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NUCLEAR
Chernobyl children facing ban from 'harmful' Britain
Dounreay, Scotland: Plutonium Worker Tests 'Show 4% Contamination'
Uranium enters spotlight in Australia WMC battle
French atomic energy body wants to cut its stake in Areva: report
India to upgrade nuclear deterrence, special forces
Iran Backs Away From a Demand on A-Bomb Fuel
U.N. Agency Welcomes Iran's Nuclear Halt
IAEA Agrees on Plan to Police Iran Nukes
Iran says draft IAEA resolution 'positive'
Japan ranks nuclear, oil, water plants, government offices
Nuclear Project Sparks Stand Off Between EU, Japan
Brazil Govt May Decide Upon $1.7B Nuclear Plant in Dec
The Nuclear Arms Race escalates, as does the arms race in space.
Russia tests modernized missile defense system
West wary of nuclear waste route
MILITARY
Arms dealer faces investigation over his sales to Sudan
Changes at Rheinmetall could ring in shake-up of German defence industry
Chemical weapons-free world still a long way off: watchdog
U.S. Accused of Using Poison Gases in Fallujah
About Baghdad gives voice to Iraqis not represented
Iraqi commandos don't yet make the grade, say US marines
Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids
Checkpoints Take Toll on Palestinians, Israeli Army
Syria ready to embrace the peace push
Pakistani missile test was "normal, routine" trial: FM
Pakistan Test Nuclear-Capable Missile
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court ponders medicinal pot
High Court Appears Hesitant to Endorse Medical Marijuana
Court to Hear Marijuana Case
Our vulnerable ports
Brazil Indians Grapple with White Man's Advance
Cuba frees political dissidents
The black hole of Guantanamo
POLITICS
Departing Ukrainian President Would Support New Election
Quietly released Pentagon report contains major criticisms
How To Take Back A Stolen Election
ENERGY
Ontario Fuel to Contain Five Percent Ethanol by 2007
Ojibwe Tribe, Utility Study Renewable Energy in Minnesota
Wind Industry Bids to Win Over Doubters
OTHER
Fine Particle Pollution is Cutting European Life Expectancy, Says U.N.
Delaware River Oil Spill Leaves Wildlife Imperiled
Dispute over Montana Riverbed Roiling along Northern Cheyenne Reservation
ACTIVISTS
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace [VOW]
Dalai Lama Arrives in Southern Russia
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Chernobyl children facing ban from 'harmful' Britain
By Stefanie Marsh
November 29, 2004
UK Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1380621,00.html
The children growing up in Belarus, who hope to visit Britain to recuperate from the effects of radiation, face disappointment. 'We seemed healthier by the time we left' MORE than 4,000 child victims of the Chernobyl disaster legacy are expected to be banned from visiting Britain in case they pick up what are considered to be dangerous Western ideas.
The children growing up in Belarus, who hope to visit Britain to recuperate from the effects of radiation, face disappointment after their President attacked the "consumerist" influences that he says are corrupting his country's youth.
Doctors from Britain and the former Soviet state say that even a few weeks' stay in this country can boost a sick child's immune system for up to two years. They said that cancelling such trips would be "astonishingly cruel".
Belarus, which shares its southern border with Ukraine, received 70 per cent of the contamination from the 1986 nuclear disaster, which was carried by northerly winds.
Belarus is still heavily contaminated and the charities Chernobyl Children's Lifeline and the Chernobyl Children's Project arrange around 4,500 recuperative holidays in Britain for its children every year.
But Aleksandr Lukashenko, President of Belarus and Europe's last dictator, said in a speech last week that countries such as Britain were corrupting the minds of Belarussian children. His rhetoric was reminiscent of Soviet-era isolationism.
"Only in extreme cases should we allow our children to leave the country," he said. "Don't you see the state in which children return from there? . .. Our children return from abroad completely different people."
A statement from the Belarussian Embassy denied that Christmas trips this year would be cancelled, but could confirm nothing more than that children would be entitled to travel abroad "for the time being".
It is thought likely that Mr Lukashenko will follow his comments with action. This month he halted foreign adoptions of Belarussian children.
Legislation introduced over the past year also makes it difficult for Western countries to donate second-hand medical equipment. Meanwhile, Belarussian children returning from abroad must pay up to 30 per cent tax on any money received as a gift.
Mr Lukashenko also accused foreign charities of underhand financial dealings. "(It) is the fact that money is extracted from parents for extra services and excursions," he said.
David Walker, co-founder of Chernobyl Children's Project, said of the President's speech: "It was completely out of the blue. We hope and pray that it's just posturing. The children are eating contaminated food, they are very impoverished and these holidays are very important for them physically and psychologically."
The only serious attempts to measure the effect of the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus resulted in the eight-year incarceration of one of the country's most respected scientists. Radiation experts around the world estimate that 80 per cent of Belarusian children are ill.
Crops in the south grow in contaminated soil and mutated genes caused by exposure to radiation can be passed from generation to generation. The high incidence of illnesses caused by radiation - thyroid cancer, deformity, leukaemia, heart defects, liver damage and sudden-death syndrome - is thought to be increasing.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials are frustrated by Mr Lukashenko's anti-Western attitudes. One unnamed source said that he feared that Mr Lukashenko intended to close the country's borders altogether. "These children are undernourished and badly in need of medical treatment and for them to go away is pretty essential," he said.
----
Dounreay, Scotland: Plutonium Worker Tests 'Show 4% Contamination'
29 Nov 2004
scotsman.com
By Joe Churcher
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3820887
Initial tests on workers suspected to have been contaminated with plutonium at a nuclear plant have found less than 4% of the annual limit, the Government said today.
The pulsed column laboratory at Dounreay in Scotland was being decommissioned when contamination was uncovered by routine "nose-blow" checks.
Trade Minister Mike O'Brien said the Department of Trade and Industry had been "informed of the potential intake of radioactive material".
"The regulators - Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Inspectorate - are aware and are monitoring the situation," he told LLew Smith (Lab Blaenau Gwent).
"Biological monitoring of 15 operators is currently being undertaken which will take a number of weeks to complete.
"The initial four results have shown doses of less than 4% of the annual limit for radiation workers."
He said the laboratory had been closed as a precaution while further investigations were carried out.
-------- australia
Uranium enters spotlight in Australia WMC battle
Nov 29, 2004
(Reuters)
By Wendy Pugh
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WMBMAZ0YTFLK2CRBAE0CFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6937724&pageNumber=1
MELBOURNE, Nov 29 - A strengthening uranium market has added a key element to the takeover battle for Australia's WMC Resources Ltd. (WMR.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) as it fights a A$7.4 billion ($5.8 billion) bid by Swiss-based Xstrata Plc., analysts said.
WMC earns most of its revenues from nickel and copper but its Olympic Dam project in South Australia is the world's largest known uranium deposit and the company is considering an expansion that it says could make it the world's biggest producer.
Aegis Equities Research resources analyst Chris Sabin said the uranium would appeal to potential rival bidder Rio Tinto Ltd./Plc. (RIO.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) (RIO.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , one of the world's top three producers of uranium but it was not clear if it would want to bid.
"The chance to pick up what is the largest known uranium resource in the world has obvious attractions," he said. "It is a question of can Rio convince themselves that the numbers will work."
A Rio Tinto spokesman declined to comment on a London Sunday Times report that the company was talking to its advisers about a bid to top the A$6.35 offer from Xstrata. WMC shares closed steady at A$7.26 on Monday.
WMC's uranium is seen as a byproduct of its copper mining but uranium spot prices have doubled in the past two years to more than $20 a pound driven by falling stockpiles and its role as greenhouse gas-free fuel, and WMC says they are going higher.
BOX SEAT
Opportunities for new Australian uranium mines are limited by opposition by two state governments, while aboriginal land owners have blocked development of the Northern Territory Jabiluka lease, held by Energy Resources of Australia Ltd., majority owned by Rio Tinto .
"It is difficult to see other uranium operations emerging here in Australia in the near future, so Western Mining (WMC) is certainly in the box seat," says Intersuisse analyst Gavin Wendt.
ERA's (ERA.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) , Ranger mine is due to end production around the end of the decade, while Namibia's Rossing Uranium, in which Rio Tinto has a 68.6 percent stake is yet to decide on plans to extend its mine life.
WMC's Olympic Dam copper and uranium division comprised 57 percent of the company's assets in 2003, but about 24 percent of revenues. The company does not break out uranium sales.
But WMC is playing the uranium card as a key part of its defence arguing that its huge resource has improved the economics of a potential A$4 billion Olympic Dam expansion and urging shareholders to wait and reap the rewards rather than sell.
The stronger uranium market has rallied ERA shares by 85 percent this year, while Canada's Cameco Corp. (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's largest uranium miner, is up around 56 percent.
WMC Resources Chief Executive Andrew Michelmore said world nuclear power demand was on the rise and growth areas would include China, South Korea, Japan and India.
"There is a huge number of (nuclear) power stations on the books to be built over the next 15 years, with the projected demand to rise from around 60,000 tonnes to around 80,000 to 90,000 tonnes by 2020," Michelmore told reporters while touring the Olympic dam facilities last week.
Doubters point out that Germany is phasing out nuclear energy and a number of European plants are due to be retired.
A larger Olympic Dam could triple WMC's uranium output to 15,000 tonnes while doubling copper output to 500,000 tonnes.
However expansion study results are not due until 2006, financial returns from the project are unclear and political and environmental issues remain potential uranium obstacles.
"There are a huge string of ifs and buts," Sabin said.
-------- europe
French atomic energy body wants to cut its stake in Areva: report
PARIS (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129115555.0tptltri.html
The French Atomic Energy Commission wants to reduce its stake in nuclear group Areva from 79 to 50.1 percent through a sale that could earn it up to three billion euros (3.97 billion dollars), commission head Alain Bugat said in an interview appearing here Monday.
He told the newspaper La Tribune that the commission would sell "a minimum" of 15 percent of its shares in Areva.
But he added that he ultimately wanted to "go beyond that" to shed a total of 28.9, thereby scaling back its interest in Areva to 50.1 percent.
The French government announced plans November 10 to sell shares in Areva in the first half of 2005, with 35-40 percent of the group to be listed on the stock exchange.
At present only four percent of the shares are listed.
Bugat told the paper that proceeds from the sale would be used by the commission to help finance the dismantling of nuclear installations.
The commission wants to concentrate on its research activities, notably with an investment of up to 180 million euros a year in 2006 in such operations as the treatment and storage of nuclear waste.
-------- india / pakistan
India to upgrade nuclear deterrence, special forces
(AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041129/wl_sthasia_afp/india_military_041129143037
NEW DELHI - India will continually upgrade its nuclear weapons capability despite a no first-use policy and expand special forces to wage high-tech war, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said.
"Although India is committed to a no-first-use of nuclear weapons, we are also clear that conventional deterrence must continue to be backed by a potent minimum nuclear deterrence capability," Mukherjee said on Monday.
India carried out a string of nuclear tests in May 1998 and then imposed a unilateral moratorium on further tests.
"India proposes to have a potent minimum nuclear deterrence to back its conventional deterrence," Mukherjee told a military seminar in New Delhi.
The defence minister also said his government has already given the go-ahead to raise more units of special forces with skills to counter proliferation of sensitive nuclear weapons material from India.
"And the plans entail totally reorganising them for a mandate vis-a-vis unconventional warfare, counter-proliferation, special reconnaissance, psychological operations and other specialised tasks," Mukherjee said.
