President Bush and DOD Officials Violate Existing Regulations

by Dr. Doug Rokke

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=10183

Dennie Williams article on Common Dreams "Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis Provisional Government Seeks Cleanup; U.S. Downplays Risks by Thomas D. Williams" http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1101-01.htm verifies the total disregard and overt contempt by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld for their own legal regulations that require thorough environmental remediation of all depleted uranium and other combat caused low level radioactive contamination. The following direct quote from Mr. Williams article as provided by a Department of Defense spokesperson verifies that DOD officials ignore their own legal requirements as mandated in AR 700-48, TB 9-1300-278 , and numerous other documents. .Compliance with all provisions in U.S. Army Regulation is required as ordered by the Secretary of the Army and previous U.S. Army Cheif of Staff General Eric Shinseki.

quote: "The Department of Defense "does not clean up DU once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle," said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official." end quote

This demonstrates / verifies the willful refusal to comply with U.S. Army Regulation AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278. The reference to read the legal requirements is:

http://traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html

Pentagon officials are also acutely aware of the known adverse health and environmental effects as documented in an internal 2002 Pentagon briefing that can be reviewed at: http://traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html but they ignore simple facts in order to sustain use of uranium munitions and avoid all liability for their use as mandated by the March 1993 Los Alamos memorandum (reference: http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/doc1.html ).

Although Pentagon officials state quote: "The Department of Defense "does not clean up DU once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle," said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official." the pertinent section of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 requires the following actions.

Quote from Army Regulation 700-48 (Please see previous reference for complete text.) "RCE" means "radiologically contaminated equipment". :

"2-4. Handling of RCE

a. General.

(1) During peacetime or as soon as operational risk permits, the Corps/JTF/Division Commander's RSO will identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE. Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible.

(2) Radiologically contaminated equipment does not prevent the use of a combat vehicle or equipment for a combat mission.

(3) RSO must consider the operational situation, mission, level of contamination, and types of contaminate when evaluating the need to utilize contaminated equipment.

(4) After the Corps Commander certifies the equipment is decontaminated IAW established OEG or peacetime regulations, it may be reutilized.

(5) The equipment for release for unrestricted use must be decontaminated to comply with peacetime regulations versus OEG.

(6) Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Units will render equipment safe prior to retrograde operations when appropriate...."

----

HOSTAGE WITH SPINE OF STEEL NOW FEARED DEAD

Singapore Press
NOV 18, 2004
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/top/story/0,4136,77533,00.html

A CLOSE friend described her as 'one of those slender people with a spine of steel'.

She dedicated most of her working life to easing the plight of ordinary Iraqis. Yet all the good work and the numerous appeals failed to move Mrs Margaret Hassan's captors.

She has apparently been killed, Care International said early this morning.

Mrs Hassan was involved in humanitarian relief in Iraq for 30 years and for the last 12 years she worked for Care as its director.

Shortly after her abduction, patients at a Baghdad hospital took to the streets to protest against the kidnapping.

They credited her with helping to rebuild the medical facility last year, reported CNN.

The protesters carried pictures of her and banners which called for the release of 'Mama Margaret'.

The last project Care completed with her effort was a rehabilitation unit for patients with spinal injuries.

In a poignant demonstration, the patients who could, painstakingly wheeled themselves into the street, held up banners pleading for her release.

The news of her killing was reported by Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.

It said it had obtained a video showing a masked militant shooting a blindfolded woman, who was referred to as Margaret Hassan, in the head using a handgun.

The TV network decided to wait on reporting the news until it confirmed the authenticity of the tape.

HUSBAND'S PLEA

After she was kidnapped, her husband Tahseen Ali Hassan pleaded with her kidnappers to let her go, even putting up posters in Baghdad.

He said: 'They should know that my wife has worked almost all her life for the Iraqi people and considers herself an Iraqi.'

Sky News reported that Mrs Hassan was a vocal opponent of international sanctions on Iraq. Before the war to topple Saddam Hussein, she warned it would bring a 'humanitarian catastrophe' on Iraq.

When war broke out, she was determined to stay to continue her work despite the danger. At the time she was taken hostage she was in charge of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programmes throughout the country.

But her kidnapping led Care to withdraw from the country.

Mrs Hassan, who was in her 60s, held Irish-British-Iraqi citizenships.

Her family said in a written statement: 'Our hearts are broken. We have kept hoping for as long as we could, but we now have to accept that Margaret has probably gone and at last her suffering has ended.'

She is said to have fallen in love with Iraq more than 30 years ago, when she travelled there as a young bride with her Iraqi husband.

She converted to Islam, learned Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.

Her film-maker friend, Felicity Arbuthnot, told the BBC recently: 'It was Iraq's children who haunted her, she called the children of the embargo 'the lost generation'.

'Half of Iraq's population is aged below 15. Childless herself, to see her cradle infants stricken with Iraq's myriad of illnesses which have reached epidemic proportions since 1991 - linked to the destruction of water facilities and the chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium weapons used - one felt her passion to protect all Iraq's children as her own.'

She said that while filming in an area of exceptional deprivation and poverty in Iraq, a crowd gathered. On seeing Mrs Hassan, thin, stressed faces, broke into wide smiles, children ran and hugged her round the knees chanting: 'Madam Margaret, Madam Margaret...'

Weeks before her kidnap, she told the Independent newspaper's Robert Fisk despairingly: 'There will be a second generation of lost children now.'

Mrs Hassan was kidnapped on Oct 19 by a group that did not identify itself.

The group said on Nov 2 that it would turn her over to an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group - Base of Jihad - if the British government did not pull its troops out of Iraq within 48 hours.

Base of Jihad has been blamed for numerous beheadings of foreigners in Iraq, including the slayings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, and Briton Kenneth Bigley. They also claimed responsibility for the killing of a Japanese hostage.

Mrs Hassan's husband has appealed to the kidnappers to return his wife's body.

He said: 'I beg those people who took Margaret to tell me what they have done with her... I need her back to rest in peace.'


-------- india / pakistan

India steps forward on Kashmir

washingtontimes
November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20041117-085411-2696r.htm

India's new government is proving its will to continue to ratchet down tensions with Pakistan over one of the world's most dangerous potential flashpoints. India began this week to reduce its troops in its portion of the territory of Kashmir. The military reduction appears to be India's first since the insurgency in Kashmir began in 1989. Also, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made his maiden voyage to Kashmir yesterday.

Pakistan and India have fought two wars since 1947 over the disputed territory of Kashmir, before the two countries had gone nuclear. Needless to say, another war between the nuclear-armed countries would be disastrous, and each is keen to avoid that prospect. Successful peace talks are also important for the U.S.-led counterterror effort, since the Kashmir dispute fuels an Islamic insurgency that could at any time shift its focus to international targets.

There were doubts whether Mr. Singh, who took office in May, would be as determined or able to negotiate peace as his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr. Singh, though, appears to be methodically plodding a course for peace with Pakistan.

India is believed to have between 250,000 and 500,000 troops in Kashmir, and is expected to pull out tens of thousands. This follows Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's proposed demilitarization of Kashmir. Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the move was "a good development" that would build confidence and facilitate the dialogue.

