remediation and the use of centrifuge technology and facilities, satisfactory performance of the American Centrifuge technology at various stages of demonstration, USEC's ability to successfully execute its internal performance plans, the refueling cycles of USEC's customers, final determinations of environmental and other costs, the outcome of litigation and trade actions, performance under government contracts and audits of allowable costs on government contract work, and the impact of any government regulation. Revenue and operating results can fluctuate significantly from quarter to quarter, and in some cases, year to year.
Please refer to our SEC filings, which can be accessed through the Company's website www.usec.com, for a more complete discussion of these factors.
USEC Inc., a global energy company, is the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
USEC Inc.
CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF INCOME (LOSS) (Unaudited)
(millions, except per share data)
Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended
September 30, September 30,
------------------- -------------------
2004 2003 2004 2003
-------- -------- -------- --------
As As
restated(a) restated(a)
Revenue:
Separative work units $194.6 $265.6 $518.2 $798.0
Uranium 16.8 28.0 111.8 104.2
U.S. Government
contracts 40.8 47.5 120.8 128.6
-------- -------- -------- --------
Total revenue 252.2 341.1 750.8 1,030.8
Cost of sales:
Separative work units
and uranium 180.1 263.7 533.3 797.0
U.S. Government
contracts 36.5 36.4 110.9 116.1
-------- -------- -------- --------
Total cost of sales 216.6 300.1 644.2 913.1
-------- -------- -------- --------
Gross profit 35.6 41.0 106.6 117.7
Centrifuge demonstration
costs 16.4 12.1 36.4 32.7
Selling, general and
administrative 15.3 15.1 47.2 44.3
-------- -------- -------- --------
Operating income 3.9 13.8 23.0 40.7
Interest expense 10.0 9.8 29.8 28.7
Interest (income) (1.2) (1.5) (2.7) (4.6)
-------- -------- -------- --------
Income (loss) before
income taxes (4.9) 5.5 (4.1) 16.6
Provision (credit) for
income taxes (1.5) 2.1 (1.2) 6.8
-------- -------- -------- --------
Net income (loss) $(3.4) $3.4 $(2.9) $9.8
======== ======== ======== ========
Net income (loss) per
share - basic and diluted $(.04) $.04 $(.03) $.12
Dividends per share $.1375 $.1375 $.4125 $.4125
Average number of shares
outstanding 84.4 82.3 83.8 82.1
(a) USEC performs contract work for DOE and DOE contractors at the Portsmouth and Paducah plants. In the three and nine months ended September 30, 2004, billings under government contracts are reported as part of revenue, and costs incurred are reported as part of costs and expenses. In the three and nine months ended September 30, 2003, the net amount of income or expense for government contracts had been reported as part of other income (expense), net. The statements of income for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2003, have been restated to conform to the current presentation. There was no effect on income before income taxes, net income or net income per share as a result of the change.
USEC Inc.
CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED BALANCE SHEETS
(Millions)
(Unaudited)
September 30, December 31,
2004 2003
--------- ---------
ASSETS
Current Assets
Cash and cash equivalents $15.0 $249.1
Accounts receivable - trade 159.4 254.5
Inventories 1,205.1 883.2
Prepaid items 14.1 16.9
Other current assets 34.4 23.0
--------- ---------
Total Current Assets 1,428.0 1,426.7
Property, Plant and Equipment, net 174.4 185.1
Other Long-Term Assets
Deferred income taxes 34.7 52.5
Prepayment and deposit for depleted
uranium 23.5 47.1
Prepaid pension benefit costs 80.9 76.3
Inventories 198.5 266.1
--------- ---------
Total Other Assets 337.6 442.0
--------- ---------
Total Assets $1,940.0 $2,053.8
========= =========
LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY
Current Liabilities
Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $173.5 $188.3
Payables under Russian Contract 136.1 119.3
Uranium owed to customers and suppliers - 45.0
Termination settlement obligation under
power purchase agreement - 33.2
Deferred revenue and advances from
customers 26.0 25.8
--------- ---------
Total Current Liabilities 335.6 411.6
Long-Term Debt 500.0 500.0
Other Long-Term Liabilities
Deferred revenue and advances from
customers 6.7 13.5
Depleted uranium disposition 27.6 53.5
Postretirement health and life benefit
obligations 144.1 138.1
Lease turnover and other liabilities 63.6 50.9
--------- ---------
Total Other Liabilities 242.0 256.0
Stockholders' Equity 862.4 886.2
--------- ---------
Total Liabilities and Stockholders'
Equity $1,940.0 $2,053.8
========= =========
USEC Inc.
CONSOLIDATED CONDENSED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited)
(millions)
Nine Months Ended
September 30,
----------------
2004 2003
------- -------
Cash Flows from Operating Activities
Net income (loss) $(2.9) $9.8
Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash
provided by (used in) operating activities:
Depreciation and amortization 23.6 21.7
Deferred revenue and advances from customers (6.6) (43.4)
Liabilities accrued for consolidating plant
operations - (9.1)
Changes in operating assets and liabilities:
Accounts receivable - (increase) decrease 95.1 (43.5)
Inventories - net (increase) decrease (299.5) 31.5
Payables under Russian Contract - increase
(decrease) 16.8 (15.2)
Payment of termination settlement
obligation under power purchase agreement (33.2) -
Accounts payable and other - net increase
(decrease) 9.5 (4.2)
------- -------
Net Cash (Used in) Operating Activities (197.2) (52.4)
------- -------
Cash Flows Used in Investing Activities
Capital expenditures (13.1) (20.5)
------- -------
Net Cash (Used in) Investing Activities (13.1) (20.5)
------- -------
Cash Flows Used in Financing Activities
Dividends paid to stockholders (34.6) (33.9)
Common stock issued 10.8 2.2
------- -------
Net Cash (Used in) Financing Activities (23.8) (31.7)
------- -------
Net (Decrease) (234.1) (104.6)
Cash and Cash Equivalents at Beginning of Period 249.1 171.1
------- -------
Cash and Cash Equivalents at End of Period $15.0 $66.5
======= =======
Supplemental Cash Flow Information:
Interest paid $34.2 $34.1
Income taxes paid (refund) 8.1 (2.8)
-------- depleted uranium
Mobile Armageddon
www.dissidentvoice.org
by Reza Fiyouzat
November 3, 2004
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov2004/Fiyouzat1103.htm
As a naturalized citizen of the USA, I am grateful that this country has established voting as a right of the citizenry, no matter how well or poorly this right may be exercised at times. And, as an Iranian long-time observer (and object) of things political, I can safely expect that almost all that is of essential significance will remain unchanged no matter who wins. And for these particular US general elections, not even the tempo of atrocious behavior toward Middle Easterners is expected to change. For the most part, now that the voting is over, we are still left with all our fundamental questions un-addressed and all our problems growing worse.
At least for those Iraqi and Afghans who are inhaling uranium fumes in their streets, ingesting uranium dust in their food, drinking uranium particles in their water; and watching their kids play in uranium-shielded vehicles after the soldiers are through destroying with them. This radioactive poison, gassing all the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and, downwind, of all countries in the Middle East, will burn cancers into all organic life forms, for the next four and a half billion years. We heard not a single word from either major candidate that such a war crime should be questioned, never mind stopped. This is the equivalent of not caring to form an opinion over Nazis' gassing of Jews and Gypsies in concentration camps.
Of course, all familiar with the history of colonization know well that the schemes and intentions driving the atrocities in Iraq are not new. For only the most famous example, Thom Hartmann has a good overview: "Prior to Columbus' arrival, some scholars place the population of Haiti/Hispaniola ... at around 1.5 to 3 million people. By 1496, it was down to 1.1 million, according to a census done by Bartholomew Columbus. By 1516, the indigenous population was 12,000, and according to Las Casas (who were there) by 1542 fewer than 200 natives were alive. By 1555, every single one was dead," (from "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late" by Thom Hartmann, www.thomhartmann.com)
This dark history of ours, however, should not be 'quoted' in the spirit of cynicism, to insinuate that humans are by immovable nature perpetually afflicted with nothing but greed, and mysteriously beyond any cure. Not at all. The reference to history is done in the spirit of a warning, a call to lift the heads and a plea for persuasion.
The singular mechanism of voting does not exhaust by a long shot all that is meant by the word 'democracy'. If that were the case, the Mullahs in Tehran could (and some perhaps do) claim to be more democratic than the politicians in Washington, DC, since, taken as a percentage of eligible population that participated in the elections, more Iranians participated in their Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 1997 than did Americans in their Presidential and Congressional elections of 1996 or 2000. Thus rendered quantitatively, would it then be logical to conclude that the Iranians practiced more democracy? Hardly!
Clearly voting alone does not guarantee a realistic control over the decisions that truly shape our lives. As some among the ancient Greeks would have it, to be a citizen implied responsibilities far beyond the occasional casting of a ballot. It would be indeed the antithesis of democracy when such occasional casting of the ballot is only followed by a swift disappearance behind the daily chores and duties and obligations that comprise the 'comfort' of the private life, little of which is truly private. Most of what we have in private was gotten through very social and public means. It is indeed public questions that determine to the last minutiae of our private lives.
Compared to the Greek ideal then, it becomes clear how deeply undemocratic and indeed anti-democratic all our states are. Laws do get written, laws that change and affect our lives, yet none of us (the people) are doing any of the writing of the laws, nor exerting any real control over the corporations that steal our common goods and natural resources at the same time as they dictate laws to our legislatures to the effect of our entrapment.
