NucNews - February 18, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Radiation exposure halts nuclear cleanup in New York Friday, February 18, 2005 11:50 AM (West Valley, NY - AP) http://www.wrgb.com/news/regional/regional.asp?selection=article_28932 Two workers at a former nuclear site in western New York were exposed to higher doses of radiation than allowed under the site's guidelines. That January 19th incident, along with two other safety lapses in the past month, have prompted officials at the West Valley Demonstration Project to suspend major work at the facility ini Cattaraugus County, south of Buffalo. A report on the worker exposure says the workers received doses of 315 and 169 millirems. That compares to the 360 millirems that the average American absorbs in a year from things like X-rays and the sun. The other two safety lapses involved materials being briefly ignited during cutting operations. West Valley is the site of the country's first commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Cleanup of the site has been ongoing for more than 20 years. The workers required no medical treatment. ---- Repair of Leaking Chernobyl Sarcophagus Begins 18.02.2005 17:09 MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/02/18/chernobyl.shtml Work has begun to repair the sarcophagus that was hastily built in 1986 to contain the radioactive debris of Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor, after experts warned it was so old it could collapse at any minute. Workers will only be able to spend a few minutes at a time at the site, which is still spewing radiation, so they will have to plan out each step of the reconstruction in detail, the Vesti news program reported. Plans to repair the shelter were underway for several years, but it was only recently, with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko elected in December, that the funding was found. With the inauguration last month of President Yushchenko, a pro-Western former opposition leader, new authorities have taken power in Ukraine who enjoy enormous American and European goodwill. As a result, financial backing for the project came from abroad. Repair plans include adding a second shelter around the old one. “Shelter 2” is a huge 19,800-ton steel arch designed to be assembled nearby, then slid into place on rails to minimize workers’ radiation exposure. The sarcophagus is designed to last at least 100 years, providing improved conditions for further stabilization work and eventual cleanup of radioactive debris isolated inside. The director of the Chernobyl electric station downplayed concerns of an accident stemming from replacing the sarcophagus. “Even if there is an accident, the contamination radius should not exceed 30 kilometers,” he was quoted as saying. Today, radiation levels in the exclusion zone — a radius of nearly 20 miles from the plant — vary wildly, depending on where radioactive debris fell in 1986. Some places register only natural background radiation, but driving in a car with a dosimeter, one passes through places where the reading zooms up to 100 times normal levels. -------- britain Plutonium Missing From British Site Agence France Presse Arab News, 18 February 2005 http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2005%20News%20archives/February/18%20n/Plutonium%20Missing%20From%20British%20Site.htm LONDON — A civilian nuclear fuels reprocessing plant in northwest England cannot account for some30 kilograms of plutonium, enough for seven or eight nuclear bombs, a newspaper said yesterday. The annual audit of nuclear material at all of Britain’s civil nuclear plants is expected to reveal that the quantity of plutonium at Sellafield was classified as “material unaccounted for” last year, The Times said. Figures published by the British Nuclear Group (BNG) each year reveal an audit of nuclear material which is admitted and processed by the various plants around Britain. A spokeswoman at Sellafield said: “This is material that is unaccounted for, and there is always a discrepancy between the physical inventory and the book inventory. There is no suggestion that any material has left the site.” The Sellafield spokeswoman said the most likely reason for any shortfall was due to the complex measuring processes that are carried out. Asked if the 30 kilogram figure raised concern, she replied: “I wouldn’t say we would be alarmed by it, because we are only talking about a book figure here.” But independent experts were worried about the disclosure, according to The Times. “They make this claim of an auditing problem but I would expect them to be overzealous in the current climate of fears about terrorism,” John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, was quoted as saying. Frank Barnaby, a specialist in nuclear weapons, told The Times: “There will always be some material unaccounted for but this is a dramatic development." -------- china Enter the Dragon: Nuclear Power's Newest Player By Jeremy L. Shane, Published 02/18/2005 http://www.techcentralstation.com/021805E.html Get ready for a new nuclear competition, a no-holds barred battle between two totally different views of nuclear power's future. Unlike past battles, this is not about whether we should build more nukes but rather what kind of nukes we will build. On one side are established nuclear plant builders in the West who think tomorrow's nuclear plants should work a lot like today's, just updated for the 21st century. On the other side is a loose affiliation of scientists spanning three continents who believe nuclear plants should work in a completely different way. Their design is called "pebble-bed modular reactor", or PBMR, after the billiard-ball shaped balls of nuclear fuel that provide its energy. Until recently, the incumbent powers were cruising to victory; the rebels could not even get a demonstration reactor built. Then China entered the fray committed to making PBMRs work. Now, the race is on. The difference between incumbent nuke designs and PBMR is like night and day. Western reactors reflect the "bigger is better" mentality that prevailed when plants were first built. Industry mismanagement in the 1970's and 1980's added layers of safety systems to already complex designs. U.S. nuclear plants are run much better today than a decade ago, but next generation designs still feature tons of safety-oriented concrete and mazes of redundant valves, controls, and piping. PBMRs, by contrast, epitomize Internet Age principles of miniaturization and modularity. Each PBMR is about one-fifth the size of a conventional reactor. They are designed without many backup cooling systems in existing plants, relying instead on a reactor core that theoretically cools itself if nuclear fuel gets too hot. PBMR's smaller footprint and simplified design, it's hoped, will allow multiple reactors to be built on one site faster and cheaper. But the challenge to incumbent nuclear companies does not end there. Most of today's nuclear industry profits come from making and replacing fuel in operating plants not building new ones. Western companies have a large stake in preserving how nuclear fuel is now made, a tightly controlled system run by quasi-government entities and nuclear service companies. The status quo works for everyone, consumers included, so long as existing reactor designs are the only viable options. PBMR commercialization would upset this arrangement. PBMR uses a totally different fuel design to current reactors. PBMRs should refuel while running whereas Western designs require refueling shutdowns every two years. So PBMRs do not need either Western-style fuel or Western companies' refueling services. Faced with this challenge, nuclear vendors -- with future plant sales and lucrative fuel and services businesses at stake -- have attacked PBMR as an idea whose time will never come. Until recently, the incumbents were winning. Then China, facing a monumental power shortage, put its top scientific brains to work to commercialize PBMRs. China needs electricity, a lot of it and fast. Coal and oil-fired power plants can meet some of this gap but the only long-term option that can provide China with the amount of power it needs at stable costs and without worsening air pollution is nuclear. China will buy some Western-style nuclear plants but it will not go "all-Western" for important strategic and practical reasons. Strategically, if China only buys Western-style nukes it will become dependent on the Western companies for nuclear fuel. This is an unacceptable political risk since Western politicians will be tempted to shut the nuclear fuel spigot every time China offends. By the same token, Western governments cannot afford to invite China into the nuclear fuel fabrication club given China's proliferation history. Western reactor designs also pose practical issues for China. They require huge up-front capital investments, take years to build, and must be tailored to fit each plant site. This prevents large scale replication. Also, Western-style plants, being large, will introduce big chunks of power onto the power grid when they startup, stressing weak links and requiring the Chinese to beef up key power lines. China needs a technology it can control, one that is less capital-intensive, can be deployed in step with growing power demand, and can be copied nationwide. PBMRs could solve each of these concerns. Being smaller, modular, and quicker to build, PBMRs could meet China's desire for a cheaper, scalable design that can be copied a hundred-fold. The technological barrier that has stopped PBMRs from becoming viable -- its use of a totally new fuel design -- is for China, a virtue. China wants a technology that gives it entre to the nuclear fuel business. Over time this would enable China to build an international market for PBMRs, financing domestic construction with overseas sales of PBMRs and lifetime fuel supply contracts. In a time of simmering nuclear proliferation horrors the possibility of an unfettered Chinese nuclear export program is reason alone for concern. Still the U.S. government seems frozen at least publicly over the PBMR challenge. Perhaps officials are hoping, along with Western nuclear companies, that the Chinese fail and PBMR goes away. Great, except what if the Chinese succeed? The West is in a policy conundrum: it cannot provide what China needs (electricity and autonomy) and China cannot afford what the West will demand (dependency). So Western nuclear powers, led by the U.S., must come up with something better or else risk a Chinese PBMR program that ignores Western proliferation and safety concerns. But is co-development feasible? What could the West hope to gain? First, if China builds PBMRs, by definition, it will also build its own nuclear fuel capability. This is no small task. The hardest nut to crack with PBMRs is to fabricate thousands of identical fuel spheres each of which meets atomic-level tolerances. The Chinese also will need to build systems for PBMR reactors to eject used fuel spheres safely, and inject them, while the plant runs. Co-developing these systems with the Chinese should be a win-win: both will gain know-how and reduce the risk of an accident caused by poorly-designed or built fuel. Joint U.S.-China development of PBMRs could address proliferation concerns. Western-style nuclear fuel is moved in large, tightly-controlled shipments. PBMR fuel spheres -- smaller and self-contained -- could be stolen or "lost" much easier. And while no one is advertising ways to extract and enrich material from PBMR fuel, sadly, where there's a will there's a way. Every PBMR fuel sphere should be implanted with a tracking device, an RFID chip or some other "Alias"-style wizardry, to ensure around-the-clock monitoring of every fuel sphere made. These safeguards are unlikely to be at the top of China's to-do list if they are left to go it alone, as its scientists face overwhelming pressure to get PBMR on-line at any cost. A final reason to co-develop PBMR is the law of unintended consequences. China is developing PBMRs hoping they will meet future power needs. Western governments, on the other hand, assume current nuclear plants will be replaced by a new generation of similar designs. In fact, neither assumption may come true. PBMRs could take far longer to perfect than the Chinese hope leaving a yawning gap in their power supply. Meanwhile, opposition in the West and Japan to building more, large nukes would increase pressure on oil, coal, and gas supplies. U.S.-Sino relations and the western energy situation could deteriorate simultaneously. This could happen even if China and the U.S. work together on PBMRs. However, if the U.S. helps China with PBMR, it will be much better positioned to help meet China's power shortages if the PBMR program suffers setbacks. If China believes PBMR ultimately will be viable, just delayed, it could be more receptive to buying Western-style nuclear plants without fearing permanent dependence on Western nuclear fuel. This outcome is preferable to letting China embark on a PBMR program alone only to face, if it fails, a new Sino-Russian-Iranian energy alliance or Chinese military moves to secure energy supplies -- or both. The U.S., too, needs more nuclear options than just current designs. If the U.S. cannot build a nuclear waste disposal site after a decade of political warfare -- an issue pitting one state against forty-seven -- what chance does it have to build another generation of super-sized nuclear plants before existing plants retire? Working with China to figure out whether PBMRs are viable could give the U.S. another option to rejuvenate its energy portfolio. If land is a premium, electricity rate stability a must, and simpler safer plant designs a priority, commercial PBMRs could be just the ticket. Jeremy L. Shane is CEO of company that develops software to manage power plants. Formerly, he was an energy trader and a policy aide in the U.S. Department of Justice. If you are a producer or reporter who is interested in receiving more information about this article or the author, please email your request to interview@techcentralstation.com. ---- U.S., China agree on North Korea nukes 2/18/2005 9:57 AM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-18-nkorea_x.htm SEOUL, South Korea — The United States and China agree that North Korea must end its nuclear ambitions and resolve the standoff through six-nation talks, Washington's top envoy on the issue said Friday, as efforts to restart the negotiations gained momentum. Reviving the stalled talks has taken on greater urgency since North Korea's explosive but unconfirmed declaration last week that it has become a nuclear power. The talks involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan. North Korea "has made a big mistake in developing these nuclear programs ... and we are to help them overcome this mistake," U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said in Seoul after a visit to Beijing Thursday to meet with Chinese officials. "But to help them, they are going to have to help themselves, and the first issue they need to do is coming to the table," said Hill, who is also U.S. ambassador to South Korea. Hill, who was appointed envoy for the nuclear talks Monday, said he and Chinese officials were in "absolute agreement on the need for North Korea to come back to the process." China announced Thursday it would send a top Communist Party official to North Korea this week, although it did not give an exact date for the trip by Wang Jiarui, head of the party's international department. The official China Daily newspaper said Friday that Wang would go this weekend, citing an unidentified Beijing source. Washington hopes China will use its economic influence on North Korea to persuade it to stop developing nuclear weapons. Beijing is North Korea's last key ally and an indispensable supplier of fuel and trade for its impoverished neighbor. North Korea says it is boycotting the talks until Washington abandons what it calls a hostile policy toward the North. President Bush on Thursday said diplomacy was the right strategy. "Now is the time for us to work with friends and allies who have agreed to be part of the process to determine what we're jointly going to do about it," he said at a news conference in Washington. China has hosted three inconclusive rounds of six-nation talks since 2003. North Korea refused to attend a fourth round, scheduled for last September. Confronting its own nuclear issues, South Korea on Friday said it will enact a new law to tighten controls over nuclear activities after secret experiments by South Korean scientists embarrassed the country last year. The Ministry of Science and Technology will complete a draft this month and present a bill to the National Assembly in May, a government statement said. The bill "aims to help prevent nuclear materials from being diverted for use in nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," the statement said. "It will also outlaw any development of nuclear weapons by the government, groups or individuals and support for such activities." South Korea is a signatory to international treaties that forbid the development of nuclear weapons. But the country's nuclear activities came under scrutiny last year when it admitted that its scientists conducted plutonium and uranium experiments in 1982 and 2000. In November, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency criticized the country for the experiments but refrained from taking tougher measures, including referral to the U.N. Security Council. Although plutonium and enriched uranium are two main elements of nuclear weapons, an IAEA report said there was no evidence that the experiments were applied to an arms program. South Korea has repeatedly said the experiments were unauthorized and were for scientific research only. But North Korea accused the U.N. nuclear watchdog and the United States of applying "double standards" and giving "tacit approval" to South Korea to pursue a nuclear weapons program. Also, South Korea said it will begin sending electricity across its heavily armed border with North Korea next month to power a joint-venture industrial park despite heightened nuclear tensions. The industrial complex in Kaesong, a North Korean town just north of the mine-strewn border, is the best known among the handful of joint economic ventures between the two countries. -------- depleted uranium 'It is the Same Here as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki' Serbians Suffer Long-term Effects of NATO Depleted Uranium Bombs by Suemori Akira, ZNet Friday, Feb 18, 2005 http://www.disabilities.afreepress.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=280930&cp=309460 [Translator's Introduction: The manufacture of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition is a prototypical Cold War arms race story. The Pentagon reported in the 1970s that the Soviet military had developed armor plating for Warsaw Pact tanks that NATO ammunition couldn't penetrate, and began searching for material to make harder bullets, bombs, and shells. After testing various metals, ordnance researchers settled on depleted uranium, a low-level radioactive waste left over from making nuclear fuel and bombs. DU ammunition, which scorches through metal targets, is now supplied to arsenals in the U.S. and abroad which also continue to store "conventional" ammunition. DU shells, when fired, leave a radioactive trail of toxic dust that still lies in parts of Kuwait and Iraq where they were first fired in combat during the 1991 Gulf War. Prohibited from use in training anywhere overseas, it is restricted certain installations in the United States. Citing serious health risks, the Pentagon requires moon-suit type protective gear when approaching anything hit with DU ordnance. Nevertheless, the American press revealed in 1996 that Marine Corps aircraft had been firing depleted uranium shells on their bombing range at Torishima Island, just off Okinawa in an important fishing ground. When Okinawans, particularly local fishermen, angrily protested over yet another act of negligence by the U.S. military that threatened their safety, welfare, and livelihood, a Marine Corps spokesman claimed that the radiation "amounts to only about what a color television set emits." By that time, however, Congressional hearings had reported that both veterans of the Gulf War and Iraqi civilians were suffering serious, long-term disabilities with depleted uranium as the suspected cause. They continue to suffer debilitating effects from radiation to this day. But that is hardly the end of the story.] Used not only in Iraq, NATO dropped approximately 30,000 depleted uranium bombs in air raids on Kosovo and elsewhere in Yugoslavia. Soldiers and civilians now suffer from cancer and other diseases. Five years have now passed since NATO air attacks on Serbia and Montenegro in Yugoslavia. A confrontation in Kosovo between ethnic Albanians, who make up a majority, and a Serbian minority escalated into armed conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Serbian Security Forces. A "humanitarian intervention" relying on air power lasted 78 days. It was supposed to lead to stabilization, but riots erupted last March in Kosovo, now administered by the United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). The chances for resolution of this conflict remain remote. The anguish of battlefield photographers Nedejko Deretic (54) was a press photographer for the former state-operated Tanjug News Agency and recipient of a photography prize awarded by the United Nations. He had always enjoyed good health until he suddenly suffered a cerebral infarction five years ago. He has undergone continued rehabilitation since then, but suffered another in 2000. He can no longer run or move quickly, has trouble remembering things, and is increasingly irritable. Unable to continue the job he loved, he retired at age fifty from the company where he'd worked for eighteen years. A disability pension is his only income.His senior colleague, press photographer Milorad Dobricic, died last winter from cancer of the lymph glands. He was fifty-five. Another press photographer for Tanjug is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer of the lymph glands. "All three were in the best of health and among our best news photographers, so they photographed the war the longest. Working for the state agency, they often accompanied the military for official coverage, and, whenever a bombing was reported, would hurry to the site within an hour," explained Dragan Milenkovic (57), former chief of Tanjug's photography section. During the 78 days of bombing, Deretic was in Kosovo a total of one month photographing the damage. "Weapons didn't kill me during the war," he says. "But I believe depleted uranium is what made me sick." Decontamination has been slow and difficult. NATO forces dropped about 30,000 depleted uranium bombs in 1999, leaving approximately ten tons of DU in Serbia and Montenegro. DU ammunition was first used in the 1991 Gulf War by U.S. and British forces. Ingestion by soldiers and local residents has been cited as the suspected cause of serious health problems. Yet it was more than one year before NATO officials revealed the locations where they said DU had been used. And, according to Colonel Predrag Minjlovic, there are obvious errors. "NATO indicated where pilots interviewed said they had dropped bombs, but these places were quite far from where the bombs landed." Large numbers of depleted uranium bombs remain in the soil where many penetrated some 1.5 meters underground in the mud. According to Colonel Minjlovic, this happened because, although DU bombs were used for their power to penetrate tank armor, they only hit a total of four or five tanks. All the others buried in the ground could easily have drifted in the rainwater. Efforts continue to remove them and the soil they've contaminated, but the job has been completed at only two of the 90 locations identified in a survey by Serbian and Montenegro authorities as the sites of 99 bombings. Now funds are running out, but Western countries have not responded positively to appeals for assistance. All that can be done is to cordon off the other 88 sites. Depleted uranium ammunition was used mostly where the conflict was centered in Kosovo and in southern Serbia. I visited Bujanovas in southern Serbia where approximately 58,000 people live in the town and nearby villages. With antenna for telephone and television communications located there, the surrounding hills were targeted for bombing. Radiation phobia Dr. Milan Jocic has worked for more than fifteen years at a hospital in the center of town. "Since the bombings, cancers of the lungs, bones, and tongue have all increased with many children falling ill. The number of cases has risen at least 30 percent. Many more people are dying young. It is the same here as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Zorisa Markovic (58), a reporter, formerly with the Tanjug News Agency now with Balkan newspaper, has long covered health care issues. He estimates that "it will take more than ten years to determine accurately the effects of depleted uranium ammunition. When symptoms began appearing among Italian soldiers, there was an uproar in the Western European media, but in Serbia under economic sanctions there was no money to survey the health of residents. What is known is how much depleted uranium was dropped, and that cancer has increased since the bombings which are also thought to have caused weakened resistance to stress. Another problem is that many young physicians, who see no future here, have left for other countries." The bombings targeted not only military installations, but also the economic infrastructure. They hit the oil refinery at Pancevo, 20 kilometers north of Belgrade, causing the release of dioxin poison. Deretic, the Tanjug photojournalist, rushed there after the bombing to film the damage. Zora Zunic (57), a researcher at the National Institute for the Study of Atomic Energy, emphasized the need to monitor the bombings' contamination of underground water. "At this point," he added, "their psychological effects in the form of radiation phobia are even more widespread than the physiological illnesses." "Accident" sparks rioting. "No one can cross the bridge to bring people over here, or take them across to the other side," an officer of the United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) stated emphatically. The river running through the town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo forms the border dividing the Albanian and Serbian ethnic districts. In March, 2004, the death of three Albanian boys in the village of Chabra, about eight kilometers west of Mitrovica, ignited protests among local residents. The worst two days of rioting since 1999 spread to other areas of Kosovo, taking the lives of nineteen people and causing some 4,000 to flee their homes. According to Georgi Kakuk, UNMIK press officer at Mitrovica district headquarters, "We have found no attacker, either a dog or a human suspect. This was most likely an accident." The boys' bereaved families don't buy his explanation. In Chabra I visited Cerkin Vesely (37), whose younger son had been nine when he died. "The investigation of their deaths as politically motivated has ended," he said with chagrin, dismissing the possibility that they were accidental. "The river's waters were high and cold at the time. No one was going there." His eldest son, who had managed to swim to safety, said that the boys had been chased by a Serbian with a dog. "Someone has to take the responsibility for finding them." The family is still in shock. They have not placed their son's photograph in the house, keeping it in a drawer at Mr. Vesely's workplace. Guiding me around the village, he explained that "all the houses are the same style because they were rebuilt after the Serbians demolished them five years ago. Twenty-two villagers were killed, and five are still missing." He stared at the Serbian village a few hundred meters from the river where his son had died. Asked about the future of Kosovo, he replied, "Things in Kosovo will get better, if it becomes independent." As