The troop withdrawal coincided with Mr. Singh's first visit to Kashmir, where he unveiled a $5.3 billion economic revival plan for the state, which is aimed at creating 24,000 jobs. The funds would be used to build new houses, schools, hospitals, railway lines, phone connections, and irrigation and power generation systems. Mr. Singh also pledged to speak to all parties that have disavowed violence.

Mr. Singh's initiative comes despite an outbreak of violence by suspected Islamist militants. Mr. Singh, though, is wisely not letting the militant violence determine the course of the peace with Pakistan and the Kashmiri people.

Still, India's troop withdrawal puts extra onus on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist training camps and the movement of Pakistani militants into Indian-controlled Kashmir. Next week, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will arrive in New Delhi for talks. Both sides should work hard to keep the momentum going, and U.S. officials should not refrain from nudging them along.


-------- iran

Iran has black market nuclear bomb drawings, still enriches uranium: opposition

Nov 18, 2005
GEORGE JAHN
Canadian Press
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041117/w111728.html

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran bought blueprints of a nuclear bomb from the same black-market network that gave Libya such diagrams and continues to enrich uranium despite a commitment to suspend the technology that can be used for atomic weapons, an Iranian opposition group said Wednesday.

Farid Soleimani, a senior official for the National Council for Resistance in Iran, said the diagram was provided by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani head of the nuclear network linked to clandestine programs in both Iran and Libya.

"He gave them the same weapons design he gave the Libyans as well as more in terms of weapons design," Soleimani told reporters in Vienna. He said the diagram and related material on how to make nuclear weapons was handed to the Iranians between 1994 and 1996.

Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said the UN nuclear watchdog agency follows up "every solid lead," but that it would otherwise have no further comment on the allegations.

A diplomat familiar with the agency and its investigations into Libya's and Iran's nuclear programs said the IAEA has long feared that Iran might have received bomb-making blueprints from Khan.

Libya bought engineers' drawings of a Chinese-made bomb through the Khan network as part of a covert nuclear program that it renounced last year.

Iran says it does not have such drawings, and no evidence has been found to dispute that claim.

Former UN nuclear inspector David Albright earlier this year described the Chinese design that Libya owned up to having as something "that would not take a lot of modifying" to fit it on Iran's successfully tested Shahab-3 ballistic missile.

The opposition group made its claim days after Iran announced it would suspend all activities related to nuclear enrichment as part of an agreement with three European countries aimed at heading off a confrontation over its nuclear program.

Soleimani said centrifuges and other equipment needed to produce enriched uranium had been covertly moved from a facility at Lavizan-Shian to a nearby site within Tehran's city limits.

The opposition group says Lavizan-Shian was home to the Centre for Readiness and New Defence Technology and was part of the covert attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

A report detailing IAEA investigations into Iran's nuclear programs prepared for the agency's Nov. 25 board meeting notes that Iran has failed to produce a trailer that apparently contained nuclear equipment at Lavizan-Shian for IAEA inspection.

The IAEA report also said Iran has "declined to provide a list of equipment used" at Lavizan-Shian, which the government says was home to research on how to reduce casualties in case of nuclear attack.

Referring to the new, secret location, Soleimani said that "as we speak, the site continues to produce (enriched) uranium" and said it "is not the only one that is being kept secret."

Soleimani's organization is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen, or Mujahedeen Khalq, banned in the United States as a terrorist organization. While much of its information has not been confirmed, it was instrumental in 2002 in revealing Iran's enrichment program at Natanz.

Enrichment at low levels generates fuel for nuclear power - and Iran says that is its sole interest. But the United States says it suspects Iran wants to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium for nuclear warheads.

Lavizan-Shian was razed by the Iranian government earlier this year as IAEA inspectors prepared to visit it. The government says it was destroyed to make way for a park. But suspicions remain about the extent of the work done there - including the removal of topsoil, which reduced the effectiveness of environmental samples taken by IAEA inspectors looking for unreported nuclear activity at the site.

The IAEA says it will start monitoring Iran's commitment to halt enrichment activities starting early next week.

The suspension pledge reduced U.S. hopes of having the board refer Iran to the UN Security Council for alleged violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Under the agreement, Tehran is to suspend all uranium enrichment in return for European guarantees that Iran has the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program. The suspension holds only until a comprehensive agreement is sealed, but European diplomats hope the freeze will turn into a long-term arrangement.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called the agreement a "great victory" but said Wednesday that Tehran won't respect its commitment if Europeans fail to support his country at the IAEA board meeting.

"If the IAEA board of governors adopts a correct decision, it will be a step in the direction that will give us more hope that our rights will be exercised," Khatami said.

"If we see that they don't keep their promise, it's natural that we won't fulfil our promise," he said.

--------

Powell Says Iran Is Pursuing Bomb
Evidence Cited of Effort to Adapt Missile

By Robin Wright and Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57465-2004Nov17?language=printer

SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 17 -- The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday.

Separately, an Iranian opposition exile group charged in Paris that Iran is enriching uranium at a secret military facility unknown to U.N. weapons inspectors. Iran has denied seeking to build nuclear weapons.

"I have seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems. . . . You don't have a weapon until you put it in something that can deliver a weapon," Powell told reporters traveling with him to Chile for an Asia-Pacific economic summit. "I'm not talking about uranium or fissile material or the warhead; I'm talking about what one does with a warhead."

Powell's comments came just three days after an agreement between Iran and three European countries -- Britain, France and Germany -- designed to limit Tehran's ability to divert its peaceful nuclear energy program for military use. The primary focus of the deal, accepted by Iran on Sunday and due to go into effect Nov. 22, is a stipulation that Iran indefinitely suspend its uranium enrichment program.

The issue of adapting a missile is separate from the question of enriching uranium for use in a weapon.

"I'm talking about information that says they not only have these missiles, but I am aware of information that suggests that they were working hard as to how to put the two together," Powell said, referring to the process of matching warheads to missiles. He spoke to reporters during a refueling stop in Manaus, Brazil.

"There is no doubt in my mind -- and it's fairly straightforward from what we've been saying for years -- that they have been interested in a nuclear weapon that has utility, meaning that it is something they would be able to deliver, not just something that sits there," Powell said.

Iran has long been known to have a missile program, while denying that it was seeking a nuclear bomb. Powell seemed to be suggesting that efforts not previously disclosed were underway to arm missiles with nuclear warheads. Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Powell's remarks indicated that Iran was trying to master the difficult technology of reducing the size of a nuclear warhead to fit on a ballistic missile.

"Powell appears to be saying the Iranians are working very hard on this capability," Cirincione said. He said Powell's comments were striking because the International Atomic Energy Agency said this week that it had not seen any information that Iran had conducted weapons-related work.

In a 32-page report, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," such as weapons programs. But ElBaradei said that he could not rule out the possibility that Iran was conducting a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Powell also told reporters that the United States had not decided what action to take following Sunday's agreement. The Bush administration had insisted that Iran's past violations warranted taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

Powell said the United States would monitor verification efforts "with necessary and deserved caution because for 20 years the Iranians have been trying to hide things from the international community."