"As for the question of ... administration, [the ancient Greeks'] system was one in which every citizen was expected to, and got to serve in various capacities, chosen through a process that has come to be known as sortition, a sort of selection by lot. This magnificent mode of experimentation, this readiness to learn by doing, has given humanity one of the most vibrant epochs of its history," (To Be or Not to Be an Idiot, H. Utanazad, March 3, 2003, www.iranian.com).
Within this ideal framework, what of those individuals who chose not to participate in the making of the decisions which shape the conditions of their lives? "They had a name -- those Greeks -- for the occasional one who refused to get involved: they called him the idiotes, the private person, the one who cared not for the affairs of the community, or for politics," (ibid).
So, which are we? Citizens or idiots?
Post Mortem for Postmodernism
Each and every aspect and dimension of this juncture of our history, as is always with our social class activities, is a forced situation. There is nothing fatalistic about it, and very little of it is based on chance or came about randomly.
Ever since the appearance of the 'New Movements' for social justice in the 1960s and 1970s, and the subsequent seeming displacement of 'classes' by 'race/gender/identity/environment', the pragmatism of the dispersed fights in concrete localities has dominated the US left. Furthermore, as the New Movements have diverged increasingly, activists of all localities, even while fighting disconnected fights, have grown more timid with every successive demand they have put forth, so as to reassure all that they are not in any way form or shape one of those 'big-picture' bad guys, to sooth any worries that, God forbid, should they be engaged in trying to change the system!
As a result, the followers of postmodernist oppositional practices have abided loyally by a policy of standing aside when it has come to 'big-picture' questions of big narratives of systems and utopias; meaning, they have voluntarily handed the most crucial domains over to the boys with the guns running the current global system.
The postmodern activist in the USA should find it instructive that politically what they preach would resonate harmonically well with a majority of middle class parents all over the world, as they persist to dissuade all from political oppositional activity. My own homegrown type have been repeating to their kids by rote: "Just tend to your own little garden. Forget about politics! What can you do anyway? See what happened when we tried to change things in Iran? We ended up with a worse totalitarianism! See child? We should have appreciated the Shah and kept our mouths shut!"
Another point of contention, and one of irony, is that, at any political juncture where the New Movements joined hands with the workers the results were the most dramatic openings in the political spaces previously undisputed, in fundamental ways. The May 1968 uprisings of Paris were perhaps the best example of this. But then, one must also mention that this is the city that, almost a century prior to the May uprisings of the 'Vietnam generation', had given us the Paris Commune.
So, maybe the working class militancy does make a big difference. Simply because working classes change shape and form does not mean militancy can be safely dispensed with; we have not entered some radically changed universe simply because more aspects of our overlooked humanity are raising their voices. The New Movements did not displace classes, nor could they.
What did take place, however, was a very systematic attack on the living standards as well as autonomous institutions of the working classes, waged on all fronts: from purely economic (systematic increases in temping, reduction and where possible axing of benefits in more and more industries, outsourcing, holding the workers at ransom practically with the threat of relocation, while reducing wages and taking rights away) to the legislative (in the form of the so called 'deregulation' revolution); all of which expanded and deepened radically the realms governed by private capital. Not to forget the destruction of the safety net for the most vulnerable portions of the working classes, thereby dropping the floor even further, all of this led by a group of rightwing activist political representatives, starting most notably in the UK and the US, by the end of 1970s. By the end of their rollback, capital had maximum mobility, while labor was locked into ghettoized, localized, dispersed parcels.
While the New Movements busied themselves with over-estimations of their own impact and scope, the infrastructure for all oppositional movements deteriorated considerably.
Ultimately, the system has laughed all the way. Feminism was reduced to having a seat at the table, as was the race 'issue'; THE table; the only table; the table at which decisions are made regarding the perpetuation of starvation, disease and insecurity, bombing or poisoning of innocent communities for the price of a loot.
Very obviously women's liberation has not come about. Nor has colonization ended. Nor have grand narratives stopped dictating the shapes of our lives. And, indeed, they continue to dictate life with special ferocity to the people living outside the so-called Metropolis, away from the North, distant from the First World.
Whatever the name, the reality is clear to us. A very definite Totality does constitute our reality, and we perceive clearly how the shitty end of this system ends up where it does, and see clearly where the loot ends up. We all exist in this totality, so we should not mistake it for randomly put together contingent narratives. The most productive intellectual tool that explains best how our historical situation has specifically come to this point is that old concept of the struggle of the SOCIAL CLASSES!
The total emancipation of women today is negated primarily by the uneven wage structure that is in perpetuity a fundamental requirement for a capitalist way of organizing social production. This, and not simply the general history of patriarchy, explains the specific and concrete shape of women's subjugation today.
The decades of 1980s and 1990s were the decades of rightwing restoration, resurgence, and renewed dominance. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the outright maniacal unleashing of unsheathed capitalism became possible and immediately went into effect. The collapse, or complete disappearance of the US left, then, has been a long process. But, with this election, we can without a doubt state that in the US the true left, with the exception of Nader, is now entirely located outside the officialdom.
Along with about 50% of the electorate that regularly does not vote. And along with a great amount of truth and un-pretty reality, under which we must continue to labor.
Two Points for Agitation:
Taxation without Representation, Radioactive Poisoning
Yet, this is exactly the last place to act timidly!
Just because it was legal to own slaves did the slaves simply surrender and lose their conviction that slavery was anything but a crime against humanity?
One point that must be raised has to do with the question of the degree of idiocy allowed. Did not the Declaration of Independence have some bearing on the slogan, 'No Taxation without Representation!'? But, on this day more than ever, we have relinquished our representation for the taxes we pay.
The question of the theft that is called taxation can be turned around, though.
Here is a modest proposal. In the magnificently hi-tech country of the USA, we have all the means and the wherewithal to devise a simple re-introduction of representation into our tax system. Imagine, if you will, a system whereby, coupled with the documents we submit for our taxes yearly, we are required to submit also a list of priorities that dictate to the government how our taxes are to be spent in the fiscal year to come.
So, for example, as a tax payer I can dictate to the government that, of the taxes just received from me, I would like them to spend 30% of it on various welfare programs, 20% on education, 20% on national healthcare, 20% on proliferation of artistic activities among the elderly, and 10% on developing a sound science of child psychology, so that we can stop torturing and stupefying our kids. Thus, under this system, the decision over the expenditure of our money is not relegated to some 'expert' legislator, but is actually carried out by us, so that each and every one of our priorities is not only respected, but accounted for, and our money is put where our collective mouths would have been through that fiscal year.
By deciding the budgetary restrains of policies and thus prioritizing expenditure, citizens become more politically adept at the same time that they are becoming more relevant in a real sense. So, where better to start demanding rights of decision making than when you are handing over your money to the government? Such a reformulation of taxation system can bring about a real lever of control exercised by the citizens over a myriad of social policies, orientation of the foreign policy, trade, would even have repercussions on industrial policy, and could far more easily exert control over questions that could lead to costly endeavors such as wars.
This is not a revolutionary idea. Loudly demanding that governments be more accountable to the people, in a very concrete way, in the light of the question of representation for taxation, is a legitimate right that most citizens of any bourgeois society can relate to without being horrified that, God forbid, they be required to turn into rabid revolutionaries, forced to abandon their families and communities!
But, if enacted, such a practiced conception of taxation would be far more conducive to creating more radical conditions.
The second point is one of guilt on a mass scale. Yes, we are repeating ourselves, and yes it is a good thing to repeat what needs repeating; we are talking about the use of uranium munitions. Did you hear about those 'bunker-buster' bombs those nice guys in Israel just bought, and received on time from their US manufacturing clients? The type that is used daily, weekly, monthly in Iraq and Afghanistan? The bunker-busting capabilities of which brought to you by uranium. A weapon of mass destruction. A nuclear weapon of a new generation.
In view of the fact that the genocidal and omnicidal (killing of all living things) impact of the US and the UK's military tactics in using uranium munitions are denied daily, while the clinical and the criminal evidence piles higher and higher, and while other more 'mundane' atrocities are becoming normalized, we must think of what lies ahead for those exposed to uranium munitions.
As a result of the unprecedented proliferation of uranium munitions by the US and the UK military forces in the Gulf region between 1991 and August 2004, Terry Jemison of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs has reported that 518,739 soldiers returning from the Gulf region in that 13-year period are currently on medical disability. In that same time period only 7,039 were injured on the battlefield. Sixty five percent of the post-war babies born to a group of 400 returning soldiers were born with severe deformities - missing brains, missing eyes, arms and legs and other organs (from, "Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: A death sentence here and abroad," by Leuren Moret, San Francisco Bay View, August 18, 2004).
That is not counting the human cost of soldiers who will never return, nor the tortured souls who will return to shattered lives. The families of the military personnel being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan must be told this. It is everybody's duty to inform them of this atrocity being committed against them by their own government, which qualifies as a war crime. Just as much an atrocity as being sent into harm's way to secure no-bid contracts for Halliburton, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group, and assorted oil, banking, and construction cartels.
And the reports are clear that the bad boys in the big business of war are aware of the growing opposition to uranium weapons from US citizens, and are therefore currently outsourcing the manufacturing of uranium into munitions to Belgium and South Africa.