"The reorientation has to be undertaken as emerging international threats point towards possibilities of nuclear and biological weapons falling into terrorist hands," he said.
Mukherjee didn't give details but commanders said New Delhi plans to raise the strength of the military's existing special forces by up to 15,000.
The government last year allocated 50 billion rupees (1.08 billion dollars) to bring special combat units called "Lethal Platoons" to act as a rapid reaction force during war.
"Special forces are force multipliers. They can enhance the nation's ability to fight a limited war. They are also ideal for combatting terrorists and insurgents," Mukherjee said.
"The nation needs them not merely to make better infantry, naval or air units, but as a comprehensively-structured unit for a full spectrum capability -- a total force of quality officers and soliders trained and ready for war," he said.
They would be equipped with latest military equipment, he said, adding that funds would not be a constraint.
India's annual military budget is around 14 billion dollars, or nearly three percent of its gross domestic product.
-------- iran
Iran Backs Away From a Demand on A-Bomb Fuel
nytimes
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
November 29, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/international/middleeast/29iran.html?oref=login
PARIS, Nov. 28 - Iran on Sunday backed off a demand to operate uranium enrichment equipment that could be used either for energy purposes or in a nuclear bomb-making project, European and Iranian officials said.
The Iranian retreat appeared to salvage a nuclear agreement reached Nov. 15 between Iran and France, Britain and Germany to freeze all of Iran's uranium enrichment, conversion and reprocessing activities.
It also paves the way for the 35 countries that make up the ruling board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based United Nations nuclear monitoring body, to pass a resolution that will be only mildly critical of Iran's nuclear program.
Such a resolution, expected to be passed Monday, is certain to disappoint the Bush administration, which is convinced that despite Iran's denials, it has a covert program to build nuclear bombs, not simply to produce energy. The administration had wanted much tougher language in the resolution.
Iran's suspected nuclear ambition has become a leading source of worry in the Bush administration, which has said it will not allow Iran's Islamic republic, with its avowed hostility to the United States, to attain nuclear weapons or even develop a comprehensive peaceful nuclear energy program. In Washington, reports of a new accord with Iran brought expressions of caution from the Bush administration, which has been skeptical about the European efforts to negotiate with Iran.
"We've seen this kind of commitment from Iran before," a State Department official said. "We'll be looking to see whether they stick with what they agree to do. In the past they haven't, so follow-up is very important."
The retreat came in the form of a letter from Iran on Sunday to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the letter, Iran withdrew its demand to operate 20 centrifuges - uranium enrichment machines - for research and development purposes.
"Iran will permit the I.A.E.A. to place these centrifuges under agency surveillance," said Hossein Mousavian, the chief Iranian negotiator, in a telephone interview from Vienna. "Iran will not conduct any testing."
Asked specifically whether the machines would be turned off, as the Europeans have demanded, Mr. Mousavian said, "We say Iran will not conduct any testing," adding that the matter of Iran's desire to continue research will be discussed when Iran and the European countries begin talks in the coming weeks on possible economic, technological and political incentives for Iran under the European agreement.
After the letter was received, the three European countries formally submitted a draft resolution on Iran to the United Nations agency, said Mark Gwozdecky, the agency's spokesman.
The I.A.E.A. is expected to certify Monday that Iran has frozen its entire program as defined by the agreement with the Europeans.
That will allow the agency's board to pass the resolution on Iran on Monday as well. Unlike the United Nations Security Council, where 5 of the 15 member countries have veto power, the I.A.E.A.'s board generally operates by consensus.
The Bush administration has been continually frustrated in its efforts to persuade the atomic energy agency to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. The three European countries have rejected a flurry of American proposals for a harshly worded resolution against Iran.
The breakthrough between the Europeans and Iran came after Iran suggested a change in the resolution that would more specifically reflect the positive step Iran was taking in suspending its enrichment program, both Mr. Mousavian and a senior European official said. In exchange, Iran abandoned its demand to operate the centrifuges for research.
Mr. Mousavian said the 20 centrifuge machines would not be sealed but placed under camera surveillance, a face-saving move that the I.A.E.A. said would be acceptable in terms of its monitoring capacity.
In another face-saving gesture, the Iranians said in their letter to the agency on Sunday that there would be no "testing," rather than no "research and development."
But a senior European official involved in the negotiations said that under the new arrangement, "The machines will not rotate an inch."
Despite its softer language, the resolution to be adopted Monday calls for continuing investigations into sensitive aspects of Iran's nuclear program.
The resolution also mentions "many breaches of Iran's obligations to comply" with international nuclear safeguards but notes Iran has taken "corrective measures" since beginning to disclose parts of its atomic program in October 2003.
Mr. Mousavian said Iran won a crucial change to reflect the fact that the freeze of its enrichment program was "not legally binding."
As a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran has the legal right to enrich uranium, and the Iranian delegation made the point repeatedly during the negotiations that its country's suspension of its uranium enrichment program was voluntary.
In Tehran on Sunday, Hamid Reza Assefi, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Iran hoped the issue would be resolved at the atomic energy agency. Nonetheless, he struck a defiant tone.
"We are not worried about going to the Security Council," he said. "It is not the end of the world. But we would prefer it be sorted out in the framework of the agency."
There is no national security debate inside Iran that is more intense than over the country's nuclear program, from the highest levels of government to Parliament and the street.
Iranians of all political stripes hold fast to the principle of Iran's sovereign right to conduct whatever activities it deems necessary to develop a peaceful program to produce energy, and the agreement with the Europeans has been wildly unpopular inside Iran.
Iran had agreed in negotiations with the Europeans two weeks ago to suspend all uranium enrichment activities. But that agreement was put in jeopardy last week when Iran demanded that it be allowed to operate centrifuges for research purposes. That demand came in two letters to the International Atomic Energy Agency from Iran's atomic energy agency, whose hard-liners oppose any concessions to outsiders.
But Iran misread the Europeans. At first, the Iranian delegation tried to argue that the centrifuge issue was only a technical matter. Iranian negotiators pointed out that after Iran had reached its first nuclear deal with the Europeans in October 2003, it continued to operate 10 centrifuges for research purposes and both the Europeans and the agency went along.
"With that history and everyone's agreement, we couldn't imagine that a few centrifuges would become a worldwide issue this time," Mr. Mousavian said.
But that first deal with the Europeans fell apart. Iran decided that the Europeans were stalling on delivering promised incentives and interpreted the agreement broadly to continue some uranium enrichment-related activities.
The Europeans were accused of naïveté by some hawks in the Bush administration, and have become less trusting of Iran. This time around, the Europeans negotiated a more precise deal and took an uncompromising no-exceptions line when the centrifuge issue was raised.
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.
------
U.N. Agency Welcomes Iran's Nuclear Halt
nytimes
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
November 29, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/international/middleeast/29cnd-iran.html?hp&ex=1101790800&en=b7823dc891cdfc26&ei=5094&partner=homepage
VIENNA, Nov. 29 - The 35 countries of the United Nations nuclear agency board, including the United States, passed a long-awaited resolution today welcoming Iran's total freeze of a sensitive part of its nuclear program.
The resolution, passed by consensus without a vote, means that Iran once again has thwarted the Bush administration's goal of bringing it before the Security Council in New York for possible censure or even sanctions.
It is the sixth, and the softest, resolution dealing with Iran's nuclear program passed by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency here.
The agency board "welcomes the fact that Iran has decided to continue and extend its suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities," the resolution states, adding that Iran's implementation of it is "a voluntary, non-legally-binding confidence-building measure."
The United States, which allowed the resolution to be passed, made no effort to hide its disappointment and anger. In a nine-page statement read after the resolution passed, Jackie Wolcott Sanders, the head of the American delegation, accused Iran of deceit and the agency board of irresponsibility.
She asserted that Iran's claim it only wanted to produce nuclear energy, not bombs, was untrue and that Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons program that "poses a growing threat to international peace and security."
She also argued more than once that the board had a "statutory obligation" to recommend consequences for Iran in the Security Council, adding that the United States reserved the right to unilaterally bring Tehran before the council.
"The United States reserves all its options with respect to Security Council consideration of the Iranian nuclear weapons program," Ms. Sanders said.
But throughout the complicated and confusing negotiations of the last week, the Bush administration found itself isolated, even from some of its closest European allies.
Britain, France and Germany were eager to salvage a hard-fought agreement with Iran earlier this month that requires Tehran to suspend all uranium enrichment activities in exchange for possible rewards.
The European trio negotiated hard with the Iranians over the past week and finally persuaded them on Sunday evening to back off a demand to operate 20 sophisticated centrifuge machines for research purposes.
In exchange, the Europeans, who led the negotiations on the resolution, succumbed to Iranian demands that it be substantially watered down to reflect Iran's insistence that it was freezing its programs as a voluntary, confidence-building measure and not because of outside pressure or coercion.
The face-saving solution for both sides was celebrated with Champagne Sunday night at the residence of French ambassador to the agency, one participant said. The Iranians drank water.
There was nothing to stop the United States, or any other agency board member, from voting against, abstaining or adding an opposing footnote to today's resolution.
But under the tradition of the I.A.E.A., resolutions are passed by consensus, which means that all 35 countries on the board agree to the language in advance and approve it by consensus in closed session.
So the United States decided to go along with the mildly worded resolution, as it has done in the past, and complain about it afterwards.
Even today, Hossein Mousavian, the head of the Iranians delegation, refused to state categorically that Iran had agreed to completely shut off the 20 machines, saying his country agreed in a letter to stop all "testing."
But Iran's retreat was sufficient to allow the I.A.E.A. to verify today that it had frozen all of its uranium enrichment, reprocessing and conversion activities, processes that are crucial both for producing nuclear energy and for making bombs.
"This is clearly a first step in the right direction," said Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the Vienna-based agency. "It will help mitigate international concern about the nature of Iran's program and over time should help to build confidence with regard to Iran's nuclear program."
He added that the machines had stopped functioning and had been put under camera surveillance.
-----
IAEA Agrees on Plan to Police Iran Nukes
Associated Press Writer
By GEORGE JAHN
November 29, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The U.N. nuclear agency agreed Monday on a plan for policing Iran's nuclear programs designed to avoid a showdown at the United Nations. But Iran's representative immediately raised questions about the wording of the pact, and the United States said it retained the right to take the case to the U.N. Security Council on its own.
U.S. chief delegate Jackie Sanders listed more than a dozen open questions about Iran's past nuclear activities still before the International Atomic Energy Agency, despite a nearly two-year investigation.
"This makes it clear that the IAEA cannot ... offer the necessary assurances that Iran is not attempting to produce nuclear material for weapons," she told the agency's board of directors.
Sanders spoke shortly after the board passed a toned-down resolution authorizing IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei to monitor Iran's commitment to freeze uranium enrichment activities that can produce either low grade nuclear fuel or the raw material for atomic weapons.
The issue of what's included in the suspension of activities had dominated the meeting since it opened Thursday, with the Iranian insistence on exempting some equipment forcing the meeting to continue Monday, after a weekend adjournment.
The United States - which has labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and prewar Iraq - wants the Islamic Republic referred to the Security Council, where it could face sanctions for allegedly violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
"We believe Iran's nuclear weapons program poses a growing threat to international peace and security," Sanders said, alluding to the possibility of a unilateral U.S. push. "Any member of the United Nations may bring to the attention of the Security Council any situation that might endanger the maintenance of international peace and security."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan urged vigilance, telling reporters in Washington "the implementation and verification of the agreement is critical."