Meanwhile, in Paris, the exile group charged that Iran was still enriching uranium and would continue to do so despite the pledge made Sunday to European foreign ministers. The group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, or NCRI, also claimed that Iran received blueprints for a Chinese-made bomb in the mid-1990s from the global nuclear technology network led by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The Khan network sold the same type of bomb blueprint to Libya, which has since renounced its nuclear ambitions.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Paris-based NCRI, told reporters at a news conference that the Khan network delivered to the Iranians a small quantity of highly enriched uranium that could be used in making a bomb. But he said the amount was probably too small for use in a weapon.

The NCRI is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen organization, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist organization. The NCRI helped expose Iran's nuclear ambitions in 2002 by disclosing the location of the government's secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. But many of its subsequent assertions about the program have proven inaccurate.

On Wednesday, Mohaddessin used satellite photos to pinpoint what he said was the new facility, inside a 60-acre complex in the northeast part of Tehran known as the Center for the Development of Advanced Defense Technology. The group said that the site also houses Iranian chemical and biological weapons programs and that uranium enrichment began there a year and a half ago, to replace a nearby facility that was dismantled in March ahead of a visit by a U.N. inspections team.

The group gave no evidence for its claims, but Mohaddessin said, "Our sources were 100 percent sure about their intelligence." He and other group members said the NCRI relies on human sources, including scientists and other people working in the facilities and locals who might live near the facilities and see suspicious activities.

The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear monitoring body, had no immediate comment on the claims but said it took all such reports seriously.

The agency has no information to support the NCRI claims, according to Western diplomats with knowledge of the U.N. body's investigations of Iran.

Some diplomats and arms control experts privately discounted the Iranian group's latest claim, saying it appeared designed to undermine the deal that the Tehran government signed with Britain, France and Germany. In Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian officials said they considered the enrichment suspension temporary and contingent upon a favorable decision at the IAEA meeting next week and on quick progress in talks next month on long-term guarantees that Iran can apply nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Richburg reported from Paris. Staff writers Glenn Kessler and Dafna Linzer in Washington contributed to this report.

--------

Exiles Add to Claims on Iran Nuclear Arms

November 18, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18iran.html?pagewanted=all

PARIS, Nov. 17 - An Iranian opposition group leveled startling but unconfirmed charges on Wednesday that Iran had bought blueprints for a nuclear bomb and obtained weapons-grade uranium on the black market.

The group also charged that Iran was still secretly enriching uranium at an undisclosed Defense Ministry site in Tehran, despite an agreement with the Europeans two days ago to suspend all enrichment activities.

The claims, made in separate news conferences in Paris and Vienna by a group known as the National Council of Resistance, the political front for the People's Mujahedeen, could not be independently verified, and independent nuclear experts were divided about whether they could be true.

The group rattled the Iranian government and the arms control community in 2002 when it revealed the existence of two secret Iranian nuclear facilities, including an enrichment plant in the town of Natanz.

Wednesday's accusations follow by two days the announcement of Iran's agreement to suspend uranium enrichment while it negotiates with France, Germany and Britain for economic and political benefits. In that agreement, the People's Mujahedeen is placed in the same category as Al Qaeda - as terrorist groups that Iran and the European Union will combat together.

The United States and the European Union define the People's Mujahedeen as a terrorist group.

The charges also come eight days before the 35-country ruling board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, opens meetings in Vienna to decide whether Iran has curbed its nuclear activities or should be referred to the Security Council for censure.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan arms control group in Washington, said, "The timing of these revelations raises suspicions that the group is attempting to derail Iran's deal with the Europeans, particularly since there is no evidence to back up any of these claims."

He added that the allegation that Pakistan supplied Iran with highly enriched uranium in 2001 "seems preposterous, given the fact that was a year when the United States was really cracking down on Pakistan's nuclear export activities."

But Paul Leventhal, of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, said the group "has been accurate in the past." "Everything that came out initially about the Iranian clandestine program was from this organization," he said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday that he had seen new evidence suggesting that Iran had been "actively working" on a system to deliver a nuclear bomb, but he said he had no information on what help it might have received.

He said the intelligence tended to support the validity of the new accusations. "I have seen intelligence which would corroborate what this dissident group is saying, and it should be of concern to all parties," Mr. Powell said in Manaus, Brazil, while traveling to a meeting of Asian and Pacific nations in Chile.

A confidential report by the nuclear agency sent to its board on Monday for review next week provides a lengthy record of an Iranian pattern of secret nuclear activities, the provision of incomplete and misleading information and delay.

"We follow up every solid lead," said Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the agency.

The nuclear agency has long suspected that Iran, like Libya, received bomb blueprints from the secretive network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, known in Pakistan as the father of the country's nuclear bomb. Among the Mujahedeen's charges on Wednesday was that the Iranian blueprints came from the Khan network.

In September, the agency revealed that as early as 1995, Pakistan was providing Tehran with the designs for advanced centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade nuclear fuel. The Iranians have never acknowledged that the source was Pakistan.

I.A.E.A. inspectors were able to nail down the connection between Iran and Pakistan because of similar centrifuge packaging material they found in Libya and Iran.

If it is proved that Iran received highly enriched uranium or blueprints for a bomb from Pakistan or any other country, it would set off widespread international condemnation and could derail the European agreement with Iran.

That agreement envisions the start of talks next month on a package of economic, technological and political incentives in exchange for a freeze on Iran's production of enriched uranium, which can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

It could also prompt the Bush administration to make good on its threats to haul Iran before the Security Council.

"The game is over if all this is true," said one Western diplomat with close ties to the nuclear agency. "But the I.A.E.A. needs more than suspicions, and the Iranian resistance hasn't given it anything it can follow up on."

In both news conferences on Wednesday, the group specifically charged that Iran moved uranium enrichment equipment this year from a suspicious site before demolishing the buildings and carting off the rubble as I.A.E.A. inspectors were preparing to visit. The Iranian government said it was destroyed to make way for a park. As proof, the opposition group presented satellite photographs that were already in the public domain.

The opposition group also claimed that the equipment was moved to a nearby Defense Ministry site, called the Center for the Development of Advanced Defense Technology, in Lavizan in the northernmost part of Tehran, and is being used to enriched uranium there.

In reply to a question in Vienna, Farid Soleimani, an opposition group spokesman, said the Khan nuclear network in Pakistan "gave Iran a quantity" of highly enriched uranium in 2001 but added, "I would doubt it was given enough for a weapon."

Mr. Soleimani said Mr. Khan also "gave them the same weapons design he gave the Libyans, as well as more in terms of weapons design," sometime between 1994 and 1996.

There was no immediate comment on the Mujahedeen's allegations in Tehran on Wednesday.

Early in the day, Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, hailed Iran's agreement with the Europeans as a "great victory," because the Europeans "have recognized that Iran can exercise its rights" in seeking peaceful nuclear technology. He added that the first test of the Europeans' "good will" would be next week's meeting of the atomic agency.