Here is the truth as told in an email interview with Leuren Moret, the courageous geoscientist, formerly at Livermore National Laboratories, who has since been informing the world of the horrors of uranium munitions: "I called [a] veteran who was in munitions, Special OPs, and has testified in Congress. He is a reliable source in my opinion, and has been in contact with Joyce Riley and her program The Power Hour for years. After testifying in Congress after Gulf War-I, he was put in military prison for telling the truth on the floor of Congress ... He said that soldiers he is in touch with who are on active duty told him that recently crates of depleted uranium ballistics (bullets, missiles and bombs) have been arriving at the port at Corpus Christi, Texas. There is a large US Army depot there where munitions are stored for distribution to all branches of the military. There is also a quarantine station there which may mean extra privacy for whatever they are doing with the DU. The crates of DU ballistics are labeled with point of embarkation as "Belgium" or "South Africa". He said that Belgium is where NATO headquarters is located, and that the winds there blow out to sea which would carry any depleted uranium dust or residue away from populated areas. The munitions are being shipped to the US for storage and deployment here. He said the metal DU is shipped to those countries for manufacturing, a way to appease the outcry in the US against DU munitions."
Ms Moret said that depleted uranium weapons are in violation of US laws and meet the federal definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction: US CODE, Title 50: Chapter 40, Section 2302: The term "weapon of mass destruction" means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of - (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors; (B) a disease organism; or (C) radiation or radioactivity." Depleted uranium WMD are therefore illegal under US Military Law, and all international treaties, agreements, and the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
"Our babies are dying again from global pollution with low level radiation," Ms Moret warned. "The US and UK are turning this planet into a death star - for greed, for profits, and to steal the mineral resources from other countries to bolster the US and UK economies. In a unit of 20 soldiers who served in the 2003 Iraq war, 8 of those soldiers have malignancies just 16 months later. What will happen to the other soldiers who have served or will be serving in the contaminated regions?"
When I suggested that, following from the available statistics, we can extrapolate that at least 50,000 returning soldiers will have died in a decade, Ms Moret's objection was that my estimate was far too low.
She said "Our children are becoming uranium meat for someone else's profits, and that is not why we had children." She added that all future generations born to contaminated people will continue to express birth defects from their damaged DNA.
The planned and conscious proliferation of uranium poisoning by the US and the UK governments can and must be used in campaigns of organized, legal mass mutiny. In this effort the clear clinical evidence that exists of the effects of uranium munitions' use must be widely disseminated among the armed forces of the US and the UK being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. The governments of the US and the UK must be held accountable.
The Nazis were neat. Anal, if you will. They created specific facilities to carry out their evilest deeds away from the public eyes, so that they could maintain their starched public appearance. One stereotypical image of the Yanks, by contrast, is the sloppy type. As tourists, they can stand out in a crowd of a million, and as military beings they feel comfortable only when they're leaving a huge mess everywhere they go. As go the stereotypes, so does some of the reality. On a less negative note, the American ruling classes are perpetually retro-proactive. Meaning, in plain English, they're always covering their tracks. This time, though, they have a hell of a track to cover.
The history of mankind has consisted mainly in the fight between the monkey within each and every one of us and the human within all of us. Faced with the monkeys, are we, let's ask again, are we going to act as citizens or as idiots?
Reza Fiyouzat is an applied linguist and freelance writer working in Japan. Iranian by birth, bi-national by passports (a US citizen), his writings have appeared in CounterPunch, and (in English and Portuguese) on the Brazilian website, Revista Espaco Academico. He can be reached at: rfaze@gol.com.
-------- iran
Diplomats: Nuke Report on Iran May Weaken U.S. Case
Reuters
By Louis Charbonneau
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21560-2004Nov3.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - A new report on U.N. nuclear inspections in Iran may be worded in a way that undermines the U.S. case for reporting Tehran to the Security Council this month, diplomats said Wednesday.
United Nations nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei is due to present a report next week summarizing his agency's two-year investigation of Iran's nuclear program, which Washington says is a front to develop atomic weapons.
Tehran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to electricity generation.
"ElBaradei plans to say in his November report on Iran that the agency has so far found no evidence of diversion (to a nuclear weapons program)," a diplomat who follows the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe told Reuters.
"But he will balance that by saying that Iran's fuel cycle activities would appear to be out of proportion with the other parts of its nuclear program," the diplomat added, referring to Iran's controversial uranium enrichment activities.
Diplomats said ElBaradei had told the Iranians he would be able to pen a positive report if there was a constructive atmosphere in their talks Friday with European counterparts who want Tehran to freeze its enrichment program.
The IAEA report will be crucial in the U.S. push to have Iran reported to the U.N. Security Council for possible economic sanctions when the watchdog's board meets on Nov. 25.
While the agency has uncovered many previously concealed parts of Iran's nuclear program, it has found no "smoking gun" clearly proving the U.S. allegations.
Several diplomats said a statement that there was no hard proof of diversion would remove a key legal ground for reporting Iran to the Security Council but would not make it impossible.
An IAEA spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the report was still being drafted.
Tehran's pursuit of enriched uranium fuel is the most controversial aspect its nuclear program because it could potentially be used to produce material for atomic weapons.
ElBaradei is trying to encourage Iran to accept an EU offer of peaceful nuclear technology and other political and economic incentives in exchange for an end to its enrichment program.
"ElBaradei told the Iranians that if the atmosphere in the EU three talks is positive, then his report on Iran will also be positive," a diplomat said. "That is quite a carrot for Iran."
Friday's talks with French, German and British officials will be held in Paris.
If no deal is struck ahead of the Nov. 25 IAEA meeting, the EU is expected to support a referral to the Security Council.
Diplomats in Vienna say they expect Iran will agree to a temporary suspension of enrichment soon to avoid being referred to the Security Council. However, they said a deal was unlikely to be struck at Friday's meeting.
--------
Iran can make the bomb, but doesn't want to: Iranian official
MOSCOW (AFP)
Nov 03, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041103163910.1gz1kawp.html
Iran has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons but does not intend doing so, a senior Iranian official said here Wednesday.
"We do not intend making nuclear weapons," said Ali Akbar Soltan, deputy director-general of Iran's foreign ministry political department.
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in Vienna has set a November 25 deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities and answer all questions about its nuclear ambitions.
The United States alleges Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies.
"If we had had such an intention, we would have done so a long time ago because Iran has the capacity to do so, especially talented scientists," Soltani told an international conference here.
"But we are interested only in nuclear power for peaceful purposes," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Last month, Russia called on Iran to ease international concerns about its nuclear ambitions by ratifying the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and halting all uranium enrichment.
"The IAEA would like to seek more steps to strengthen trust in Iran's nuclear programme, and Iran must take such steps," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying in the Tajik capital Dushanbe.
Lavrov urged the Iranian parliament to ratify the additional protocol of the NPT, which Tehran signed in December 2003 and which steps up international controls on the nuclear activities of signatory states.
He also called on Tehran to immediately freeze all uranium enrichment activities, another key demand of the international community.
The uranium enrichment process produces fuel for civilian reactors but is also used for production of the explosive core of atomic bombs.
Lavrov also emphasised that Russia's help in building Iran's first nuclear power station in the southern city of Bushehr "was absolutely not a cause for concern at the IAEA" and vowed that Moscow would forge ahead with the project.
The United States has also opposed the project over concerns that spent fuel from the plant could be used by Iran to produce low-yield nuclear weapons.
-----
US Librarian of Congress visits Iran as nuclear tensions rise
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 03, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041103171550.au89hnjb.html
The chief of the US Library of Congress is visiting Iran this week to explore expanding the facility's Iranian document collection as tensions between Washington and Tehran soar over the Islamic republic's nuclear program, US officials said Wednesday.
Librarian of Congress James Billington is leading a small delegation on the rare trip which also comes as Iranians celebrate the 25th anniversary of the November 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran during the country's Islamic revolution, the officials said.
"The purpose of Dr Billington's trip to Iran is purely cultural," said Helen Dalrymple, a spokeswoman for the Library of Congress. "The Library of Congress is interested in expanding its collection of Iranian publications.
"The process of collection has been curtailed since the Islamic Revolution in 1978-79, and the Library wishes to ensure that Congress is well served with printed, digital and other materials in different formats that are available not only in Persian but also in the other languages of Iran," Dalrymple said.
She said Billington had been invited by the director of the National Library of Iran.
A State Department official said that Billington's trip had been approved by the US government.
The Federation of American Scientists, which first reported Billington's trip, said the visit had been arranged by a private organization known as "Catalytic Diplomacy" and that it was intended to explore a possible exchange program.
The federation said the visit was expected to end on Friday after the conclusion of an exchange agreement between the Library of Congress and Iran's national library.
The director of Catalytic Diplomacy, Jeremy Stone, organized a scientific exchange agreement between the non-governmental National Academy of Sciences and the Iranian Academy of Sciences in 1999 but formal contact between Washington and Tehran at Billington's level is rare.
The United States and Iran severed diplomatic relations after the seizure of the embassy which resulted in the taking of 52 American hostages who were held captive for 444 days by Islamic students.
In Tehran on Wednesday, thousands of Iranians gathered at the former US embassy in Tehran, chanting "Death to America" and carrying posters depitcting the Statue of Liberty with a death mask.
As in past years, demonstrators burnt the Stars and Stripes along with the flag of Israel, the closest US ally in the Middle East and as the rally broke up, organizers read a statement that Iran would refuse to give up its right to nuclear technology.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weaopons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program and was the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to refer the matter to the UN Security Council later this month for possible sanctions.
Iran has vehemently denied the US allegations and is fighting Washington's efforts to send the matter to the Security Council.
-------- korea
S.Korea lobbies hard at UN nuke watchdog-diplomats
(Reuters)
By Louis Charbonneau
03 Nov 2004
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03718584.htm
VIENNA, Nov 3 - South Korean diplomats are lobbying hard to prevent the United Nations nuclear watchdog reporting it to the U.N. Security Council for violating the global non-proliferation pact, diplomats said on Wednesday.