for the Serbians, they grow ever more apprehensive living under the present circumstances in Kosovo cut off from Serbia. Families commute by train to the ruins of homes they were forced to flee. I visited the village of Zvecan, about three kilometers from Mitrovica, where Serbian civilians must now live as refugees from the March, 2004 rioting. After entering a building with brick siding, I met a family staying in a drab concrete room. The building had been under construction when it was hastily prepared to house refugees. There was no toilet or running water. Bozidar Antic (67) and his wife Gordana (67) came from the village of Svinjare, about three kilometers from Mitrovica. Approximately 180 Serbian and twenty Albanian families had lived there. But with the three children's deaths last March, Albanian protests spread throughout Kosovo and the NATO-led international Kosovo Force (KFOR) lost control of public safety. "Albanians carrying weapons ran into the village from all sides. They started breaking the windows of our homes and throwing gasoline-soaked rags inside. The KFOR troops were there, but did nothing. Some wanted to mount an armed defense, but the U.N. had taken away all their weapons after the bombings. So we Serbians gathered in the center of the village after their attack, and escaped in a U.N. truck." As Mr. Antic told what had happened, his wife's eyes filled with tears. The family had been forced to flee, literally, with only the clothes on their backs. Three coffee cups and one saucer were among the only things left in the burnt ruins of their home. Still, they wanted to keep some remembrance of it, and had retrieved a pot with scorch holes from the ashes. Though only a few kilometers away, going back to their village is far from easy. The only way is to take a train through Albanian territory, leaving and returning the same day. Mitrovica station is in an Albanian district, and Albanians board the train one stop before it at Zvecan. The glass in the train windows was replaced after the riots, but we can see new cracks made by stones thrown at the train as it passes through Albanian territory. Fearing the Albanians, Serbians try to travel to and from the village in groups. On board I met Lelja Radivojevic (86) who, nevertheless, rode the train alone. He had already gone back and forth about ten times. After arriving at the station where KFOR troops were standing, we climbed a narrow road between the unscathed houses of ethnic Albanians to reach the burnt remains of his home. "I've lived almost ninety years, but what took so much work to build was reduced to ashes in a day. Some people coming to see the burnt ruins of their home might get upset, but I was born in this house so it calms me to come here." That's why he returns over and over again to the home that will never be like it was before, no matter how many times he comes to see it. He hadn't wanted to leave the day it burned down, but his eldest son came and took him away. "I want to stay to die here," he told me. His second son who had lived here with him died six years ago. "He was shot by an Albanian. The attack on our village had nothing to do with the death of those children. It was planned and organized by Albanian extremists." All the Serbians in the village whose houses were burned agree with him, and they deeply resent the blatant ineffectuality of the United Nations. With Serb and Albanian opinion clashing over the issue of independence, nothing bright can be seen in Kosovo's future. All that can be seen is the devastation inflicted on its residents from "humanitarian" bombings by countries who won't put their soldiers at risk on the ground. This article appeared in Shukan Kinyobi, October 1, 2004, pp. 35-37. Suemori Akira is a photojournalist. If you have a news story that you would like to publish, or you wish to comment on this story, please contact the Editor, John Perry, at perryjohn1962@yahoo.co.uk or visit http://www.jkpenterprises.co.uk ---- ANOTHER WAR CRIME? IRAQI CITIES "HOT" WITH DEPLETED URANIUM August 18, 2003 -- By Sara Flounders http://www.join-snafu.org/du.htm Has U.S. use of depleted-uranium weapons turned Iraq into a radioactive danger area for both Iraqis and occupation troops? This question has already had serious consequences. In hot spots in downtown Baghdad, reporters have measured radiation levels that are 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal background radiation levels. It has also opened a debate in the Netherlands parliament and media as 1,100 Dutch troops in Kuwait prepare to enter Iraq as part of the U.S./British-led occupation forces. The Dutch are concerned about the danger of radioactive poisoning and radiation sickness in Iraq. Washington has assured the Dutch government that it used no DU weapons near Al-Samawah, the town where Dutch troops will be stationed. But Dutch journalists and anti-war forces have already found holes in the U.S. stories according to an article on the Radio Free Europe website. The original expose came from M.H.J. van den Berg of RISQ "the Review of International Social Questions" and was picked up by the Dutch media. DU-caused radiation had already raised alarms in Europe after studies showed increased rates of cancers, respiratory ailments and other disabilities of occupation troops from NATO countries stationed in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. In general, the health and environmental dangers of weapons made with DU radioactive waste have received far more attention in Europe than in the U.S. In this year's war on Iraq, the Pentagon used its radioactive arsenal mainly in the urban centers, rather than in desert battlefields as in 1991. Many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and U.S. soldiers, along with British, Polish, Japanese and Dutch soldiers sent to join the occupation, will suffer the consequences. The real extent of injuries, chronic illness, long-term disabilities and genetic birth defects won't be apparent for five to 10 years. By now, half of all the 697,000 U.S. soldiers involved in the 1991 war have reported serious illnesses. According to the American Gulf War Veterans Association, more than 30 percent of these soldiers are chronically ill and are receiving disability benefits from the Veterans Administration. Such a high occurrence of various symptoms has led to the illnesses being named Gulf War Syndrome. This number of disabled veterans is shockingly high. Most are in their mid-thirties and should be in the prime of health. Before sending troops to the Gulf region, the military had already sifted out those with disabilities or chronic health problems from asthma, diabetes, heart conditions, cancers and birth defects. A LONG-TERM PROBLEM The impact of tons of radioactive waste polluting major urban centers may seem a distant problem to Iraqis now trying to survive in the chaos of military occupation. They must cope with power outages during the intense heat of summer, door-to-door searches, arbitrary arrests, civilians routinely shot at roadblocks, outbreaks of cholera and dysentery from untreated water, untreated sewage and uncollected garbage, more than half the work force unemployed, and a lack of food-- which before the war was distributed by the Baathist regime. But along with these current threats are long-range problems. Around the world a growing number of scientific organizations and studies have linked Gulf War Syndrome and the high rate of assorted and mysterious sicknesses to radiation poisoning from weapons made with depleted uranium. Scott Peterson, a staff writer for the Christian Science Moni tor, reported on May 15 about taking Geiger counter readings at several sites in Baghdad. Near the Republican Palace where U.S. troops stood guard and over 1,000 employees walked in and out of the building, his radiation readings were the "hottest" in Iraq, at nearly 1,900 times background radiation levels. Spent shell casings still littered the ground. At a roadside vegetable stand selling fresh bunches of parsley, mint and onions outside Baghdad, children played on a burnt-out Iraqi tank. The reporter's Geiger counter registered nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation. The U.S. uses armor-piercing shells coated with DU to destroy tanks. The Aug. 4 Seattle Post Intelligencer reported elevated radiation levels at six sites from Basra to Baghdad. One destroyed tank near Baghdad had 1,500 times the normal background radiation. "The Pentagon and the United Nations estimate that the U.S. and Britain used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium during attacks on Iraq in March and April--far more than the 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War," wrote the Post Intelligencer. The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle analyzed swabs from bullet holes in Iraqi tanks and confirmed elevated radiation levels. RADIOACTIVE AND TOXIC The extremely dense DU shells easily penetrate steel armor and burn on impact. The fire releases microscopic, radioactive and toxic dust particles of uranium oxide that travel with the wind and can be inhaled or ingested. They also spread contamination by seeping into the land and water. In the human body, DU may cause harm to the internal organs due both to its chemical toxicity as a heavy metal and its release of radiation. An otherwise useless by-product of the uranium-enrichment process, DU is attractive to military contractors because it is so cheap, often offered for free by the government. According to the Uranium Medical Research Center, the toxic and radiological effects of uranium contamination may weaken the immune system. They may cause acute respiratory conditions like pneumonia, flu- like symptoms and severe coughs, renal or gastrointestinal illnesses. Dr. Asaf Durakovic of UMRC explains that the initial symptoms will be mostly neurological, showing up as headaches, weakness, dizziness and muscle fatigue. The long-term effects are cancers and other radiation- related illnesses, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, joint and muscle pain, rashes, neurological and/or nerve damage, mood disturbances, infections, lung and kidney damage, vision problems, auto-immune deficiencies and severe skin conditions. It also causes increases in miscarriages, maternal mortality and genetic birth defects. For years the government described Gulf War Syndrome as a post-traumatic stress disorder. It was labeled a psychological problem or simply dismissed as mysterious unrelated ailments. In this same way the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration treated the health problems of Vietnam vets suffering from Agent Orange poisoning. THE COVERUP The U.S. government denies that DU weapons can cause sickness. But before the first Gulf War, where DU weapons were used extensively, the Pentagon's own internal reports warned that the radiation and heavy metal of DU weapons could cause kidney, lung and liver damage and increased rates of cancer. Ignoring these dangers, the Pentagon went on to use these weapons, which gave it a big advantage in tank battles. But it denied publicly that DU use was related to the enormously high rate of sicknesses among GIs following the war. Today the Pentagon plays an even more duplicitous role. It continues to assert that there are no "known" health problems associated with DU. But Army training manuals require anyone who comes within 75 feet of any DU- contaminated equipment or terrain to wear respiratory and skin protection. The manuals say that "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption." According to the Army Environmental Policy Institute, holding a spent DU round exposes a person to about 200 rems per hour, or twice the annual radiation exposure limit. This March and April U.S. and British forces fired hundreds of thousands of DU rounds in dense urban areas. Superfine uranium oxide particles were blown about in dust storms. Yet the Pentagon refuses to track, report or mark off where DU was fired. There is no way Iraqis or the occupying soldiers can keep 75 feet away or use respiratory and skin protection in 120-degree heat. The American Gulf War Veterans Association (AGWVA) reports that suffering veterans are receiving little, if any, medical treatment for their illnesses. "Whenever veterans become ill, the term 'mystery illness' seems to be the first and often the only diagnosis that is ever made. Veterans are then left to fend for themselves, sick and unable to work, with little hope of a normal life again." Iraq's National Ministry of Health organized two international conferences to present data on the relationship between the high incidence of cancer and the use of DU weapons. It produced detailed epidemiological reports and statistical studies. This data showed a six- fold increase in breast cancer, a five-fold increase in lung cancer and a 16-fold increase in ovarian cancer. Because of the U.S.-imposed sanctions, Iraqi doctors and scientists were barred from presenting their research papers in most of the world. Doug Rokke of AGWVA, former head of the U.S. Army DU Project, who is seriously ill with respiratory problems, has been campaigning against the use of DU. Rokke reports that U.S. troops presently in Iraq are already falling sick with a series of Gulf War Syndrome symptoms. The AGWVA says the Department of Defense has information regarding "mystery" deaths of soldiers in this latest war and the emergence of a mysterious pneumonia that has sickened at least 100 men and women. U.S. POSITION: NO CLEAN-UP While the U.K. has admitted that British Challenger tanks expended some 1.9 tons of DU ammunition during major combat operations in Iraq this year, the U.S. has refused to disclose specific information about whether and where it used DU during this yearcampaign. It also is refusing to let a team from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) study the environmental impact of DU contamination in Iraq. Despite this refusal, it is public knowledge that the U.S. made extensive use of weapons that can fire DU shells. These include the A-10 Warthog tank-buster aircraft with 30-mm cannons that can fire up to 4,200 DU rounds per minute; the AC-130 gunship; the "Apache" helicopter, and Bradley fighting vehicles that fire anti-armor 105-mm to 120-mm tank rounds containing DU. The U.S. followed the same tactics in the wars in the Balkans. While claiming full cooperation with UNEP's Balkans studies, the Pentagon delayed releasing target locations for 16 months. It gave misleading map information. Then bomb, missile and cluster-bomb targets were excluded. NATO allowed 10 other teams to visit or clean up sites before UNEP inspections started. Washington refuses to acknowledge DU use anywhere or that it poses any danger. To acknowledge radiation poisoning would immediately raise demands for a cleanup. According to Alex Kirby, BBC News Online environment correspondent: "The U.S. says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted uranium weapons it is using in Iraq. It says no cleanup is needed, because research shows DU has no long-term effects." EVIDENCE OF DU USE But in the information age, the Pentagon can't suppress all the evidence. The Dutch example shows this. Though the U.S. government specifically denied any firing of DU weapons near the city of Al- Samawah, where Dutch troops were to be stationed, a simple Internet search by journalists undid this lie. The Dutch government, to get a resolution through the parliament to authorize sending troops to Iraq, depicted the Al-Samawah region as a remote, barely inhabited desert where no noteworthy events had occurred. In actual fact, Al-Samawah is strategically located on the road from Basra to Baghdad, providing access to a bridge over the Euphrates River. On its march to Baghdad, the U.S. Army encountered fierce resistance from Iraqi forces there, according to American officers. This was well covered by their embedded media. It was more than a week before the town and the road were cleared of all pockets of resistance. Some 112 civilians, most of them inhabitants of Al-Samawah, were killed in battle. DU ammunition was widely used during this operation. In a widely distributed field message, Sergeant First Class Cooper reported that the weapons systems used by the 3rd Infantry, 7th Cavalry, en route to Al- Samawah and on to Najaf, were performing well, especially the 25-mm DU and 7.62. Of greater interest to Internet researchers was a letter a young soldier sent home to his parents, which they posted in their church bulletin on the Internet. In the letter E. Pennell, a crew member on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle of the 1st Infantry Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, described how his crew fired a 25-mm DU round as they encountered seven Iraqi troops in the town of Al-Samawah. Pennell's letter has raised concern among groups like the United Federation of Military Personnel, a kind of labor union for Dutch troops. It fears that its members might be at risk of contracting cancer or other diseases because of exposure to DU ammunition. RESISTANCE: THE ONLY SOLUTION Officers and politicians in imperialist countries have always treated rank-and-file soldiers as cannon fodder. These young lives are totally expendable. The occupied or colonized people are not counted at all. As a global movement against imperialist wars grew over the past century, military planners made great efforts to hide the true costs of war, especially the human cost. The nearly 60,000 U.S. casualties in the Vietnam War provoked a mighty mass anti-war movement. This time, long before U.S. casualties reached 100 soldiers, the movement to "Bring the Troops Home" had gained momentum. This new movement must demand a true accounting of the enormous human costs of the war. The impact on the health and future of not only U.S. troops but the millions of people in Iraq must be part of the demand. A growing international movement must demand full reparations for the Iraqi people. A cleanup of the toxic, radioactive waste is in the interests of all the people of the region. The cost of the war must be calculated in terms of bankrupt social programs here in the U.S. and the health of all the people who were in the region during the war and will be in the years to come. Sara Flounders is co-director of the International Action Center and coordinator of the DU Education Project. She is an editor and a contributing author of the book "Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium," and helped produce a video by the same name. The IAC helped organize an international effort to bring the issue of DU to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and helped measure radiation levels in Iraq before the 2003 war. Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, How the Pentagon Radiates Soldiers & Civilians with DU Weapons by Various Authors Available from Leftbooks.com A devastating exposé of the Pentagon's new weapons comprised of Depleted Uranium. This is the book you've heard about, but won't see in most bookstores. Now in it's second printing you can read scientists; Gulf War veterans; leaders of environmental, anti-nuclear, anti-military and community movements discuss: the connection of Depleted Uranium to Gulf War Syndrome and a new generation of radioactive conventional weapons. Understand how the bizarre Pentagon recycling plans of nuclear waste creates a new global threat. Authors include former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Dr. Michio Kaku, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Jay M. Gould, Dan Fahey, Sara Flounders, Manuel Pino and many others. List price is $12.95 but at leftbooks.com it's 15% off, only $11.00 International Action Center, Published 1997, Second edition 1999, ISBN: 0-9656916-0-8, Soft Cover, 272 p.p., Index, Photos, Tables. Price: $ 11.00 ---- Third N.C.-Based Soldier Dies After Exhibiting Flu-Like Symptoms Sgt. Clay Garton Reportedly Dies From Infection POSTED: 6:49 pm EST February 17, 2005 UPDATED: 9:04 am EST February 18, 2005 http://www.wral.com/news/4209862/detail.html RALEIGH, N.C. -- The mysterious death of a third soldier with North Carolina ties is raising questions. All three died from flu-like symptoms after returning from overseas deployments. Sgt. Clay Garton's family says the Army veteran exhibited flu-like symptoms after returning from overseas deployments. Sgt. Clay Garton was a flight medic at Fort Bragg. He spent 16 months in Iraq and returned home in July. Then, he got sick. His family said he had symptoms like the flu. He fought it for three weeks, but his fever soared to 106 degrees. The day after Christmas, he died. "They came out in five minutes and said, 'He's gone,'" said Duane Garton, Clay's father. According to a preliminary autopsy report, Garton's liver and spleen were swollen. His wife said doctors told her he died from infection. It is the third recent example of soldiers dying after exhibiting flu-like symptoms. Capt. Gilbert Munoz was a special forces soldier at Fort Bragg who was deployed to the Middle East. After he got back, he died from a bacterial infection. Video Third N.C.-Based Soldier Dies After Exhibiting Flu-Like Symptoms Sgt. Christopher Rogers was a reservist from Raleigh. He went to Afghanistan. After he came home, his temperature hit 109 degrees. His widow, Windy Rogers, wonders whether he had what Munoz had. "Chris was admitted with flu-like symptoms. Whatever it was, it shut all of his organs down -- shut them all down -- and I want to know what happened," she said. Garton's family has questions, too. His wife said while Garton was in Iraq, he treated someone exposed to depleted uranium. Garton's father wonders if that had something to do with his death. "He went through 16 months of hell and he came back and they didn't do nothing for him," he said. WRAL called Fort Bragg, the Department of the Army and some congressional offices. At this point, it does not appear that anyone is investigating the deaths or trying to determine if there is a common cause. Previous Stories: • February 15, 2005: Doctors Try To Determine Cause Of Death For Raleigh Army Reservist http://www.wral.com/news/4201783/detail.html -------- europe Tenth Shipment of Reprocessed Japanese Nuclear Waste Heading Home to France February 18, 2005 — By Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7160 CHERBOURG, France — Reprocessed nuclear waste headed for Japan was loaded aboard a ship Thursday for the nearly two-month journey home, France's state-run reprocessing plant said. The "Pacific Sandpiper" was loaded with 124 containers of highly radioactive waste which was reprocessed at the Cogema plant at nearby La Hague. Trucks traveling under tight security delivered the containers, bound in five packages, to this western port. Details of the sea route were not divulged. The cargo -- the tenth such shipment to Japan -- is to leave on Thursday night and arrive in Japan in April. Japanese electricity companies are under contract with Cogema to reprocess the waste from plants in Japan. The waste is routinely sent on ships to Britain and France for vitrification, a process by which it is packed into glass, then returned home. Environmental groups, as well as some Pacific and Caribbean states, have said the shipments pose a potential threat. The first such shipment was in 1995. ---- France's nuclear response to Kyoto By Caroline Wyatt BBC News correspondent in Paris Friday, 18 February, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4276461.stm As the Kyoto Protocol comes into force, some scientists are suggesting that nuclear power could make an unexpected comeback as a "cleaner" alternative to conventional energy sources. They point to France, which derives some 78% of its energy from its 58 nuclear reactors, which operate with little or no public opposition. The French President, Jacques Chirac, is a big fan of nuclear energy. He recently told a nuclear safety conference in Moscow that nuclear energy in France was not only the most economic choice, but also the most environmentally friendly. While nuclear power does have its environmental opponents in France, they are far outweighed by friends of the nuclear energy lobby, which numbers some surprising allies. Solution? They include French environmentalist Bruno Comby, who has written several books including one titled Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy. He also founded Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy (EFN), an international association aimed at promoting nuclear energy. EFN believes that environmental opposition to nuclear energy is based on a misunderstanding. "If well-managed," Bruno Comby says, "nuclear energy is very clean, does not create polluting gases in the atmosphere, produces very little waste and does not contribute to the greenhouse effect." His beliefs are echoed by the independent scientist James Lovelock, an environmentalist and so-called green. As a lifelong supporter of nuclear energy, he recently argued that civilisation was in imminent danger from global warming and must use nuclear power - "the one safe, available energy source" - to avoid catastrophe. French energy providers point out that alternative sources of energy remain uneconomical compared with nuclear energy. A recent British report by the Royal Academy of Engineering showed that the nuclear option was the second cheapest means of generating electricity, at $0.043 (2.3p) per kilowatt hour, after gas at $0.04 (2.2p), while wind power cost more than $0.09 (5p) per kWh. Growth in emissions However, despite its championing of nuclear energy, France is among the European countries unlikely to hit its Kyoto target for reducing greenhouse emissions. Each EU country pledged to reduce its 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 8% by 2010. Nuclear power has some surprising allies in France By the end of 2003, France was off-target by almost 10%, with only Sweden and the UK expected to meet their commitments. For France, the target represents 552 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Despite using mainly nuclear power, France is still looking for ways to reduce its other emissions. While carbon dioxide emissions have been brought down 15.5% from 1990 to 2001, and French industry has reduced emissions by 25% and energy generation companies by 22%, emissions through transport and house heating increased over the same period. Carbon dioxide emissions from transport have also risen more than 26% since 1990, and emissions from house heating more than 12%. These last two sectors produced 47% of greenhouse gases emitted in France in 2001. So while nuclear energy may be part of the solution for France, on its own it is not enough to live up to its Kyoto promises. -------- india / pakistan India, Pakistan to Finalize Agreement on Missile Test Notification by July, Indian Official Says By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire February 18, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_18.html WASHINGTON — India and Pakistan plan to finalize an agreement establishing a formal system of advance notification of missile tests by this summer, Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said Wednesday (see GSN, Jan. 3). The agreement is one of several Indian and Pakistani officials have been ordered to complete during a set of meetings scheduled to occur by July, Singh said during a joint press conference in Islamabad with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri. The press conference was held following Singh’s visit to Pakistan, the first by an Indian foreign minister since 1989, which also involved meetings with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Other talks to be held by this summer will focus on finalizing memorandums of understanding between the Indian and Pakistani coastal and narcotics authorities, Singh said. India and Pakistan agreed last year to develop a formal advance notification system on missile tests to replace the informal approach now in place. Over the past year, both countries have conducted a number of tests of various nuclear-capable ballistic missile systems. U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency chief Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby warned Congress this week that India and Pakistan’s continued ballistic missile efforts are a reflection of the “tension” between the two nuclear-armed rivals. India and Pakistan also agreed to begin negotiations on developing an agreement to reduce the risk of nuclear accidents or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons, Singh said. Experts yesterday praised the two countries’ decision to develop such an agreement. “Not very long ago, the governments of India and Pakistan belittled the prospect of a nuclear accident or incident. So this is a very positive development that is indicative of far more responsible nuclear stewardship,” said Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington. One concern is that past confidence-building and risk-reduction measures were “hard to sustain” when Indian-Pakistani relations were poor, according to Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “So it will be important to put a system in place that is robust enough, and gets exercised often enough, to be used in times of tension,” she said. Wednesday’s talks were the latest step in a composite peace dialogue India and Pakistan launched last year with the aim of resolving outstanding disputes. Chief among them is the issue of the divided Kashmir region, which remains a potential regional flashpoint. During this week’s meeting, Pakistan “impressed upon the Indian government for an early and final settlement,” Kasuri said. The two countries agreed to launch on April 7 a bus service between the capitals of the divided region — Srinagar on the Indian side of the informal Line of Control and Muzaffarabad on the Pakistani side. Travel will be conducted through an entry permit system, “once identities are verified,” a joint statement says. Both Singh and Kasuri on Wednesday praised the improved relations that have resulted so far from the peace dialogue. “We have noted with satisfaction the overall improvements in atmospherics between the two countries. We have taken positive steps that auger well for the future of bilateral relations. We are strongly committed to carrying forward the composite dialogue process to make it productive and fruitful,” Kasuri said. “I am convinced that cooperation between our two countries is not just a desirable objective; it is an imperative,” Singh said. “My visit has reinforced in me the determination to continue working for expanding cooperation and understanding between our two countries. The people of both our countries clearly desire it.” -------- iran Iran has 'no intention' of acquiring nuclear arms, Putin says Fri Feb 18, 2005 1:51 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050218/wl_mideast_afp/russiairannuclear_050218185130 MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin said Russia was convinced Iran has no intention of making nuclear weapons, but warned Tehran must "strictly respect" rules to make sure it does not do so in exchange for Russian help in developing its civilian nuclear power program. "The latest steps on Iran's behalf persuade us that Iran has no intention of building an atomic weapon," Putin said as he greeted Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Hassan Rowhani, at the Kremlin. "Consequently, we will continue to cooperate with Iran in all fields, including in nuclear energy," the Russian leader said. Putin said he had received and intended to accept an invitation to visit Iran, but stressed that Russia remained "deeply convinced" that the spread of nuclear weapons constituted a serious threat to world security and would not want to see Iran attempt to acquire the bomb. "We hope that Iran will strictly respect all commitments it has made bilaterally with Russia and internationally" not to seek to develop its own nuclear weapons, he stated. Putin's comments came a day after Iran announced that it had agreed to sign on February 26 an agreement under which it would be obliged to return all spent nuclear fuel from civilian reactors to Russia. Iran has stated that its nuclear ambitions were limited strictly to civilian use. It has however in the past used various arguments to avoid signing the agreement to return spent nuclear fuel, including that it was too dangerous to ship and that Moscow was charging too much for the fuel. The absence of the agreement has been, from Russia's point of view, the main impediment to completion of an 800-million-dollar project led by Russia to build a nuclear power plant at Bushehr in southern Iran. Moscow and the West both fear Iran could reprocess the spent fuel delivered from Russia by upgrading it through centrifuges to either make a weak "dirty bomb" or an actual nuclear weapon. The United States and Israel have jointly launched an international campaign against the Bushehr project, but Moscow has countered that it would make sure the plant remained harmless to protect its own security interests. The United States has said it believes Iran is using its civilian nuclear program as cover for an effort to acquire nuclear weapons and has demanded that Iran foreswear any uranium enrichment activities needed to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. The United States has pointedly refused to rule out military action against Iran to make sure it does not acquire a nuclear weapons capacity, and President George W. Bush said Thursday that Washington would back Israel if it were threatened by Iran. "In that Israel is our ally and in that we've made a very strong commitment to support Israel, we will support Israel if her security is threatened," Bush said at a news conference in Washington. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off Putin's remarks and cited Russia's move on the Bushehr project as proof that Moscow shared the concerns of the United States, European Union and UN monitors about Iran. "I think the behavior of everyone suggests that there are good reasons to be suspicious of what the Iranians are doing," she told a news conference Friday in Washington after talks with Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot. "The world appears to be concerned about all of this, to be engaged in a variety of activities that would diminish the capability of the Iranians to build a nuclear weapons under the cover of civilian programs," she said. In contrast to the muscular public rhetoric from the United States, Germany, Britain and France -- the "EU-3" -- have been pursuing efforts to use quiet diplomacy to persuade Tehran to accept outside controls on its nuclear program to ensure it remains peaceful. Rowhani told Putin that Iran believed Russia had a role of "great importance" to play in resolving the dispute over Iran's nuclear program. Rowhani later met Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, ITAR-TASS news agency reported. The two discussed "current and prospective military-technical cooperation between Russia and Iran" along with other unspecified regional and international security issues, the report said. The Iran nuclear issue was on the official agenda of subjects to be discussed at a summit between the United States and the European Union in Brussels next week, an EU source said Friday. ---- Russia backs Iran in nuclear row The Bushehr reactor is being built with Russian assistance Friday, 18 February, 2005 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4276829.stm Russian President Vladimir Putin says recent moves by Iran have convinced him it is not trying to build nuclear arms. He said Moscow would continue working with Tehran in all fields, including nuclear power, adding that he had accepted an invitation to Iran. His comments came at a meeting in Moscow with chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani. Moscow is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor - a project which has been heavily criticised by the US. The Americans accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its nuclear development programme is purely for peaceful, energy-generating purposes. Under an agreement announced on Thursday and due to be signed this month, Moscow will supply Tehran with the nuclear fuel it needs. The spent fuel will be returned to Russia. This was the last issue delaying the start of operations at the Russian-built reactor at Bushehr, in southern Iran. The US believes that the Bushehr reactor - when completed - could enable the Iranians to extract weapons grade plutonium. The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says Russia has close ties with Iran, dating back to Soviet times, and it is determined to continue co-operation despite US opposition. Suspension After his talks with President Putin on Friday, Mr Rowhani said Russia's role may prove "rather useful" in moving ahead discussions on Iran's nuclear programme with Germany, Britain and France. The three have offered to replace a heavy-water nuclear reactor - which can be used to make weapons-grade nuclear material - with a light-water reactor. Low grades of uranium are used for nuclear reactor fuel, but higher grades can be used in atomic bombs. Tehran suspended uranium enrichment temporarily in November, as part of the dialogue process. ---- Putin: Russia will continue nuclear cooperation with Iran 2/18/2005 2:52 PM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-18-russia_x.htm MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he is convinced Iran is not seeking to develop nuclear weapons and announced plans to visit the country, showing strong support for Tehran a week before a summit with President Bush. Putin's bold expression of faith in Tehran starkly contradicts U.S. suspicions about the intentions of Iran, which Bush has labeled part of an "axis of evil" seeking weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorists. (Related video: Putin visits Iran's National Security Council) "The latest steps from Iran confirm that Iran does not intend to produce nuclear weapons," Putin said at a meeting with Iranian National Security Council chief Hassan Rowhani. He said Russia "will continue to develop relations in all spheres, including the peaceful use of nuclear energy." Russia is building a nuclear reactor for a power plant in Iran, a project the United States fears could be used to help Tehran develop nuclear weapons. The $800 million project has harmed Russian-U.S. relations for over a decade. American concerns have been eased by Moscow's refusal to send Iran nuclear fuel for the reactor unless all spent fuel is returned to Russia — an effort to ensure that it wouldn't be reprocessed to extract plutonium, which could be used in weapons. Russia's nuclear chief is expected in Iran next week to sign a protocol on returning the spent fuel, the only remaining obstacle to the reactor's expected launch next year. Putin, who will meet with Bush on Feb. 24 in Slovakia, said he had accepted an invitation from Iran's leadership to visit. The Kremlin said no date has been set. The Russian president's words are bound to alarm U.S. officials who have praised earlier statements which indicated he shared American concerns about Iran's nuclear program. On Monday, a senior U.S. diplomat said Russia had "seen the light" in agreeing that Iran's claims cannot be taken on faith because of the way it has misled the international community about its nuclear program in the past. "There are good reasons to be suspicious of what Iran is doing," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a news conference in Washington on Friday. Rice has warned Iran to come clean or face the prospect of being brought before the U.N. Security Council. A Russian analyst questioned whether Putin's statement was based on actual information or on expediency. Russia has friendly ties with Iran and sees it as an important trade market for its industrial goods and services. "To my mind, it's hard to find arguments to support Putin's declaration," said Anton Khlopkov, director of the PIR Center, which studies weapons issues. He said that "Iran is potentially an important strategic partner for Russia ... (with) a whole series of coinciding interests." At the Kremlin meeting, Putin did say that the "spread of nuclear weapons on the planet does not aid security." "We hope that Iran will strictly adhere to all international agreements, in relation to Russia and the international community," he said. Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, said that "now, no one can doubt that Iran's nuclear program has a peaceful character." Russia does not want the issue to come before the Security Council, where support for a resolution against Tehran could ruin relations with Iran while a veto would bluntly defy the United States. "Russia intends not to allow the isolation of Iran," Khlopkov said. With Security Council referral and Washington's refusal to rule out military action in Iran looming in the background, Russia is supporting European diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to permanently abandon its uranium enrichment program. "We think that Russia can play an important role in this process," Rowhani said. Iran has warned it will resume all nuclear activities it has suspended if talks don't make progress by mid-March. -------- israel U.S. Will Back Israel Against Iran, Bush Says February 18, 2005 Global Security Newswire http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_18.html U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday the United States would support Israel if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Feb. 17). “Iran has made it clear they don’t like Israel, to put it bluntly. And the Israelis are concerned about whether or not Iran develops a nuclear weapon, as are we, as should everybody,” Bush said. “Clearly, if I was the leader of Israel and I’d listened to some of the statements by the Iranian ayatollahs that regarded the security of my country, I’d be concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon as well.” “And in that Israel is our ally and in that we’ve made a very strong commitment to support Israel, we will support Israel if her security is threatened,” he added. Bush said Iran’s nuclear program would be an important topic of discussion when he visits Europe next week. “The objective is to solve this issue diplomatically — is to work with friends, like we’re doing with France, Germany and Great Britain — to continue making it clear to the Iranians that developing a nuclear weapon will be unacceptable” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Feb. 17). Tehran does not expect negotiations with the European powers to produce a “definitive result” by mid-March, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, AFP reported. A round of expert-level negotiations is expected in mid-March before a steering committee meets at the end of March to make conclusions, according to AFP. Kharazi said Iran was prepared to continue to negotiate beyond that time “if we feel that the discussions have been positive.” “The Europeans must make some new proposals. We know the Europeans are concerned about our nuclear program. Now the Europeans must actually tell us how we can dispel those concerns.” Iran is looking to follow the Japanese model on nuclear work, Kharazi said. “Japan has no access to atomic weapons, but employs nuclear technology for peaceful uses,” he said (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, Feb. 17). -------- japan Japan to Join U.S. Policy on Taiwan Growth of China Seen Behind Shift By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, February 18, 2005; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33297-2005Feb17?language=printer TOKYO, Feb. 17 -- The United States and Japan will declare Saturday for the first time in a joint agreement that Taiwan is a mutual security concern, according to a draft of the document. Analysts called the move a demonstration of Japan's willingness to confront the rapidly growing might of China. The United States has long focused attention on the Chinese government's threat to use military force against Taiwan if the island, which China views as a renegade province, moves toward independence. Until now, Japan has been content to let the United States bear the brunt of Beijing's displeasure. But in the most significant alteration since 1996 to the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance, which remains the cornerstone of U.S. interests in East Asia, Japan will join the Bush administration in identifying security in the Taiwan Strait as a "common strategic objective." Set for release after a meeting of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and their Japanese counterparts in Washington on Saturday, the revisions will also call for Japan to take a greater role in conjunction with U.S. forces both in Asia and beyond, according to a draft copy obtained by The Washington Post. Although it is likely to anger China, the move is being welcomed by Taiwan, which, despite having been occupied by Japan from 1895 to 1945, maintains an empathy for the Japanese that is rare in Asia. Elderly Taiwanese, for instance, still show delight in Japanese language and culture. Last month, Taiwan inaugurated its $3 billion, Japanese-built bullet train, which can reach speeds of almost 200 miles per hour. And in December, Japan angered China by granting a tourist visa to former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui, who was educated in Japan and had an emotional reunion here with a former professor. "This is the first time that Japan has made its stance clear; in the past, Japan has been very indirect on the Taiwan issue," said Koh Se-kai, Taiwan's special representative to Japan, which since 1972 has had formal relations with China but not with Taiwan. "We're relieved that Japan has become more assertive." Japan's constitution, drafted by the United States at the end of World War II, prohibits the country from going to war. But there is strong pressure to revise the constitution so that Japan's Self-Defense Forces can act as a real military. Along with the threat of North Korea, which declared itself a nuclear-armed nation last week, the rise of China has become the primary concern fueling Japan's shift away from nearly six decades of pacifism. Japan has generally been inclined to sidestep conflict with China. But in recent years, China has dramatically modernized its military while expanding its sphere of influence in Asia on the strength of its booming economy. The effort to extend its reach has included exploring for natural gas near Japanese-claimed waters only 110 miles north of Taiwan and countering Japan's claims to exclusive economic zones in the Pacific. In response, Japan has also shifted course in the past year, moving to defend its territorial claims in the East China Sea. Last November, Japan dispatched aircraft on a two-day hunt for a Han-class Chinese submarine that briefly intruded into Japan's far southern waters in what many here saw as a test of Japanese resolve in the event of Chinese aggression against Taiwan. "It would be wrong for us to send a signal to China that the United States and Japan will watch and tolerate China's military invasion of Taiwan," said Shinzo Abe, the acting secretary general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party who is widely considered a likely successor to Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister. "If the situation surrounding Japan threatens our security, Japan can provide U.S. forces with support." Such talk reflects what diplomats and scholars call the defining drama of East Asia for the 21st century -- the competition for economic and political dominance in the region between Japan, the world's second-largest economy, and China, the world's most populous nation and a fast-developing economic and military power. "I think the biggest challenge to Japan is going to be how it arranges its relationship with China," the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Howard H. Baker Jr., said on Wednesday. "But how they do that is going to say a lot about stability in this region for years to come. . . . Japan is a superpower; China is on its way to being a superpower. They are both rich, they both have a history and tradition in this region, and they don't much like each other, I think." Analysts note that both China and Japan have substantial reasons for restraint. Last year, China surpassed the United States as Japan's number one trading partner, while massive investments by Japanese companies in search of cheaper labor and larger markets have become a driving factor behind China's blistering 9.5-percent annual growth rate. But if their economic relations are hot, politically the two nations are cool. The Chinese complain about Koizumi's visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine commemorating fallen warriors -- including World War II war criminals. The two governments have also battled over the route of a trans-Siberian pipeline for Russian oil and territorial rights in an East China Sea island chain known as the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese. The Chinese government granted rights two years ago for domestic and foreign oil companies to explore and drill an area only three miles from Japanese-claimed territory -- a region rich in natural gas and oil. This month, Japan pushed back, boosting its claims to the area by officially taking over ownership of a 15-foot lighthouse built on the island chain by Japanese nationalist activists in 1978. "It is time Japan began protecting what is ours," said Makoto Yamazaki, director of the Japan Youth Association, which built the lighthouse and freely handed it over to the government this month. "If our sovereignty is being threatened, we have a right to defend ourselves." But the idea of Japanese military cooperation with the United States in the sea lanes north of Taiwan has particularly rankled Chinese diplomatic and military planners because it goes to the heart of their Taiwan strategy. On the one hand, diplomats and other specialists say, the Chinese military has embarked on a buildup of short-range missiles, naval vessels and electronics-aided aircraft to enable it to threaten the island militarily if President Chen Shui-bian should take what China considers an unacceptably decisive step toward independence. On the other hand, they added, China has set out to improve and extend its maritime and airborne might in the sea lanes north of Taiwan, with the goal of forcing the United States to think twice about military intervention. Within the next five years, according to U.S. estimates, the Chinese navy is expected to have more than 20 modern attack submarines, including half a dozen nuclear-powered vessels. Japanese officials said that the official position advocating a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue has not changed. They said the constitution limits the level of assistance that Japan could offer in the event of a U.S. confrontation with China over Taiwan. But the joint statement on Saturday could help lay the groundwork for the Japanese to extend as much cooperation as they legally can, including logistical support such as transportation and medical rescue operations behind the lines of combat, officials said. "We consider China a friendly country, but it is also unpredictable," a senior Japanese government official said. "If it takes aggressive action, Japan cannot just stand by and watch." Correspondent Edward Cody in Beijing and special correspondents Sachiko Sakamaki and Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report. -------- korea Scenarios Of N.Korea Nuke Drive by Jong-Heon Lee, UPI Correspondent Seoul (UPI) Feb 18, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/nuclear-blackmarket-05j.html Most officials and analysts here are playing down the North's boast of nuclear weapons, saying this is a brinkmanship tactic aimed at gaining leverage over the United States in future dialogue. But some experts say North Korea could further raise the stakes in the 28-month-long nuclear standoff with the United States and caution against optimistic views on the North's nuclear ambitions. North Korea stunned the world last week by declaring it has manufactured nuclear weapons and was pulling indefinitely out of the six-nation talks on its nuclear programs. The Stalinist nation further ratcheted up its nuclear threat this week, pledging to use nuclear bombs to counter any U.S. nuclear strike. "North Korea is now playing a high-risk, high-return gamble," said Nam Joo-hong, ! a strategy expert at Kyonggi University in Seoul. "If North Korea wins the dangerous game, it will help boost survivability of the country and ensure stability of the North Korean regime," he said. "If not, however, North Korea would suffer unprecedented troubles," Nam said, adding North Korea has already crossed the Rubicon. South Korean government officials, who are desperately seeking a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear dispute, also agree on the opinion that the North's nuclear brinkmanship could determine the fate of the communist regime. They say the multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons programs could resume sooner or later unless North Korea takes further steps toward weapons of mass destruction. "The United States and other related nations are stepping up diplomatic efforts to press North Korea to return to the negotiating table," a senior government official told United Pr! ess International. "The North's declaration of nuclear weapons possession seemed largely aimed at testing a U.S. response ahead of the resumption of the six-nation talks," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Pyongyang achieved its initial goal of drawing U.S. attention focused on Iran's nuclear programs, regardless whether Washington believe in nuclear weapons in North Korea," the official said, predicting Pyongyang would return to negotiations "when an appropriate time comes." But unless the United States or North Korea comes up with new proposals and the both reach a compromise, the six-nation talks would further stall even though they resume, officials and analysts say. The United States and North Korea have held three rounds of the six-way talks that also involved Japan, China, Russia and South Korea since 2003, but no significant progress has been made, with suspicions that North Korea has stalled nego! tiations to buy time to develop atomic bombs. The new round of nuclear row erupted in 2002, when U.S. officials accused North Korea of admitting to pushing a clandestine uranium-based arms program, in addition to its known plutonium-based one, in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord. Prof. Nam said the current nuclear standoff is more serious than the 1993 crisis because North Korea sparked the new crisis with the declaration of nuclear weapons possession, considered as a fait accompli. Officials and analysts, including Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik, said the situation could turn much serious if North Korea takes further steps, such as extracting additional plutonium from spent fuel rods from a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor it reactivated last year, or transferring nuclear material to other countries, Lee said. North Korea said last summer that it had completed reprocessing 8,000 spent fu! el rods from the reactor, a process outside experts said could give the country enough plutonium to make several atomic bombs. North Korea also could test-fire ballistic missiles capable of loading nuclear warheads. In 1998, North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong-I ballistic missile that flew over Japan and landed into the Pacific Ocean. The communist state is now believed to be developing longer-range missiles that could strike western parts of the United States, such as Alaska and Hawaii. South Korea's Defense Ministry and the intelligence agency estimates that North Korea's technology has yet to make its bombs light enough to be carried on its missiles. "In order to put a nuclear bomb on a missile, they should make it weigh less than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds), but we don't think North Korea has acquired such technology," said an official at the National Intelligence Agency. But U.S. CIA D! irector Porter Goss said on Wednesday that North Korea could test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the United States "at any time." He also said North Korea may have enough plutonium for more than two nuclear bombs, more than in the previous U.S. assessment, and probably has chemical and biological weapons "ready to use." Seoul's largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, cited government sources, confirmed this saying North Korea has developed a new type of Scud missile with improved precision and enough range to hit anywhere in South Korea and most of Japan. Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung admitted that South Korea has bolstered its defense readiness for possible nuclear strikes by North Korea over the past few years. Kim Tae-woo, a nuclear strategy analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis, called for more concerted efforts to force North Korea to abandon its nuc! lear programs, "Time is not on the side of the United States and South Korea because North Korea may attempt to buy more time to make atomic bombs," he said. "International efforts should be focused on freezing the North's nuclear activities as the first step to dismantle the programs eventually," he said. ---- US calls for closer coordination in resolving nuclear stand-off Fri Feb 18, 3:56 AM ET, (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050218/wl_asia_afp/nkoreanuclearuschinaskorea_050218085607 SEOUL - A top American envoy called for closer coordination with South Korea in handling North Korea as Seoul agonized over a request from Pyongyang for a massive shipment of fertilizer aid. US envoy Christopher Hill, recently named Washington's senior delegate to six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear stand-off, said he had no advice to give Seoul on how to respond to Pyongyang's recent request for 500,000 tonnes of fertilizer aid. "I'm certainly not going to be giving advice to the ROK," said Hill, who also serves as the US ambassador to South Korea, speaking at a seminar. "What we need to do is to coordinate our approaches and make sure that the DPRK does not try to exploit any differences among any of the partners in the six-party process." Agricultural experts say the amount is close to North Korea's entire yearly requirements in fertilizer. In recent years South Korea has supplied around 300,000 tonnes annually to North Korea. The request comes as Washington stepped up pressure on North Korea following Pyongyang's statement last week that it had nuclear weapons and was turning its back on international dialogue. South Korea has been pushing ahead with an engagement policy with North Korea throughout the more than two-years-old nuclear standoff, upsetting hawks in the Bush administration who champion a harder line against Pyongyang. While meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon in Washington last week, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said South Korea should "underreact" to the fertilizer aid request, Yonhap news agency said Thursday, quoting diplomatic sources in Washington. The New York Times reported that US Vice President Dick Cheney told Ban in a meeting on Sunday that South Korea should reject the fertilizer aid. On his return from Washigton on Wednesday, Ban said, however, that US officials made no comment or proposals concerning South Korea's reaction to the aid request. He said Seoul would consider "varying circumstances" before making a final decision on this issue. Hill, who made a one-day trip to China on Thursday, also said China and the United States had reached an "absolute agreement" that North Korea must return to dialogue at an early date to end its nuclear ambitions peacefully. "We had a very good discussion about the six-party process and the absolute agreement on the need for North Korea to come back to the process," he said. "We will try to construct an agreement that will enable them to get out of the weapons, out of the nuclear weapons business, and into the business of trying to develop their economy and trying to integrate the rest of the world, which is the only outcome that any person should want for the DPRK," he said. Hill and South Korea's chief negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon, held separate meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and leading Chinese diplomats on Thursday. In talks with Song, Li praised South Korean efforts at trying to improve relations with its northern neighbor, but reiterated Beijing's stance that North Korea's security concerns needed to be taken into account. The discussions in Beijing are expected to be followed by a weekend visit to Pyongyang by Wang Jiarui, a special envoy from China, the broker and host of the six-party talks and North Korea's closest ally. The nuclear standoff erupted in October 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of operating a weapons programme based on highly enriched uranium, violating a 1994 arms control agreement. The last set of six-way talks -- among the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan, and the United States -- took place in June last year but produced few results. North Korea shunned a fourth round set for last September, complaining of "hostile" US policies. -------- missile defense Missile Defense Not Yet Able To Protect U.S., Rumsfeld Says By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire February 18, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_18.html#37809619 WASHINGTON — The national missile defense system the Bush administration began fielding in pieces last year presently lacks the capability to defend the United States, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in congressional testimony yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 15). Several comments made by Rumsfeld to the Senate Armed Services Committee indicated the secretary believes that much work remains to be done before the system might be determined effective against ICBMs. “What’s being done here is … deploying the pieces of the capability that will evolve into an early missile defense capability,” he said. The Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency is in “the early stage of engineering” for “a complex and unprecedented capability,” Rumsfeld said. “We remain committed to produce and deploy a missile defense capability, and the program director has assured us that the key aspects of the program are on track,” he said. Senior officials including Rumsfeld last year vowed to begin deploying a “limited” missile defense capability by the end of the year, as directed by President George W. Bush in 2002. North Korean missile development and suspected nuclear weapons work was cited as a potential threat. Critics have noted, however, that key sensors might not be developed and deployed for years, requiring the current the use of Global Positioning System locators for tracking target and interceptor missiles during tests. They also have argued that the planned system probably will never be effective because of its complexity and that decoys could easily fool it. “The secretary of defense is simply expressing the technical reality that the system has a long way to go,” said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information who in the 1990s oversaw testing for the program. “The system has no demonstrated capability to work under realistic operational conditions,” he said. “The secretary’s testimony speaks for itself,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. Rumsfeld made his comments in response to questions from Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who asked whether the government was wasting money buying interceptor missiles for a system that might never work. “It seems to me that before we commit to buying dozens of these interceptors, it would be important to have some operationally realistic tests that can demonstrate whether the system will work effectively,” she said. “Would you agree that realistic operational tests could give us confidence in whether the system works effectively, and that if the system does not work effectively, we should not be spending billions of dollars on it?” she said. Rumsfeld noted that the administration proposed cutting the Missile Defense Agency budget from $8.8 billion for this fiscal year to $7.8 billion for fiscal 2006 and said the “program has been generally successful.” He said elements of the system were being fielded so further testing could occur. ---- Northrop Grumman Conducts Wargame In Support Of Anti-Missile System At JNIC The game also included the first live hook-up to an Aegis ship in the Pacific Ocean and an "enclave" of weapons system models and simulations at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii that represented how theater missile activity "communicates" with the entire simulation. Colorado Springs (SPX) Feb 18, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/news/milspace-05f.html Northrop Grumman, in partnership with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, completed a five-day wargame this month at the Joint National Integration Center (JNIC), where many operator crews trained for the first time on the nation's anti-missile system equipment - from their home bases - via a link to the wargame center. In addition to providing crew certification, the game was one in a series that supports the test and development of missile-defense concepts of operations in order to analyze how the system works under varying circumstances. Northrop Grumman's Mission Systems sector has been the prime contractor at the JNIC, the nation's premier missile-defense wargaming center at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., for nearly a decade and plays a key role in the agency's wargaming, simulation, and system test and integration. The event, known as Integrated Missile Defense 4.5, linked operator crews to the JNIC from the individual combatant commands. The game also included the first live hook-up to an Aegis ship in the Pacific Ocean and an "enclave" of weapons system models and simulations at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii that represented how theater missile activity "communicates" with the entire simulation. "In addition to giving missile-defense operator crews realistic practice on their equipment, the scenarios also presented situations that had to be coordinated through other agencies and organizations - all having a vested interest in the battle's outcome," said Buz Gibson, Northrop Grumman vice president and program manager at the JNIC. "These simulations dramatically showed how rapidly participating groups must coordinate, respond and make decisions." The software that drove each scenario was the JNIC's chief wargame simulation tool - Missile Defense Wargame & Analysis Resource (MDWAR) software. The MDWAR software was created by Northrop Grumman to provide a simulated environment that enables operators to communicate using the same protocols used by the current ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system. Participants practiced on the latest version of the GMD battle-management software - a complex software package developed by Northrop Grumman under contract to the GMD prime contractor, The Boeing Company. "This provides a great deal of realism for the crews, who can now practice battle operations and certification procedures using the same equipment they will operate during actual alert duties," said Gibson. Each day included up to four scenarios where crews were confronted with realistic warfighting problems and the compressed timelines typical of the ballistic-missile environment. They used the tools, methods, capabilities and limitations of the current ballistic-missile defense system to thwart an attack. Each scenario was followed by an after-action review where analysts collected data and player impressions to determine where modifications or improvements needed to be made. Northrop Grumman leads the simulation and wargaming initiatives at the JNIC, executing approximately 15 wargames per year of varying complexity to represent today's missile-defense capability. The JNIC will continue to support wargames and exercises and provide a facility for certification of new GMD crews. Northrop Grumman employs more than 300 personnel and oversees approximately 500 teammate subcontractor personnel at the JNIC facility. From detection, to tracking, to engagement, Northrop Grumman is bringing its entire suite of expertise to bear on the development of a global layered missile-defense capability for our nation, allies and deployed forces. In boost phase, Northrop Grumman leads an industry team on the Kinetic Energy Interceptors program and is developing the chemical laser portion of the Airborne Laser. For the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, Northrop Grumman provides the critical GMD fire control/communications system. In the area of sensors, the company is prime for the Space Tracking and Surveillance System and is currently the prime on the Defense Support Program. In modeling and simulation, Northrop Grumman is prime at the Joint National Integration Center. -------- pacific NZ needs nuclear power, say farmers By NICOLA BOYES 18.02.05 New Zeland Herald http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=187&ObjectID=10111554 The Waikato pylon controversy shows it is time for the country to reignite the nuclear power debate, say leaders in New Zealand's Federated Farmers. In light of Transpower's proposal to string 400kV lines on pylons running from Whakamaru to Otahuhu up the central North Island, Federated Farmers vice-president Charlie Pedersen says it's time New Zealand grew up. "Nuclear power could offer New Zealand some very economic and environmentally-friendly options as far as producing electricity at the top end of our country," he says. "Let's join the century that we actually live in. "A lot of other countries get their energy that way." Federated Farmers has advised its members to unite in their negotiations with Transpower. Mr Pedersen says Transpower has made a rod for its back through past dealings with farmers. In the case of farmers living with existing lines south of Auckland, they plan to tell Transpower they will not sit at any negotiation table until proper compensation for the lines they already have running across their properties is resolved. "If we bargain together we have a great deal of strength rather than individually," says Mr Pedersen. He says the power lines are a significant detriment to the value of a property, and restrictions planned on land use along the lines corridor will hurt farmers. "The effect on property values and land has to be balanced with the need to provide Aucklanders with air-conditioning." People have the right to turn on a switch and have a light go on, Mr Pedersen says, but to keep the whole country in power long term, other options have to be looked at. "Two out of the last three years we have had the threat of blackouts. Something has to be done." His calls for the nuclear debate are backed by other Federated Farmers members. Auckland dairy section chairman John Sexton says that when he has discussed the issue with members, he has seen little resistance. "Other countries are doing it. We've almost run out of hydro power, which leaves us gas and coal, and we can't do that because of our commitment to Kyoto." While farmers seem to want the nuclear debate and demand Transpower look at other options, most are worried about the impact the lines would have on their business. Matamata dairy farmer Adrian Ball farms 121ha in the heart of cow country on some of the most expensive dairying land in New Zealand. His finely-tuned business won the Fonterra farm business of the year in 2003. The technology is old, he says. "Farms have got a lot more intensive." In his area the planned line runs across airstrips and cropping land, where farmers rely on choppers for management. He says if the line goes ahead, Transpower should pay rental rates, not lump-sum compensation. One route option runs through the back of his farm. "It is an easy option, but it's not fixing the problem of what's best for New Zealand." He says in his area the bulk of those affected are dairy farmers. "The dairy industry has been proactive in terms of the environment and that's had a huge cost for farmers to comply with those standards. We don't think Transpower has been proactive at all." What it's about The top half of the North Island - especially Auckland - can't get enough electricity from the rest of the country because its transmission lines are out of date. Transpower, the company which runs the national grid, wants to solve the problem by building a new line of bigger pylons up to 70m high through private land across Waikato and South Auckland. Many landowners are horrified. They say the pylons will wreck their property values, restrict their ability to use their land and may also damage their health. Today's coverage is the final part of a week-long Herald series examining the argument from both sides - from the planners who say the new line is essential to the protesters vowing to fight it to the bitter end. -------- russia DOE Reports Delays In Russian/US MOX Program By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire February 18, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_18.html#9E8EBDC0 WASHINGTON — The U.S. Energy Department acknowledged to Congress last week delays in a U.S.-Russian effort to jointly eliminate about 70 tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium (see GSN, Jan. 31). In a Feb. 7 letter sent to the leadership of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the department would not be able to meet a January 2009 objective to begin production of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. The United States and Russia have agreed to each eliminate 34 tons of plutonium through conversion to MOX fuel, which will be used to power civilian nuclear reactors. Bodman blamed the delay on the continuing dispute over who should accept liability for U.S. nonproliferation-related work in Russia. The dispute has disrupted “critical work” in Russia and has delayed the construction of MOX production facilities in both countries, he wrote. “Although we expect to settle liability in the near future, delays caused by this issue have made it impossible to meet the MOX production objective by January 2009,” Bodman wrote. Last year, then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham reported to Congress the department planned to resolve the liability dispute in time to meet the 2009 MOX production objective. “We are determined to resolve this issue in time to prevent slippages that will prevent us from meeting our 2009 commitments,” Abraham wrote. The U.S. State Department has recently provided Russia with a new proposal to resolve the liability dispute, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) in a Feb. 14 letter. She did not provide details of the new proposal. “The ball is now in Russia’s court,” she wrote. “A resolution would pave the way for settling other issues with Russia for plutonium disposition, as well as for other cooperative programs affected by this impasse.” The Energy Department since 2004 has been required to annually submit to Congress a report on the implementation of a 2003 construction and operations schedule for the planned U.S. MOX production facility, to be built at the department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The schedule called for the start of MOX fuel production by Jan. 1, 2009, the production of 1 metric ton of fuel by the end of that year, and the conversion of all 34 metric tons of plutonium by the start of 2019. Bodman told Congress last week that the Energy Department will need to “restructure the planned schedule and funding requirements that were contained in the 2003 plan.” “We will submit a revised construction and operation schedule to Congress within 120 days of resolving the liability issue,” Bodman wrote. Tom Clements, a senior adviser with Greenpeace International, praised the Energy Department last week for being “honest” with Congress over delays with the MOX program. “The modus operandi of DOE has been to hide the truth about the MOX program so we welcome a new approach based on honesty. Perhaps this is a signal that the new secretary will conduct DOE affairs in a way which is more open and accountable to Congress and the taxpayer,” Clements said in a statement. Earlier this week, the National Nuclear Security Administration announced the resignation of Ed Siskin, head of the Office of Fissile Material Disposition, which manages the U.S.-Russian plutonium disposition program. Despite the delays caused by the liability dispute, “significant progress has been made” in moving forward with the MOX program, Bodman wrote. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to issue a construction permit for the MOX production plant next month, both the United States and Russia are expected to begin “full site preparation activities” for their respective MOX plants in May and construction of the facilities is set to begin in 2006, he said in the letter. In addition, an effort to convert a test batch of more than 100 kilograms of U.S. plutonium to MOX fuel at a French facility is proceeding “on schedule” and the fuel is set to be used at a nuclear power plant in South Carolina beginning in May, Bodman wrote. “We have confidence in the entire plutonium disposition program,” NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes said Wednesday. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Rumsfeld says US needs deep-penetrating nuclear bomb Washington | February 18, 2005 10:15:06 AM IST Web India (PTI) http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=67578&cat=World The US needs a nuclear bomb that can hit targets buried hundreds of feet deep, a capability it does not have now, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said. An earth-penetrating nuclear warhead is needed because many countries are burying targets underground and "we have no capability, conventional or nuclear, to go after them," Rumsfeld said testifying before the House Armed Services Committee here yesterday. However, he said, what is involved now is a feasibility study and not development of a weapon, which Congress had opposed last year. The goal of the feasibility study, he said, is to see whether the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories could come up with a concept for a warhead casting that could carry a nuclear device down through rock or hardened earth, keeping it intact to explode and destroy an underground facility. Gen Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that Gen James E Cartwright, the new chief of Strategic Command who has to deal with countering underground targets, "certainly thinks there's a need for the study," and that the other Joint Chiefs agreed. However, he too said that at this stage "it is not a commitment to go forward with a system." Earlier, Energy Secretary Samuel W Bodman, in charge of the laboratories which design nuclear weapons, told the Committee that the laboratories halted work on the project when the budget for it was eliminated by Congress last year but Rumsfeld has said he supported resumption of the study and funds have been included to complete it in fiscal 2007 (beginning October 1, 2006). ---- Lawmakers Propose U.S. Nonproliferation Director By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire February 18, 2005 http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_2_18.html#B70479F0 WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers in the House of Representatives last week introduced legislation that would create a “nonproliferation czar” to oversee U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Feb. 12, 2003). The Omnibus Nonproliferation and Anti-Nuclear Terrorism Act of 2005 would establish within the executive office an Office of Nonproliferation Programs, to be headed by a director nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The director, who would serve as the president’s chief nonproliferation adviser, would be responsible for overseeing the various programs conducted by the Defense, Energy and State departments. Among the director’s responsibilities would be guiding the development of nonproliferation budgets and setting priorities. Representatives Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) sponsored the bill. A congressional staff member said earlier this week that White House support for the measure was unknown. The bill would also eliminate restrictions placed by Congress on nonproliferation aid provided to Russia and other former Soviet states through the Pentagon’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program and congressional restrictions placed specifically on chemical weapons elimination support for Russia. The bill would also remove a $50 million cap placed on CTR aid provided to countries outside of the former Soviet Union, and would provide the energy secretary with authority to spend departmental funds on nonproliferation projects in those nations. The bill seeks to address the proliferation threat posed by Russian tactical nuclear weapons by authorizing the Energy Department to aid Moscow in conducting an inventory of such weapons. It would further require the defense secretary to report to Congress on efforts to secure or dismantle the weapons. In addition, the president’s authority to fund nondefense-related research by former Soviet WMD scientists would be expanded. The legislation also calls on the president to seek U.N. Security Council authorization for the Proliferation Security Initiative — a U.S.-led effort to interdict shipments of WMD related cargo; and to work with other countries to develop international standards on security for nuclear weapons and materials. In addition, the bill would require the president to report to Congress on measures to strengthen the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to prevent countries from obtaining nuclear weapons under the guise of seeking civilian nuclear power programs. It also seeks to enhance the Global Threat Reduction Initiative — a U.S.