"If the I.A.E.A. board of governors adopts a correct decision, it will be a step in the direction that will give us more hope that our rights will be exercised," he said. However, he added, "If we see that they don't keep their promise, it's natural that we won't fulfill our promise."

Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Manaus, Brazil,for this article, and Ariane Bernard from Paris.

--------

Iran said to be developing weapons-delivery systems

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jennifer Joan Lee
November 18, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041117-094509-8506r.htm

PARIS - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday the United States has seen signs that Iran is developing technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

He spoke just hours after an Iranian opposition group charged that Tehran has a secret, military-run uranium-enrichment plant and has bought the blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Powell made his remarks while traveling with reporters to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Chile.

"I have seen some information that would suggest they have been actively working on delivery systems. ... You don't have a weapon until you can put it in something that can deliver a weapon," he said, according to Reuters news agency.

"I'm talking about what one does with a warhead," Mr. Powell said. "We are talking about information that says they not only have [the] missiles, but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together."

Hours earlier, officials of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said at twin press conferences in Paris and in Vienna, Austria, that Tehran had bought plans for a nuclear weapon, as well as weapons-grade uranium from the black-market network that sold similar designs to Libya.

The NCRI is on the State Department's terrorist list, along with its affiliate, the Mujahideen Khalq, or People's Mujahideen.

The senior spokesman for the NCRI - which first exposed Iran's nuclear program two years ago - said in Vienna that the diagram was provided by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani head of the nuclear network linked to clandestine operations around the world.

Farid Soleimani said the material was handed to the Iranians between 1994 and 1996. Libya bought Chinese-language warhead-design documents through Mr. Khan's network before it publicly renounced its covert nuclear-weapons program last year.

U.S. officials have estimated that Iran is three to five years from developing a nuclear weapon, but some independent experts have said it could obtain one sooner.

Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Non-Proliferation Project, told Reuters that it takes considerable expertise to shrink a nuclear bomb to fit on a missile with a 1-ton payload and to make it sturdy enough to survive rocket launch and re-entry.

It was not clear whether diagrams provided by the A.Q. Khan network would meet those requirements, but Pakistan, a declared nuclear power, is believed to have mounted warheads on missiles.

A U.S. official familiar with intelligence on the Pakistani network questioned some of the claims yesterday by the Iranian opposition group, but did not elaborate.

A Vienna-based diplomat familiar with the International Atomic Energy Agency said such suspicions "have been around for almost a year, and they don't help us get closer to the truth."

Mr. Powell told reporters that he could not corroborate the Iranian opposition group's claims.

But NCRI spokesman Mohammad Mohaddessin said in Paris that Iran's Ministry of Defense had moved equipment used to enrich uranium as well as develop biological and chemical weapons to a new 60-acre site in the Lavizan district of Tehran.

Now known as "the Modern Defensive Readiness and Technology Center," the former military battalion site was to be used for nuclear research separate from the country's civilian nuclear-energy program.

"I don't know if the plant is in operation yet, but our sources say they know that centrifuges have been installed and that nuclear research is being undertaken there," Mr. Mohadessin said.

He went on to describe the building and gave out the names, addresses and phone numbers of four nuclear scientists working in Iran's Ministry of Defense.

NCRI's claims, if true, point to serious weaknesses in the latest deal between Iran and Europe, whereby Tehran pledged it would suspend its uranium-enrichment activities as the group thrashes out the details of a longer-term nonproliferation pact.

"The larger point that this speaks to is, despite the agreement Iran has reached with Europe, are they going to continue to develop things secretly? This group is arguing yes," said Valerie Lincy, of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

"That is going to be the big hole in any agreement," she said in Washington. "It is very hard to detect low-level nuclear research and development and bench-scale type experiments."

It is unlikely that the United States will publicly pursue the NCRI's information because of the terrorist designation of the organization and its affiliate.

The State Department said yesterday it had "no comment" on the opposition group's claims, although a number of its revelations have proved accurate in the past.

•Sharon Behn in Washington contributed to this report.


-------- korea

Threat of 'nukes to spare' in N Korea

November 18, 2004
The Australian Peter Alford
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11418369%255E2703,00.html

NORTH Korea has built enough nuclear weapons to sell some of them to other rogue states or terrorist groups and still retain enough to deter attacks on its territory.

That must be the new baseline assumption for the US and other countries trying to disarm the communist state, according to International Crisis Group president and former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans.

"It's happened in the last two years," Mr Evans told The Australian from Seoul. "Since we lost track of the spent fuel rods at Yongbyong (nuclear plant), we have to assume they have reprocessed enough plutonium to make six to eight weapons."

A new ICG report says the strong likelihood that North Korea has as many as 10 nuclear bombs -- US intelligence assumes two weapons existed before a 1994 agreement to freeze plutonium production -- makes the task of dismantling the rogue program increasingly urgent.

The study suggests the US-led approach to disarming North Korea since the collapse of the 1994 agreement two years ago has been a dangerous waste of time.

"While six-party talks have continued with results in Beijing, North Korea has probably reprocessed its (8000) fuel rods and may have turned the plutonium into weapons," the report says.

"It almost certainly has enough bombs to deter an attack and still have some to sell to other states or even terrorist groups."

Since October 2002, when the Americans accused Kim Jong-il's regime of running another covert nuclear program, there has been no effective international oversight of North Korea's nuclear industry and its spent rods stockpile.

Having already breached the 1994 Agreed Framework several times previously, Pyongyang in late 2002 renounced the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Commission safeguards.

Since then the US -- working with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia -- has insisted on "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of the weapons programs before it would consider resuming energy or food aid or guaranteeing that the North will be from attack.

The six-party process produced no breakthroughs before it stalled in September, while the North awaited the outcome of the US presidential election. Talks are unlikely to resume before the new year.

"This (period) has been less than non-productive," Mr Evans said yesterday.

"The international community has no basis for self-congratulation -- international interests have gone backwards."

The ICG is now calling for the Americans to lead the six-party process in a new direction, by setting out in detail for the North Koreans a process of disarmament, accompanied by a series of economic and security benefits.

This would be enforced by sanctions and -- if the North attempted to sell weapons or nuclear material to another state or terror group -- a credible threat of military force. Mr Evans said he awaited more details of the US State Department's "new management" under Condoleezza Rice before judging whether the Bush administration was ready to change course on North Korea.

"I'm not assuming that things are going to get any easier," he said. "But the US has so few alternatives in terms of approach, I believe that in the end some kind of rationality has to prevail."


-------- missile defense

Missile shield project ignites bidding war
Japan defense firms see 1 trillion yen project as chance to build industry

The Japan Times
By NAO SHIMOYACHI
Nov. 18, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20041118f1.htm

Tokyo's decision last year to deploy an expensive U.S.-developed defense system against North Korea's ballistic missiles has triggered a heated race between the defense industries of Japan and the United States to get the most out of the 1 trillion yen project.

Last week, major U.S. defense firms Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., Raytheon Co., Boeing Co. and Computer Sciences Corp. showcased their missile defense products at the Parliamentary Museum in Tokyo, where Japanese and U.S. defense policymakers, industry figures and politicians gathered for a two-day security symposium.

Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor, set up a full-scale replica of the PAC-3 interceptor missile Japan will deploy for the ground-based portion of the system.

Raytheon, the prime contractor of the SM-3 interceptor missiles Japan will use in the sea-based portion of the system, displayed a computer system that can simulate missile interception on monitors.

But while Japanese defense industry leaders agreed that it was important to learn from and cooperate with their U.S. counterparts, they also stressed the need for Japan to develop its own technology.

"Japan's environment is unique when it comes to missile defense," said Hidetsugu Horikawa, vice president of the aerospace unit of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the second-largest defense contractor in Japan.

Given the extremely short time it would take for a missile to reach Japan from North Korea, Horikawa said, Japan needs a highly effective system that can detect a launch at the earliest possible stage and rapidly relay that information so the missile can be tracked and intercepted.

"To build a (financially) practical and effective system, Japan needs to carefully assess which parts it should introduce from the U.S. and which parts it should develop on its own," he said.

The Japanese side sees the missile defense project as a great opportunity to establish domestic defense research, development and production bases. The expected lifting of the government's self-imposed ban on arms exports by year's end is also fueling expectations in the sector that military-related production will become a new cash cow.

By 2011, Japan plans to deploy a two-tier missile shield combining sea- and land-based systems. Deployment will begin in 2006, with the total cost estimated at 1 trillion yen.

The government has already decided to purchase interceptor missiles -- SM-3s to be launched from Aegis-equipped warships and PAC-3s to be deployed on the ground -- from the U.S., at least for the next fiscal year.

But the Japanese defense industry, led by the Defense Production Committee of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), is pressing the government to let Japanese companies produce these missiles under license.

"To maintain our current technology level as well as for future technological development, we, the defense industry, will continue urging the government to let us start licensed production as early as possible," said Takashi Nishioka, vice chairman of Keidanren and chairman of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

MHI, Japan's largest defense contractor, already makes the PAC-2, predecessor of the PAC-3, under license.

The Defense Agency has promised to consider the request, saying it didn't have enough time to negotiate a PAC-3 licensing agreement with the U.S. this year.

A command, control and communications system for the missile defense system is to be built by upgrading the Air Self-Defense Force's existing Base Air Defense Ground Environment system. The agency has yet to decide how the contracts for this project will be allotted.

The agency is also in talks with the U.S. to launch joint research aimed at improving antiair radar and a battle management system for Aegis-equipped ships. It plans to use technology from both Japanese and U.S firms for the research.

For the U.S., which is expected to declare its missile defense shield to be operational by the end of the year, Japan is the most promising research partner and overseas market for missile defense-related products.

Only the U.S., Israel and Japan are expected to have an operational missile defense system within the next few years. Given that Israel is only deploying the Arrow, a ground-based missile system aimed at countering Iran's short-range missiles, Japan is expected to become the leading missile defense nation after the U.S.

"Japan's addition of missile defense capabilities to its Self-Defense Forces can make Japan a world leader in missile defense," Aaron Fuller III, president of the Defense Mission and Engineering Division at Computer Sciences, said at the symposium. His company developed the software for the Aegis Weapon System.

Indeed, the race for contracts appears to have no bounds.

During last week's symposium, a Boeing representative strongly urged Japan to use the firm's airborne laser system, or ABL, which is designed to detect and destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles as they take off. Defense experts say Tokyo has little use for such a long-range system, as its main concern is North Korea.

Industry officials in both Japan and the U.S. say they welcome the expected lifting of Japan's weapons export ban, expressing hope that it will help promote joint research and technology transfer.

Yet the Japanese side is determined not to give its U.S. rivals a free hand, having learned a lesson from its bitter experience with the FS-X fighter in the late 1980s.

The Defense Agency had intended to develop the FS-X, a successor to the ASDF's F-1 support fighter, using domestic technology. But bending to strong pressure from the U.S., Japan gave up on the option of domestic development and chose to remodel the U.S.-developed F-16 fighter.

U.S. fears over losing key technologies through the project also led to highly limited technology transfers and 40 percent of the work going to U.S. firms.

"As soon as the new government policy (on arms exports) becomes clear, we will start exchanging information with the U.S. private sector and present concrete proposals to the Japanese government," Keidanren's Nishioka said during the symposium. "That will enable Japan to take a more active position toward the U.S."


-------- russia

Russia Rewrites Its Nuclear Doctrine With Mobile Launchers

Moscow (UPI)
by Peter Lavelle
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-04w.html

Speaking to the country's top military brass on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia's nuclear deterrent would soon be significantly upgraded with weapons technology unmatched by other nuclear powers. While making it clear Russia's top security priority is the war against international terrorism, Putin has also signaled that the country's nuclear deterrent will remain a key element of national defense.

In what is widely interpreted as a prep talk to Russia's military leadership, Putin boasted of technological breakthroughs that would considerably modernize the country nuclear arsenal. Providing few details, Putin stated, We are not only conducting research and successful test on state-of-the-art nuclear missile systems, but I am convinced that there will appear ... weapons that not a single other nuclear power has, or will have, in the near future.

Defense experts in Russia and around the world believe Putin was referring to either a new mobile version of the Topol-M ballistic missile, deployed in silos since 1998, or a significant upgrade of the Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile. Still other analysts contend that Russia is also developing a new generation of heavy missiles with a payload of up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing more than tons - currently a Topol-M has a 1.32-ton warhead capacity.

The technological breakthrough suspected is the ability to have warheads detached from the main delivery missile during the final stage of its descent, then to continue the flight as crisis missiles. Such missiles, experts believe, would be able to evade any existing or planned missile defense shield. Russian military officials claim this new technology was successfully tested in February of this year.

Putin's announcements were also for international consumption, particularly the United States - vigorously developing its own missile defense shield. Russia strongly protested America's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, only to later let the issue pass and develop technologies that would render any U.S. missile defense shield obsolete before complete deployment.

The U.S. reaction to Putin's address has been to play down any sense of alarm. White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Wednesday said: This is not something we look at as new. He added, We are very well aware of their longstanding modernization efforts for the military. ... We are allies now in global war on terrorism.

While there appears to be little doubt Putin's announcements were to remind the United States and other nuclear powers that Russia will continue to upgrade its nuclear deterrent, Putin's boasts were for more internal consumption. Putin reminded the world that Russia remains a superpower in at least one sense. He also reminded Russians that, like many other reform efforts, the military is also on the mend after almost a decade of decay, low morale, underinvestment, and ineffectiveness in Chechnya.

Military reform has been a top priority during Putin's presidency, with only limited results to date. After five years in office, Putin finally felt confident enough to remove top military brass resistant to reforms designed to modernization Russia's military establishment, which remains remarkably Soviet in outlook and structure.

Russia's conventional forces remain dangerously weak, with some defense analysts believing that in the case of foreign attack the country might not be able to defend itself. Missile defense is very different, its mere existence serves as a deterrent.