South Korea said in September that scientists at government laboratories had enriched a minuscule quantity of uranium in 2000 and had extracted a trace amount of plutonium in 1982, all without government knowledge or authorisation.
"They really don't want to be reported to the Security Council. They're trying to move heaven and hell to avoid it," a Western diplomat on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
South Korean diplomats have been visiting missions of key members of the IAEA board to plead their case, he said.
Some diplomats on the IAEA board have said Seoul's failure to report the experiments violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and should be reported to the Security Council.
Unlike Iran's potential NPT breaches, which the United States has been trying unsuccessfully to have reported to the Security Council for over a year, Washington is not pushing hard to refer Seoul's case to the U.N. Security Council.
"The U.S. is not actively trying to get South Korea reported to the Security Council, but it would not block any such report if the IAEA determined that South Korea violated the NPT," said another Western diplomat on the board. The diplomats said they would wait for the IAEA assessment before deciding whether Seoul's case should go to the Council.
"NO MAJOR NEW FINDINGS"
Along with a report on a two-year investigation of Iran's atomic programme, which Washington says is aimed at weapons, the IAEA board will discuss IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report on South Korea's nuclear programme when it meets on Nov. 25.
One diplomat in Vienna said there would be "no major new findings" in the IAEA's report on South Korea and that anything not previously reported would be details connected with either its plutonium or its uranium enrichment research.
Another diplomat said that the IAEA's investigation of South Korea would not be closed by the November board meeting.
This means that the board would probably not decide this month on whether to send the case of South Korea to the Security Council, which has the power to impose economic sanctions.
One of the diplomats said that Seoul has been cooperating with U.N. inspectors, who are in South Korea for their last inspection before this month's IAEA meeting. Part of the reason for the visit is to discuss the draft report that will be submitted to the IAEA board next week.
"They (South Korea) have been cooperating ... I think the report will say that," the diplomat said.
South Korea insists that it never intended to build nuclear weapons and was fully committed to non-proliferation.
North Korea has cited the experiments as one reason for holding up multilateral negotiations aimed at ending its own nuclear weapons programmes.
-----
NKorea lays out terms for rejoining six-way nuclear talks: report
HONG KONG (AFP)
Nov 03, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041103023049.ppls40h2.html
North Korea has spelled out its terms for rejoining six-nation talks on its nuclear programme, saying the outcome of the US vote will have no bearing on resolving the crisis, a report here said Wednesday.
The isolated Stalinist state said talks would depend on the US dropping human rights demands on Pyongyang and abandoning sanctions.
The remarks were made by Han Song Ryol, ambassador in charge of US affairs and a North Korean envoy to the United Nations, in a report in the Hong Kong-based Asian Wall Street Journal.
Han told the newspaper he saw little merit in US presidential hopeful John Kerry's policy of pursuing bilateral talks with Pyongyang, calling such a move a mere "change in formality".
"It's not a matter of who will be elected as the next US president, but rather a matter of who has the political will to change the US's DPRK (North Korea) policy," Han reportedly said.
To restart stalled talks with China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States, Han demanded that Washington drops North Korea's inclusion among the "axis of evil" countries and abandon sanctions on Pyongyang, the report said.
He also said progress would not be made without the US repeal of a law passed by President George Bush calling on the country to allow freedoms of expression.
The ongoing crisis began in October 2002 when US officials said North Korea had admitted in a bilateral meeting to pursuing a covert uranium-enrichment program.
North Korea, however, has since denied such a program, and has demanded food and energy aid and diplomatic concessions in return for refreezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms program, mothballed in 1994.
-------- russia
Weapons-Grade Plutonium Never Disappeared in Russia - Atomic Official
MosNews
03.11.2004
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/11/03/plutonium.shtml
No case of weapons-grade plutonium disappearing has been registered in Russia, an official of Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency said.
It was reported earlier that a resident of an Altai town handed eight containers of weapons-grade plutonium-238 to the police.
Nikolai Shingarev was quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying the material found and handed over by Leonid Grigorov was not weapons-grade but an "isotope widely used in various devices. Any enterprise with a license can freely obtain plutonium-238, for instance, in Kurchatov Atomic Energy Institute in Moscow. Speaking about weapons-grade plutonium, it is closely controlled and registered."
Each of the containers handed in by Leonid Grigorov held 50 grams of plutonium. Grigorov planned to receive $8.25 per milligram after reading about rewards for surrendering radioactive material in the local media. However, criminal proceedings were instigated against him for "illegal storage of radioactive substances".
Many years ago Grigorov worked as a nuclear engineer at the laboratory of the local mining and enrichment plant. The enterprise was closed in 1992. The installation, whose "heart" was plutonium, was broken up and thrown on the scarp heap. The radioactive metal should have been handed over to a special plant, but this did not happen, ITAR TASS reported.
Grigorov was quoted by the agency as saying that seven or eight years ago he had found cylinders of radioactive metal and written a few letters about this. However, nobody answered him. Then he placed the cylinders in a lead container and hid the plutonium in his garage. "As an expert, I was simply obliged to do this to prevent anything bad from happening," Grigorov said.
"Having hidden the hazardous find, Grigorov acted as any person should have acted from the moral point of view. But we are considering the situation from the legal aspect. Grigorov's actions are categorized according to the Criminal Code," the local police department was quoted by the agency as saying.
Experts said Grigorov's plutonium-238 is normally used to generate heat but, if mixed with other materials, could be used in a nuclear explosive device. It is much more radioactive than plutonium-239, a radio-isotope normally used in atomic bombs.
In a separate incident, 44 kg of radioactive scrap metal was discovered in Chelaybinsk, the agency reported on Tuesday. The region is heavily polluted with radioactive material from its nuclear reactor and plants producing plutonium for atomic bombs. The agency said the discovery was the second such find in a week.
-----
Russia and Iran Are to Sign Nuclear Deal in December, Says Tass
By Reuters
November 03, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=296
MOSCOW - Iran will sign an agreement in December to return spent nuclear fuel to Russia for disposal, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported on Tuesday, heading off U.S. fears that the material could be used to make bombs.
Russia has built an $800 million reactor at the Iranian port of Bushehr despite pressure from the United States, which says Iran's atomic energy program is a front for the development of nuclear weapons.
Iran says the program is peaceful, but Russia has insisted on the spent fuel deal to alleviate Washington's concerns.
"Now there are no technical or political reasons not to sign such a protocol during the forthcoming visit to Tehran by the head of the Russian atomic agency Alexander Rumyantsev," Tass quoted an Iranian official as saying.
The official, Ali Akbar Soltani, who is deputy director-general of political and international affairs at Iran's Foreign Ministry, said only a few financing details remained and they would be settled a month before the visit.
Tass quoted the Russian Atomic Ministry as saying the visit would take place in the second half of December.
-------- terrorism
Axis of failure
The war in Iraq has realised Tony Blair's worst fear: the creation of another country where terrorists can easily find weapons of mass destruction
The Guardian
November 3, 2004
Richard Norton-Taylor
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1342003,00.html
Early last year, Tony Blair was warned by the joint intelligence committee that invading Iraq would increase the risk of a far greater threat than anything posed by Saddam Hussein: namely international terrorism, and al-Qaida in particular. The JIC also warned, according to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that "any collapse of the Iraqi regime would increase the risk of chemical and biological warfare technology ... finding their way into the hands of terrorists".
The invasion has produced a toxic mix of insurgents, resistance fighters, former soldiers, foreign "jihadists" and bandits, with no shortage of weapons, including thousands of mortars and rocket-propelled grenades - and, we now know, enough explosives to make thousands of bombs, and powerful enough to detonate nuclear weapons.
In May, an International Atomic Energy Agency memorandum warned that terrorists could be helping themselves "to the greatest explosives bonanza in history". The looting became public after the UN agency subsequently told the security council that nearly 380 tonnes of nuclear-related high explosives had gone missing from the al-Qaqaa weapons factory, about 45 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The IAEA had sealed the explosives before the invasion and warned the US of the need to keep them secure. The agency has also warned that machine tools that could be used to make nuclear weapons are missing from other sites in Iraq - sites that before the invasion were known to contain them.
Shortly after the invasion, when US troops were busy protecting Iraq's oil ministry and pipelines, Greenpeace reported that not one soldier was guarding Tuwaitha, a nuclear research base near Baghdad with nuclear equipment that had also been sealed by inspectors. Tuwaitha and al-Qaqaa were well known to the CIA and MI6.
In June last year, a Greenpeace radiation team found looting still going on at Tuwaitha, with villagers taking contaminated materials for house building and barrels that had contained uranium yellowcake for storing food and water. Two months earlier, American soldiers stood by as looters took potentially lethal viruses from an Iraqi laboratory well known to UN inspectors.
Human Rights Watch says that it gave British and US troops precise information about weapons stockpiles in Iraq. The response was that there were not enough soldiers to guard them. Meanwhile, 1,000 inspectors from the CIA's Iraq Survey Group were looking for WMD.
The threat that, before the invasion, Blair said he feared most - terrorists getting their hands on WMD - has increased immeasurably. Even before the full extent of the looting - now exposing British and American troops to greatly increased danger - was known, their military commanders were furious with their political masters and the misjudgments of their intelligence agencies. Britain's commanders had more reason to be angry as Washington dismissed their entreaties that the Iraqi army be encouraged to remain in place to maintain law and order and prevent looting.
A new study spells out the huge dangers to international security of the Bush view of the world. Amitai Etzioni, an American who influenced New Labour's "third way" thinking on the domestic front, argues that Washington's emphasis on "rogue states" is thoroughly misconceived. "Failing states" are the problem, he says. Iraq seems in danger of rapidly falling into this category.