Jahn reports the Iranian development comes just before a meeting of the U-N nuclear watchdog agency and is significant.
"We will see, as time goes by, if they are now finally going to comply in full," McClellan said.
France, Germany and Britain, who negotiated a Nov. 7 agreement with Iran on the suspension, came to the meeting saying the deal meant that all equipment used for enrichment must be at a standstill. Iran, which insists its nuclear program is peaceful, had demanded it be allowed to run 20 centrifuges for research.
Seeking to avoid tough measures by the board that could have led to referral to the Security Council, Iran delivered a letter to the agency Sunday pledging "not to conduct any testing with these sets of components."
Hossein Mousavian, the chief Iranian delegate to the meeting said the commitment meant "we are not going to introduce material or any gas" into the centrifuges - a pledge that seemed to fall short of the European demands.
Later, Iranian delegate Cyrus Nasseri appeared to move closer to the European interpretation, telling reporters Iran "will not" run even empty centrifuges.
The enrichment process involves introducing uranium hexafluoride gas into centrifuges that then spin them to low-level nuclear fuel or highly enriched uranium used in the core of nuclear warheads.
Delegates to the meeting - including senior diplomats with nuclear expertise - suggested the contradictory language was meant to ease fears among Iranian hard-liners that Tehran gave up too much in exchange for a resolution that didn't even include an indirect mention of possible Security Council referral.
That lack of a "trigger mechanism" beginning the referral process in case of violations disappointed the United States - which insists Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons.
The deal with the Europeans commits the Iranians to the freeze only during negotiations with France, Germany and Britain on economic, political and technological aid from the 25-nation European Union. Those talks are set to start in mid-December.
But ElBaradei urged Iran to keep suspension in place as long as possible. That, he said, was needed "to mitigate the confidence deficit" in Iran, its record of past clandestine activities and continued reluctance to fully cooperate with an agency probe of its nuclear agenda.
The proposed deal also commits Iran to a pledge not to reprocess plutonium - which it would be able to do in several years' time, once it completes work on a heavy water reactor in the city of Arak.
With the EU deal envisaging a light-water reactor for Iran - from which extraction of weapons-grade nuclear material is difficult - diplomats said the Europeans hoped Iran would not complete its heavy-water facility.
--------
Iran says draft IAEA resolution 'positive'
TEHRAN (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129111551.jcv1unpp.html
A top Iranian nuclear negotiator welcomed a draft European resolution due to be submitted to the UN's nuclear watchdog Monday as "the most positive" text on the issue since the crisis began in early 2003.
"The draft resolution that we agreed upon last night after seven rounds of negotiations is without doubt the most positive one to be presented to the board of governors (of the International Atomic Energy Agency) since the beginning of the Iranian nuclear crisis," Hossein Moussavian told state television front of the IAEA's headquarters in Vienna.
Britain, France and Germany submitted Sunday a relatively soft draft resolution on Iran's nuclear program, diplomats said, after the Islamic republic agreed to a full freeze of its nuclear enrichment activities that could make uranium for atomic weapons.
"The main difference between this (draft) resolution and the previous ones is that the Iranian case will disappear from the top of the agenda of the IAEA board, and that it is up to the director general of the IAEA (Mohamed ElBaradei) to seize the board if necessary," Moussavian said.
"Compared to the other resolutions, the Iranian point of view has been taken into account," the diplomat said, asserting that a "trigger mechanism" that would send the matter to the UN Security Council in case of a problem was also absent from the draft.
Speaking to reporters, government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh also said the draft was "acceptable, but it does not meet all our goals." "We don't feel the Europeans have deceived us. There are still misconceptions on both sides and we need to correct them," he said.
-------- japan
Report: Japan ranks nuclear, oil, water plants, government offices as top defense priority in terror strike
The Associated Press
November 29, 2004
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041129/ap/d86l85lo2.html
Japan's Defense Agency would react to a terror attack by mobilizing troops to protect nuclear, oil and water facilities and government offices before securing public broadcasting studios and U.S. military bases, a newspaper reported Monday.
Tokyo recently had developed evacuation and other emergency plans should terrorists strike on Japanese soil, following the September 2001 attacks in the United States. Previously, it was unclear what facilities Japan's military would guard in the immediate aftermath of such an attack.
The national Yomiuri newspaper said new Defense Agency measures call for forces to fan out to the prime minister's residence, top government ministries and the imperial palace in Tokyo, as well as dozens of nuclear power plants and water purifying and emergency oil reserves facilities nationwide.
Natural gas plants, oil refineries, broadcasting studios and antenna towers and U.S. bases in Japan under a mutual security pact would come next, followed by airports, shipping ports and regional government offices, if needed, the daily said.
Japanese ground troops would be dispatched to protect more than 130 facilities nationwide, it reported.
A Defense Agency spokesman declined to comment.
News of the guidelines come months after authorities discovered that a French citizen suspected in Europe of links to Islamic extremists and al-Qaida had lived undisturbed in Japan and traveled using a fake passport in Asia in 2002 to 2003.
The man, Lionel Dumont, was later arrested in Germany and extradited to France. Japanese police were investigating suspicions he was trying to set up a terrorist network in Japan.
--------
Nuclear Project Sparks Stand Off Between EU, Japan
by Lisa Jucca
REUTERS BELGIUM:
November 29, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/28321/story.htm
BRUSSELS - The EU said on Friday it would do its utmost to include Japan in a project to build a nuclear fusion reactor in France, but suggestions the EU may eventually leave Tokyo out drew angry reactions from Japan.
The plan to build the world's first thermonuclear reactor is sponsored by six partners -- the European Union, Japan, China, the United States, Russia and South Korea, but the EU and Japan are competing against each other to host the reactor.
EU ministers meeting on Friday agreed to continue seeking Japan's backing to build the reactor in France and said they would strive to get the support of all partners in the project.
EU officials said the EU was hoping to clinch a deal by year end and may consider going ahead without Tokyo if talks failed.
"This is not an ultimatum, but we wish to reach a political agreement before the end of the year," French Research Minister Francois D'Aubert told a news briefing.
"If the negotiations do not come to a rapid conclusion, the Commission has the possibility to choose a different path."
Japan said it would pursue its bid to host the project and warned the EU against a unilateral move to go ahead without it.
"It is regrettable that they are talking about taking unilateral action," Satoru Ohtake, director for fusion energy at the Science and Technology Ministry, told Reuters. "There is no change in Japan's policy to seek to host the project."
NO UNILATERAL ACTION
EU officials said there was no talk of unilateral action, stressing the EU wanted support for the 10 billion euro ($13 billion) project from all partners, including Japan.
"Given the global importance of fusion research, the project should involve the broadest possible number of partners," Dutch Research Minister Maria van der Hoeve, who chaired EU research talks in Brussels, told a news conference.
The EU ministers set no official deadline for the talks, to be handled by the EU's executive Commission, although the Dutch Presidency wants a solution by the end of December.
If no deal was reached, the EU would consider pressing ahead to build the reactor in Cadarache, France, with as many partners as possible, EU officials said.
"This is a solution of last resort," said one.
The European Union wants to offer Tokyo a privileged partner role in the mammoth nuclear fusion research plan to compensate for not building it in Japan, officials said.
Energy by nuclear fusion would be low on pollution, using sea water as fuel. But 50 years of research have so far failed to produce a commercially viable fusion reactor.
Last week, the Commission suggested offering Japan a package of incentives so Tokyo would drop its bid to host the reactor.
But Japan reacted angrily to this, accusing the EU of being high-handed in the negotiations. EU officials said the United States had also expressed concern at the EU's approach.
Diplomats say the EU offer might include creating a fusion institute in Japan worth one billion euros for pre-research activity, on the condition Japan raised its financial contribution to the reactor.
Construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is forecast to cost some 4.6 billion euros over a 10-year period. The EU intends to cover 40 percent of that while France has proposed doubling its contribution to 20 percent.
Including a development phase, the ITER project is forecast to last 30 years at an overall cost of 10 billion euros.
The United States and South Korea have previously supported the site at Rokkasho, a Japanese fishing village, but EU sources believe they would back Cadarache if Tokyo stepped aside.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil Govt May Decide Upon $1.7B Nuclear Plant in Dec
Dow Jones Newswires
November 29, 2004
http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji§ion=news&news_id=dji-00056820041129&date=20041129&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw
RIO DE JANEIRO (Dow Jones)--Brazil's government will likely decide soon on the construction of a new 1,350-megawatt nuclear power plant near Rio de Janeiro, Mines and Energy Minister Dilma Rousseff said Monday.
Brazil's National Energy Council, the body that has to decide on the $1.7 billion Angra III reactor, will examine the issue at a meeting in December, Rousseff was quoted as saying on the local Agencia Estado newswire.
Framatome ANP, a unit of the French state-run nuclear-engineering company Areva SA (4524.FR), is likely to complete the construction of Angra III, the energy secretary of Rio de Janeiro state, Wagner Victer, told Dow Jones on Nov. 23.
The energy council for years had delayed the decision on whether or not to build the nuclear plant because of financial snags. Brazil years ago had already bought material worth $750 million in equipment for the Angra III reactor but lacked the money to go ahead and build the reactor. Storing the material currently costs Brazil $20 million a year.
Rousseff didn't say who could finance the expensive reactor now. Rio state's Victer last week said financing could come in part from the Brazilian National Development Bank, or BNDES.
Areva SA is the product of a three-way merger of Framatome with Cogema and CEA-Industrie three years ago. Shortly before that, Germany's Siemens AG (SI) had merged its nuclear power generation division KWU N with Framatome, but kept only a 34% stake in the new company that then became Framatome ANP.
KWU N had built Brazil's second nuclear plant, Angra II, that went online in 2000.
Brazil generates most of its energy with hydroelectric power plants that produce cheaper electricity than the country's existing two nuclear plants.
Rousseff Monday added the electricity generated by nuclear power is likely to become even more expensive, rising soon to about 91 reals ($1=BRL2.748) per MW/h from currently BRL76 per MW/h. If Angra III were to go online, the rate "will probably be higher (again)" to pay for the expensive project, Rousseff said.
-By Bernd Radowitz, Dow Jones Newswires; 5521 3288 5004; bernd.radowitzdowjones.com
-------- missile defense
The Nuclear Arms Race escalates, as does the arms race in space.
Russia Successfully Tests Anti-Missile Defense - Minister
November 29, 2004
Moscow News
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/11/29/antimissile.shtml
Russia has conducted a successful test of an anti-missile missile, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Russian Cabinet on Monday, the RIA-Novosti news agency reports.
"At 11-00 Moscow time on Monday we conducted a successful test of an anti-missile missile at the Sary-Shagaz testing grounds in Kazakhstan," the agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
Russian strategic potential has been seriously decreased since the times of the Cold War, but President Putin pledges to bring back the country's might.
In mid-November Putin said that Russia was working on new, unique, nuclear missile systems. Various experts interpreted the Russian president's words as an announcement that Russia may soon have weapons to counter the U.S. anti-missile defense system.
"We know that we have only to weaken our attention to such components of our defenses as the nuclear-missile shield, and new threats to us could appear," the Russian leader said at a meeting with the heads of the military forces.
"I am sure that in the near future weapons will appear... which other nuclear powers do not and will not possess," he said.