Impatient and unable to quicken the pace of conventional forces reform, the Kremlin has changed its military doctrine to compensate for this weakness, and missile defense is seen as the only solution ensuring the country's security. Russia's current national security doctrine, signed by Putin in 2001, allows for use of nuclear weapons if other forms of defense fail. Previously, the use of Russia's nuclear deterrent could only be called into play if it was deemed the country's sovereignty was in peril.

Putin's announcement that Russia will continue to support state-of-the-art nuclear deterrence certainly puts would be aggressors on notice. It reminds the United States that Russia is a very meaningful military peer. At home, the military and the average citizen can take pride in the fact that Russia is still a very powerful country in the world. However, in all of this is embedded a very grave danger.

If upgrading Russia's nuclear deterrent is a substitute for conventional forces reform, neither Russia nor the world is any safer. Without radical conventional forces reform, the Kremlin has effectively lowered the threshold to use nuclear weapons. Lowering the threshold permitting the use of such weapons only encourages other nuclear powers to do the same. It also may encourage some countries that do not have nuclear weapons to acquire them.

Breakthroughs in military technology cannot ensure Russia's security, but well-trained, modern, and highly motivated ground forces can. One has to wonder if the Kremlin is opting to be smart instead of practical.

Peter Lavelle is an independent Moscow-based analyst and the author of the electronic newsletter on Russia Untimely Thoughts untimely-thoughts.com.

-----

Russia seeks active participation in Iran's peaceful nuclear programme

MOSCOW (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118220500.pvctng2l.html

Russia wishes to participate actively in Iran's peaceful nuclear programme in due conformity with international commitments, the secretary of the national security council was quoted as saying Thursday.

"Russia intends to participate actively in the development of civil nuclear energy in Iran in line with international obligations," Russsian news agencies quoted Igor Ivanov as telling his Iranian equivalent Hassan Rohani by telephone.

Iran has informed Russia of the terms of an agreement reached with France, Germany and Britain -- on behalf of the European Union -- on the controversy of Iranian nuclear power.

Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in order to defuse international concern about its nuclear programme -- seen by the United States as a cover for an atomic weapons drive.

The deal brokered by the EU three offered Iran trade, security and technological incentives in return for its cooperation.

Tehran asserts that it only wants to generate atomic energy in order to meet booming domestic power demand and free up its vast oil and gas resources for export.

RIA Novosti news agency reported that Russia had expressed satisfaction at the accord with the western powers, saying it would help to normalise the Iran's situation.

Moscow is in the process of completing Iran's first nuclear power plant, although it has refused to provide fuel for the project until it guarantees its safe return to Russia for reprocessing.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said in September his Islamic state was pushing forward with nuclear cooperation with Russia despite protests from the West.

He said the reactor in the southern Iranian town of Bushehr would go ahead despite resistance from the United States and Israel.

-----

Putin: Russia to Deploy Missiles 'Unlikely to Exist' Elsewhere

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56417-2004Nov17.html

MOSCOW, Nov. 17 -- President Vladimir Putin told a conference of top military officials Wednesday that Russia was planning to deploy a nuclear missile of a kind that other nuclear powers were unlikely to develop.

Putin gave no other details, but over the last several months Russian military officials have spoken about developing a ballistic missile that could penetrate any missile defense system, such as the one being put in place by the United States. It reportedly would have the maneuverability of a cruise missile after reentering the atmosphere from space, helping it to evade interceptor rockets.

"We have not only conducted tests of the latest nuclear rocket systems," Putin said at a meeting in Moscow of the armed forces leadership, according to Russian news services. "I am sure that in the coming years we will deploy them. . . . Moreover, these will be things which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in other nuclear powers."

Russian officials have talked of shield-evading missiles since the 1980s, when the Reagan administration promoted its Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile system.

In announcing a planned missile defense system in 2001, the Bush administration said it was designed to protect the country from "rogue states" such as North Korea, not Russia's massive arsenal.

But the announcement prompted a new round of statements from Russian officials that their country would develop missiles capable of penetrating such a shield.

The Itar-Tass news service said Putin may have been referring to a pending mobile version of the Topol-M, the only intercontinental missile developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Earlier this month, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia expected to test the missile soon and that production might begin in 2005.

Some analysts questioned whether the projected 2005 defense budget was sufficient to finance an upgrading of Russia's nuclear forces. The army and security agencies, including the police, are projected to receive about $32 billion, or 30.5 percent of the federal budget.

"Putin's statement looks rather political," Ruslan Pukhov, an analyst at Moscow-based Center AST, which specializes in security studies, told the Bloomberg news service. "Most likely, Putin meant some research and design, conducted during Soviet times and dusted off recently."

--------

Putin Says New Missile Systems Will Give Russia a Nuclear Edge

November 18, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/europe/18russia.html?pagewanted=all

MOSCOW, Nov. 17 - President Vladimir V. Putin, meeting with Russia's defense officials and military commanders here, said Wednesday that the country would soon deploy new nuclear missile systems that would surpass those of any other nuclear power.

Reiterating previous statements and providing no new details, Mr. Putin said Russia would continue to emphasize its nuclear deterrent, even as it continues its focus on terrorism, which has roiled the country in recent months with deadly results.

"We are not only conducting research and successful testing of the newest nuclear missile systems," he said in concluding remarks to a regular gathering of commanders at the Ministry of Defense, which were reported by news agencies and broadcast on NTV. "I am certain that in the immediate years to come we will be armed with them. These are such developments and such systems that other nuclear states do not have and will not have in the immediate years to come."

In his remarks, which amounted to a broad overview of military strategy and budgets with a dash of boosterism, Mr. Putin did not elaborate on the new systems.

The Russian military is widely reported to have been trying to perfect land- and sea-based ballistic missiles with warheads that could elude a missile-defense system like the one being constructed by the Bush administration. Still, Russia already has more than enough missiles to overwhelm the limited system the United States is constructing.

In February, Mr. Putin announced that Russia had successfully tested a new nuclear-tipped missile during an exercise that included two embarrassing missile misfires. At the time, he said the system would allow "deep maneuvering," a statement that arms experts in Russia and abroad took to mean a warhead that could alter its course as it approached its target.

A day after that exercise, Col. Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, who this summer was promoted to the chief of the military's general staff, said the missile was a "hypersonic flying vehicle," though neither he nor any other officials have provided details about the weapon or, more important, its viability.

The missile is reportedly a variant of the Topol, a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile that is already in Russia's arsenal, but Russia's efforts are shrouded in secrecy.

Dmitri V. Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and an expert on the Russian military, said Mr. Putin's remarks, made almost in passing and not a part of his main address, revealed nothing particularly new.

Mr. Trenin described the comments as a gesture to bolster the confidence of the armed services, which remain beleaguered, despite the government's efforts to increase spending, including a 27-percent increase, to roughly $20 billion, in the military budget for 2005.

Last month, a senior missile designer publicly complained in remarks to Russian news agencies that production of the Topol missiles had twice this year ground to a halt because of a lack of financing.