"Much of the attention that is paid to nuclear threats has been focused on the three members of the axis of evil: Iran, Iraq and North Korea. However, nuclear attacks in this day and age are much more likely to be the work of terrorists," says Etzioni in Pre-Empting Nuclear Terrorism in a New Global Order, which is published by the Foreign Policy Centre.
The reason, he argues, is that it is "more difficult to deter suicide bombers than even rogue states".
Though Etzioni concentrates on the nuclear threat, the same may be said to apply to attacks with biological or chemical weapons. Etzioni says that among failing states, Pakistan ranks high as a country from which terrorists are most likely to be able to obtain ready-made weapons, either by toppling the government or by corrupting the guardians of its bombs.
Yet Pakistan is not on the axis-of-evil list. The US ignored the the fact that the leading Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was found to be at the centre of a transnational black market in nuclear materials, because, says Etzioni, it was focusing on capturing Osama bin Laden and Pakistan promised to help.
Russia, where some 20,000 nuclear warheads are sitting in 120 separate nuclear weapons storage sites, is a failing state. So, too, says Etzioni, are Nigeria, Ghana, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, countries that have scores of sites from which terrorists may get their hands on HEU (highly enriched uranium) used for nuclear reactors there. Four tonnes of spent HEU of Russian origin are in 20 reactors in 17 countries. More than 40 tonnes of HEU of American origin are in more than 40 locations around the world.
Over the past decade, according to the IAEA, there have been 18 incidents involving the seizure of stolen highly enriched uranium or plutonium.
Etzioni says that a new global safety authority should be set up with the backing of the UN. Some new authority is needed before the excesses and failings of George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq are repeated elsewhere.
· Richard Norton-Taylor is the Guardian's security affairs editor
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Ill., Mich. Want New Federal Isotope Lab
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21457-2004Nov3.html
CHICAGO - Like most of us, politicians don't know much about isotopes. But because they know something about money and jobs, lawmakers from Illinois and Michigan are locked in a battle to convince the federal government that their state and not the other one is the perfect place for a new lab devoted to these unstable atomic forms.
The federal government plans to spend about $1 billion to build an isotope lab that could create a few hundred jobs for scientists and a few hundred more for support staff.
The choice, expected to be made next year, could come down to Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago or Michigan State University, both leaders in nuclear physics.
The proposed facility - known as a rare isotope accelerator, or RIA - would allow physicists to explore the structure and forces that make up the nucleus of atoms, test theories of fundamental structure of matter and perhaps play a role in developing new nuclear medicines and techniques.
Among those trying to bring the RIA to Illinois is Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who formed a task force of politicians, including U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., business leaders and academics to lobby for Argonne.
"The rare isotope accelerator project is a marvelous opportunity for Illinois," said Hastert, who praised both the lab's scientific value as well as its ability to produce "major economic benefits in the form of job creation and investment."
In Michigan, officials have been equally effusive. The RIA "will make important contributions to the nation in research and education, add to national security, help attract the next generations of scientists for cross-discipline research," Michigan State President Peter McPherson said in a news release last year.
The project, in its early stages, is expected to be significant on a number of fronts, delivering new technology that will advance both industry and medicine.
For example, it could help track the origin of nuclear weapons. The detectors needed to operate the RIA could be modified to identify the "fingerprints" of radiation given off by weapons to determine where in the world the weapons came from.
Illinois officials say placing the lab at Argonne makes the most sense because the lab already has built a major isotope accelerator, called ATLAS, that creates isotopes for study.
"We have the infrastructure at Argonne," said Dale Knutson, the director of Argonne's project management office. "That would save the government about $100 million in project costs."
But in Michigan officials counter that the university's cyclotron lab - where a machine hurls atoms against each other at 100,000 miles per second, allowing scientists to separate the nuclei of atoms and study their properties - makes it the best place for the RIA.
"It would attract not just nuclear physics students, but engineering students and computer science students," said Konrad Gelbke, director of the lab. "There is great synergy that can only be found on a university campus."
-------- us nuc waste
Permit Change Bars High-Level Sludge from WIPP
The Associated Press
November 3, 2004
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/252472nm11-03-04.htm
SANTA FE- State Environment Secretary Ron Curry has signed off on a permit modification designed to bar the disposal of high-level tank sludge at the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad.
The permit modification ensures the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will remain solely devoted to the disposal of transuranic waste.
"This action gives New Mexico the clear authority to prevent any high-level sludge from coming to WIPP," Curry said.
The 2,150-foot-deep repository excavated from underground salt beds opened in 1999 under a federal law prohibiting high-level waste. The facility buries such things as gloves, rags, tools, dried sludge and other debris contaminated by plutonium during weapons work.
The DOE had tried to reclassify some of the 90 million gallons of radioactive waste kept in tanks at federal facilities in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.
After a federal judge in Idaho ruled last year that reclassifying such sludge as low-level waste violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the department began pushing to change the law.
The DOE reached a deal with the New Mexico Environment Department in June. It agreed to stop trying to move the sludge to WIPP as long as it could apply for future permission to bring the sludge to the state. The state, however, still has the legal right to reject it.
By modifying the permit, Curry said any reclassified high-level waste- including the tank sludge- cannot be brought to WIPP unless the federal government proves the waste is not high-level waste.
-----
Study: Nuclear shipments broke rules for testing
(AP)
November 03, 2004
http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/11/03/news/regional/450d3a6318f05c6687256f40007bdad6.txt
SANTA FE, N.M. -- At least 602 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste sent to the federal government's nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad, N.M., violated a directive against shipping waste when there are questions about whether the shipments were properly tested.
An internal Environmental Protection Agency document obtained by the Albuquerque Journal says one option under consideration is shutting down shipments from the Hanford nuclear reservation to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project.
The shipments from the Washington state facility were made in violation of the EPA's August 2003 directive about testing.
It's the second incident this year and the fourth since WIPP opened in March 1999. The internal review said such problems threaten public confidence.
The EPA and the Energy Department "need to demonstrate that the violation is being taken seriously, and that changes will be made to ensure that it does not happen again," the review said.
State Environment Secretary Ron Curry called the problem "mismanagement at the highest level."
New Mexico environmental officials were concerned about how long the DOE might have known about the problem and why energy officials haven't been talking about it.
In the most recent case, Hanford had set up a testing program that EPA had not yet approved as sufficient, WIPP manager Paul Detwiler wrote the EPA on Oct. 18. He said EPA had forbidden shipments of questionable waste while the review was under way.
EPA spokesman Dave Ryan, in a statement Monday, said the agency is conducting a technical review of the waste and gathering information about any further action required. He would not answer questions.
The DOE had no comment.
The state Environment Department is negotiating with the DOE over a fine that could run up to $2.4 million as a result of a similar incident in which more than 100 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were shipped to WIPP from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory without proper testing.
The DOE suspended shipments from the Idaho lab in mid-July after workers at WIPP discovered drums of waste that should have not been in the shipment. The drums were added after a batch readied for shipment had been tested for explosives, chemicals and other materials prohibited at WIPP.
In each case, the DOE and EPA determined after the shipments that no prohibited waste ended up being buried in WIPP, which places plutonium-contaminated materials left over from nuclear weapons work in underground rooms excavated in salt beds.
"Although we do not believe this waste will adversely affect WIPP's performance or affect protection of public health and the environment, a serious and thorough response to these problems is necessary to maintain public confidence in the WIPP's performance and EPA's oversight," the internal review said.
-----
Future Of Hanford Initiative In Doubt Despite Voters' Approval
By KOMO Staff & News Services
November 3, 2004
http://www.komotv.com/stories/33785.htm
SEATTLE - Voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative to limit the amount of nuclear waste at the Hanford nuclear site, but opponents argued the measure's future remains in doubt.
"Legal challenges are inevitable," said Grant Nelson, government affairs director for the Association of Washington Business. The measure is scheduled to take effect in 30 days.
Initiative 297 blocks the U.S. Department of Energy from sending more waste to the Hanford nuclear site until all the existing waste there is cleaned up.
By a more than 2-to-1 margin, voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative. With 97 percent of precincts reporting statewide early Wednesday, 69 percent of voters approved, with just 31 percent voting against it.
"It's clear that the rule of the people of the state of Washington is that Hanford needs to be cleaned up before more waste can be dumped there," said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Seattle-based Hanford watchdog group and the initiative's sponsor.
The 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington, which was created in World War II as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, remains the most contaminated site in the nation.
Supporters called the initiative a no-brainer: Don't add more waste until the existing waste is cleaned up. Opponents feared that barring waste shipments to Hanford could backfire if other states take similar steps to ban Hanford waste.
The Energy Department took no official position on the initiative. Agency spokeswoman Colleen French said the Energy Department would be studying the initiative and evaluating its options over the next 30 days.
Opponents have said the initiative is likely to end up in court because they believe it is illegal on several fronts: It pre-empts the federal government's nuclear waste and interstate commerce policies, imposes a tax on the federal government and addresses more than one issue, which would violate the state constitution.
The bigger concerns are the potential for delaying cleanup and jeopardizing annual federal funding for cleanup, which now stands at about $2 billion, Nelson said.
"I think it's safe to say the federal government will not want to put its limited available resources toward a project that is now clouded," he said.
But Pollet said the initiative will stand up in court, and supporters will mount a vigorous defense.
"The voters will be outraged by anyone who takes this initiative to court to make this a radioactive waste dump," he said.
At issue are the federal government's plans for disposing of waste from World War II and Cold War nuclear weapons production nationwide.
The Energy Department chose Hanford to dispose of some mildly radioactive waste and mixed low-level waste, which is laced with chemicals.