Putin gave no further detail about what type of weapons he was referring to or what shape these new security threats could take. "We will continue to consistently and successively build up the armed forces in general and its nuclear component," he said.
-------- russia
Russia tests modernized missile defense system
KIEV (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129121453.irjwmlaz.html
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday that the military had successfully tested a modernized missile defense system, but he gave no details of the missile involved.
News reports quoted Ivanov as telling President Vladimir Putin the test was completed at the Sary-Shagaz testing range in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.
"We intend to continue perfecting and modernizing our missile defense system," Ivanov was quoted as telling by Russian news agencies.
Putin replied: "Good. Congratulations!"
The brief exchange came less than two weeks after Putin startled the world by announcing that Russia was carrying out tests on "the latest nuclear rocket systems."
Russia has been cryptic about missile defense or other system it is working on, amid efforts to counter the proposed US missile defense shield.
-------- us nuc waste
West wary of nuclear waste route
A proposal to ship material across Colorado and other states has governors wanting to make their voices heard on a uranium-enrichment plant.
Denver Post
By Kim McGuire
November 29, 2004
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2563226,00.html
A proposed uranium-enrichment plant in southeastern New Mexico has stoked concerns about tons of radioactive material being shipped by 2008 on rail lines through some of Colorado's most mountainous terraincq.
After a recent environmental impact study showing proposed transportation routes slicing through Colorado, the Western Governors Association this month petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow the group to weigh in on the plan to build a $1.2 billion enrichment facility.
If built, the plant would provide "low enriched" uranium to help power nuclear reactors generating electricity.
Company officials say the plant would provide a much-needed domestic source of fuel for the nation's 104 licensed nuclear power reactors, which provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.
While many uncertainties shroud the proposal, which comes from a consortium of U.S and European energy companies, the governors' group contends that a Union Pacific rail line - running parallel to Interstate 70 - would not be the best route to ship depleted uranium waste generated from the proposed facility.
"One characteristic of depleted uranium hexafluoride is when it gets in contact with moisture, it turns into an acid," said Bill Mackie, the association's program manager for nuclear waste transportation. "If either a truck or train caught fire, emergency responders need to know that if they hit it with water there's going to be a serious problem."
If depleted uranium hexafluoride reacts with water, toxic hydrofluoric acid forms. The acid is extremely corrosive and, if inhaled in high concentrations, can damage the lungs or cause death, scientists say.
Under the plan before federal regulators, the consortium, led by Louisiana Energy Services, proposes to build the nation's first commercial gas centrifuge enrichment plant in Eunice, N.M., just south of Hobbs, N.M.
As part of the licensing process, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September issued a preliminary environmental impact study showing depleted uranium waste from the plant - "deconverted" at a proposed plant in Ohio - being transported on rail lines that run parallel to Interstates 70 and 80 through Colorado and Wyoming.
Ultimately, the tracks lead to radioactive waste dumps in Washington, Nevada and Utah.
Trucks could also be used to transport enriched uranium up Interstate 25 through Colorado to a fuel manufacturing plant in Richland, Wash., the study shows. Using truck - not rail - is actually the company's preferred transportation method.
"I think in any case it will come through Colorado," Mackie said.
That's not necessarily true, said April Wade, a Louisiana Energy Services spokeswoman.
She said the proposed transportation routes and disposal options mentioned in the preliminary study could change by the time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission finishes processing the company's application, tentatively set for 2006.
Nonetheless, the study raises lots of questions- such as the feasibility of shipping radioactive waste on rail lines with a history of derailments, Mackie said.
"If memory serves correct, there have been three coal-train accidents on that stretch, and each sent diesel fuel and coal into the river," Mackie said.
A Union Pacific spokesman acknowledged two derailments last year on that particular track but said that is not an unusually large number.
Rod Krich, Louisiana Energy Services' vice president for licensing, safety and nuclear engineering, said that before the depleted uranium waste is transported to Utah or anywhere else for disposal, it would first be "deconverted" to a form that's chemically similar to the mined ore and wouldn't produce a dangerous acid.
"The point ... is we're not adding any type of material that's not already coming across your highways," Krich said.
The big hitch to Louisiana Energy Services' plan: There currently is no facility in the nation that could process its depleted uranium for disposal, company officials acknowledge.
"New Mexico has a long history with nuclear waste, and our concern is that they can't tell us how they plan to get rid of it," said Amy Williams, a spokeswoman for Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety in Santa Fe. "We're scared that it could sit in Lea County forever.With a half life of 24,000 years - that's a long time."
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com .
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Arms dealer faces investigation over his sales to Sudan
Scotsman.com
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN
29 Nov 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1369832004
THE government has ordered an investigation into the activities of an arms dealer exposed by The Scotsman last week for attempting to sell aircraft and weapons to the Sudanese government.
The British businessman, John Knight, admitted that he tried to broker a deal to supply Antonov planes - of a type used by the Khartoum regime to bomb its own people in Darfur - and large numbers of other weapons at a time when the ethnic cleansing in Darfur was at its height. Now an investigation has been ordered into whether he should face criminal prosecution.
The government whip, Baroness Crawley, in a written answer to a question tabled in the House of Lords by Lord Alton of Liverpool last week, said: "Since the report concerning the alleged activities of a British businessman with regard to the sale of arms to Sudan came to light, inquiries have been under way to see if there is sufficient information for UK authorities to commence a criminal investigation.
"For legal reasons, I am unable to comment further on the nature and extent of these inquiries."
Baroness Crawley said that the UK enforced rigorously the EU arms embargo against Sudan by the "scrupulous consideration" of export licence applications, the investigation of alleged breaches and through dialogue with other states. She also pointed out that the new restrictions on trade to embargoed destinations came into force in March.
"These controls have full extraterritorial reach. Seeking to trade in controlled goods to Sudan without a licence would constitute an offence and the broker would be liable to prosecution," she said.
Mr Knight has denied breaking any laws, but admits to negotiating on behalf of the Sudanese government despite an EU embargo on arms deals with Khartoum.
The issue was raised in the Lords by Lord Alton, an independent crossbench peer, in response to The Scotsman's report on Mr Knight's activities.
He asked the government what information it had concerning the recently reported sale of arms by a British businessman to Sudan.
In a speech in the Lords last week, he again referred to The Scotsman article.
"In Africa, weapons of mass destruction are often small arms or munitions shamelessly sold by Western business interests," he said.
"In an interview with The Scotsman on 18 November, the arms dealer said that as weapons had been supplied to Hitler he saw no issue in selling arms to Khartoum. He had been asked to supply 130mm field guns, T72 main battle tanks, multiple rocket launchers and semi-automatic pistols, and although these weapons were ultimately caught by the Export Control Act, he did supply Antonov AN26 transport planes. He said that he believed they would be used to drop aid. "These planes, of course, can be fitted with bomb racks."
Britain has spoken out against the human-rights abuses in Darfur, but has stopped short of endorsing the US description of Khartoum's acts as genocide.
-------- business
Changes at Rheinmetall could ring in shake-up of German defence industry
FRANKFURT (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129125300.7o0i1hhp.html
The decision by the German Roechling family to sell its majority stake in Rheinmetall, maker of Puma and Leopard II tanks, could herald a wider shake-up in the German defence industry as a whole, analysts here said on Monday.
The Roechling family, Rheinmetall's major shareholder since 1954, said in a statement it had sold its entire 42.1-percent stake in the defence technology group to "more than 75 institutional investors" via a private placement.
Financial details were not disclosed, but a source close to the matter put the price at 37 euros per share and the total transaction at some 560 million euros (745 million dollars).
Merck Finck analyst Robert Heberger said the deal "could trigger a consolidation in the German defence sector in the medium term".
Until now, the presence of the Roechling family in Rheinmetall -- they held a 73.7-percent stake in the voting capital and a 10.48-percent stake of the preference shares -- has effectively prevented the company from taking part in the consolidation process.
"Obviously it's a very key step given that Rheinmetall has been in private hands so far, preventing it from taking part in the consolidation," said tbe assistant director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Alexander Nicoll.
Rheinmetall itself also appears to believe that the departure of the Roechling family could open up new doors of opportunity.
"We're not going to close ourselves to a consolidation in arms technology," Rheinmetall chairman Klaus Eberhardt said in a weekend newspaper interview.
On the contrary, "we can only be armed for Europe if we have a strong national position," he said, with an eye on two other German tank makers Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Diehl.
Heberger at Merck Finck said the change in Rheinmetall's shareholder structure could re-ignite speculation of a merger with Krauss-Maffei.
"Until now, negotiations have failed as a result of the rivalry between the Roechlings and the Bode family (which hold 51 percent of Krauss-Maffei Wegmann). That will no longer be the case," Heberger said.
The tie-up scenario appears all the more convincing given that the two companies alreay cooperate in the Puma tank and Krauss-Maffei's other shareholder, electronics giant Siemens, has similarly indicated that it wants to sell its 49-percent stake in the longer term.
Rheinmetall chief Eberhardt believes the imminent shake-up of the German defence industry was a necessary step in a Europe-wide process of consolidation.
"First of all, we have to see consolidation in Germany. Only then can we take responsibility for a wider European circle," Eberhardt said, estimating that the timeframe for such a process would be "more than 10 years".
"One thing is clear -- from its pole position in Europe, Rheinmetall will play a leading role," he said.
Wider changes certainly seem to be afoot.
Speculation has intensified in recent weeks of a tie-up between French defence electronics company Thales and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS).
And in the naval sector, the merger of ThyssenKrupp's shipbuilding activities with submarine maker HDW is also seen as a step towards the creation of a European naval equivalent to EADS.
-------- chemical weapons
Chemical weapons-free world still a long way off: watchdog
THE HAGUE (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129144243.hnnvcuyo.html
The destruction of chemical weapons is making progress, but much more needs to be done to wipe out this arsenal as less than 14.3 percent of known stocks have been eliminated, a watchdog said Monday.
Six countries -- Albania, India, Libya, Russia, South Korea and the United States -- have admitted they have chemical weapons and committed themselves to destroying them under a convention that came into effect in 1997.
The weapons are to be totally eliminated by 2007, exceptionally as late as
"We come to this session with a real sense of satisfaction but we must recognize that much more needs to be done," Rogelio Pfirter, director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told a conference here.
If Libya's pledge earlier this year to get rid of its chemical weapons program is good news, this cannot be enough, Pfirter told the opening of the Ninth Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the OPCW.
"I believe that Libya joining the convention had a tremendous impact," he added.
Russia which has 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons, the world's biggest such arsenal, has only destroyed about two percent so far, according to the
"I remain confident in the political will of the Russian governement" to wipe out this type of weapon, Pfirter said, but added: "The international community needs to continue to actively support the destruction program of the Russian governement."
So far only one plant making chemical weapons safe is in operation, but Moscow has plans for six others by 2009 and has asked for more help to finance proper investments of some three billion dollars.
Paul Walker of the non-governmental organization Global Green meanwhile warned that total elimination of chemical weapons may not happen for many years.
"If we are realistic, we are looking at 2020," he told the meeting.
While the United States has destroyed about 30 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal, Walker told AFP that "it seems very unlikely that we will meet the 2012 deadline" for the elimination of all 30,000 tonnes.
"India is the only one that is ahead of schedule," said Pfirter.
As for Libya, the OPCW's 167 member states were set to give the green light at the meeting to converting a chemical weapons production site into a pharmaceutical plant.