-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Atomic energy's second wind

The Japan Times
By DAVID HOWELL
Nov. 18, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?eo20041118dh.htm

LONDON -- American utility companies are returning to the idea of building nuclear power stations. They believe they can get approval for licenses to start doing so by 2007, and they also believe, despite bitter past experience, that safety problems can finally be solved and the economics can be justified.

This is bold thinking, but is it realistic? All over the world nuclear power programs have long been in limbo for years and a huge political resistance has developed. Although accidents have been rare and performance generally reliable, America's Three Mile Island incident in 1979 and, even more, the Soviet Union's Chernobyl disaster in 1986 have left an indelible imprint of fear that no amount of statistics showing years of safe operation seem able eradicate.

An even deeper fear focuses on the handling of radioactive waste. The public remains convinced that the super-toxic material left over from nuclear electricity generation cannot be transported, stored or disposed of safely.

In vain the nuclear industry has pointed out that the quantities involved are minute (all the waste ever generated by nuclear power stations so far would probably cover no more than three football fields) and that poisonous radioactive material can be encased in glass (vitrified) and buried for centuries until it is harmless. But the public remains skeptical.

Then there is the cost problem. The issue that has long frightened investors away from the nuclear power industry is the colossal cost of eventually decommissioning a plant. It is what made nuclear power so unattractive to financial markets in Britain back in the 1980s when the rest of the electricity industry was successfully privatized.

These are still formidably steep mountains to climb, so why the revived optimism? The answer is that nuclear advocates now think that new designs and technical innovation can overcome safety as well as cost problems. They argue that the danger of a nuclear reactor core being drained of coolant and overheating, as happened at Chernobyl (and as depicted in the mythical but chilling movie "The China Syndrome"), can be eliminated with new designs.

They also maintain that decommissioning costs can be drastically cut and that electricity can be generated from new nuclear stations for about $1.70 a kilowatt-hour over the reactor's lifetime, compared with $1.80 for coal-fired stations and much more for oil and gas.

But much more significant than any of these semi-technical issues are two new "drivers" that nuclear enthusiasts point to. The first is, quite simply, that nuclear power is clean -- it produces no carbon dioxide (CO2 emissions. Of course, the process of constructing a nuclear power station, with its megatons of concrete and metal, is highly energy-intensive. But once the plant is up and running, it is goodbye to the CO2 pollution that many fear is threatening the planet.

The second big new "driver" for the cause of nuclear energy is that oil and gas supplies are becoming less and less reliable. There may be plenty of oil and gas left, both in discovered reserves and in hidden, more remote areas (such as under the Arctic ice cap). But at what cost can it be extracted and will it keep flowing? Those are the questions.

More and more hydrocarbon energy deposits are destined to come from regions that are very unreliable politically. How painful will the price of a barrel of oil get to cover the vast risks of interruption, sabotage, terrorism, blackmail, insurgency, revolution -- not to mention natural disasters like earthquakes?

Can countries afford to rely on the boiling Middle East, unsettled Nigeria, unpredictable Russia, troubled Venezuela, embattled Algeria, for example, for their daily light, heat and industrial production?

Nations and societies that are self-sufficient in oil can perhaps sleep a little easier in face of all these dangers. But America has long ceased to be one of these. Since claiming self-reliance in energy 40 years ago, it has allowed itself, almost absentmindedly, to drift into the hair-raising position of having to import 73 percent of its daily oil needs from the outside world.

Of course, what goes for America goes for other countries, too, but at least some of them are getting prepared. Japan has made strides toward using less oil and is thinking, however reluctantly, about expanding nuclear power further.

Finland, always a center of green issue concerns, has bitten the bullet and is building six new, state-of-the-art, nuclear stations. Even Germany is overcoming its long-held hesitations.

Admittedly the wider dangers of nuclear power in an age of terrorism cannot be overlooked. The tightest possible international monitoring of all nuclear activity is essential if nuclear materials are not to slip into irresponsible hands.

But the plain truth of the world's energy future is now written in letters a mile high: Burning fossil fuels has become both a high risk and threat to the planet.

Renewable energy can help at the margin, but even giant wind farms have a big environmental downside. Conservation and solar panels can do their part, especially in the home, but the massive power that industry and 21st-century life need will have to come increasingly from safe nuclear energy. The experts know this as do the technicians, but dare the politicians break the news to a still nervous public, or will they wait until the lights go out, industry seizes up and the heating fails -- by which time it will be too late to take remedial action.

As President George W. Bush settles into his third term, his advisers are rightly warning him that America needs a radically new energy policy. Could this be the time for some real leadership?

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords.

-----

U.S. nuclear power workers show no unexepected radiation related cancer

News-Medical in Medical Study News
Thursday, 18-Nov-2004
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6391

A first-of-its-kind study of more than 53,000 U.S. nuclear power workers has found that employees in the commercial nuclear industry are less likely than the general population to die from cancer or non-cancer diseases due, in large measure, to the so-called "healthy worker effect."

The study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health tracked workers from 15 nuclear utilities in the U.S. for periods of up to 18 years between 1979 and 1997. Mortality rates of these workers showed that they were 60 percent lower than cause-specific U.S. mortality rates for a population similar in terms of gender, age and calendar year. In order to work in the nuclear industry, workers have to be healthy and are usually required to have annual medical check-ups.

The most important results of this study were findings with respect to radiation-related leukemia and radiation-related other cancers. According to the records, which were maintained by the facilities themselves and by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy, positive, although non-statistically-significant, associations with radiation were seen for mortality from some forms of leukemia and other cancers as a whole. The magnitude of these associations is very similar to those from other radiation studies on which current radiation safety standards are based, indicating that the standards are appropriate.

The researchers did report, however, a strong positive and statistically significant association between radiation dose and death from arteriosclerotic heart disease, including coronary heart disease.

Cautions Geoffrey Howe, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School and principal investigator of the study, "While associations with heart disease have been reported by some other occupational studies, the magnitude of the present association is not consistent with them, and, therefore, needs cautious interpretation and merits further attention."

According to Dr. Howe, "With a mean age of 45 years, this cohort is still relatively young which explains the small number of deaths. Further follow-up and data from an on-going analysis of nuclear workers from 15 countries will provide an additional opportunity for studying the effects of low-dose radiation exposures and greater power to evaluate the present findings."

This study represents the culmination of efforts by individuals in industry, government and academia to combine available sources of information on occupational radiation doses received by U.S. commercial nuclear workers. Currently, there is no single depository of radiation doses in the U.S. and researchers believe one is desirable.

The study, "Analysis of the Mortality Experience Amongst U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Workers After Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation," is published in the November issue of Radiation Research (Rad Res 162, 517-526, 2004), the official journal of the American Radiation Research Society. The 15 nuclear utilities voluntarily participated in the study conducted by the independent researchers. The results are of value in informing U.S. nuclear workers about the latest findings on the safety of their workplace.

http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu

-------- connecticut

Millstone Tax Case Turns On Definition Of 'alteration'
Dominion argues air pollution devices deserved tax credit

The Day
11/18/2004
By PATRICIA DADDONA
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=2B4648E7-2B68-48D1-A2F2-3243E9722977

New Britain - Attorneys for Dominion, the owner of Millstone Power Station in Waterford, argued with town lawyers Wednesday in New Britain Superior Court over tax credits for air pollution control devices at the Millstone 3 reactor.