The site also would serve as a packaging center for some transuranic waste - plutonium-contaminated rags, tools and other discarded items - before it is shipped elsewhere for long-term disposal. Transuranic waste is highly radioactive and can take thousands of years or more to decay to safe levels.
A citizens' petition sent the initiative to the Legislature early this year. Lawmakers declined to act on it, sending the measure to the ballot. The roughly $1 million cost of the initiative was largely funded by Heart of America Northwest.
Energy Department officials have said the site's most dangerous waste will be shipped out-of-state anyway. Of the 405 million curies of radioactivity at Hanford, about 374 million curies will be sent to other states for long-term disposal.
Hanford already is home to 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid, sludge and saltcake stored in 177 underground tanks. The Energy Department aims to bury much of that waste in a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Another 75,000 55-gallon drums of transuranic, radioactive and hazardous waste also are buried at Hanford.
In 2003, Washington state filed suit to block waste shipments from entering the state, fearing Hanford would become a radioactive waste dump. The Energy Department voluntarily suspended the shipments after the lawsuit was filed, but the case remains in U.S. District Court.
-----
State to bolster oversight of WIPP
ap
11/3/2004
http://www.krqe.com/environment/expanded.asp?RECORD_KEY%5BEnvironment%5D=ID&ID%5BEnvironment%5D=7534
The state Environment Department is bolstering its oversight of the federal government's underground nuclear waste dump near Carlsbad.
The agency has announced that it's Department of Energy Oversight Bureau will reopen its Carlsbad operations next Monday.
There will be four employees, and the agency expects to add three employees in the coming months.
State Environment Secretary Ron Curry says recent problems at WIPP involving unapproved waste disposal highlight the need for improved oversight.
The most recent snafu involved at least 602 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste sent to WIPP from the Hanford nuclear site in Washington.
Federal officials say the drums violated a directive against shipping waste when questions were raised about whether shipments had been properly tested.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Karzai Win Gives Chance to Cleanse Afghan Government
Reuters
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
By Simon Cameron-Moore
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21470-2004Nov3?language=printer
KABUL (Reuters) - Incumbent Hamid Karzai was declared the winner of last month's Afghan presidential election Wednesday and now faces the task of forming a government minus the warlords and drug runners who tainted his last cabinet.
For the past three years Karzai has led an interim government installed after U.S. and Afghan resistance forces overthrew the Taliban militia in late 2001 for refusing to handover al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
But Karzai's second cabinet will look very different from his first if he sticks to his word that he will not be forming coalitions with main rivals, characterized as regional strongmen who rely on ethnic loyalties and private militias.
The advent of democracy in this Islamic central Asian country after a quarter century of war, was hailed by President Bush as a foreign policy success as he campaigned for re-election himself.
"Karzai is the winner," Sultan Baheen, spokesman for the U.N.-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body told journalists after an independent panel of election experts investigating vote fraud told a news conference that undoubted irregularities, including ballot stuffing, had not altered the outcome.
But Karzai's triumph has been soured by the kidnapping last week of three U.N. election officials.
Wednesday, an Islamist militant group that has threatened to kill the Filipino diplomat and women from Northern Ireland and Kosovo extended a deadline for its demands to be met as negotiations continued with Karzai's government.
The group had demanded authorities release all Taliban prisoners in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay by 0730 GMT Wednesday, but extended the deadline indefinitely.
Armed with a mandate from the people, Karzai can now form a cabinet of his own choosing, though his choices will have to be ratified once the National Assembly is established after parliamentary elections due in April.
VICTORY NEVER IN DOUBT
"The coming government should not be formed according to the vote. We should have a new formula to achieve national reconciliation in Afghanistan, security and political stability," former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who supported Karzai and remains an influential figure, told Reuters.
Rabbani's own government disintegrated in a civil war that paved the way for the Taliban militia to take over the country in the mid-1990s. He is now a strong advocate of Karzai's disarmament policies so long as former mujahideen fighters are retrained or given pensions to reward their sacrifices.
Karzai's victory had never been in doubt, but counting the votes from the Oct. 9 poll took several weeks and the election commission had also to assess a report given by a three-man panel investigating allegations of vote fraud.
The panel delivered its report Tuesday and concluded that while there had been shortcomings, including cases of ballot stuffing, the irregularities had not affected the overall result. After the news conference given by the British, Canadian and Swedish panel to explain their findings, a United Nations spokesman said the results would be formally certified later on Wednesday.
Karzai won 55.4 percent of the vote, obtaining the simple majority needed to avoid a run-off against his nearest rival. He will be inaugurated at the end of this month.
"There were fewer problems on election day than many experts had expected," Craig Jenness, the Canadian member of the panel, read from the conclusion of their report.
The panel made several recommendations implicitly criticising the election commission, remarking on opposition candidates' lack of trust in the body, and it put a priority on taking an audit of the voter register before parliamentary elections due in April.
Meantime, Karzai is still dependent on nearly 28,000 U.S. and NATO troops to guarantee security and fight an insurgency in southern provinces by remnants of the Taliban.
A U.S.-trained Afghan National Army is in the making. Currently over 15,000-strong, the plan is for a force of 70,000 troops by 2007.
U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, heavily influenced by Bush's Afghan-born ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, revolves around Karzai forging some semblance of unity in country riven by sharp ethnic divides, highlighted by election results.
There have been two assassination attempts on Karzai so far, and a vice presidential running mate survived another during the election campaign. That attack was later blamed on drug lords in the north rather than Taliban fighters.
Washington pays for private U.S. bodyguards, overseen by State Department officers, to protect the Afghan president.
--------
Afghan Militants Extend Hostage Deadline
By STEPHEN GRAHAM
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20784-2004Nov3.html
KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants threatening to kill three U.N. hostages pushed back their deadline until Wednesday evening, saying negotiations were continuing on demands that include the world body's withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Afghan officials and colleagues of the three foreign election workers expressed hope that the abduction will eventually end with their safe release.
There was no confirmation that the kidnappers had been contacted or the victims located. Still, an official said Wednesday that police units had launched a fresh search operation west of Kabul.
A Taliban splinter group claims it abducted Annetta Flanigan of Northern Ireland, Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Habibi of Kosovo in the Afghan capital last Thursday.
Jaish-al Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, released a videotape on Sunday showing the frightened captives pleading for their freedom. However, several Afghan officials say they suspect that warlords or criminal groups were also involved in the bold daylight snatch.
Syed Khaled, a purported spokesman for the group, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that talks with government and U.N. envoys were taking place at an undisclosed location.
"We will decide this evening what we will do," Khaled said in a satellite telephone call.
He declined to say whether that meant the hostages could be killed or if a new deadline would be set.
U.N. spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva refused to discuss any negotiations, saying it could endanger efforts to free the hostages. The Philippine government, which has sent diplomats to Kabul to seek their freedom, also imposed a news blackout.
Still, one election official said privately that there was some optimism that the three would be released. "We have a good feeling," the official said.
Latfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which is leading Afghan government efforts to find the hostages, said the ministry had "not been informed" of any contacts with the kidnappers.
But he said the ministry, whose security forces are leading the search, had undertaken unspecified initiatives which were "going well."
"We're progressing and hopeful that the hostages will be released safely," Mashal said.
He declined to elaborate. But another government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said police units had been deployed to Wardak, a province west of Kabul, on Tuesday evening.
"They're searching there in two or three places," the official said.
Afghan security forces, backed up by NATO troops based in Kabul, have also focused their search in the city and the neighboring Paghman valley.
The militants say that they have divided up the hostages to thwart any rescue attempt, and warned authorities to back off.
All three hostages were in Afghanistan to help manage its Oct. 9 presidential election.
U.S.-backed interim leader Hamid Karzai, who has condemned the latest kidnapping, secured a majority of the votes, but is still awaiting official confirmation as the country's first popularly chosen leader.
Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
--------
Karzai Formally Named Winner of Afghan Presidential Election
November 3, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/international/asia/04afghancnd.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 3 - President Hamid Karzai was formally announced the winner of the Oct. 9 presidential election by Afghanistan's electoral board this afternoon after an international panel announced that irregularities it had investigated were not significant enough to change the overall result.
""We sincerely congratulate him and wish him big success in his affairs," Zakim Shah, president of the board, said in front of assembled journalists.
Mr. Karzai polled 55.4 percent, easily passing the necessary 50 percent threshold, and 39 percentage points ahead of his nearest rival, former education Minister Muhammad Yunus Qanooni, who won 16.3 per cent.
The final results had barely changed from unofficial figures released 10 days ago, but the formal announcement had to wait for the investigation of complaints of fraud by most of Mr. Karzai's 17 opponents.
The complaints, which the international panel agreed today had merited investigation, marred Mr. Karzai's historic win as Afghanistan's first directly elected head of state, and spoiled the impressive achievement of the Afghan people, who turned out to vote in high numbers despite threats of violence and intimidation.
Mr. Karzai's success at the polls has also been overshadowed by the kidnapping of three foreign United Nations election workers in Kabul six days ago by a group that has threatened to kill the three if its demands are not met. The group, which calls itself Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, extended its deadline from noon today until night, saying that it was in negotiations with the government.
"We have extended the deadline because we are hopeful about negotiations," Sayed Khalid Agha of the group told Reuters by satellite phone.
The leader and others claiming to speak for the group have made demands in almost daily telephone calls to news agencies that the United Nations and international troops leave Afghanistan and that all Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners being held in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be released. They have also said that if security forces attempt to rescue the hostages, they will be killed.