The chemical plant at Rabta, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Tripoli, which produced around 100 tonnes of sulphur mustard gas and other neurotoxic agents in the 1980s, should now produce low-priced vaccines and medicines to treat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis for Africa and developing countries.
Rabta was closed in 1990 under pressure from the United States and other countries.
Libya decided in January to adhere to the Chemical Weapons Convention after announcing the previous month that it was renouncing its unconventional weapons programs.
Pfirter said that the Middle East and the Korean peninsula were "still flashing red on our map" because of their potential for chemical warfare and called on countries in the two regions to sign on to the convention.
The OPCW will continue to help countries ward off any chemical weapons attacks, he said, adding: "An organization like ours can contribute to the global fight against terrorism."
The organization this year inspected 1,892 chemical facilities and hopes to keep up the same pace next year.
According to Pfirter 64 production units have been destroyed so far and 13 are to be converted.
The OPCW is an independent international organization which works with the United Nations to monitor the 1997 convention banning the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, and to lobby countries that have not yet joined the treaty to do so.
--------
U.S. Accused of Using Poison Gases in Fallujah
democracynow.org
November 29th, 2004
http://www./article.pl?sid=04/11/29/1448226
Survivors of the week-long attack on Fallujah have reported the U.S. military used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in the assault. We go to Baghdad to speak with independent reporter Dahr Jamail who broke the story. [Includes rush transcript] Widespread violence continued throughout Iraq over the weekend. At least 12 people died earlier today when a car bomb exploded outside a police station in Ramadi. Most of the dead were Iraqi police officers. In Mosul, US forces found the bodies of 17 Iraqis on Saturday. Over the past 10 days, nearly 60 bodies have been recovered in the northern city. At least 20 of the executed men have been identified as members of the Iraqi National Guard. The U.S. military in Mosul believe many of the Iraqi resistance fighters who fled Fallujah landed in Mosul.
Independent reporter Dahr Jamail writes that survivors of the week-long attack on Fallujah have reported the US military used poison gas and other non-conventional weapons against civilians in the assault.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Electoral Commission is insisting the Jan. 30 elections will proceed as scheduled even though 17 Sunni and Kurdish political parties have called for the elections to be postponed six months. Among those calling for a delay is former governing council member Adnan Pachachi, a former presidential candidate who has been allied closely with Washington.
Documentary film review:
About Baghdad gives voice to Iraqis not represented
Maureen Clare Murphy,
Electronic Iraq,
29 November 2004
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1735.shtml
"We'll give [the Americans] a chance. If there's no freedom ... they know that the Iraqi people are revolutionary. We won't be silent if we are repressed," says an Iraqi man with a weathered face in the documentary About Baghdad, shot in July 2003. His sentiment is shared by many of the other Iraqis interviewed in the film. But one wonders what he would say today, after seeing the images that have come out of Abu Ghraib and Falluja, and now that it is apparent that the U.S. military has had no viable exit strategy.
Chaos and looting broke out when the Americans bombed Iraq in May 2003, and the country's outlook looks grimmer as the occupation wears on. The film captures through the many Iraqi voices in the film the trauma of this most current war, on top of the pain endured during twelve years of economic sanctions and decades of war and oppression under the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Says a man in a cafe, "The pressure we've endured for 35 years has knocked us off balance. We are only human. We are a mass of nerves. This could only lead to a breakdown. You could say that all Iraqis are schizophrenic."
Other Iraqis in the film regret that the war and the sanctions that preceded it caused them to lose their consciousness, and turn to looting and aggressive behavior towards one another. It is clear in the film that the pride of the Iraqi people, a rich society 7,000 years old, has been wounded - because its cultural riches were plundered by looters, because the U.S. bombing campaigns left its infrastructure devastated, because the humiliation of the U.S. occupation, and because, as some feel the most keenly hurt about, the impotency of its Arab neighbors to do anything to stop it.
About Baghdad was spearheaded by Iraqi-American writer Sinan Antoon, who explains in the film that his intention was to return to his homeland that he left in '91, when his country was "a big prison." He comes to talk to Iraqis to hear what they think of the situation imposed on them, and finds that there is a plurality of opinion regarding the war and its justifications, and it seems that he, as well as the Iraqis his crew films, feel a need to relocate their sense of national identity.
While a handful of the Iraqis featured in the film thought at the time that the U.S. overthrowing Saddam Hussein through military force was a good thing, many more others were bitter towards the way civilians were targeted in the bombing campaigns and how Iraq's schools, libraries, hospitals, and cultural institutions were left unprotected by U.S. forces and looted as a result.
But Iraqi opinion is more nuanced than Americans bad, Iraqi resistance good. One man explains that since the U.S. kept Saddam Hussein in power, they had a responsibility to take him out, just not in the way that they did, which left Iraq's civilian population hurting as well. And while all of the Iraqis in the film are glad to have Saddam gone, many are angry that the U.S. isn't doing a satisfactory job rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure it destroyed, and giving Ahmed Chalabi so much representation of the Iraqi people, when Iraqis, as one man exclaims, "want someone who suffered with us, who went hungry with us, who was thirsty with us, who lived with us, who ate from the same plate with us."
Yanar Muhammed, a human rights activist who publishes a publication that focuses on women's rights and campaigns against honor killings and compulsory veiling of women, explains in the film that her organization approached coalition forces so they could help develop the Iraqi constitution, but were refused participation. While American-style democracy for the Iraqi people is seen in the United States as being a major boon for women, Yanar expresses her frustration that because of U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq, the high rate of educated women in the country was cut in half, and women and children have been hit the hardest by the depression that has resulted.
Upon viewing the film, one can't help but wonder if voices like these were featured in the U.S. mainstream media, would there have been a war at all, or at least a war waged without the support of the international community. As journalists in the U.S. admit that they failed to deliver their true responsibility of objective reporting during the pep rally leading up to the war, it seems more and more amazing that the U.S. can go to war on the flimsiest of pretenses, without even representing the people who are on the war's receiving end. How ignorant can a young country such as the U.S. be to attack Iraq and sacrifice its own soldiers, some of whom (like one interviewed in the film), genuinely believe that they are doing for the Iraqis what they could not do for themselves, while ignoring its history of support towards Hussein as he was killing his own people?
While U.S. news reports speak of insurgents and terrorists, graffiti in Baghdad reads, "It is incumbent on Iraq to build democracy." And while books in Baghdad cost more than a teacher's monthly salary, U.S. soldiers put up parking signs over the names of those who died in the monument for the Iraq-Iran war. And while Bush is reelected for a second term, a woman who contracted yellow fever, and therefore unable breast feed her dehydrated son, can't provide her child with adequate medical treatment because Iraq's hospitals don't even have milk. As a cab driver featured in the film puts it, "If not much changes soon, then God help us."
Maureen Clare Murphy, currently living in Ramallah, is Arts, Music, and Culture Editor for Electronic Iraq and its sister site, The Electronic Intifada.
--------
Iraqi commandos don't yet make the grade, say US marines
Iraq (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129105616.ndwn5yw4.html
Interior ministry commandos hunting for weapons caches on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq's "triangle of death" have some way to go before they become an effective fighting force, said US marines helping to train them.
"Keep moving, come on! Jesus Christ!" barked one exasperated marine, urging the men to pick up the pace as they marched through orange groves and along irrigation channels, chatting and smoking as they went.
The commandos, billed as a fledgling elite unit in Iraq's emerging security force line-up, had been on the go since a chilly 2:00 am start and by early afternoon were clearly flagging.
After a high-speed boat trip up the Euphrates, the 80-strong unit, supervised by 40 marines, waded ashore and fanned out to comb fields, woods and date palm groves.
Insurgents had been firing mortars from this area near the town of Yusufiyah at the British army's Camp Dogwood on the far side of the river.
British soldiers from the Black Watch regiment provided cover from the far bank for the commandos' boat landing, and US helicopters gave air support.
The region lies in the heart of an area south of Baghdad that many troops call the triangle of death where kidnappings and deadly attacks on civilians and security forces are an almost daily event. US-led forces last week began a major operation called Plymouth Rock in a bid to bring the region back under government control ahead of landmark elections planned for January 30.
It is the third major assault on Sunni rebel strongholds this month after crackdowns on the cities of Fallujah, west of the capital, and Mosul in the north.
Coalition forces -- now nominally under orders from the Iraqi interim government -- like to spearhead these operations with small units of Iraqi forces, from the national guard, the interior ministry commandos, or, in at least one province, Iraqi SWAT teams.
The commandos, a special police that can be dispatched anywhere in the country, were at the forefront of an operation to reclaim the city of Samarra in October. The force has three battalions of about 350 men each.
Last weekend a unit was dispatched from Baghdad to the US marines' Forward Operating Base Kalso, near the town of Iskandariyah, to take part in the sweep Sunday on the banks of the Euphrates.
The operation also served as a training manoeuvre for the commandos, who undergo an initial three-week course at an academy in Baghdad.
But by the end of the day many of the exhausted men seemed to have lost interest, to the frustration of the marines accompanying them.
"They're just not ready," said one marine following behind the commandos, clad in forest green and carrying Kalashnikov rifles, as they crossed a ploughed field after walking for several hours in warm sunshine.
"There is clearly some frustration" with the force, said US marine spokesman Captain David Nevers.
Captain Tom de Triquet, who has been involved with the training of the commandos, said he was very impressed with an Iraqi SWAT team the marines have been coaching.
The SWAT team, under the command of the governor of Babil province, which takes in most of the targeted region, has been living at this base and training intensively with marines.
"We're not yet at that stage with the commandos," said de Triquet.
Sunday's operation netted only a handful of rifles hidden in fields as well as some identity documents of what appeared to be a senior former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.
The marines also found what they said might be a severed human head in a plastic bag dumped in a ditch, but an AFP correspondent with the patrol could not ascertain that it was a human skull.
The operation, which ended with a drive in a convoy back to this base, had at times seemed like a Sunday stroll in the country, with the commandos picking fruit from trees as they went along.
But the drive home provided a reminder of the threats security forces face.
A homemade roadside bomb went off as the convoy of five trucks and several humvees passed. No-one was injured, but marines who chased two men who ran from the scene shot one dead and detained the second.
-----
Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids
nytimes
By JOHN F. BURNS
November 29, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/international/middleeast/29search.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=92bdb26fc272952d&hp&ex=1101790800&partner=homepage
CHARD DUWAISH, Iraq, Nov. 28 - As marines aboard fast patrol boats roared up the Euphrates on a dawn raid on Sunday, images pressed in of another American war where troops moved up wide rivers on camouflaged boats, with machine-gunners nervously scanning riverbanks for the hidden enemy.
That war is rarely mentioned among the American troops in Iraq, many of whom were not yet born when the last American combat units withdrew from Vietnam more than 30 years ago. A war that America did not win is considered a bad talisman among those men and women, who privately admit to fears that this war could be lost.
But as an orange moon sank below the bulrushes on Sunday morning, thoughts of Vietnam were hard to avoid.
Marines waded ashore through soft silted mud that caused some to sink to their waists, M-16 rifles held skyward as others on solid land held out their rifle barrels as lifelines.
Ashore, sodden and with boots squelching mud, the troops began a five-hour tramp through dense palm groves and across paddies crisscrossed by deep irrigation canals.
There were snatches of dialogue from "Apocalypse Now," and a black joke from one marine about the landscape resembling "a Vietnam theme park."