At stake is an estimated $3 million a year in tax revenue for the town or, conversely, in tax credits for the company.

The devices monitor and manage steam and radiological emissions at the reactor using mechanical and chemical systems for plant ventilation, leak-detection and other functions. Under state law, the Department of Environmental Protection requires business taxpayers to certify whether there have been "any alterations" to such equipment before granting or renewing tax exemptions for air pollution control.

Wednesday's court session dealt with whether the devices have been altered and whether they still qualify for tax exemptions first issued in 1994.

In the first half of what is expected to be a two-part appeal before Judge Arnold W. Aronson, Dominion attorney Charles D. Ray of the Hartford firm McCarter & English argued that the town assessor erred in failing to credit Dominion three years ago for the devices, which had been certified as tax exempt since 1994.

The town's attorneys, Daniel E. Casagrande of the Danbury firm of Pinney Payne, P.C., and Anthony Roisman of NLS in Lyme, N.H., countered Wednesday that Town Assessor Michael Bekech correctly applied the law when denying tax credits. The law, they said, is clear and unambiguous.

Filed in 261 separate counts in 2001, Dominion's tax appeal challenges the town's property tax, which is based on an appraised value of Millstone of slightly less than $1.2 billion. The company states that the three nuclear reactors and associated buildings were really worth only $854 million.

Dominion bought the power station with three plants, two of them operational, for $1.3 billion, less than half the $3 billion or more the property was worth before deregulation introduced competition into the nuclear marketplace.

The judge will rule on the validity of air pollution control exemptions, which account for 83 counts of the appeal, after receiving briefs and final oral arguments in January. In February, attorneys will argue the merits of their appraisers' views.

The judge's ruling on the tax exemptions alone could affect as much as $2 million a year in payments for Dominion, said John R. Malin, another Dominion attorney from McCarter & English.

It was not until Judge Aronson was considering whether to stop hearing expert witnesses, and rely on written briefs from each side, that the court heard testimony on what alterations might have been made to the pollution devices.

Dominion called the town assessor, Bekech, to the stand in an effort to show he could have investigated more before denying Dominion's exemptions.

Bekech testified that before he denied the exemptions, Dominion's tax supervisor claimed, "no alterations ... have materially changed since 1994." A Dominion engineer added that the function and form of the equipment did not change. Those answers did not satisfy him, he said.

"The statute, I believe, is very clear," he said. "It says, 'altered in any manner.'"

"We disagree that any change is an alteration," said Ray, representing Dominion. "If you go down that road it is going to end up being a silly result, because that can't be what the legislature intended ... The essential structures certified in 1994 were not changed as a result of whatever little changes were made."

Aronson allowed testimony from Dominion's second and only other witness, nuclear mechanical engineer David Miller of Sargent & Lundy, who has 28 years experience in the nuclear industry. The firm is an engineering and business consultant for the electric power industry.

Miller explained the findings of a report he compiled for Dominion. Of 10,350 design changes at the reactor, 1,115 were associated with air pollution control, and of those, 1,086 were minor, he said. Of the 29 significant changes, only two "might have the potential" to affect a system's function, he said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not the DEP, would regulate such changes, Miller said.

"The change was minor," Miller wrote repeatedly when describing modifications to seven systems, "and did not alter the air pollution control function; therefore this change was not considered a change" to the tax exemption certificate already on file.

In other words, he said, the change did not necessitate a change in the license or design amendment to the plant through the NRC.

The word "alteration" is just not used in the power business, he added, so he had to analyze the changes closely. He explained several of them, translating highly technical terms into words the average person could understand.

Under cross-examination, Roisman, the town's attorney, elicited testimony from Miller establishing that even re-painting a piece of air pollution control equipment could actually be a major undertaking, and involved safety analysis, temperature and other standards.

For instance, paint that peeled and chipped could block a pump, which could conceivably contribute to an accident, and so "is not trivial," Roisman said. Miller agreed.

Aronson asked attorneys to file briefs on Jan. 7. The trial could resume in February.

p.daddona@theday.com

-------- new mexico

Richardson speaks on Los Alamos contract

11/18/2004
The Associated Press
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2464293

LOS ANGELES - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson urged the University of California on Wednesday to fight to keep its contract to manage the nation's top nuclear laboratory.

Richardson addressed members of the university's governing board as they met in Los Angeles, telling them the university has been a good steward of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and urging them to seek renewal of the contract to operate the lab in northern New Mexico.

The university has managed the lab for 60 years on no-bid contracts. But security slip-ups and allegations of sloppy financial management prompted federal officials to insist on open bidding when the current contract expires in September 2005.

University officials have not decided whether they will seek the contract, although they have instructed staff to prepare as though the school were offering a bid.

Richardson said the university should join forces with industry so the school can delegate security, safety and hazardous waste-disposal problems to another party.

That would free university officials to concentrate on scientific research, said Richardson.


-------- MILITARY

Child Soldiers Still on the March

Inter Press Service
by Sanjay Suri
November 18, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/suri.php?articleid=4000

LONDON - Hundreds of thousands of child soldiers are being used in conflicts around the world and governments are doing little to stop this, says a report published Wednesday.

"Governments are undermining progress in ending the use of children as soldiers," says the "Child Soldiers Global Report 2004" produced by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, a group of human rights and humanitarian organizations.

The report says children are fighting in almost every major conflict, in both government and opposition forces. "They are being injured, subjected to horrific abuse, and killed," the report says.

"Tens of thousands of children are being used by government armed forces in Myanmar [Burma]," head of the coalition Casey Kelso told IPS. "In Colombia, upwards of 14,000 child soldiers are being used both by rebels and the government-backed paramilitaries."

Up to 100,000 child soldiers are engaged in conflicts across Africa, with "at least 30,000 in Sudan," he said. A precise worldwide total is difficult to obtain because "this is an unacceptable practice that more and more governments try to hide," Kelso said. "It is hard to get at hard figures."

Some of the other countries with a high use of child soldiers in conflicts are Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, and now also southern Taiwan, Kelso said.

Until last year the United States was also on the list, following an admission that it had deployed 17-year-olds in conflict situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child categorizes a child as someone below 18 years of age.

The coalition says that "at least 60 governments, including Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States continue to legally recruit children aged 16 and 17."

Influential groups such as the G8 (the leading industrialized nations, comprising the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia), the United Nations, and the European Union (EU) have all adopted positions against the use of child soldiers, Kelso said. "There are a lot of good things on paper, but they have not been translated into action," he said.

Four members of the Security Council - Algeria, Benin, China, and Russia - have not ratified the child soldiers treaty arising from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Others are not finding the political will to impose arms embargoes and political sanctions against countries using child soldiers, he said. Such actions cost money, and Western governments don't want to end arms sales, he said.

"The international community is responsible for making these declarations and resolutions, and so it must follow up on them or people will begin to see through the paper," Kelso said.

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