The three hostages - a British-Irish woman, Annetta Flanigan, a Kosovo-Albanian woman, Shqipe Habibi, and a Filipino diplomat seconded to the United Nations, Angelito Nayan - were all working on the Afghan elections and were shown in captivity in a video released Sunday by the kidnappers.
Mr. Qanooni's office declined any comment. Representatives of two other candidates said they rejected the findings of the international panel and continued to accuse the Karzai camp of fraud.
The international panel concluded that fraud had occurred, in particular evident ballot box stuffing, but that it had not been widespread or limited to one particular candidate. "There were fewer problems on election day than many experts had anticipated," Craig Jenness, a Canadian diplomat and one of the three members of the panel, said.
The panel dismissed the allegation that the failure of the indelible ink had led to multiple voting, an allegation leveled on election day by 15 of Mr. Karzai's opponents who called for a boycott just hours after polling stations had opened. Up to 60 percent of polling stations were affected by the ink problem, yet it "did not have a significant effect on the credibility of the election process as a whole," the panel reported today.
Yet the panel criticized the electoral board's handling of the problem and recommended changes to the organization, to improve efficiency and diminish the high level of mistrust that opposition candidates harbor for the board, which they see as a pro-Karzai body.
Acknowledging that there were serious irregularities in the registration process, the panel also called for an immediate and thorough audit of the electoral register. Some estimates have said that 10 to 15 percent of the 11.5 million registered voters, both inside Afghanistan and among refugees, may be multiple registrants, the panel said. It said, however, that local and foreign observers had seen little multiple evidence of multiple voting.
Dr. Yassa, a representative of the Shia Hazara leader Muhammad Mohaqeq, who came in third with 11.7 percent, described their final meeting with the international panel as a "farce" saying the international experts had admitted the irregularities but kept repeating, "like a mantra." that the problems were not significant enough to alter the result.
Dr. Yassa said Mr. Mohaqeq would accept the result in the interests of the country, but Dastagir Hazhabr, a representative of Mr. Pedram, who came fifth, said that the result was illegitimate and that Mr. Karzai's future rule would be illegitimate.
-------- africa
U.N. Accuses Sudan of Moving Refugees
November 3, 2004
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_SUDAN_DARFUR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The top U.N. envoy to Sudan accused security forces in southern Darfur of forcing several thousand people who had taken refuge in a camp to move against their will in "flagrant violation" of international law.
Jan Pronk demanded that all those rounded up and forced to leave the El Geer camp at 3 a.m. Tuesday be returned immediately from the Sherif camp, where they were taken.
"It has to stop - not only in El Geer but as a policy everywhere," Pronk said, demanding that the government keep its agreement with the United Nations barring the forced transfer of any internally displaced people, known as IDPs. Refugees, in legal terms, are those who have crossed borders.
The U.N. envoy, who is scheduled to report to the U.N. Security Council Thursday on the situation in Darfur, confirmed that the "overall" security situation in the vast western region - which is the size of France - has deteriorated in the last few weeks.
Pronk said the early morning incident at El Geer, a camp close to the city of Nyala where about 30,000 people have taken refuge, was the most important but "there are other activities also in other places," which he did not disclose.
At a hastily called news conference, Pronk said "a couple of thousand" people were taken early Tuesday to Sherif, a location "desired by the government" that is outside Nyala and not as desirable for displaced people trying to earn money.
He said the people who were forced to move from El Geer had "the right to resist." He said he couldn't confirm reports that the Sudanese forces used tear gas, but said there were no reports of injuries.
While he blamed Sudanese forces in southern Darfur, Pronk left open the possibility that the forced transfer from El Geer was not carried out on instructions from the government in Khartoum.
But he was clearly outraged that those rounded up in the middle of the night were erroneously told that the United Nations had approved the move.
"The government has told these IDPs that this was happening in close consultation with the United Nations and in consultation with non-governmental organizations, which is not the case," Pronk said.
In a statement issued later by his spokesman, Secretary-General Kofi Annan echoed Pronk's words and strongly urged the government "to halt immediately all such relocation operations and to facilitate the return of the affected persons from the inappropriate sites to which they have been taken."
Pronk said he expected a strong international protest against the forced moves not only by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations working in Darfur but also by the United States and European governments.
The violence in Darfur began in January 2003 when two black African rebel groups took up arms over alleged unjust treatment by the Sudanese government and ethnic Arab countrymen. Pro-government militias called Janjaweed reacted by unleashing attacks on villages.
The conflict has killed at least 70,000 people and forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes, creating what U.N. officials say is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
U.N. officials said Tuesday's action was in apparent retaliation for the abduction of 18 Arabs by the rebel Sudan Liberation Army.
Annan urged the rebels to release the hostages and called on the Arab militias who have mobilized thousands in west and south Darfur to "stand down," warning that "the SLA and the militias risk sparking a new round of violence that could claim the lives of thousands of civilians."
He also urged the parties to respect a cease-fire signed in April.
-------- biological weapons
UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program
Five admirals, Carlyle Group and Rand take over - Part 6
11/3/04
sfbayview.com
by Leuren Moret
http://www.sfbayview.com/110304/ucregents110304.shtml
Dr. Henry Kissinger, who wrote: "Depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World."
Research on population control, preventing future births, is now being carried out secretly by biotech companies. Dr. Ignacio Chapela, a University of California microbiologist, discovered that wild corn in remote parts of Mexico is contaminated with lab altered DNA. That discovery made him a threat to the biotech industry.
Chapela was denied tenure at UC Berkeley when he reported this to the scientific community, despite the embarrassing discovery that UC Chancellor Berdahl, who was denying him tenure, was getting large cash payments - $40,000 per year - from the LAM Research Corp. in Plano, Texas.
Berdahl served as president of Texas A&M University before coming to Berkeley. During a presentation about his case, Chapela revealed that a spermicidal corn developed by a U.S. company is now being tested in Mexico. Males who unknowingly eat the corn produce non-viable sperm and are unable to reproduce.
Depopulation, also known as eugenics, is quite another thing and was proposed under the Nazis during World War II. It is the deliberate killing off of large segments of living populations and was proposed for Third World countries under President Carter's administration by the National Security Council's Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy.
National Security Memo 200, dated April 24, 1974, and titled "Implications of world wide population growth for U.S. security & overseas interests," says:
"Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that 'depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.' He quoted reasons of national security, and because `(t)he U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-developed countries ... Wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and to the economic interests of U.S."
Depopulation policy became the top priority under the NSC agenda, Club of Rome and U.S. policymakers like Gen. Alexander Haig, Cyrus Vance, Ed Muskie and Kissinger. According to an NSC spokesman at the time, the United States shared the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the "population crisis" is a greater threat to U.S. national security interests than "nuclear annihilation." In 1975, Henry Kissinger established a policy-planning group in the U.S. State Department's Office of Population Affairs. The depopulation "GLOBAL 2000" document for President Jimmy Carter was prepared.
It is no surprise that this policy was established under President Carter with help from Kissinger and Brzezinski - all with ties to David Rockefeller. The Bush family, the Harriman family - the Wall Street business partners of Bush in financing Hitler - and the Rockefeller family are the elite of the American eugenics movement. Even Prince Philip of Britain, a member of the Bilderberg Group, is in favor of depopulation:
"If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels" (Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund, quoted in "Are You Ready for Our New Age Future?" Insiders Report, American Policy Center, December 1995).
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been proposing, funding and building Bio-Weapons Level 3 and Level 4 labs at many places around the U.S. - even on university campuses and in densely populated urban locations. In a Bio-Weapons Level 4 facility, a single bacteria or virus is lethal. Bio-Weapons Level 4 is the highest level legally allowed in the continental U.S.
For what purpose are these labs being developed, and who will make the decisions on where bio-weapons created in these facilities will be used and on whom? More than 20 world-class microbiologists have been murdered since 2002, mostly in the U.S. and the UK. Nearly all were working on development of ethnic-specific bio-weapons (see "Smart Dust, Roboflies ...").
Citizens around the U.S. are frantically filing lawsuits to stop these labs on campuses and in communities where they live. Despite the opposition of residents living near UC Davis, where a Bio-Weapons Level 4 lab was planned, it had the support of the town's mayor.
She suddenly reversed her position after a monkey escaped from a high security primate facility on the campus where the bio-weapons lab was proposed. Residents claimed that if UC Davis could not keep monkeys from escaping from their cages, they certainly could not guarantee that a single virus or bacteria would not escape from a test tube. The AWOL monkey killed the project (see "Smart Dust, Roboflies...").
Population is a political problem. The extreme secrecy surrounding the takeover of nuclear weapons, NASA and the space program and the development of numerous bio-weapons labs is a threat to civil society, especially in the hands of the military and corporations.
The fascist application of all three of these programs can be used to achieve established U.S. government depopulation policy goals, which may eliminate 2 billion of the world's existing population - through war, famine, disease and any other methods necessary.
Two excellent examples of existing U.S. depopulation policy are, first, the long-term impact on the civilian population from Agent Orange in Vietnam, where the Rockefellers built oil refineries and aluminum plants during the Vietnam War. The second is the permanent contamination of the Middle East and Central Asia with depleted uranium, which, unfortunately, will destroy the genetic future of the populations living in those regions and will also have a global effect already reflected in increases in infant mortality reported in the U.S., Europe, and the UK.
References
Birth defects: "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm," Life photo-essay (1995), http://www.life.com/Life/essay/gulfwar/gulf01.html.
Statement by Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, http://homepage.mac.com/kaaawa/iblog/C337802379/E1557478132/.
"Smart dust, roboflies, microbugs: UC is spying on you" by Leuren Moret, San Francisco Bay View, Feb. 26, 2003, http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Berkeley-Library-Classified22feb03.htm.