But behind the joshing lay something more serious: the sense expressed by many of the Americans as they scoured the area that in this war, too, the insurgents might have advantages that could make them a match for highly trained troops, technological gadgetry and multibillion-dollar war budgets.
The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted the river raid as part of a weeklong offensive billed as a sequel to the battle for Falluja, less than 20 miles upriver from the village where the marines landed Sunday.
The 40-foot river craft they used are called Surcs, for Small Unit Riverine Craft, a high-tech update on the Swift boats used in Vietnam. The craft were flown into Iraq aboard giant C-5 transport aircraft and were first deployed with five-man crews during the battle for Falluja this month, patrolling the stretch of the Euphrates that runs along the city's western edge to prevent attempts by insurgents to escape that way after American troops had thrown a cordon around the city.
Those patrols were judged a success by American commanders. Now they are eager to exploit the potential the patrol boats give them for mounting fast, unexpected attacks along the Tigris and the Euphrates. The rivers run through many of the cities and towns that are rebel strongholds, and the long stretches of verdant riverbank provide ideal hiding places for insurgents and their weapons caches.
The raid, backed by air cover from attack helicopters and pilotless drones, gave the Americans a chance to exploit another new dimension of their strategy for winning the war: twinning American combat units with newly trained Iraqi troops.
After failures earlier this year, when many Iraqi units deserted or refused to fight, the American command wrote a new blueprint for training tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters and used Falluja as the first, critical testing ground. Considered a qualified success there, the best Iraqi units have been an integral part of every major raid in the follow-up offensive here. In many raids, they have heavily outnumbered American troops, as they did in the operation on Sunday, which included 40 marines and 80 members of a special Iraqi commando unit assigned to the country's powerful Interior Ministry.
As much as they wanted to test their new river boats, American commanders wanted to see how the commandos - many drawn from elite units of Saddam Hussein's special forces - would respond to an arduous and potentially risky mission.
This day, long before the three-mile sweep through the palm groves and citrus orchards and paddies was ended, the mood among the marines had soured as the Iraqis adopted a mostly dilatory attitude toward the tedious business of spreading out in long lines and moving methodically across the terrain, poking haystacks, running metal detectors over piles of palm fronds, peering into thick clusters of bulrushes, and digging in places of freshly turned earth.
"They've just about given up," said Lt. Jerman Duarte, 34, of Houston, his voice edged with exasperation.
Lieutenant Duarte, a native of Guatemala, led the raid in his capacity as commander of a reconnaissance and surveillance platoon that has honed its skills in many of the marines' toughest raids and stakeouts during their five months in Iraq. Among his men, he is known as "El Guapo," the handsome one, for his fine features and his bristling mustache. But his sense of urgency and do-it-by-the-book briskness appeared lost on the Iraqi fighters, who used their rest breaks in the morning sunshine to trade quips about the Americans, not all of them friendly.
As in so much else about the American venture in Iraq, cultural differences played their part. At one point, Lieutenant Duarte bridled when some of the Iraqis resisted his repeated urging that they spread out along the line, preferring to cluster together, ineffectively, at one end. A Marine sergeant told him that the Iraqis were officers and did not feel that they should be asked to work side by side with common soldiers.
One of the Iraqi officers, asked if he spoke English, replied snappily, "English no good. Arabic good. Iraq good." The message seemed clear.
Although recruits in the new Iraqi units undergo strict vetting, American officers say rebel sympathizers have infiltrated some of the new units - some of the soldiers have been caught tipping off rebel groups. If there were sympathies for Hussein loyalists among these raiders, though, the area chosen for the sweep would likely have stirred them. One American officer described the stretch of the Euphrates that runs southeast from Falluja as "Saddam's Hamptons" for the clusters of luxurious villas set along the riverbank, mostly built by favored stalwarts of Mr. Hussein. The territory controlled by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, across the southernmost reaches of Iraq's Sunni heartland, served as an arsenal for Mr. Hussein, with dozens of weapons research facilities, munitions factories, and vast weapons storage sites, including the one at Al Qaqaa, which made headlines last month when the Americans discovered that more than 350 tons of high explosives were missing.
Recent American sweeps in the area have uncovered some of the largest weapons caches found in post-Hussein Iraq. And the raid here on Sunday, about five miles from Al Qaqaa, followed a tip that more large caches might be found there.
But either the tipoff was flawed or the raid missed the target. Altogether, Lieutenant Duarte's men discovered only an old shotgun and three Kalashnikov rifles, two of them in plastic bags that were clumsily buried in a paddy field. They also found two sets of identity documents belonging to a high-ranking member of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. After a marine stumbled across a yellow plastic bag lying in an irrigation panel with what he identified as a severed human head and intestines, Lieutenant Duarte radioed to headquarters and was told to leave it for investigation by the Iraqi police.
In the end, the day's main yield came not from the raid, but from the brutal chance that comes with every foray into the Iraqi hinterland. On the road back to the Marine base at Camp Kalsu, 40 miles from the raiding site, the unit's convoy of armored trucks and Humvees was attacked near the town of Latifiya with a huge roadside bomb.
Unlike a similar device that killed two marines in a nearby incident later in the day, the bomb caused no injuries or damage. But two Humvees broke away from the convoy and pursued two fleeing men with Kalashnikovs into a house about a mile back from the highway, shooting one dead and capturing the other. The men were said to have been found with a cellphone that could have been used to set off the bomb.
-------- israel / palestine
Checkpoints Take Toll on Palestinians, Israeli Army
Civilians Describe Abuse; Troops Lament Conditions
Washington Post
By Molly Moore
November 29, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18597-2004Nov28.html
HAWARA, West Bank -- At a sandbagged military checkpoint on a bleak patch of asphalt in the West Bank, an Israeli soldier yanked 29-year-old Mohammad Yousef out of a Palestinian ambulance. When Yousef's medical papers were produced, the soldier waved them off and bellowed, "I wouldn't let you in even if you brought God here with you!"
In long lines nearby, hundreds of Palestinians on foot jammed against a narrow turnstile, each waiting to be allowed to proceed -- one by one -- through concrete lanes resembling cattle chutes. All males under the age of 30 were turned away. So were all students, male and female.
"Open! Open!" a chorus of angry men shouted at the armed Israeli soldiers who controlled the gates holding back the Palestinians. As a thin man with a swath of black stubble across his face squeezed through the turnstile, his 18-month-old toddler became wedged between the bars. "Open it! Open it!" he screamed, cursing at the soldiers and gripping the whimpering child by one arm.
For two neighboring societies segregated by the physical and psychological barriers of a conflict dragging into its fifth year, the most intimate contact between Israelis and Palestinians occurs over the barrel of a gun at the 61 manned military checkpoints throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Such encounters exact a heavy toll on both sides, as evinced by accounts from former checkpoint guards who describe working under dehumanizing conditions, and by numerous reports of abuses committed by such soldiers against Palestinian civilians.
"Most soldiers prefer to be under fire than at those roadblocks," said Staff Sgt. Ran Ridnick, 21, a marksman for the Israeli military's elite 202nd Paratroop Battalion who spent six months this year here at the Hawara checkpoint. "The mission is dreadful. . . . It tears you apart."
Michael Aman, 21, another staff sergeant who served in the same battalion, said: "Everyone, no matter how moral, if he feels a commitment to the mission, will or could fall into violence. We're all told we shouldn't behave badly to civilians -- never hit them, never yell. But after eight hours in the sun, you're not so strong."
The Israeli military says the checkpoints are necessary to protect Israel and Jewish settlements in the territories from Palestinian attackers. Government and military officials have repeatedly cited the system of checkpoints in the West Bank as one of several factors contributing to a steady reduction in the number of suicide bombings against Israeli targets in the past two years.
At the same time, Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of abuse by Israeli troops against Palestinians at roadblocks: beatings, shootings, harassment, humiliation and life-threatening delays. Last year, a female Israeli soldier assigned to a Gaza Strip checkpoint was convicted of forcing a Palestinian woman at gunpoint to drink a bottle of cleaning fluid, according to court records. This month, soldiers at the Beit Iba checkpoint, not far from the Hawara checkpoint, ordered a Palestinian to open his violin case and play for them while the lines behind him grew.
At least 83 Palestinians seeking medical care have died during delays at checkpoints, according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. At the same time, 39 Israeli soldiers and police officers have been killed at checkpoints and roadblocks, according to the Israeli military. A year ago, two Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint south of Jerusalem were shot dead by a Palestinian who carried an automatic rifle rolled in a prayer rug.
A Glimpse of Brutality
The Hawara checkpoint sits on the edge of the village of the same name, just south of Nablus. It severs a pocked highway that is the main artery connecting the West Bank's northern cities to its major population centers in the south. The nearest border with Israel is 16 miles away as the crow flies, farther by road.
On days when the Hawara checkpoint is open, it is one of the busiest in the West Bank. Sometimes as many as 5,000 Palestinians a day request permission to cross. They stand in line in searing heat or icy rains, depending on the season, until they reach an open-air shed with a corrugated tin roof. Often packed together by the hundreds, they must then wait their turn to pass, one by one, through narrow metal turnstiles that the soldiers open and close electronically.
As the Palestinians inch forward, armed soldiers standing behind sandbagged concrete walls shout orders to have bags opened and their contents dumped on the ground. On one recent morning, soldiers demanded that a man squirt shaving cream from an aerosol can to verify its contents. They ordered another man to rip the red-and-silver wrapping paper off a box to reveal what was inside: a doll for his granddaughter.
"You can't look at a person and know if he's good or bad," said Israeli Sgt. Nadav Efrati, a stocky, square-faced 21-year-old who recently finished his military service after spending months at the Hawara checkpoint. He said the limited Arabic that the Israeli army teaches most of its soldiers exacerbates the friction between the two peoples. "The main words they taught us were: 'Stop. If not, I will shoot you,' " Efrati said.
Early this year, the tension and animosity between soldiers and Palestinians at the Hawara checkpoint sparked an incident so brutal that it spurred the Israeli military to confront the devastating effect the checkpoint system has had -- not only on Palestinian civilians, but also within its own ranks.
Checkpoints Take Toll on Palestinians, Israeli Army
On an unusually cold January day, hundreds of Palestinians waited to pass through the Hawara checkpoint. Snow dusted the ground, and tempers and patience rubbed raw on both ends of the lines that crept toward the soldiers of the 202nd Paratroops. A camera crew from the army's Education Corps maneuvered around the soldiers and Palestinians, collecting video footage and interviews for a training tape.
"Go home! What's your problem?" shouted the checkpoint commander, a gaunt staff sergeant whose face was partially hidden beneath his helmet. The camera focused on the sergeant -- a Bedouin, rare in the Israeli military -- as he continued yelling in Arabic at an agitated Palestinian man grasping the hand of a small child. "Shut up! Shut up! Go back, go back, everyone go back. No one through -- everyone go back."
The video did not capture the next exchange, but other soldiers at the checkpoint said in interviews that the Palestinian man began screaming at the 23-year-old sergeant. The sergeant handcuffed the man with disposable plastic cuffs and ordered him to sit on the ground.
Suddenly, the camera jerked toward the sergeant. He bashed the Palestinian man in the face with his fist. The man's hysterical wife and two weeping children tried to squeeze between him and the sergeant. The soldier shoved the Palestinian into a hut as the army cameraman followed close behind.
The man's toddler son clung to his father's shirttail until soldiers brushed him away like a fly. The soldier flipped a blanket over the window of the hut, and the camera's audio picked up the Palestinian's muffled cries as the soldier punched him in the stomach.
"For them, you see, they don't have a problem getting beaten up," the sergeant explained before the video camera a short time later. "It's the humiliation in front of all the people, the wife and children. I try to do it so they don't see me, so it's not in front of the people."
A soldier from the Education Corps asked the sergeant why he had attacked a defenseless, handcuffed Palestinian.
"Because he was beaten, then everybody learns and no one fools around with us," the sergeant said. As he spoke, the camera shifted to the Palestinian's wife and children sitting in the dirt. The youngsters wore colorful party hats their mother had offered to distract them.
With the army video as evidence, Israeli military officials prosecuted the soldier -- one of only a handful of checkpoint abuse cases ever brought to court, according to lawyers and military officials.
After a five-day military trial, the sergeant pleaded guilty in late September to assault charges stemming from the beating. He also admitted beating at least eight other Palestinians at the checkpoint and smashing the windshields of 10 Palestinian taxicabs as commander of the post from mid-January through the end of February.
The court prohibited the publication of the soldier's name and home town for fear of retribution against him or his family.
The military indictment accused the sergeant of habitually using violence against Palestinians who refused his orders to wait in line or who shouted at him. In as many as five incidents, he "kicked them forcefully in their buttocks and pushed them backwards or assaulted them with punches and kicks," the indictment said. Other times he took recalcitrant men into "the women's checking tent that was empty and . . . beat them either by punching them or kicking them in their stomach."
A three-member military judicial panel sentenced him to six months in jail, half of which he had already served, and demoted him to the rank of private.
Checkpoint duty "is in the hands of a very small number of young soldiers who do not have the proper training and proficiency in security checks," the judges wrote. "It is difficult and wearing, threatening and frustrating. . . . In imposing the punishment, it is difficult to escape the fact that the accused had to face a situation which was above his powers."
The case exposed far more than a single soldier's violent misdeeds. During the trial, soldiers who had served at the Hawara checkpoint over the past year gave testimony describing what they said were common, accepted practices among combat soldiers who detested checkpoint duty and often received little or no training for what they considered a policeman's job. In testimony and in interviews, they also argued that the army and Israeli society should accept some of the blame for abuses that they said were the result of an impossible mission.
"When we do all these things, we are not doing it only to the Palestinians, but to ourselves, too," said Aman, who was a friend of the convicted sergeant and recently finished his military service. "The most important discussion should be in our own society. If you blame the soldiers, you miss the point. . . . These duties corrupt." For the convicted sergeant, the pressures were magnified because he was a Bedouin, an Israeli Arab in an overwhelmingly Jewish army engaged in combat against Arabs. Service in the Israeli armed forces -- which is mandatory for Israelis -- is voluntary for members of the Bedouin tribes. "People in the village did not like it that I contributed to the army," the soldier said in court.
Unlike his Hebrew-speaking comrades, he understood every word the Palestinians uttered in Arabic. "I heard them behind my back," he testified. "Traitor. Dog."
After two weeks in command of the checkpoint, he said, he asked his senior officer, Lt. Col. Guy Hazut, to take him off the assignment. Hazut, a 15-year military veteran, said in court that he refused: "It didn't seem right for a commander to leave his soldiers three weeks before the end of their term."
The soldier's trial and the publicity surrounding it contributed to efforts by the military to provide more instruction to soldiers assigned to checkpoints, to improve facilities and to begin training a new military police corps, according to military officials. The soldiers who have served at the roadblocks said those initiatives were a start, but that they did not address the main problem.
The constant struggle to balance the security of their men and their country with the pleas of elderly women who remind the soldiers of their own stubborn grandmothers is emotionally debilitating, Staff Sgt. Sergey Zamensky, an emigrant from Siberia, said in an interview in the central Israeli industrial town of Rishon Letzion where he resides.
Zamensky, 21, also spent months at the Hawara checkpoint before he finished his tour of duty this summer. He and his fellow commanders described turning away a tearful young bride in a white gown on her wedding day and forcing students to miss final exams because the checkpoint was closed.
"Every day, the regulations were different," Zamensky said. "One day, you can let everyone pass; on another, no one is able to come in. It's very difficult to explain. They don't care if someone in Nablus wants to explode himself in Israel. They just want to live their life. Regardless of how strong you are, dealing with these problems is too much."
Zamensky, who attended many of the court sessions in support of his Bedouin friend and comrade, added: "They say if you're a good person, there's no way you should be doing anything like this and be violent. They don't understand the situation. They're living in a movie."
Researcher Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
-------- mideast
Syria ready to embrace the peace push
The Australian
Nicolas Rothwell
November 29, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11527129%255E2703,00.html
AS the quest for a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement gathers momentum, with elections across the West Bank and Gaza due early next year, there are tantalising signs that Syria, long the region's most militant Arab nation, is preparing to negotiate a new relationship with both Israel and the US.
With re-elected President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair now determined to broker Palestinian statehood, the diplomatic horizon is rapidly widening and a new Middle Eastern architecture is being shaped.
Much immediate Western effort has concentrated on the urgent need to redefine relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: both the British and Russian foreign ministers were in Jerusalem and Ramallah for talks last week. But behind the scenes, Syria is emerging as the next focus of transformation, for the Government of reformist President Bashar Assad in Damascus has begun sending out clear signals it is prepared to strike a set of new compacts with the West.
Syria is a key factor in at least three regional theatres of tension: it maintains a strong military presence in neighbouring Lebanon; it is suspected by the US of a concerted support for the Iraqi insurgency; and it is blamed by Israel for backing Palestinian terrorism.
Even as the four-year-old Assad regime picks its way towards economic and social reforms, Washington has been applying pressure on Damascus, insisting that the Syrian-Iraqi border be completely sealed and introducing a United Nations resolution demanding that Syrian troops withdraw fully from Lebanon.
Now it appears that a breakthrough may be in prospect, after intensive backroom encounters and statements by senior Syrian officials at summits in recent weeks, highlighted by a series of talks held by Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa in Iraq last week.
Syria's renewed desire to open talks with Israel was first brought into the open late last week by UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen and received confirmation over the weekend in a Syrian government newspaper statement, indicating Damascus was prepared for peace talks on the basis of UN resolutions. Larsen described the Syrian demarche as one of "unique potential and opportunity" and urged regional leaders to seize the chance before them.
"Starting now, the future may be saved," he said, somewhat apocalyptically. "Without changes, we might face a dark future."
Larsen's initial disclosures were met with deep scepticism in Israel, which has shown no enthusiasm for renewed contacts with Syria since the previous round of talks, held with the regime of the current President's father, Hafez Assad, broke down in 2000. While Israel's figurehead President, Moshe Katsav, mildly suggested the opening might be "important and worthwhile", Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was quick to stress that no deals could be done with Syria before Damascus had dismantled its support for terror.
But despite this swift reaction, Larsen pushed on and repeated his claim that a crucial opening towards peace talks had been made. He stressed he had spoken directly to Mr Assad and Syrian Foreign Minister Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Wednesday and said they had offered unconditional talks, premised on the principle of "land for peace".
This translates into an offer of eventual diplomatic recognition of Israel in exchange for the return of the ultra-sensitive Golan Heights -- a strip of territory won from Syria by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and since annexed by Jerusalem.
Today, the Golan is the key to the defence of three countries: its peaks oversee the Syrian capital and dominate southern Lebanon, while from its command posts and military roads, Israel's richest farmlands can be seen spread out along the Jordan rift valley far below.
At the same time as peace feelers are being extended towards a reluctant Israel, the Syrian regime may also be attempting to engineer a compromise deal on its longstanding occupation of Lebanon, in the face of a sustained pressure campaign mounted by a series of visiting US officials.
Syria miscalculated badly in forcing an extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's term in office three months ago - an action that precipitated a mini-constitutional crisis in Beirut, caused the resignation of pro-Western Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and even united France and the US in outrage. With Washington and Paris co-sponsoring an unambiguous UN demand for Syria to withdraw its 18,000-strong contingent of troops from Lebanon, Damascus at first tried a cosmetic pullout, "redeploying" 1000 men and moving other detachments from highly visible coastal bases to hinterland positions.
Now, intelligence sources claim a more drastic Syrian pullback is on the cards: Al-Sharaa reportedly told outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the Iraq summit that Damascus intended to remove the vast majority of its remaining troops inside Lebanon. It would retain four key radar systems - one overlooking the main Beirut-Damascus highway, two in the centre of the country and one in the north - and some 5000 troops would be retained, under the terms of a Lebanon-Syria mutual defence treaty, to protect these facilities. According to the Syrian Foreign Minister, this move would bring his country into compliance with the US-sponsored UN resolution 1559 and would provide further leverage for the Syrian argument that Israel should implement standing UN resolutions calling for it to leave the Golan Heights.
Equally significant are the signs that Syria has begun engaging with the US in a bid to control the flow into Iraq of insurgents and militant sympathisers across its long desert border. If Syria can also be induced to end its rhetorical and practical support for Palestinian extremist movements, several of which still operate in Damascus, there is at least a chance that Israel will be inclined to resume negotiations aimed at an overarching peace settlement.
The ultimate aim of Washington's intervention in the Middle East is to bring Arab regimes into the Western fold, to inculcate democracy and reduce ideological tensions between Islamic nations and the wider world. The central importance of the current drive to resolve the Palestinian impasse and achieve a two-state solution comes from Israel's long-term role as the source of discord throughout the Arab domain.
If Syria, Israel's chief enemy, can emerge as a constructive player in the Middle East's new design, the most ambitious blueprint for revolutionary change in the region put forward by an American administration could be on the way to fulfilment.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani missile test was "normal, routine" trial: FM
BRASILIA (AFP)
Nov 29, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041129151705.8p08x2c3.html
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri declared that the missile test his country carried out on Monday was a "normal, routine" trial.
Kasuri, who is accompanying President Pervez Musharraf on an official visit to Brasilia, noted that Pakistan has been performing similar tests for years.
"There is nothing exceptional about it. We've been doing these tests for many years now and they are governed by our technical requirements," Kasuri said. "It is a normal, routine test."
"It is not tit for tat," he added, "because India has its own parameters, scientific parameters ... which need to be substantiated, and therefore I don't think it is of much significance."
Pakistan and India, who have fought three wars since they gained independence from Britain in 1947, have been nuclear powers since 1998.
Pakistan test-fired a short-range nuclear capable missile early Monday, marking its fifth missile test this year alongside peace talks with nuclear rival India.
It was the third test of the "Ghaznavi," or Hatf-III missile, a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 290 kilometers (180 miles), the military announced in a statement.
The tests are seen as a bid to placate domestic anxieties that Pakistan may be pressured to dismantle its nuclear program, after it emerged that its key nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had been involved in proliferation activities.
Pakistan was plunged into a nuclear proliferation scandal when Khan, the father of its nuclear program, confessed in February to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Musharraf arrived in Brazil Saturday and was due to meet with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva later Monday.
-----
Pakistan Test Nuclear-Capable Missile
Associated Press
By MUNIR AHMAD
November 29, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PAKISTAN_MISSILE_TEST?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan successfully test-fired a new version of its short-range, nuclear-capable missile Monday, officials said, in the latest round of tit-for-tat launches with neighboring India despite recent peace overtures.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan insisted the test of the Ghazanvi missile will have no negative impact on the peace process with Pakistan's rival, India, which had no immediate comment on the launch.
"We have test-fired this missile to check its latest design," he told The Associated Press.