-------- business
BAE investigated over Saudi fraud allegations: two arrested
LONDON (AFP)
Nov 03, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041103134356.49rvdiw0.html
Britain's largest defence contractor, BAE Systems, is being investigated over allegations of false accounting in relation to defence contracts held with Saudi Arabia's government, prosecuters said Wednesday.
Two men, aged 73 and 66, were arrested following searches at eight locations across London and the southern England by Serious Fraud Officeinvestigators and the Ministry of Defence Police.
"The Serious Fraud Office, with the Ministry of Defence Police, has commenced an investigation into suspected false accounting in relation to contracts for services between Robert Lee International Ltd, Travellers World Ltd and BAE in connection with defence equipment contracts with the government of Saudi Arabia," the SFO, an independent government department, said in a statement.
News of the investigation followed recent BBC allegations, denied by BAE, that it paid millions of dollars into a slush fund for a leading member of Saudi Arabia's royal family with the knowledge of its chief operating officer.
BAE, formerly British Aerospace, laid on luxury hotels, chartered aircraft, limousines and exotic holidays for Prince Turki bin Nasser and his entourage, the broadcaster's Money Programme alleged last month.
The prince was responsible for running the Saudi side of Al Yamamah, the biggest arms sale in British history, worth billions of dollars in orders to
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Britain warns EADS it could lose multi-billion dollar aircraft order
LONDON (AFP)
Nov 03, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041103005049.94w7kyb6.html
The British government has warned pan-European defence group EADS that it could lose a huge contract agreed earlier this year to supply the Royal Air Force with refuelling aircraft, a report said Wednesday.
The Ministry of Defence has told a consortium led by EADS that unless some contract issues are resolved, it would lose the massive deal, worth 13 billion pounds (18.8 million euros, 24 million dollars), the Financial Times said.
Citing letters sent by defence procurement officials which it had obtained, the business daily said EADS had been cautioned that the British government was starting "fall-back studies" to find a possible alternative supplier.
In one letter, Britain's chief military acquisition officer Sir Peter Spencer said that competing proposals would be "pursued vigorously" unless a final contract was agreed soon.
It was announced in January this year that the EADS-led AirTanker consortium had won the 27-year-long deal to provide the planes, seeing off competition from a joint bid by leading British defence contractor BAE Systems and US aviation giant Boeing.
The British deal is seen as crucial for EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, in pushing a tanker adapted from its Airbus A330-200 airliner as an alternative to Boeing.
Boeing, which had offered Britain tankers based on its 767 model, had previously enjoyed a virtual monopoly in the air refuelling market.
According to the Financial Times, Spencer warned AirTanker that one of his possible options for the end of this year was a recommendation that the deal be called off.
"A number of the detailed issues that we originally set out last January... have yet to be satisfactorily resolved," he said in a letter.
He added: "Whether and how quickly you gain a PB (preferred bidder) recommendation is therefore up to you."
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Northrop Grumman Demonstrates Key Technologies For Army Unmanned Armed Rotorcraft Program
(SPX)
Nov 03, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/unmanned-combat-04e.html
San Diego CA - Northrop Grumman recently used two company-funded test flights of an unmanned helicopter surrogate to demonstrate key technologies for its proposed concept for a new U.S. Army unmanned armed rotorcraft program.
The test flights of the company-owned Yamaha RMAX unmanned helicopter, which is being used as a surrogate for the company's concept for the Army's Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) program, included a remote-control flight and the RMAX's first autonomous flight. The flights are the latest in a series of company-funded activities designed to demonstrate how unmanned systems can increase the fighting effectiveness of Army ground- and helicopter-based units.
Northrop Grumman is currently competing for Phase III of the UCAR demonstration program, which is funded jointly by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army. To date, the company has conducted more than 60 flight tests of the RMAX UCAR surrogate covering more than 35 hours of flight time to help refine its UCAR concept.
The RMAX's first autonomous flight was completed Oct. 7 at Camp Pendleton, Calif. In that test, the air vehicle, which incorporates vehicle management system hardware and autonomy software that Northrop Grumman is developing for the UCAR program, was piloted remotely to an altitude of 200 feet, then transitioned to a fully autonomous flight. After the autonomous flight, which lasted approximately eight minutes, the vehicle landed under remote control. All software tests and previously predicted vehicle responses were achieved with success.
During Army exercises conducted Sept. 9-14 at Fort Rucker, Ala., the RMAX was operated under remote control to demonstrate how unmanned systems could reinforce the combat operations of an advancing ground unit supported by a rotary wing aviation unit. These company-funded flights were coupled with virtual manned and unmanned combat units provided through modeling and simulation activities, which included network communications.
The exercises included three scenarios, representing different phases of a typical joint combat engagement: virtual U.S. Marine Corps ground units advanced over desert terrain to an urban area, then dismounted and cleared the city - building by building. Mounted in light armored vehicles, the Marines were supported by virtual Fire Scout vertical take-off and landing tactical unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and simulated Marines "flying" AH-1Z Super Cobras. The Army aviation unit also supported the virtual ground forces using real pilots to "fly" virtual cockpits configured as AH-64D helicopters, and Hunter UAVs simulated by systems at Redstone Arsenal.
For these exercises, the RMAX UCAR surrogate provided real-time video surveillance support for the virtual engagement. While the virtual Army and Marine units "advanced," the UAV flew actual flights at the Fort Rucker test range under remote control, gathering video surveillance data about the "enemy" and feeding it to the virtual troops via its mobile ground station.
"Our primary goal for the autonomous flight test at Camp Pendleton was to demonstrate predicted autonomous vehicle response for our UCAR concept," explained Greg Zwernemann, Northrop Grumman's UCAR program director. "In the Fort Rucker exercise we wanted to show that it can fly over a battle zone, collect critical visual information, then transmit it to the ground for use by dismounted soldiers, helicopter units or other members of a tactical strike team."
The Fort Rucker exercises were conducted as part of the Army's Unmanned Systems Initiative, a coordinated, Army-wide effort to rapidly identify, evaluate, develop and integrate unmanned systems technologies into operational systems. In addition to Army aviators from Fort Rucker, Aviation and Missile R&D UAV system program managers and P Executive Office tactical missile representatives from Redstone Arsenal, Ala., and dismounted combat soldiers from Fort Benning, Ga. cooperated in the exercise.
Army Col. Glen A. Rizzi (ret.), working in support of the director of Combat Developments was enthusiastic about the Fort Rucker tests. "The Unmanned Systems Initiative allows us to experiment with manned and unmanned systems using the latest technology to bring live UAVs, computer simulation, and constructive aircraft simulators from three different locations - Fort Rucker, Redstone and Benning - all together at one time," he said.
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Lockheed to Take Charge on Court Decision
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
November 3, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/27972/story.htm
NEW YORK - Lockheed Martin Corp. will take a fourth-quarter after-tax charge of about $110 million, or about 25 cents per share, for damages and costs from a court decision rejecting its request to overturn a contract's termination, the No. 1 U.S. defense contractor said.
Lockheed Martin (LMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) had asked to overturn the contract's termination for default and claimed damages of approximately $270 million. The company had assumed that it would recover some portion of the costs it incurred under the contract, it stated.
Instead, the court concluded that Lockheed must repay $54 million in progress payments, plus interest, and pay about $12 million in decontamination and decommissioning costs.
Lockheed in 1994 had won a fixed-price contract to design, construct and test remediation facilities, as well as remediate waste found in Pit 9 at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory reservation.
But in 1998, the management contractor for the Department of Energy terminated the contract for default and filed a lawsuit against Lockheed seeking damages and interest totaling approximately $100 million.
Lockheed shares closed at $55.09 on Friday
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Defense stocks surge after Bush win
Associated Press
DAVE CARPENTER
Nov. 03, 2004
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/business/10090661.htm
CHICAGO - Defense stocks jumped higher Wednesday in what one analyst called a "relief rally" following President Bush's re-election.
Downplaying the impact of the election, the head of Boeing's defense unit said he still sees slower growth ahead for U.S. spending on military contracts after the surge that occurred throughout Bush's first term.
Nonetheless, shares in the nation's three biggest military contractors increased, making defense one of the strongest sectors on a bullish day on Wall Street.
Lockheed Martin Corp.'s stock closed up $1.78 per share, or 3.3 percent, at $55.89 on the New York Stock Exchange. Boeing shares increased $1.27, or 2.5 percent, to $51.15, and Northrop Grumman Corp. surged $2.10, or 4.1 percent, to $53.75. All finished near 52-week highs.
Even after retrenching somewhat late in the trading session, the gains easily exceeded the 1 percent increase in the Dow, reflecting not only investors' embrace of an unchallenged outcome but confidence that defense companies will get more business from a second-term Bush administration than they would have under John Kerry.
But Merrill Lynch defense analyst Byron Callan said in a note to investors that he foresees cuts to the U.S. military's modernization plans that will result in slower growth rates for those programs, affecting contractors.
"We see today's strength in stocks as more of a relief rally than a signal of new directions for the defense sector," he wrote.
Jim Albaugh, the head of Boeing's more than $30 billion-a-year defense business, told analysts a slowdown in military procurement has begun despite "a great last five years" that saw defense spending rise sharply, particularly for development and technology.
"We have taken the position that regardless as to whether or not President Bush is in the White House or Sen. Kerry was elected, we would see a moderation in defense spending in the years ahead," he said at a Goldman Sachs conference in New York. "I think we're (already) starting to see a flattening of the spending on the defense side."
Albaugh also indicated Boeing can wait only about seven more months to land a new co