The military said Pakistan's neighbors, including India, had been notified of the test in advance. India and Pakistan routinely test missiles.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz congratulated scientists for giving Pakistan the missile and "making its defense impregnable," another military official said on condition of anonymity.
He said more such tests will be carried out in the coming days.
The military issued a statement saying the Ghazanvi has already been added to the army's "strategic command," and that "Pakistan's nuclear and missile program will maintain the pace of development, and tests will continue to be conducted as per technical needs."
It was the third test of the Ghazanvi missile. India has said technology for the missile was given to Islamabad by China or North Korea in the 1990s. Just six weeks ago, Pakistan tested its Ghauri V missile, which has a range of 930 miles, making it capable of hitting many Indian cities.
India on Friday test-fired a surface-to-air short-range missile on the coast of eastern Orissa state.
When contacted by AP, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna refused to comment on Pakistan's missile test, saying: "We don't react to that. We never have."
Pakistan's latest test comes days after Aziz traveled to India and met with his counterpart Manmohan Singh to discuss outstanding issues, including their long and bitter territorial dispute over Kashmir.
Divided between Pakistan and India but claimed in entirety by both, Kashmir has triggered two of the rivals' three wars since 1947, when they gained independence from Britain.
Both countries have agreed in recent months to resolve their disputes through negotiations.
Pakistan became a declared nuclear power on May 28, 1998, when it conducted underground nuclear tests in response to those carried out by India. It tested its first missile the same year.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Court ponders medicinal pot
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nov. 29, 2004
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/29/health/main657988.shtml
The Supreme Court appeared hesitant yesterday to endorse medical marijuana for patients who have a doctor's recommendation.
Justices are considering whether sick people in 11 states with medical marijuana laws can get around a federal ban on the drug.
Paul Clement, the Bush administration's top court lawyer, noted that California allows people with chronic physical and mental health problems to smoke marijuana and said potentially many people are subjecting themselves to health dangers.
"Smoked marijuana really doesn't have any future in medicine," he said.
Justice Stephen Breyer said supporters of marijuana for the ill should take their fight to federal drug regulators - before coming to the Supreme Court, and several justices repeatedly referred to the nation's drug addiction problems.
Dozens of people, some with blankets, camped outside the high court to hear justices debate the issue. Groups such as the Drug Free America Foundation fear a government loss will undermine campaigns against addictive drugs.
The high court heard arguments in the case of Angel Raich, who tried dozens of prescription medicines to ease the pain of a brain tumor and other illnesses before she turned to marijuana.
Supporters of Miss Raich and another ill woman who filed a lawsuit after her California home was raided by federal agents argue that people with AIDS, cancer and other diseases should be able to grow and use marijuana.
Their attorney, Randy Barnett of Boston, told justices that his clients are law-abiding citizens who need marijuana to survive.
Marijuana may have some side effects, he said, but seriously sick people are willing to take the chance.
Besides California, nine other states allow people to use marijuana if their doctors agree: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Arizona has a law permitting marijuana prescriptions, but no active program.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against the government in a divided opinion that found federal prosecution of medical marijuana users is unconstitutional if the marijuana is not sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.
The Bush administration argues that Congress has found no accepted medical use of marijuana and needs to be able to eradicate drug trafficking and its social harm.
The Supreme Court ruled three years ago that the government could prosecute distributors of medical marijuana despite their claim that the activity was protected by "medical necessity."
Medical marijuana was an issue in the November elections. Montana voters easily approved a law that shields patients, their doctors and caregivers from arrest and prosecution for medical marijuana. But Oregon rejected a measure that would have dramatically expanded its existing medical marijuana program.
----
High Court Appears Hesitant to Endorse Medical Marijuana
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 29, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Medical-Marijuana.html?hp&ex=1101790800&en=a65b4f1c9aadc8b1&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court questioned whether state medical marijuana laws might be abused by people who aren't really sick as it debated Monday whether the federal government can prosecute patients who smoke pot on doctors' orders.
The stakes are high on both the government level -- 11 states have passed medical marijuana laws since 1996 -- and the personal.
In the courtroom watching the argument were Angel Raich, an Oakland, Calif., mother of two who said she tried dozens of prescription medicines to ease the pain of a brain tumor before she turned to marijuana, and another ill woman, Diane Monson. They filed a lawsuit to protect their access to the drug after federal agents confiscated marijuana plants from Monson's yard.
Their attorney, Randy Barnett of Boston, told the justices his clients are law-abiding citizens who need marijuana to survive. ``When people are sick and people are suffering and people are dying, they may be willing to run the risk of these long-term harms in order to get the immediate relief, the lifesaving relief that cannabis has demonstrably been able to provide,'' he said.
The justices refused three years ago to protect distributors of medical marijuana from federal anti-drug charges. They are confronting a more personal issue this time -- the power of federal agents to go after sick people who use homegrown cannabis with their doctors' permission and their states' approval.
A defeat for the two California women might undermine laws passed by California and 10 other states and discourage other states from approving their own.
A loss for the government, on the other hand, could jeopardize federal oversight of illegal drugs and raise questions in other areas such as product safety and environmental activities. A Bush administration lawyer told the justices they would be encouraging people to use potentially harmful marijuana if they were to side with the women.
``If they're right, then I think their analysis would extend to recreational use of marijuana, as well as medical use of marijuana, and would extend to every state in the nation, not just those states that made it lawful,'' said Paul Clement, acting solicitor general.
Justice David H. Souter said an estimated 10 percent of people in America use illegal drugs, and states with medical marijuana laws might not be able to stop recreational users from taking advantage.
Justice Stephen Breyer said the government makes a strong argument that as many as 100,000 sick people use marijuana in California, and ``when we see medical marijuana in California, we won't know what it is. Everybody'll say, `Mine is medical.' Certificates will circulate on the black market. We face a mess.''
And Justice Antonin Scalia said there are many people with ``alleged medical needs.''
Despite the tenor of the debate, the case is hard to predict. The justices will rule before next summer.
The marijuana users won in the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that federal prosecution of medical marijuana users is unconstitutional if the pot is not sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the federal government has a stake in interstate commerce, but with the California medical marijuana patients: ``Nobody's buying anything. Nobody's selling anything.''
Her colleague, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, observed that homegrown medical marijuana never makes it to the interstate market.
Conservatives like Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Clarence Thomas and Scalia generally have supported states' rights to set their own policies.
Rehnquist, who is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer, missed Monday's argument and is not expected to return to the court until January, at the earliest.
Raich said she hopes the 80-year-old chief justice's chemotherapy treatments ``would soften his heart about the issue.''
``I think he would find that cannabis would help him a lot,'' said Raich, who uses marijuana every few hours for scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other illnesses.
California's law allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Besides California, other states with such laws are: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
Medical marijuana was an issue in the November elections. Montana voters easily approved a law that shields patients, their doctors and caregivers from arrest and prosecution for medical marijuana. Oregon rejected a measure that would have expanded its medical marijuana program dramatically.
The case is Ashcroft v. Raich, 03-1454.
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Court to Hear Marijuana Case
Legality of Cultivating Plant for Medical Use Is at Issue
Washington Post
By Charles Lane
November 29, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18420-2004Nov28.html
Local sheriff's deputies and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents disagreed when they converged on Diane Monson's house in Oroville, Calif., two years ago.
The county cops accepted Monson's explanation for growing six marijuana plants: She had a doctor's permission to smoke it for back pain, so the pot was legal under the state's 1996 "medical marijuana" law.
But the DEA agents insisted that growing marijuana is still against federal law. They seized the plants and destroyed them.
Today that federal-state clash continues at the Supreme Court, where the justices will hear oral arguments on whether the Constitution permits the federal government to take action against those who use homegrown marijuana for medicinal reasons within states where it is legal to do so.
The case is the third medical pot case to reach the Supreme Court since voters overwhelmingly approved California's Compassionate Use Act. But the legal issues this time give the case importance well beyond the 11 states, mostly in the West, that since 1996 have eased or eliminated penalties for medical use of marijuana.
Among these states is Maryland, which last year set a maximum fine of $100 for medical users of less than an ounce of pot. It has wider implications because Monson claims that federal drug busts of people such as her exceed Washington's authority under the commerce clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to regulate trade "among the several states."
Last year, the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that Monson was right. If the Supreme Court agrees, it could limit the federal government's power over not just the cultivation and use of marijuana, but also other activities.
Much modern government regulation exists because the Supreme Court articulated a broad definition of interstate commerce during the 20th century. This permitted the court to uphold, as exercises of Congress's commerce clause power, a wide range of national laws -- from the economic policies of the New Deal to the civil rights era ban on racial segregation in hotels and restaurants.
Perhaps the key ruling came in 1942, when the court held that the Roosevelt administration could enforce acreage controls against an Ohio wheat farmer who claimed his crop was entirely for his own use.
The court said that even subsistence farming could change the overall supply and price of grain; this "substantial effect on interstate commerce" triggered Congress's authority.
But in more recent years, the court has tightened its definition of interstate commerce.
In 1995, the court struck down a federal ban on gun possession within 1,000 feet of a school, ruling that Congress's claims that school gun violence had a "substantial effect" on the economy were implausible.
And in 2000, the court struck down a federal law giving women a right to sue rapists in federal court, ruling that such violence was not, "in any sense of the phrase, economic activity."
Monson and her co-plaintiffs -- Angel McClary Raich, an Oakland woman who suffers from a variety of painful chronic disorders, and two people identified as John Doe One and John Doe Two, who give Raich pot free of charge -- argue that these recent cases favor them, because using small amounts of marijuana they grow for themselves, or passing it along for "compassionate" reasons, cannot affect the broader market for the drug.
"This case is and always has been about federalism and state sovereignty," Monson's lawyers argue in their brief.
But the Bush administration counters that even small-scale use of a fungible commodity such as marijuana can affect price and quantity in the black market.
"[E]xcepting drug activity for personal use or free distribution from the sweep of [federal drug laws] would discourage the consumption of lawful controlled substances and would undermine Congress's intent to regulate the drug market comprehensively to protect public health and safety," the administration argues in its brief.
The federalism issue in the case has created unusual alliances. Three conservative Deep South states, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, have filed a friend of the court brief supporting the marijuana users on states' rights grounds. "California is entitled to make for itself the tough policy choices that affect its citizens," the states' brief argues.
Legal analysts say the likeliest supporter on the court for the marijuana users may also be its most conservative member: Justice Clarence Thomas, who, though a harsh critic of drug abuse, has also written that the court must narrowly define Congress's commerce clause powers.
Meanwhile, a liberal environmentalist group, the Community Rights Council, filed a brief in support of the Bush administration, noting the group's interest in "ensuring . . . legislative flexibility to address national concerns."
In two previous cases at the Supreme Court, medical marijuana advocates have a split record.
In 2001, the court ruled 8 to 0 that there is no "medical necessity" exception to federal drug laws against producing and distributing marijuana, so California's "cannabis clubs" cannot escape prosecution by saying they save lives.
But in 2003, the court refused to hear the Bush administration's appeal of a 9th Circuit ruling that said doctors have a right to discuss marijuana as a treatment option with their patients. That left the 9th Circuit ruling on the books.
Thus, today's case is critical to the medical marijuana movement. With cannabis clubs unable to distribute pot legally, a doctor's right to recommend it would be meaningless unless users or their friends can grow it themselves.
The case is Ashcroft v. Raich, No. 03-1454. A deci