-Russian effort to recover stocks of fresh and spent highly enriched uranium fuel the two countries provided to research reactors around the world during the Cold War. “We have been warned repeatedly that we are in a race with terrorists who are actively seeking nuclear weapons. The choice is ours: we can continue to risk an almost inevitable nuclear attack, or we can take action to prevent it,” Schiff said last week in a press statement. -------- u.s. nuc facilities French Government Nuclear Firm Seeks to Build U.S. Plants BETHESDA, Maryland, February 18, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-18-09.asp#anchor1 Based in Paris, the nuclear power corporation Framatome ANP is positioning itself to build and operate nuclear power plants in the United States. The company is a member of the AREVA group, owned by the government of France. Framatome ANP is AREVA’s joint subsidiary with Siemens. "AREVA has been preparing for a revival of nuclear generation in North Amerca for some time, and we now have the focus, technology and resources in place to play a leading role in nuclear power’s bright future," said Ray Ganthner, senior vice president of Framatome ANP. On Tuesday, Framatome ANP announced the formation of a new organization to focus on "the future need for commercial nuclear generation in North America." The New Plants Deployment team, managed by Ganthner, will lead the North American deployment of the EPR, which the company describes as "an advanced, evolutionary, pressurized water reactor design." "The U.S. EPR will be part of a global fleet of standardized plants, designed and built in North America," said Ganthner. "The licensing and engineering work will be done primarily in our Charlotte, North Carolina, and Lynchburg, Virginia, locations." Framatome ANP has been using these locations to develop new manufacturing processes for nuclear fuel fabrication. The company says it has established "a new state-of-the-art for both pressurized water reactor and boiling water reactor fuel manufacturing." AREVA, through its Framatome ANP subsidiary, has begun a dialogue with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to outline its intentions regarding design certification of the EPR and to be sensitive to the agency’s resource planning needs. AREVA’s intent is to complete the pre-application process so that an application for design certification can be made to the NRC as soon as possible. Framatome ANP will also "support the global project to develop a Generation IV high temperature gas reactor." "AREVA never stopped designing and building nuclear power plants around the world and has been a leading supplier in North America for over 30 years through its COGEMA and Framatome ANP subsidiaries," said Tom Christopher, CEO of AREVA Inc. With 7,100 employees in North America, Christopher says AREVA is "the only vertically integrated supplier who can provide uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel, plant services, major plant components, spent fuel solutions and energy delivery systems." AREVA designed and installed 30 percent of the world’s current nuclear generation capacity and provides nuclear fuel to 46 percent of the world market. "Today, AREVA is the only global nuclear supplier currently building a Generation III plant," said Christopher. On February 8, the French government announced plans to partially privatize three major energy firms, including AREVA, but the plan has provoked protests among nuclear workers. Framatome ANP is headquartered in Paris with regional subsidiaries in the United States and Germany. The company's total workforce of 14,000 is active in Eastern and Western Europe, North and South America, Asia, and Africa. -------- nevada Tide may wash away advocates of Yucca WEEKEND EDITION February 19 - 20, 2005 Columnist Jeff German: Las Vegas SUN http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/feb/18/518317376.html There is no doubt in my mind now that the forces pushing the stalled Yucca Mountain project are in a panic mode. "They're desperate to hold back the tide of public opinion that this thing is dead on arrival," says one Nevada congressional source fighting to keep the nation's high-level nuclear waste out of the state. How desperate? Well consider that, for the first time in the history of this 22-year battle, the pro-Yucca Mountain forces felt the need last week to travel into the heart of enemy territory in Carson City to spread their disinformation. In the face of Yucca Mountain's growing troubles, there was former Gov. Bob List, the nuclear industry's well-paid mouthpiece in Nevada, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee, "the likelihood of this project is greater than it has ever been." Are you kidding me? Only two days earlier the Los Angeles Times had published an in-depth story on how Nevada's tenacity in the fight is paying dividends and raising questions about whether the multibillion-dollar project will ever go forward. List's incredulous words once again reminded me of that Iraqi information minister, known as "Baghdad Bob," who boasted that his country was winning the war with the United States as American troops surrounded Baghdad. I'll bet List even drew chuckles from his nuclear industry bosses, who are starting to consider alternatives to burying waste at Yucca Mountain, as the project heads toward a meltdown. "It was like, holy cow, Bob. Give it up," says Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizen Alert, an anti-Yucca Mountain group. "Even people in the industry are saying it's in big trouble." Just in case lawmakers had trouble believing him last week, List introduced them to Michael Bauser, a top lawyer with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's influential Washington lobby, which has been working for 22 years to stick us with nuclear waste. Bauser reminded the senators that Nevada has lost most of its legal battles to fend off the dump, and he suggested this was as good a time as any to give up the fight. But Bauser didn't talk much about the legal battle Nevada won that has turned out to be the Achilles heel of the project -- its inability to meet a scientific standard for storing the waste safely. Ever since a federal appeals court last July tossed out the government's inadequate standard, the project has taken a nose dive. "It's sort of in a death spiral," says Bob Loux, Nevada's top Yucca Mountain watchdog. "And I don't think there's anything that anyone can do to stop it." Loux and others in the Nevada camp say there's a growing lack of confidence in Washington in the project's ability to move ahead. Look at the mounting evidence: # The Bush administration recommended a mere $651 million for Yucca Mountain's budget this year, about half of what had been projected. # The Energy Department missed a December deadline to file its complicated license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It still has to pore over a mass of scientific papers about the size of Yucca Mountain. # Margaret Chu, the assistant energy secretary overseeing the project, decided to seek a less stressful job and announced her resignation. # The Energy Department acknowledged that Yucca Mountain is now at least two years behind its scheduled opening in 2010. # Pro-nuclear members of Congress began voicing frustration with the way Nevada has put up roadblocks to the project. # Utilities put the word out that burying the waste in Nevada no longer is crucial to building more long-awaited nuclear power plants. So here's a thought. Maybe it's time for Bob List and his fellow Yucca Mountain mouthpieces to start waving the white flag. ---- Managers say Yucca process on track License application to be ready by year's end, regulators told Friday, February 18, 2005 By KEITH ROGERS Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Feb-18-Fri-2005/news/25892724.html Managers of the Energy Department's effort to put the nation's spent nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain told a panel of regulators Thursday that they'll have a license application for the project ready for review by the end of this year. The agency missed its self-imposed deadline last year, and the panel led by Bill Reamer, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's division of repository safety, warned that problems in the process will continue if project officials continue to change documents about designs, operations and closure. "If information changes, then there is a risk of new issues that we're not aware of," Reamer said, sitting across from a table of Energy Department managers that included radioactive waste chief Margaret Chu. Chu has announced she will resign before the end of the month. Under her leadership, the deadline to haul 77,000 tons of metal-clad spent fuel and highly radioactive defense waste to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has slipped from 2010 to at least 2012. Meanwhile, the specter of a radiation safety standard extending hundreds of thousands of years beyond the previous 10,000-year guideline still looms. An appeals court has invalidated the 10,000-year Environmental Protection Agency standard because it doesn't conform to recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences. What that means for the Department of Energy plan to submit a license application varies widely among the interested parties. Asked whether the department can submit an adequate license application without a new standard in place, Joe Ziegler, director of DOE's Office of Licence Application and Strategy, said during a break in the meeting, "I don't know." Project critic Steve Frishman, a full-time consultant for the Nevada Nuclear Project Agency, said state scientists are skeptical of any design based on an uncertain standard. "How can you consider a license application when you don't know what the standard is?" he asked. Reamer said that if DOE submits a license application before the EPA standard is revised, "They need to explain to us." He said DOE also needs to resolve key technical issues such as addressing the potential consequences of molten rock from volcanic activity invading the repository. "They need to consider the consequences that event would have on waste packages. How much ash would come out, and would it contain radioactivity?" -------- new mexico Los Alamos Lab Agrees to Strict Storm Water Regulations LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, February 18, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-18-09.asp#anchor6 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has signed an agreement with the Department of Energy (DOE) to guide the DOE through the steps it must take to comply with a new set of stricter storm water management regulations at the Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL) site in New Mexico. The agreement establishes a compliance program for the regulation of storm water discharges from solid waste management and areas of concern point sources at the Lab until those sources are regulated by an individual storm water permit issued by the EPA. Storm water discharges at Los Alamos are now regulated by a general industrial permit. The DOE and EPA agree that the environmental conditions at the site and unique waste concerns make an individual permit more appropriate. The Lab is a federal facility covering 40 square miles located in Los Alamos County, in north-central New Mexico. Operated by the University of California for the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, Los Alamos develops and applies science and technology to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent; reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism; and solve national problems in defense, energy, environment and infrastructure. In addition to its nuclear activities, a number of conventional industrial facilities are located at the Lab, some with associated solid waste management and areas of concern that discharge storm water. The agreement, signed February 3 by Los Alamos site manager Edwin Wilmot, will serve as a bridge to provide onsite protections and monitoring while an individual permit is developed for the site. The individual permit will contain site-specific conditions to address water quality standards at more than 1,000 solid waste management units. "I commend DOE for its willingness to work through compliance issues at LANL," said EPA Regional Administrator Richard Greene. "By signing this agreement, DOE demonstrates its commitment to work with EPA and New Mexico to protect the state's valuable natural resources." "This is an opportunity for us to address water quality issues and concerns at LANL," said Wilmot. "How we manage this program is important to all of us and the Los Alamos community." The agreement provides for monitoring and sampling at approximately 60 automated monitoring stations at various locations within the Laboratory canyons pursuant to a Storm Water Monitoring Plan. In addition, it provides for sampling near specific locations on a rotating basis as detailed in the Lab's Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan. Monitoring must continue until the absence of pollutants or contaminants in runoff exceeding water screening action levels has been verified. The Energy Department shall submit annual updates of its new 2004 Storm Water Monitoring Plan to the EPA for review and approval, with copies provided to the New Mexico Environment Department, by March 31 of each year, beginning in 2005. If there are pollutants or contaminants detected above an established level, DOE shall conduct an investigation to determine the source within 30 days, and evaluate Best Management Practices that can be used to eliminate the pollutants. The DOE must screen for metals, PCBs, flow, dioxins, radiation, perchlorate. The problems arise from a variety of factors - a one time spill, storm drainage, firing sites former and active, surface disposal sites, burn sites, operational releases, soil contamination beneath buildings, waste water treatment, outfall and stack emissions, materials disposal areas in trenches, and an incinerator. New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Secretary Ron Curry said, "Through the agreement signed today, the state of New Mexico will play a strong role in surface water protection at Los Alamos. NMED is now one step closer to moving forward with fence-to-fence cleanup of the entire LANL site." A copy of the agreement is available at: http://www.epa.gov/region6/6xa/lanl.pdf. -------- north carolina Duke Power considering building new nuclear plant Associated Press Fri, Feb. 18, 2005 http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/10935251.htm CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Duke Power Co. is considering whether to build a new nuclear power plant somewhere in the Carolinas, according to the utility's top nuclear officer. The Charlotte-based company has long maintained it needs to add new plants over the next decade to serve the region's growing population and industry. The increased output will likely come through a combination of coal, natural gas and possibly nuclear plants, Duke Power's Brew Barron said at a nuclear energy conference in Washington. "It is not a commitment to build," Barron said Wednesday. "It is a commitment to maintain new nuclear capacity as a meaningful option for our customers." If Duke decides to build a nuclear plant, it could be a decade before one would go on line. The application process is lengthy, involving years of scrutiny from nuclear regulators on the engineering, safety and environmental plans of a proposed plant. Duke Power hasn't applied for such a license. It is "in the initial stages of planning the preparation" of a license application and looking at costs, Barron said. Duke Power has three nuclear plants in the Carolinas, one on Lake Norman and a second on Lake Wylie in the Charlotte area and another in Seneca, S.C. Nuclear power may be making a comeback as the stigma of the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents has faded. Cheaper than natural gas, nuclear power doesn't create greenhouse emissions. Environmentalists said there is a lot of potential danger of nuclear plants' fuel, as well as concerns about where waste can be stored. Nuclear-plant projects in Virginia, Louisiana and Illinois are in the very early stages of applying for licenses. The last U.S. nuclear plant to come online was in Tennessee in 1996. -------- texas Going Nuclear in West Texas BY FORREST WILDER 2/18/2005 Texas Democracy Foundation http://www.mollyivins.com/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1881 Like nuclear waste, bad ideas never seem to go away. Long-time Observer readers will remember the decades-long knock-down drag-out fights over where to put a radioactive waste dump. The last major episode was in 1998, when an unusually effective citizen-led campaign succeeded in persuading the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (now the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)) to deny the license for a low-level radioactive waste dump in Sierra Blanca. Oddly, not just the people of Texas celebrated this victory. A particularly aggressive and well-connected private outfit, Waste Control Specialists (WCS), backed by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, saw opportunity in the Sierra Blanca site’s demise. Now, because of WCS’s deep pockets, deeper political connections, and dogged persistence, Texas could soon find itself the national dumping ground for state and federal, commercial and governmental nuclear waste. On February 1, Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), whose district lies near WCS-owned land in Andrews County in West Texas, organized a hearing for the Senate Committee on Natural Resources. Chair Sen. Ken Armbrister (D-Victoria), who accepted $2,500 in campaign contributions in 2004 from WCS interests, called it a “fact-finding mission.” Sen. Duncan was intent on getting to the bottom of just what WCS was up to. He and several other senators seemed blindsided by WCS’s multiple (and multiplying) schemes to accept state and federal radioactive waste streams. Under legislation passed in 2003, WCS has a license to process, store, and dispose of hazardous and toxic materials at its mammoth site in Andrews County, near the New Mexico border. Now WCS is back asking for more. As Sen. Duncan related, the company has several pending applications into the TCEQ and the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) that, if approved, would vastly expand WCS’s fledgling radioactive empire in West Texas. One of the DSHS licenses would allow WCS to begin accepting the leftovers from a retired bomb plant in Fernald, Ohio, for permanent storage—some 10 million cubic feet to be brought in on an estimated 800 railcars. This Ohio nuclear waste is at least four times (and up to 140 times) more radioactive than the average gram of uranium waste, according to Richard Ratliff, chief of the bureau of radiation control of DSHS. The TCEQ license would also allow WCS to permanently dispose of Texas’ (and other states’) commercial radioactive waste as well as federal low-level radioactive waste. Additionally, WCS has its eyes on a proposed uranium enrichment facility right across the border in New Mexico that could conveniently hand over its by-product—depleted uranium—to WCS for disposal. WCS, a company that consistently reports quarterly losses to the Securities and Exchange Commission, stands to make billions of dollars from these deals. The state and the people of Texas, however, won’t receive a cent on most of this revenue. In a presentation to the committee, Sen. Duncan reviewed what transpired in the 2003 legislative session. WCS, after years of failed attempts and millions of dollars spent on political contributions and high-dollar lobbyists, finally succeeded in getting a bill passed, House Bill 1567, that catered to its interests. HB 1567 essentially authorized a private radioactive waste facility in Texas for this state, Vermont, and possibly others. Although it technically allowed any private company to apply to establish the dump, WCS was the only company that was positioned to qualify. Vermont comes into the picture because of a “compact” agreement that states can enter into that makes one state—Texas, in this case—a host for other states’ low-level radioactive waste. But because of a loophole, any other entity—including a foreign government—can opt into the compact with the majority consent of the compact commissioners, according to Richard Simpson, a long-time activist who has worked on anti-nuclear waste dump campaigns in New Mexico and Texas. Sen. Duncan also reminded the committee that the Legislature had authorized a private company to process and (temporarily) store federal low-level radioactive waste in addition to the compact waste. Sen. Mike Jackson (R-La Porte) seemed to have forgotten this fact. “We formed the compact to avoid being a dumping ground for the federal government,” he told George Dials, President of WCS. Dials, who was testifying in front of the committee, gently corrected Sen. Jackson. In fact, in the lead-up to passage of HB 1567, WCS’s proxies had convinced lawmakers that compact waste alone wouldn’t generate enough revenue to keep WCS afloat, the loophole notwithstanding. Obligingly, legislators passed the bill without any meaningful caps on the amount of federal waste the company can accept. As a result, WCS potentially has full access to massive amounts of nuclear waste that the feds have been trying to unload since the Cold War. If Dials succeeds in landing a permit from the TCEQ for (permanent) disposal of “low-level” radioactive waste, Andrews could be the home for vast amounts of this waste forever. Luckily, TCEQ’s permit process is relatively stringent and a decision isn’t expected until December 2007. According to an official with TCEQ, WCS was recently issued its “third notice of administrative deficiency.” If not corrected, WCS would have to start the licensing process all over again. TCEQ oversight of the compact and federal low-level radioactive waste was a concession won by Sen. Duncan in 2003. Perhaps that’s why he seemed a little miffed at the prospect of DSHS—seen by many as a regulatory pushover—handling the application for the Fernald waste. One of Sen. Duncan’s concerns is that the agency will approve WCS’s applications before the Legislature has time to intervene. The Legislature “has never considered whether the state of Texas should be a commercial importer of [Fernald radioactive materials],” Duncan said at the hearing. The twist is that WCS may not even need to get its disposal permit granted to become the nation’s repository for aging Cold War waste. A “perfect storm” may make it one by default. On February 7, President Bush announced major budget cuts to the environmental cleanup budget of Fernald and two other similar facilities. According to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a grassroots network that monitors nuclear issues, that kind of pressure forces the Department of Energy to find a permanent home for their radioactive waste soon. Currently, the other states that could feasibly accept Fernald-type and other low-level radioactive waste—Nevada, Utah, and South Carolina—are signaling their intention to cut back or get out of the business. Nevada, which is still fighting to rid itself of the Yucca Mountain high-level waste site, has said that it will also fight any attempted low-level importation. In a letter to the DOE, Nevada attorney general helpfully mentioned WCS’s site as an alternative. Utah, which is home to WCS’s long-time rival Envirocare, has been moving away from radioactive dumping due to public opposition. Finally, South Carolina is eliminating the importation of the most radioactive of the low-level waste despite its generating an estimated $300 million in revenue for the state. That leaves WCS holding a virtual monopoly. Sen. Duncan argues that “once we get the [Fernald waste] here we’re going to have to dispose of it most likely,” even if WCS is only permitted for storage, not disposal. The final wild card in WCS’s and Texas’ radioactive future is the proposed uranium enrichment facility that lies, in the words of Sen. Duncan, “a nine-iron chip away from the [Texas] border” in New Mexico, next door to WCS’s facility. An initial agreement has already been inked to create a private uranium plant that will take dangerous depleted uranium coming from the proposed National Enrichment Facility (NEF) outside of Eunice, New Mexico, and try to make it a little more chemically stable. Sen. Duncan pressed Dials on the matter. “In addition to the waste that we authorized last session and the compact waste, potentially now there’s another source of waste that could be disposed of at your site. We could anticipate that in 2008, you might come back to ask for an amendment to allow you to take that waste,” said Duncan. After some hesitation, Dials responded. “Yes,” he said. And why can’t the depleted uranium just stay in New Mexico? Simple: The state and its people don’t want it. WCS is promoting its various radioactive ventures as a popular jobs program for West Texas and a chance for Texas to seize the market in “an emerging industry.” On hand at the hearing to drive his point home was Robert Zap, the mayor of the city of Andrews, and Russell Shannon, Vice President of the Andrews Industrial Foundation. They recounted the hard times their area fell on after the oil crash in the ’80s, and plugged the jobs that an expanded dump would create. What they didn’t mention was their county’s zeal for high-risk holes in the ground no one else seems to want: the national, high-level radioactive waste site (now slated for Yucca Mountain), the failed supercolliding superconductor, and the hazardous and toxic materials dump WSC currently operates at its facility. Shannon told the committee of a sign outside Andrews that promotes the area’s values: God, Country, and Free Enterprise. “We hope the Legislature takes no action to impede our growth,” Dials said. WCS has spent a lot of time and money to get to this point. They’ve been helped along the way by lawmakers either too shortsighted or too indebted to pay attention to WCS’s expanding ambitions. HB 1567 allows for a total of 162 million cubic feet of federal low-level waste—virtually all of it. In addition, the Fernald waste is estimated to be 1.3 million cubic feet. The Sierra Club estimates that WCS could generate $100 billion in profits on the federal waste it’s already allowed to accept, to say nothing of the waste from Ohio. That’s a nice return on the millions WCS and its affiliates have sunk into political contributions to state and federal candidates, parties, and PACs over the years. (According to Andrew Wheat of Texans for Public Justice, Harold Simmons, one of the company’s principals, was the state’s number four political donor in 2004, paying out $548,250. From January 1, 2003, to late October 2004, WCS-related contributions totaled $843,200. Several members of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources have received significant contributions from WCS and its affiliates.) It will be hard for a Republican senator, even one with a thoughtful take on the issue, to undercut a company that has dispensed favors so generously to Republican candidates. “Duncan has to realize that he’s up against some major donors,” according to Colin Leyden, the Legislative Director for Rep. Lon Burnham (D-Fort Worth). Nonetheless, the senator from Lubbock finally seemed to get his colleagues to listen when he broached the topic of fees for the state. Under HB 1567, Andrews County and the state of Texas will each eventually receive 5 percent of WCS’s gross receipts from compact and federal waste, much less than the amount South Carolina generates for similar low-level waste. However, the Fernald waste stream would generate not a single dime for Texas under the current fee schedule. According to Cyrus Reed, a registered lobbyist with the Sierra Club, some lawmakers are considering imposing a 5 percent fee on the Fernald waste in order to generate revenue for cash-strapped state coffers. Considering the tremendous pressure the Legislature is under to come up with billions in new funding for public schools, it’s not unlikely that Texas may follow South Carolina’s example and use the fee money to fund public education. The appearance of a quick-and-easy fix may spur lawmakers reluctant to squeeze WCS’s profits into action, quickly setting up a fee system for the incoming radioactive waste while putting pressure on TCEQ and DSHS to expedite WCS’s applications. “Once [the waste] is a state revenue source you’ll never get rid of it,” says Leyden. Left out of the mix, of course, will be the short-term and long-term health and environmental consequences of unloading millions of cubic feet of radioactive junk on future generations. Forrest Wilder is a freelance writer living in Austin. -------- virginia NRC hearing airs opinions Nuclear industry, opponents square off over environmental aspects of proposal to add two nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Station Date published: By RUSTY DENNEN, 2/18/2005 Fredericksburg VA Free-Lance Star http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005/022005/02182005/1642334 MINERAL--From Northern Virginia, Charlottesville, Richmond, even as far away as North Carolina they came, converging on Louisa County Middle School, bearing signs, speeches, buttons and pins. And though their agendas and political views couldn't have been further apart, they agreed on one thing: a desire to weigh in on an issue of crucial importance--namely, whether Dominion should be allowed to build new nuclear reactors at its North Anna Power Station. The occasion was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's public hearing last night on a draft environmental impact statement. The session began at 7 p.m., but protesters and proponents started gathering an hour ahead of time to do a little politicking with local and NRC officials, and to rally the troops. The sidewalk out front was one part lobbying those who walked by, and one part theater. Jennifer Connor and Shelly Stern of Charlottesville, decked out in beauty-pageant sashes and regalia, rolled empty 55-gallon drums up the sidewalk to make a point. Connor, aka "Ms. Radioactivity," described herself and Stern as "beauty queens for nuclear waste," referring to highly radioactive spent fuel stored at North Anna. Needless to say, they were opponents of the plan. "We didn't think that Louisa had enough waste, so we brought more," Connor said. Lisa Shell, who lives in Henrico County, was among a number of supporters stationed out front. She was with the pro-nuclear group North American Young Generation in Nuclear. "We're here because we don't think the media are telling the whole story" about nuclear power, said Shell, who works for Dominion. "We want to tell the success side of the story that it's an important part of the country's energy mix." Louisa is ground zero in a battle to determine whether, and where, a new generation of nuclear reactors will be built in the United States. Dominion, parent company of Dominion Virginia Power, and two other utilities--Exelon Generation Co. in Illinois and System Energy Resources Inc. in Mississippi--have filed applications for early site permits to resolve safety, environmental protection and energy-planning issues before making the decision to build. The permits would allow the utilities to "bank" a site for up to 20 years. Dominion is slightly ahead of the others in the permit process. "It is at the head of the pack," said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell, which is why its application is being watched so closely by the nuclear-energy industry, and by opponents, who have pulled out all the stops to challenge the application. Some 300 people packed the meeting room, and it was clear from a show of hands that the majority of the crowd was critical of Dominion's plans. Occasionally, as Dominion and NRC officials spoke, several attendees held up homemade "Lie Meters" that drew occasional snickers from one side, and glares from the other. More than 75 people signed up to speak, and each was allotted three minutes. Environmental groups opposing Dominion's plans contend that the lake environment is at risk and that health and safety concerns have been dismissed. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League is calling for a comprehensive health survey before the federal government issues an early site permit for new nuclear reactors at North Anna. It recommended death and disease studies for a nine-county area. The group released a report in January showing significantly higher death rates in that nine-county area, which includes Charlottesville. It contends that death rates rose sharply soon after North Anna began operation in 1978 and that the effects continue. That study has been dismissed as "junk science" by the nuclear industry, which says data have been manipulated and omitted to reach those conclusions, and that there's no correlation between those problems and the plant's operations. Spotsylvania supervisors weighed in last week on Dominion's application, saying that more reactors could lower the lake's water level, affecting recreation and property use, and that the environmental analysis doesn't go far enough in looking at potential effects downstream. The board also was critical of the overall permit process. Dominion has maintained that its plant is safe and that new reactors would not pose health risks to nearby residents or to the environment. The company says it has no plans now to add reactors at North Anna, but wants to have that option. It does have some things in its favor: a president and political climate favoring expanding nuclear power generation--and financial incentives The U.S. Department of Energy is picking up about half the $11 million cost of the early site permit application, and Dominion stands to get $366 million in DOE funds to develop and build any new reactors. Dominion has said a new reactor at North Anna could cost about $1.4 billion and take four years to build. Before that can happen, an early site permit would have to be approved, and then the company would have to apply for a combined construction and operating license. Its draft environmental impact statement concludes that Dominion's early site permit should be approved, finding "There are no environmentally preferable or obviously superior sites and that any adverse environmental impacts from possible site preparation and preliminary construction activities at North Anna could be redressed." The final environmental impact statement is due in August. NRC officials said last night that public comments would be considered in its conclusions. The NRC could vote on Dominion's application by June 2006. North Anna sits on a 13,000-acre lake created in 1971 to cool its reactors. Over the years, the lake has become home to marinas, dozens of subdivisions, a state park and thousands of recreational users. The draft report says that water quality and levels in Lake Anna could decline in times of drought and residents' quality of life could be affected by construction and increased traffic. Heat-sensitive striped bass could also suffer from higher water temperatures. In addition, the report concluded that no additional transmission lines or rights of way would be required; some minor air-quality impacts would be expected during construction; and about 128 acres of the existing plant site would be disturbed. There are currently two reactors in operation at North Anna, though the plant was originally designed for four. Units 3 and 4 were scrapped in the early 1980s. To reach RUSTY DENNEN: 540/374-5431 rdennen@freelancestar.com -------- wyoming Energy Metals Corporation Adds To Uranium Resource Base-Focuses On Wyoming February 18, 2005 09:00 AM US Eastern Timezone--(BUSINESS WIRE) http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050218005149&newsLang=en VANCOUVER, British Columbia--Feb. 18, 2005--Energy Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE:EMC) announces that the Company's wholly owned subsidiary, Energy Metals Corporation (US), has exercised the right of first refusal granted in July of 2004 with William M. Sheriff to acquire all of his interests in various uranium properties in the United States. Most of these properties have seen extensive drilling and some have historical resource estimates. This portfolio establishes the Company as a significant property holder in the State of Wyoming by providing key property positions in all of the principal Wyoming uranium districts. The properties include 8 state leases in the Gas Hills area, 14 state leases in the Powder River Basin, 3 state leases in the Shirley Basin, 2 state leases in the Ketchum Buttes area, and 1 state lease in the Great Divide district. The state leases combine for a total of more than 12,000 acres. In addition, the property package includes a number of unpatented mining claims covering areas of previously identified uranium mineralization. The claim blocks known as the SD and VR are located in the Powder River Basin. The KM, KME, RM, CD, PN, and BL claim groups are in the Great Divide district. Coupled with the Company's earlier acquisitions in Utah and Oregon, and upon completion of this transaction, Energy Metals Corporation will have further established itself as one of the largest holders of uranium properties in the United States. Since its initial discovery in Wyoming in 1951, uranium has been produced from four basins or districts within the state consisting of the Powder River Basin, the Great Divide Basin, the Shirley Basin, and the Gas Hills area. Minor production has come from other areas in the state. Peak uranium production reached 12 million pounds per year in 1980 declining to less than 2 million pounds per year during the last few years of depressed uranium prices. Wyoming mines have produced in excess of 200 million pounds of U3O8 and the state has ranked number one in the United States in U3O8 (yellowcake) production since 1994. Wyoming is expected to maintain its position as the premier U.S. uranium producer in the years to come in light of its known uranium reserves and reasonable permitting and regulatory environment. Wyoming Uranium Properties The Great Divide District: The 280 acre KM and KME claim blocks cover the principal areas of very close spaced historical drilling within a broad zone of mineralization estimated to contain 3 million pounds of U3O8. This resource figure is indicated on a uranium resource map of the district which was compiled in 1981 by Rocky Mountain Energy, then a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad. The KM and KME properties were owned by Kerr McGee at the time of the Rocky Mountain Energy compilation. The claims are located approximately 18 miles south of Jeffrey City, Wyoming and about 3 miles east of the Company's Antelope property. The historic resource estimate is considered to be reliable and relevant, however it does not incorporate categories as defined in NI 43-101, and has not been independently verified by EMC's Qualified Person. The property has not been completely drilled out. Preliminary evaluation suggests that parts of this resource may be amenable to ISL (in situ leaching) technology. The Company is in the process of acquiring all historical exploration and technical data. The RM block of claims covers over 500 acres wherein Rocky Mountain Energy reported a resource of 4 million pounds of uranium at a grade of .04% U3O8. Most of these pounds are thought to be amenable to ISL extraction. The property is located about 32 miles southwest of Jeffrey City in the western portion of the district. The resource estimate is considered to be reliable, but it does not incorporate categories as defined in NI 43-101. The property was last held by Cameco through the 1999 assessment year when it was dropped at a time of low uranium prices. The 600-acre CD block of claims is located approximately 16 miles south-southeast of Jeffrey City and approximately 6 miles northeast of the Company's Antelope property. This property is shown on the Rocky Mountain Energy compilation map to contain at least 1.5 million pounds U3O8 to a depth of 200 feet. This property was also owned by Kerr McGee at the time of the 1981 compilation. The property has seen more than 100 drill holes and was most recently held by Cameco through the 2000 assessment year when it was dropped, again, during a period of low uranium prices. The Company is in the process of acquiring a complete package of the technical data on the property. The BL claim group covers the resource area previously held by NAMMCO located some 33 miles southeast of Jeffrey City. This property which was identified by Kirkwood Oil is thought to contain 700,000 pounds of U3O8 based on the previously cited district compilation. The Company is in the process of acquiring a complete package of technical data on the property. The PN block is located 8 miles south of the CD block. Conoco, who owned the property in 1981, extensively drilled this block. More recently Pioneer Nuclear Corp. conducted limited exploration on the property. Although uranium mineralization is known to occur, a resource figure has not been calculated to date. Further exploration is planned for this property. The Powder River Basin: The SD claims cover more than 1200 acres along Highway 387 in Campbell County 23 miles southwest of Wright, Wyoming. The claims encompass parts of the Moore Ranch property which was delineated by Conoco in the late 1970s. At the time, Conoco reported a total resource for the area covered by the claims of approximately 3 million pounds U3O8. The subject area was part of a larger area included in a comprehensive feasibility report which contemplated open pit mining and on site milling. As the price of uranium declined, the plans were abandoned, as was the property. More recently, the property has been considered to have potential for the use of ISL technology. It was most recently held by Power Resources, the U.S. operating subsidiary of Cameco, until 2003 when it was dropped. The data set is in hand and plans for further study are underway. The 400 acre VR property is located approximately 1 mile southeast of an active ISL well field operated by Power Resources as part of the Highland mine site. The property was held by the Highland Uranium Joint Venture through the 2003 assessment year. The property has seen over 200 drill holes including some testing for the use of ISL technology. The property is thought to be amenable to ISL uranium recovery. Efforts are underway to acquire the extensive data base for this property. State of Wyoming Uranium Mining Leases: In addition to the aforementioned mining properties, the property package includes twenty-nine State of Wyoming Uranium Mining Leases encompassing a total of 12,274.76 acres. These Mining Leases, the earliest of which were granted in 2004, have an initial term of 10 years, renewable thereafter with production. Data acquisition for these mining leases is underway. In acquiring these uranium properties, the Company exercised its right of first refusal under a July 19, 2004 property purchase agreement with William M. Sheriff ("Sheriff"), of Wylie, Texas. Mr. Sheriff, who currently beneficially owns 5.7% or more of the issued and outstanding capital of the Company, will receive 1,500,000 common shares of the Company as consideration for all of the uranium properties described in this release. The shares shall be issued in tranches of 500,000 shares by April 15, 2005, 500,000 shares on or before January 5, 2006 and 500,000 shares on or before January 5, 2007. Mr. Sheriff has also agreed to allow the Company access to his extensive uranium data archives, which include uranium exploration databases from Hecla Mining Company, Ranchers Exploration, and select material from UV Industries as well as the worldwide exploration, metallurgy, and property files for the Union Carbide Corporation and many of its subsidiaries. The foregoing is subject to regulatory approval. All resource estimates quoted herein are based on prior data and reports obtained and prepared by previous operators and information provided by the State. The Company has not completed the work necessary to verify the classification of the mineral resource estimates. The Company is not treating the mineral resource estimates as National Instrument 43-101 defined resources verified by a qualified person. The historical estimates should not be relied upon. These properties will require considerable further evaluation which EMC's management and consultants intend to carry out in due course. Energy Metals Corporation is a Canadian listed company involved in developing resources to power the 21st century. EMC has adopted a corporate strategy, which will focus on the acquisition and development of uranium assets in politically favorable and mining-friendly jurisdictions within the United States as part of its long-term strategy to take advantage of growth in the U.S. and worldwide electrical energy demand. This increasing demand is occurring at a time when uranium mine supplies are dwindling and inventories are being depleted. The Company is targeting advanced projects in Wyoming that are amenable to "in situ leach" (ISL). ISL or "in situ leach" mining was pioneered in Wyoming using water wells and oxygen fortified groundwater to mine the uranium in place. It is the safest, and most environmental friendly, uranium mining method in the world. Conventional and ISL opportunities in Utah and other states are also being actively advanced. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF ENERGY METALS CORPORATION "signed" Per: Paul Matysek, M.Sc., P.Geo. President, CEO and Director THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS PRESS RELEASE. Energy Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE:EMC) Contacts Energy Metals Corporation Ran Davidson Corporate Communications 604-684-9007 rdavidson@energymetalscorp.com http://www.energymetalscorp.com -------- MILITARY -------- balkans [No mention is made of the approximately 8 tons of depleted uranium munitions which contributed to the debris - et] Kosovo Needs Cleanup to Realize Tourist Potential By Haxhi Bajraktari and Jeta Limani PRISTINA, Kosovo, February 18, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-18-03.asp On the road from Pristina to Prizren, in the west of Kosovo, rays of sunshine pick out a tapestry of colors on the landscape of hills, forests and rivers. The pristine waters of the Bistrica River flowing through the mountains and the breathtaking view from the Qafa e Duhles plateau put many in mind of the gentle landscape of The Shire, from JRR Tolkien’s "Lord of the Rings." Yet few of the tens of thousands of international aid and development personnel who work in Kosovo ever venture out into the countryside for rest and relaxation. And it will be many years before western tourists begin showing an interest in the region. This is not only due to the fighting that engulfed Kosovo in 1999 between independence seeking Albanians and their Serb rulers. Besides the often ugly towns in the center and east - with their decaying communist-era architecture and dismal hotels - the public face of Kosovo is scarred by heaps of rubbish littering its streets and potholed roads. James Pettifer, author of the "Blue Guide to Albania and Kosovo," says Kosovars might reap a reward from their unexplored hills and rivers if they would just clean the place up. “Kosovo’s tourist industry has great potential for the future and even some possibilities in the present,” he said. He believes that Kosovo should make an effort to clean up its environment, put an end to fly-tipping, and follow the example of the Albanian capital Tirana, which has a program of demolishing ugly modern buildings and a zero-tolerance stance on the dumping of rubbish. Whether any of these proposals have much chance of being put into practice is another matter. At the moment, Kosovo does not have a tourist ministry, or even a government department to deal with the issue. And the rare visitors who are not part of the protectorate’s military or diplomatic community have to make their own way around Kosovo, as there are no tourist information bureaus to help them. Without help from the authorities, many enterprising locals have started up their own tourist agencies. Prizren resident Adem Veselaj started his Shpejtimi agency some years ago to offer sightseeing tours for German soldiers serving with the NATO-led stabilization force KFOR. Veselaj takes his clients to natural beauty spots such as Bjeshket e Nemura, the Sharr mountains, the Rugova gorge, the Mirusha waterfalls and the Gadime caves as well as to the medieval Serbian monasteries at Decani, Gracanica and the Patriarchate in Peja (Pec). But the lack of government assistance even in such minor tasks as providing an official tourist map means that Veselaj has not been able to expand his activities to offering trips to foreign visitors. “I would invest something myself if there was an initiative, but nobody cares about tourism here,” Veselaj said. However, the problems standing in the way of a Kosovo tourist industry are bigger than just a shortage of maps and information. The high cost of air travel to Pristina and the poor standard of other transport links are off-putting, and the quality of the road network is very poor inside the protectorate. Conditions are at their worst in remote rural Kosovo - precisely those unspoilt and picturesque areas that most visitors would like to explore. Tahir Lajci, an independent tour guide in Peja, said that these areas have a great deal to offer potential visitors and that two weeks could be spent exploring the Rugova Gorge and its mountains alone. The Boge mountains in the western Rugova region, on the Albanian border, are well known to climbers and winter sports enthusiasts, and their custom has encouraged the establishment of a number of small private motels which charge around € 20 per night. But as Lajci freely admits, most of the visitors to this areas are local - old people or children who have come for health reasons and because they are already familiar with the area. For foreigners, Kosovo’s wild places remain completely unexplored. It’s likely to be a long time before western tourists visit the region in any number because of the perception that it remains a dangerous place. For the moment, the priority is to get more of the international workers based in Pristina and its environs to spend time in the countryside. Zeke Ceku, head of the Hotel and Tourism Company, noted that even if the latter is achieved, the development of a proper tourist industry will be impossible without investment, which the cash-strapped authorities may struggle to provide. Pettifer believes that both the Pristina authorities and the international administrators are failing in their duty to protect Kosovo’s past and safeguard its future. “The preservation of Kosovo’s wonderful historic buildings, particularly the Ottoman heritage in towns like Vushtri (Vucitrn) could help,” Pettifer said. “If this was done properly and publicized well, it could help change the entire international perception of Kosovo.” {Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting} -------- israel / palestine Israel Says It Will End Punitive Demolitions WORLD IN BRIEF Friday, February 18, 2005 Washington Post; Page A23 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33570-2005Feb17?language=printer JERUSALEM -- The Israeli military said Thursday it would stop punitive demolitions of the homes of Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen because an internal panel had concluded they did not deter attacks. The policy, which the military defended in a statement as its "legal right," could be reinstated "if an extreme change in circumstances takes place." Human rights activists lauded the abandonment of the policy, which has led to the razing of about 1,800 Palestinian homes since the 1967 Middle East war. But other groups said the decision might not end Israeli razing in Palestinian areas. About 4,100 homes have been destroyed by Israel since the current Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, according to the human rights group B'Tselem. Most of those buildings were destroyed not as punishment, but to eliminate cover for gunmen and expand security buffer zones. For now, all types of demolition are effectively on hold since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to hostilities at a summit on Feb. 8. -------- spies Negroponte Selected As Intelligence Chief By KATHERINE SHRADER Associated Press Writer Feb 18, 2005 1:24 AM EST http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_INTELLIGENCE_CHIEF?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government's first national intelligence director Thursday, turning to a veteran diplomat to revive a spy community besieged by criticism after the Sept. 11 attacks. Ending a nine-week search, Bush chose Negroponte, who has been in Iraq for less than a year, for the difficult job of implementing the most sweeping intelligence overhaul in 50 years. Negroponte, 65, is tasked with bringing together 15 highly competitive spy agencies and learning to work with the combative Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brand new CIA Director Porter Goss and other intelligence leaders. He'll oversee a covert intelligence budget estimated at $40 billion. Negroponte, a former ambassador to the United Nations and to a number of countries, called the job his "most challenging assignment" in more than 40 years of government work. His U.N. nomination was held up for half a year in 2001 over criticism regarding his record as ambassador in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, the time of the Iran-Contra scandal. He was widely believed not to have been Bush's first choice for the new job, but officials denied the president had had trouble filling the position. If confirmed by the Senate, as expected, Negroponte said he planned "reform of the intelligence community in ways designed to best meet the intelligence needs of the 21st century." Bush signaled that he sees Negroponte as the man to steer his intelligence clearinghouse. "If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," Bush said. Negroponte will have coveted time with the president during daily intelligence briefings and will have authority over the spy community's intelligence collection priorities. Perhaps most importantly, Bush made clear that Negroponte will set budgets for the national intelligence agencies. "People who control the money, people who have access to the president generally have a lot of influence," Bush said. "And that's why John Negroponte is going to have a lot of influence." Bush also announced he had chosen an intelligence insider to serve as Negroponte's deputy, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the National Security Agency's director since 1999. As the longest-serving head of the secretive codebreaking and eavesdropping agency, Hayden pushed for change by asking some longtime personnel to retire and increasing reliance on technology contractors. For years, blue-ribbon commissions have proposed creating a single, powerful director to oversee the entire intelligence community, but the concept didn't gain momentum until recommended by the independent Sept. 11 Commission. Bush and other senior administration officials initially resisted, but reversed course after an exceptional lobbying effort by the families of 9/11 attack victims. Congress approved the new post in December as part of the most significant intelligence overhaul since 1947. Yet intelligence veterans remain concerned about whether the job will wield enough power to lead government elements that handle everything from recruiting spies to eavesdropping to steering satellites. Some say the authorities of the intelligence chief are too ambiguous as established in the legislation. The position was also excluded from the Cabinet to shield it from politics, requiring Negroponte to work directly with more senior personalities such as Rumsfeld. According to one informed administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, former CIA Director Robert Gates was the White House's first choice, but he and other candidates declined the post over concerns about the job's authority. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card rejected reports that Bush had a difficult time filling the job. "It's just not true," he said. Bush has trusted Negroponte with trying assignments. He was ambassador to the U.N. when U.S. relations with the world organization were declining over the approaching Iraq invasion. Last year, Bush sent him to Iraq as ambassador during the middle of a bloody insurgency. Negroponte has held official posts in eight countries, including ambassadorships in Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines. He also understands the intelligence demands of policy-makers, serving in President Reagan's National Security Council from 1987 to 1989. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill expressed concern that Negroponte's departure from Iraq would create a crucial vacancy less than a month after the country's first democratic elections. During consideration of his U.N. nomination, critics suggested he had played a key role in carrying out the Reagan administration's covert strategy to crush the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua - an element of the Iran-Contra scandal. Human rights groups also alleged that Negroponte acquiesced in rights abuses by Honduran death squads funded and partly trained by the CIA. Negroponte said during his U.N. confirmation hearings that he did not believe death squads were operating there. In a statement Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., praised Negroponte's selection and said the panel would hold a confirmation hearing as soon as his duties in Iraq are complete. A Roberts aide said that could still be weeks away. The committee's top Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, called Negroponte "a sound choice." Others reacted more coolly. Said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California: "As one who has disagreed with Ambassador Negroponte for over 20 years ... I am pleased that he is now in a position that doesn't have anything to do with policy." ---- Syria gets new intel chief after bombing Associated Press 2/18/2005 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-18-syria_x.htm BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad replaced the chief of military intelligence with his brother-in-law, a Syrian official said Friday. The move came four days after the assassination in Beirut of Lebanon's former prime minister. The chief of military intelligence oversees all of Syria's domestic and foreign intelligence operations, including activities in Lebanon, where Syria has some 15,000 Syrian troops and many intelligence agents. The outgoing chief, Gen. Hassan Khalil, 65, had passed retirement age and his retirement had been postponed several times, the official said on condition of anonymity. The new chief is the former deputy head of military intelligence, Brig. Gen. Asef Shawkat, 55, the president's brother-in-law. The official said the change was a "natural" succession within the military. A presidential decree was expected later on the appointment. Monday's bombing that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri provoked an unprecedented level of criticism against Syria's presence in Lebanon. Senior Lebanese opposition figures accused Syria of responsibility — a charge that Syria flatly rejected. Thousands marched in Hariri's funeral on Wednesday behind banners that said: "Syria Out." The United States withdrew its ambassador to Damascus, giving the assassination as the immediate cause, and the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution reminding Syria it was obliged to implement a previous council resolution that called for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Lebanon. On Thursday, President Bush said he will work with his European allies to pressure Syria to pull out from Lebanon, saying Syria "is out of step" with progress being made in the Middle East. Assad's move indicates the young president is consolidating his hold on the security services. Shawkat is close to Assad and recently emerged as a top presidential adviser on security matters. He is married to Assad's sister, Bushra. Earlier this month, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned whether Assad was fully in control of Syria, four years after he assumed power after the death of his father, President Hafez Assad. Since Bashar Assad came to power in 2000, his government has touted a range of political and economic reforms. But the young leader also has been pressured by the old guard in the ruling Baath Party, holdovers from the three decades of iron rule under his father. Syria has dominated Lebanon with its army and intelligence forces since Syrian troops first entered the country in the second year of the civil war of 1975-1990. ---- Negroponte Named National Intelligence Chief Ambassador to Iraq Would Oversee Nation's 15 Spy Agencies By Michael A. Fletcher and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, February 18, 2005; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33210-2005Feb17?language=printer President Bush nominated John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, yesterday to be director of national intelligence, ending a long search to fill the newly created job overseeing the nation's 15 spy agencies. Negroponte is slated to fill a post intended to prevent a repetition of the intelligence failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and led to overstatements regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. If confirmed by the Senate, he will replace the CIA director as the nation's top intelligence official, setting budgets and priorities for national intelligence agencies and filtering the sensitive information about terrorist and other threats presented to the president. "John will lead a unified intelligence community and will serve as the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters," Bush said. The nomination comes two months after Bush signed into law the broadest restructuring of the nation's intelligence services in more than half a century. Some people in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill view the time it took to fill the post as a consequence of lingering questions over how much authority the new director would have. While the director will by law oversee the nation's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, he will have only several hundred employees, leaving him reliant on the CIA, FBI and Pentagon agencies to collect and analyze intelligence and carry out covert operations. Negroponte also would oversee the new National Counterterrorism Center, which will be central to the war on terrorism, though its director, also a presidential appointee, will report directly to Bush on counterterrorist operations. In comments to reporters, Bush made it clear that he would look to Negroponte as his top intelligence official, not just in title but also in fact. "When the intelligence briefings start in the morning, John will be there," Bush said. "And John and I will work to determine how much exposure the CIA will have in the Oval Office. I would hope more rather than less." Negroponte said he was "honored" to be selected. Standing next to Bush, he said, "Providing timely and objective national intelligence to you, the Congress, the departments and agencies, and to our uniformed military services is a critical national task. . . . Equally important will be the reform of the intelligence community in ways designed to best meet the intelligence needs of the 21st century." Creating the post was a key recommendation of the national commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The law resulting from the commission's work, as modified by Congress, reorganizes the nation's intelligence-collecting and analytic agencies in a way that proponents hope will lead to better coordination and communication among them. Bush, who initially resisted some of the recommendations, said yesterday that the new structure will make the nation safer. "If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," he said. "And that's why I supported and Congress passed reform legislation creating the job." Yesterday, Bush also named Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, head of the National Security Agency, which collects electronic intelligence, to be Negroponte's deputy. Hayden, who has run the NSA for almost six years, was a White House choice for the deputy post even before Negroponte was picked. In selecting Negroponte, 65, Bush is turning to someone with 40 years' experience as a diplomat abroad and a senior official in Washington. Among the jobs he has held are U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras. "He understands the power centers in Washington," Bush said, adding that he also has another key qualification. "His service in Iraq during these past few historic months has given him something that will prove an incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief: an unvarnished and up-close look at a deadly enemy." The choice of Negroponte drew bipartisan praise from the top members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate panel, said he was "extremely pleased." Roberts and his counterpart on the House side, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), noted in separate statements that Negroponte and Hayden have significant national security and intelligence backgrounds. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, has known Negroponte for years and spoke to him yesterday after his appointment. "I told him he had traded the Green Zone for the hot zone," she said. It could be well into March before Negroponte's confirmation hearings take place, since he must first return to Baghdad to wrap up his duties there. His confirmation hearing may revisit his service as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, when the Honduran military's Battalion 3-16, which had received CIA training, took part in the torture and killing of citizens accused of being rebels. Reports filed by Negroponte's embassy at the time did not note the human rights violations. Negroponte's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2001 was delayed for months because human rights groups protested his role in Honduras. At the hearings, he testified that he did not think the death squads operated in that country. He has said he served "honorably and conscientiously in a manner fully consistent with and faithful to applicable laws and policies." In the new post, Negroponte would not only oversee the nation's combined intelligence budget of $40 billion a year but would also set intelligence collection and analytic priorities, ensure sharing of information among agencies, and establish standards for all intelligence personnel. He is "moving in uncharted waters, and he has a lot of turf that he has to defend or reconstruct," said Judith Yaphe, a former senior CIA analyst who is now with the National Defense University. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday that he thinks Negroponte has done "an absolutely first-class job in Iraq" and that the ambassador is "clearly an excellent choice" to be intelligence chief. Rumsfeld has testified at congressional hearings that he is concerned about the power an umbrella intelligence director might wield over the Defense Department and budgetary matters, but he said those concerns could be worked out. He said discussions are ongoing about the relationship between the CIA and Pentagon officials on their respective roles in paramilitary operations. Retired ambassador Frank G. Wisner, a close friend of Negroponte's, said the challenge in taking the job is that "he will set the standard for those to come." Negroponte's name did not arise in the early speculation that swirled around the new intelligence post, which had mentioned former CIA director Robert M. Gates, current CIA Director Porter J. Goss and retired Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as candidates. But in the past few weeks, after some candidates were hesitant about the job, the White House focused on Negroponte after it became clear that he wanted to leave his Baghdad post. He was contacted by White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., who began a series of conversations. Those resulted in a meeting with Card on Saturday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. On Monday, Negroponte met with Bush and others to discuss progress in Iraq. Afterward, he was invited to the Oval Office with Bush and Card, where he was offered the job. Staff writers Robin Wright and Josh White contributed to this report. ---- Promoting the 'Ambassador of Torture': Bush Nominates Negroponte for Intel Czar Friday, February 18th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/18/157206 As President Bush nominates Ambassador John Negroponte, current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first Director of National Intelligence, we look back at Negroponte's bloody history in Central America in the 1980s. [includes rush transcript] President Bush has nominated John Negroponte - the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq - as the country’s first director of national intelligence. Bush made the surprise announcement at a news conference yesterday in Washington. * President Bush, news conference, February, 18, 2005. John Negroponte will have daily access to Bush as his primary intelligence briefer and would have authority over the budgets of the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. He also will have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence and information sharing between agencies. Creating the new top intelligence position was a central recommendation of the 9/11 commission. It was included in an intelligence overhaul bill that Bush signed into law in December. Negroponte has been ambassador to Baghdad for less than a year. Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said he was concerned "about the message we are sending to Iraq and the rest of the world" by removing Negroponte from Baghdad so soon after he took office in June. Negroponte served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2001 to 2004. But it is his time as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. He played a key role in coordinating US covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras. During Negroponte’s tenure, US military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from 3.9 million dollars to over 77 million. Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army’s loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America. The Senate must confirm Negroponte to the new post of national intelligence director. In his confirmation hearings as UN ambassador in (2001) two-thousand-one, he was asked whether he had supported human rights abuses by death squads, which were funded and partly trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified that he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran government policy. He said, "To this day I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras." * Peter Kornbluh, author of “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.” He is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a public-interest documentation center in Washington. * Sister Laetitia Bordes, Catholic nun with the Society of Helpers, a Catholic community of women. She is talking to us from San Bruno California. * Andrés Thomas Conteris, program director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the human rights group Non-Violence International. He is Co-Producer of “Hidden in Plain Sight” He has promoted human rights throughout Latin America for 25 years. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: President Bush has nominated John Negroponte, the current U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, as the country's first Director of National Intelligence. Bush made the surprise announcement at a news conference yesterday in Washington. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm pleased to announce my decision to nominate Ambassador John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence. The Director's responsibility is straightforward and demanding. John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions. John understands America's global intelligence needs because he spent the better part of his life in our foreign service and is now serving with distinction in the sensitive post of our nation's first ambassador to a free Iraq. John's nomination comes in an historic moment for our intelligence services. In the war against terrorists who target innocent civilians and continue to seek weapons of mass murder, intelligence is our first line of defense. If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must insure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise. That's why I supported and Congress passed reform legislation creating the job of Director of National Intelligence. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking in Washington on Thursday. John Negroponte will have daily access to Bush as his primary intelligence briefer. He would have authority over the budgets of the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. He will also have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence and information sharing between agencies. Creating the new top intelligence position was a central recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. It was included in an intelligence overhaul bill that Bush signed into law in December. Negroponte has been Ambassador to Baghdad for less than a year. Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said he’s concerned, quote, “about the message we’re sending to Iraq and the rest of the world by removing Negroponte from Baghdad so soon after he took office in June.” Negroponte served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. from 2001 to 2004, but it's his time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. Negroponte played a key role in coordinating U.S. covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shored up a C.I.A.-backed death squad in Honduras. During Negroponte's tenure, U.S. military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million to over $77 million. Much of this went to insure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America. The Senate must confirm Negroponte to the new post of National Intelligence Director. In his confirmation hearings as U.N. Ambassador in 2001, he was asked whether he had supported human rights abuses by death squads which were funded and partly trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran government policy. He said, quote, “To this day, I do not believe the death squads were operating in Honduras.” To talk about Negroponte's record as the Ambassador to Honduras, we're joined by two guests. Sister Laetitia Bordes is a Catholic nun with the Society of Helpers, a Catholic community of women. She’s talking to us from San Bruno, California. And on the line with us from Washington, we're joined by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Peter Kornbluh, I want to begin with you. Can you lay out John Negroponte's record in the early 1980s? PETER KORNBLUH: He was the pro-counsel. He essentially ran Honduras as the Reagan administration changed it from a small Central American country into a territorial battleship, if you will, to fight the Contra war and overthrow the Sandinista government. He was really the head person in charge of this whole operation, which became a massive paramilitary war in the early 1980s. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Battalion 316? What was its role in Honduras, and what did the U.S. government have to do with it? PETER KORNBLUH: Battalion 316 was the Honduran military special forces elite unit. It certainly became a death squad, contrary to what Negroponte said. He must have been well aware that the C.I.A. was working extremely closely with this particular unit, and the U.S. special forces were providing extraordinary aid to this particular unit. The Human Rights Ombudsman in Honduras, Leo Valladares, did a major investigation of the atrocities of this unit and concluded it was mostly responsible for the murders of up to 184 people, one of them an American priest working in Honduras, Father Carney. And the C.I.A. worked very closely with this unit, both to fight the left in Honduras, and to sustain the Contra war. I should say that we have many declassified documents from the Iran-Contra scandal, which do show Negroponte's kind of odd role. He stepped out of being U.S. Ambassador and kind of put on the hat of a C.I.A. station chief in pushing for the Contras to get more arms, in lobbying and meeting with very high Honduran officials to facilitate U.S. support for the Contras and Honduran cooperation, even after the U.S. Congress terminated official support for the Contra war. AMY GOODMAN: I was just watching the Senate Intelligence -- head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts. He was being asked about the confirmation hearings for John Negroponte and asked if he has enough intelligence background. He has diplomatic background, and he said, no, he has both, because as ambassador, he is in charge of the C.I.A. station chief, and so he always knows what's going on around intelligence in his embassy. Of course, I think he was talking about very much Iraq, but what about what Negroponte knew and when he knew it in Honduras? PETER KORNBLUH: Well, you know, the interesting thing, Amy, is that throughout the years, Ambassadors and the State Department have complained that the C.I.A. has been the stronger force in these smaller countries particularly where major covert operations are going on, and that the Embassy head, the Ambassador, essentially gets cut out of the loop. But in the case of Honduras, it was just the reverse. In fact, the Ambassador was a major player not just in receiving information from the C.I.A. station, but in really being the mover and shaker on C.I.A. covert operations there. So, he was very much in the loop even though those are not the, I think, the official duties. He was in the loop and he was active in running this paramilitary war. I would say that his strongest qualifications for this post were the unofficial duties that he had as Ambassador in Honduras. AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break, and then when we come back, we'll continue speaking with Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archives. We'll also speak with Laetitia Bordes, the nun who met with John Negroponte when he was Ambassador to Honduras in 1982 about the fate of dozens of nuns who had gone to Honduras. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We continue to look at the early record of John Negroponte, who has been nominated by President Bush to one of the highest posts of the land. It's new. It's Director of National Intelligence. We're looking at his record as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Our guests are Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, and Laetitia Bordes, an American nun, who met John Negroponte in 1982. Can you talk about why you went to Honduras, Sister Laetitia Bordes? SISTER LAETITIA BORDES: Yes, I went to Honduras in May of 1982 on a fact-finding delegation. As you know, Archbishop Romero had been assassinated in El Salvador in 1980, and there were quite a few members of Christian-based communities who were being picked up and disappearing in El Salvador. So, a group of 32 women -- by the way, these were not nuns. They were lay women, but they were members of Christian-based communities who had been followers of Archbishop Romero, had gone to Honduras to seek refuge from the repression that was taking place in El Salvador at that time. These 32 women -- also included were four children, by the way, in that group -- disappeared in Honduras, and there were witnesses to their disappearance. Vans pulled up in front of the safe house where they were staying, and they were taken and never heard from again. And so, this was -- this happened in April of 1981, and I went to Honduras in May of 1982 and met with John Negroponte to find out what had happened to these 32 women. And John Negroponte said very clearly that the embassy in El Salvador did not know what happened to those women, that we would need to talk to the Honduran government to find out about their fate. We went back. We did speak with the Honduran government. We had meetings there, and they referred us very clearly to our American embassy and sent us back to the American embassy and told us we would need to go through them to find out what had happened to the women. We had two meetings with John Negroponte. The first, and then we went to the Honduran government, and then returned to John Negroponte with the information that we had been given from the Honduran government, and again, he denied clearly the whereabouts of these women. He was very specific in saying that the embassy in Honduras did not interfere in Honduran affairs. That was very, very clear. At the same time, we were talking to different people in Honduras, and it was clear from the people with whom we spoke that John Negroponte was working closely with General Alvarez, who was Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras at that time. And he was facilitating, really, the training of Honduran soldiers and psychological warfare and sabotage, and many types of human rights violations. And by the way, the co-founder -- the founder and commander of battalion 316, who was General Discua, had been trained at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, which is very interesting. So, we see the close connections that there was there between what was going on in Honduras and the American government. AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sister Laetitia Bordes, speaking of the School of the Americas, we have just been joined on the telephone by Andres Contreris. He is joining us from Chile right now. He is co director of the film, Hidden In Plain Sight, which is about the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. He is also the person who, when John Negroponte was going through his confirmation hearings as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, stood up in the hearing room and protested. We welcome you to Democracy Now! Thanks for joining us Andres. ANDRES CONTRERIS: Amy it's really good to be with you, and I'm glad that you're really focusing on this very, very important issue. I not only disrupted Negroponte last year in April, but also in September of 2001 when he was having his hearing to become Ambassador to the United Nations. The reason that I stood up on both of those occasions is because I was trying to be a voice for the voiceless in Honduras. The sister of Manfredo Velazquez whose name is Venaida Velazquez, she was the founder of the Committee of the Family Members of the Disappeared in Honduras. She asked me to go to the hearing when Negroponte was to be confirmed to be Ambassador to the United Nations, and to be a presence there on his behalf. I did not plan to do anything at that time, but when Negroponte said in sworn testimony that he had never even heard of Battalion 316 until years after he left the post in Honduras, I couldn't believe this incredible lie that he was committing, which is a crime, and I decided to risk arrest by standing up and telling him that the people of Honduras consider him to be a state terrorist. This was two days after September 11. I was whisked out of the room at that time. Then last year in April, when he was being -- in the hearing to be confirmed to be Ambassador to Iraq, I also returned at that time because it just seems incredible that this man, who we consider to be a promoter of torture, knowing that that's what was going on in Honduras and Central America, this is the man who just before the Abu Ghraib scandal was breaking -- he was being -- he was under testimony then in the Senate, and he clearly went to Iraq having had the experience of covering up U.S. involvement in torture in Central America. So, this is a state terrorist that needs to be confronted. He needs to be accused of war crimes. He needs to be taken to trial. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, can you elaborate on what Andres is saying? PETER KORNBLUH: I think Andres is absolutely correct that John Negroponte misled the Senate in his confirmation hearings about his knowledge of Battalion 316 about his knowledge of death squad activity. The C.I.A. did report to him on various atrocities that took place. There is some evidence in partially declassified C.I.A. Inspector General's report about the Battalion and its atrocities and about the reporting out of the embassy by both the C.I.A. officers and diplomatic attaches there that seems to imply that Negroponte preferred not to see honest, hard reporting going back to Washington on atrocities being committed by our very strong allies in Honduras. People have to remember, and certainly your listeners remember better than anybody, that they -- your audience and many others in this country -- made Reagan's policy in Central America controversial and managed to get Congress -- push Congress to cut off aid to the Contras. So, any negative reporting on our main allies' activities in Honduras would have given further ammunition to the critics of Negroponte's policies, Reagan's policies, et cetera. That's why there are strong indications that he squashed this reporting. He certainly was critical to the Contra war effort. What he had told the sister about not interfering in Honduran affairs is quite frankly laughable, because he was named essentially the Proconsul. He essentially was a fallback to the age of gunboat diplomacy when the U.S. Ambassador ran a Central American country. In the early 1980's, he was in that position in Honduras. I'm holding a declassified White House document which is from 1983, and it's a memo to the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. It begins, “Ambassador Negroponte, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, has recommended that we increase the number of weapons issued to the F.D.N. forces.” The F.D.N., of course, was the leading contra force and the one most strongly associated with massive human rights violations of civilians in Nicaragua. And in his memo, Negroponte has apparently recommended that the United States send 3,000 additional rifles to the F.D.N. forces, and his recommendation is approved by the President. There are two little R.R.'s, Ronald Reagan, and a yes box under the recommendation in his options memo. So, you get a sense from these declassified records of how important Negroponte was and the type of odd role he played, stepping out of his position as ambassador, a diplomat, and essentially putting on the hat of the C.I.A. station chief and pushing forward the Contra war. AMY GOODMAN: When you heard, Peter Kornbluh, that John Negroponte had been promoted yet again from U.N. Ambassador to Iraq Ambassador and now to become the Director of National Intelligence, what was your reaction? PETER KORNBLUH: Well, part of it is that this President, George Bush, has resurrected many of the Iran-Contra criminals, if you will, or people who certainly tarnished their own careers and the image of the United States by their activities in the Iran-Contra operations. John Negroponte was certainly one of them. You know, I -- I thought that this was not the person that the 9/11 commission had in mind when they wrote for the need -- described the need for us to reconfigure our intelligence committee and have a very, very forceful person at the top. John Negroponte's resume is a diplomatic one, aside from his involvement in the paramilitary operations in Honduras, and he has no deep background in the intelligence community, other than being a State Department official who received intelligence during the course of his positions as head of embassies in the Phillipines, Honduras, Mexico, and at the United Nations, et cetera. So this was -- and everybody is treating it as somewhat of a surprise. Obviously, not the first choice of the President, either. We know that he went to three other people before he finally arrived under pressure at picking John Negroponte. AMY GOODMAN: Apparently among them, Robert Gates, the former Director of C.I.A.? PETER KORNBLUH: Robert Gates, who had been already been D.C.I., Director of Central Intelligence, and apparently did not want to be D.N.I., Director of National Intelligence. AMY GOODMAN: Let me put that same question to Laetitia Bordes, American nun, who met with John Negroponte in 1982 over the fate of dozens of nuns in Honduras. Your reaction, as you have watched John Negroponte's career as he moves up in the U.S. government? SISTER LAETITIA BORDES: Yes. When I heard the news yesterday, I must say I was devastated, absolutely devastated. I wondered, can things get any worse, really, and I am frightened for our own country. I think of what happened in Central America and countries like Honduras, like El Salvador, like Guatemala, where ordinary people organized for justice, for their basic rights and they disappeared. And I'm wondering if that's the road that we are on now, when we hear the President saying that John Negroponte's responsible for getting the information that we need and gathering all of the intelligence, and you know, stopping them before they stop us. That kind of language. It really frightens me. Sometimes I feel that we're on a rollercoaster, and we're headed down, and there's no one pulling the switch. And I think that the switch ought to have been pulled on John Negroponte years ago. When the Senate nominated him --approved his nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N., that was their fault. When once again, they approved his nomination as Ambassador to Iraq, I mean, they bear the responsibility for that. Right now, his confirmation is going to come before the Senate again. Are they going to approve this nomination? I mean, when is all of this going to stop? That is what I'm asking. When is it going to stop? AMY GOODMAN: If I recall correctly, Democratic Senator Dodd of Connecticut opposed the confirmation of John Negroponte as Ambassador to the U.N. on the grounds of what he had done in Central America, but when it came to his being nominated and confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Senator Dodd backed off the protest he had made earlier. When you heard Andres Contreris, about this nomination yesterday while you were in Chile, what was your response, and do you think that there will be Democrats who will raise the kinds of issues that you are raising, Andres? ANDRES CONTRERIS: You know, Amy, in terms of democratic protest, it seems like what they will probably do again is have another “love-fest,” which was the description of the last Senate committee hearing when he was to become Ambassador to Iraq. Here in Chile, they're very mindful of the role that the United States and C.I.A. had in the coup of 1973, and as Sister Laetitia is talking, it seems in some ways that our country is -- is practically a Chile in 1972, and we are approaching more and more what could become an overt military dictatorship with folks like Negroponte in power, with Elliot Abrams being promoted, and all of the ones who have committed human rights crimes are the ones who are being rewarded. Those who are the most experts in what the C.I.A. engages in constantly as “plausible deniability,” they are the experts in this horrendous kind of policy, and they're the ones who are really going to be pushing the buttons in terms of U.S. war making around the world. A month ago, Amy, we heard that from Newsweek that Salvador option was being implemented in Iraq. What we're seeing is that the U.S. military is losing the war there, and so the Salvador option was really a policy of death squads. And it's no coincidence that Negroponte, having been the Ambassador in Honduras where he was very much engaged in this kind of support for death squads was the Ambassador in Iraq and this is the kind of policy that was starting to be implemented there, which is not just going after the resistance itself, but targeting for repression and torture and assassination the underlying support base, the family members, and those in the communities where the resistance is. These kinds of policies are war crimes, and these officials need to be called to accountability. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Andres Contreris, if people want to find out about your film, Hidden In Plain Sight, where do they go on the web? ANDRES CONTRERIS: Thank you, Amy. They would go to hiddeninplainsight.org. We are going to be screening the film here in Chile tonight. We screened it at the World Social Forum in Brazil. I have been traveling in the Southern cone of Latin America talking about the role of the School of the Americas, and U.S. support for torture. AMY GOODMAN: And Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, if people want to see the documents that the National Security Archive has on this period, where can they go? PETER KORNBLUH: Well, the National Security Archive has a very prominent website, nsarchive.org. The key documents on Negroponte are not up on the site at the moment, but they are in our collections, our Iran-Contra collection. There is some citations to them, and use of them in our book, the Iran-Contra scandal, the declassified history. I'm sure they will be circulating around, and if there are any Democratic Senators who wish to address Negroponte's role in Honduras, during the questioning for confirmation of this post, they certainly will have these documents in their hands. AMY GOODMAN: Maybe even Republican Senators as well? PETER KORNBLUH: I would doubt there are going to be very many of those who will challenge his nomination, Amy. Hopefully you are right, and there might be a few. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, as well as Sister Laetitia Bordes, the Catholic nun with the Society of Helpers, the Catholic community of women, speaking from San Bruno, California. -------- veterans Combat-related stress can last a lifetime By Kimberly Hefling, Associated Press Military Writer 2/18/2005 http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-18-combat-stress_x.htm WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Freshly home from World War II, Reni Winter's father charmed his way into her mother's heart, and the two married. Slowly, however, the violence he'd witnessed at Okinawa began to haunt him, and he became abusive. As a young child, Winter knew Marine Lance Cpl. Jerry Joseph Ohana only as the man who called occasionally from an institution. At 7, those calls stopped when her mother decided to cut him out of their lives. "We were forbidden to mention his name," said Winter, 50. Hundreds of thousands of veterans like Ohana were institutionalized with war-related psychiatric problems after World War II. Thousands of others among the 4 million surviving veterans are still struggling with post-combat trauma. The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder estimates that one of every 20 World War II veterans suffers from the disorder, with symptoms such as bad dreams, irritability and flashbacks. Many never got help, in part because few people knew what to look for 60 years ago. The Army sent psychiatrists into battle with the troops, but there was little awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder then. "We didn't even know how to spell it, let alone pronounce it," said retired Col. Bob Jones, 87, of Clarksville, Tenn., who was hit by a tank while serving in World War II with the 101st Airborne Division. Others saw seeking help as a sign of weakness. In 1943, then-Lt. Gen. George S. Patton called two soldiers hospitalized for what was called combat fatigue "cowards" and slapped them. Herman Eickhoff, 80, of Mount Vernon still has nightmares about the eight months he spent in a German POW camp during World War II. In one, he's working as a prisoner, repairing German railroads. Sirens blare as American forces drop bombs around him, unaware he is on the ground. "It always comes back to you," Eickhoff said of his wartime experience. Unlike today's veterans, he can't confide in his war comrades because nearly everyone in his 1st Infantry Division platoon was killed or seriously injured. "There was none of them left," said Eickhoff, a retired carpenter. "It was that bad." Combat-related stress disorders became more widely recognized after the Vietnam War. Today, recruits undergo psychiatric screening before they enlist and receive counseling and screening once they come home. There's also medication to treat those with war-related trauma. Yet the stigma associated with postwar trauma persists. An Army study published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine found that one in eight troops coming home from Iraq reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress, but only about 40% were interested in getting help. Some said they worried about how peers would view them, or that it would affect their careers. Jeffrey Matloff, program director of the post-traumatic stress disorder team at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health Care System, said troops need to realize they aren't alone. "It's a normal reaction to the abnormal events of being in combat," Matloff said. Jones, who recovered from his injuries and later fought in Korea and Vietnam, agreed. "I think it's good that people get this attention," he said. "A lot of people, when they come back, they're bitter, they're hard-nosed, they're rough. They believe in force. They've got to be retooled mentally." For Ohana, that retooling never occurred. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent nearly 50 years in the care of the VA. After years of searching, Winter found him in 1988 in a VA home in New York. She began arranging to have him moved to Indiana, but he died Dec. 2 at 76 in Montrose, N.Y. With modern medicine, Winter said, "Who knows what kind of life he could have led? The sacrifice that he gave ... it's just as valid a sacrifice as anyone who give their life or is wounded." -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence Calif. county wants pot certified organic Posted 2/18/2005 2:59 PM http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-18-pot_x.htm BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Medical-marijuana growers in Mendocino County — a Northern California outpost that is home to vegans, vintners, libertarians and aging hippies — want to have their pot certified as organic. The notion of pesticide-free pot is making some people smile. But county officials say the issue is serious, and they are asking the state whether they can regulate pot-growing and pronounce some crops organic. They say that with no system to regulate cultivation, consumers are at risk. "We regulate wine grape growers and pear growers and everybody else, so why shouldn't we also regulate pot growers?" said Tony Linegar, assistant agricultural commissioner for Mendocino County. "It's really an agricultural crop. In our estimate, it should be subject to a lot of the same laws and regulations as commercial agriculture." California, one of 11 states with medical marijuana laws, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain pot with a doctor's recommendation. Around the country, medical marijuana has slowly moved toward the mainstream, with local law enforcement agencies issuing "user cards," and insurance companies honoring claims for stolen plants. If the county got the go-ahead to regulate organic medical marijuana, it would be "absolutely a first," said Allen St. Pierre of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Regulating cultivation would be "a huge leap in the public discourse and policy-making, in that it recognizes that medical cannabis is legal but it needs to have some sort of local controls placed on it." Acting on a request for two marijuana growers who want their crops to be certified organic, and concerned by reports of someone getting sick in another county from pesticide-treated marijuana, Mendocino County Agricultural Commissioner Dave Bengston wrote to the state Department of Food and Agriculture last month. Bengston asked whether the county can certify pot as organic and whether employees should be inspecting marijuana nurseries to check for pests and other problems as they do with other crops. Department spokesman Jay Van Rein said Monday the secretary is studying the request. Marijuana plants can be threatened by mites, mildew and cornmeal worms. But with no products officially developed for marijuana cultivation, some growers have been using chemicals intended for ornamental plants, which could make users sick, Linegar said. Linegar said he could not estimate how much marijuana is grown in Mendocino County, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, but it is generally considered prime pot territory. And clearly not all of it is being grown for medicinal purposes. The first time someone brought in a pot plant for a health check, was "awkward," Linegar said. Last year, Mendocino County voters passed a first-in-the-nation measure banning the raising of genetically engineered plants and animals. And Mendocino set a pot precedent in 2000 with a ballot issue allowing residents to grow a small amount of marijuana. The move was only symbolic, since state and federal prohibitions rule. "When things like this crop up it's almost our county that's on the cutting left edge if you will," Linegar said. "When I'm discussing these issues with my counterparts in other counties, they really can't relate to the problems that we're facing in Mendocino. They laugh sometimes. But to us it's really a serious issue." -------- terrorism Britain to propose new anti-terror law Associated Press 2/18/2005 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-18-britain-terrorism_x.htm# LONDON (AP) — Home Secretary Charles Clarke said Friday he will introduce anti-terrorism legislation to Parliament next week that would allow him to impose orders restricting suspects' activities. The plan is a response to a December ruling from Britain's highest court, which condemned a law that allowed foreign terrorism suspects to be held indefinitely without charge or trial. Clarke said he was hopeful that the legislation would pass within weeks, even though Conservative Party leader Michael Howard has criticized it harshly. He gave few details, but he has previously said the orders could include restrictions such as house arrest, electronic tagging, curfews, bans on meeting certain people and limits on access to telecommunications for suspects who have not been charged with or convicted of a crime. In December, nine law lords in the House of Lords said the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, rushed through after the Sept. 11 attacks, was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Since then, officials have been scrambling to come up with new legislation that they believe would address the threat from terrorism in a way acceptable to the court. -------- torture Promoting the 'Ambassador of Torture': Bush Nominates Negroponte for Intel Czar Democracy Now Friday, February 18th, 2005 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/18/157206 As President Bush nominates Ambassador John Negroponte, current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first Director of National Intelligence, we look back at Negroponte's bloody history in Central America in the 1980s. [includes rush transcript] President Bush has nominated John Negroponte - the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq - as the country’s first director of national intelligence. Bush made the surprise announcement at a news conference yesterday in Washington. * President Bush, news conference, February, 18, 2005. John Negroponte will have daily access to Bush as his primary intelligence briefer and would have authority over the budgets of the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. He also will have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence and information sharing between agencies. Creating the new top intelligence position was a central recommendation of the 9/11 commission. It was included in an intelligence overhaul bill that Bush signed into law in December. Negroponte has been ambassador to Baghdad for less than a year. Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said he was concerned "about the message we are sending to Iraq and the rest of the world" by removing Negroponte from Baghdad so soon after he took office in June. Negroponte served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2001 to 2004. But it is his time as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. He played a key role in coordinating US covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras. During Negroponte’s tenure, US military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from 3.9 million dollars to over 77 million. Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army’s loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America. The Senate must confirm Negroponte to the new post of national intelligence director. In his confirmation hearings as UN ambassador in (2001) two-thousand-one, he was asked whether he had supported human rights abuses by death squads, which were funded and partly trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified that he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran government policy. He said, "To this day I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras." * Peter Kornbluh, author of “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.” He is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a public-interest documentation center in Washington. * Sister Laetitia Bordes, Catholic nun with the Society of Helpers, a Catholic community of women. She is talking to us from San Bruno California. * Andrés Thomas Conteris, program director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the human rights group Non-Violence International. He is Co-Producer of “Hidden in Plain Sight” He has promoted human rights throughout Latin America for 25 years. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush has nominated John Negroponte, the current U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, as the country's first Director of National Intelligence. Bush made the surprise announcement at a news conference yesterday in Washington. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm pleased to announce my decision to nominate Ambassador John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence. The Director's responsibility is straightforward and demanding. John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions. John understands America's global intelligence needs because he spent the better part of his life in our foreign service and is now serving with distinction in the sensitive post of our nation's first ambassador to a free Iraq. John's nomination comes in an historic moment for our intelligence services. In the war against terrorists who target innocent civilians and continue to seek weapons of mass murder, intelligence is our first line of defense. If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must insure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise. That's why I supported and Congress passed reform legislation creating the job of Director of National Intelligence. AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking in Washington on Thursday. John Negroponte will have daily access to Bush as his primary intelligence briefer. He would have authority over the budgets of the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies. He will also have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence and information sharing between agencies. Creating the new top intelligence position was a central recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. It was included in an intelligence overhaul bill that Bush signed into law in December. Negroponte has been Ambassador to Baghdad for less than a year. Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said he’s concerned, quote, “about the message we’re sending to Iraq and the rest of the world by removing Negroponte from Baghdad so soon after he took office in June.” Negroponte served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. from 2001 to 2004, but it's his time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. Negroponte played a key role in coordinating U.S. covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shored up a C.I.A.-backed death squad in Honduras. During Negroponte's tenure, U.S. military aid to Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million to over $77 million. Much of this went to insure the Honduran army's loyalty in the battle against popular movements throughout Central America. The Senate must confirm Negroponte to the new post of National Intelligence Director. In his confirmation hearings as U.N. Ambassador in 2001, he was asked whether he had supported human rights abuses by death squads which were funded and partly trained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified he did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran government policy. He said, quote, “To this day, I do not believe the death squads were operating in Honduras.” To talk about Negroponte's record as the Ambassador to Honduras, we're joined by two guests. Sister Laetitia Bordes is a Catholic nun with the Society of Helpers, a Catholic community of women. She’s talking to us from San Bruno, California. And on the line with us from Washington, we're joined by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Peter Kornbluh, I want to begin with you. Can you lay out John Negroponte's record in the early 1980s? PETER KORNBLUH: He was the pro-counsel. He essentially ran Honduras as the Reagan administration changed it from a small Central American country into a territorial battleship, if you will, to fight the Contra war and overthrow the Sandinista government. He was really the head person in charge of this whole operation, which became a massive paramilitary war in the early 1980s. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Battalion 316? What was its role in Honduras, and what did the U.S. government have to do with it? PETER KORNBLUH: Battalion 316 was the Honduran military special forces elite unit. It certainly became a death squad, contrary to what Negroponte said. He must have been well aware that the C.I.A. was working extremely closely with this particular unit, and the U.S. special forces were providing extraordinary aid to this particular unit. The Human Rights Ombudsman in Honduras, Leo Valladares, did a major investigation of the atrocities of this unit and concluded it was mostly responsible for the murders of up to 184 people, one of them an American priest working in Honduras, Father Carney. And the C.I.A. worked very closely with this unit, both to fight the left in Honduras, and to sustain the Contra war. I should say that we have many declassified documents from the Iran-Contra scandal, which do show Negroponte's kind of odd role. He stepped out of being U.S. Ambassador and kind of put on the hat of a C.I.A. station chief in pushing for the Contras to get more arms, in lobbying and meeting with very high Honduran officials to facilitate U.S. support for the Contras and Honduran cooperation, even after the U.S. Congress terminated official support for the Contra war. AMY GOODMAN: I was just watching the Senate Intelligence -- head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts. He was being asked about the confirmation hearings for John Negroponte and asked if he has enough intelligence background. He has diplomatic background, and he said, no, he has both, because as ambassador, he is in charge of the C.I.A. station chief, and so he always knows what's going on around intelligence in his embassy. Of course, I think he was talking about very much Iraq, but what about what Negroponte knew and when he knew it in Honduras? PETER KORNBLUH: Well, you know, the interesting thing, Amy, is that throughout the years, Ambassadors and the State Department have complained that the C.I.A. has been the stronger force in these smaller countries particularly where major covert operations are going on, and that the Embassy head, the Ambassador, essentially gets cut out of the loop. But in the case of Honduras, it was just the reverse. In fact, the Ambassador was a major player not just in receiving information from the C.I.A. station, but in really being the mover and shaker on C.I.A. covert operations there. So, he was very much in the loop even though those are not the, I think, the official duties. He was in the loop and he was active in running this paramilitary war. I would say that his strongest qualifications for this post were the unofficial duties that he had as Ambassador in Honduras. AMY GOODMAN: We're going to break, and then when we come back, we'll continue speaking with Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archives. We'll also speak with Laetitia Bordes, the nun who met with John Negroponte when he was Ambassador to Honduras in 1982 about the fate of dozens of nuns who had gone to Honduras. [break] AMY GOODMAN: We continue to look at the early record of John Negroponte, who has been nominated by President Bush to one of the highest posts of the land. It's new. It's Director of National Intelligence. We're looking at his record as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Our guests are Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archives, and Laetitia Bordes, an American nun, who met John Negroponte in 1982. Can you talk about why you went to Honduras, Sister Laetitia Bordes? SISTER LAETITIA BORDES: Yes, I went to Honduras in May of 1982 on a fact-finding delegation. As you know, Archbishop Romero had been assassinated in El Salvador in 1980, and there were quite a few members of Christian-based communities who were being picked up and disappearing in El Salvador. So, a group of 32 women -- by the way, these were not nuns. They were lay women, but they were members of Christian-based communities who had been followers of Archbishop Romero, had gone to Honduras to seek refuge from the repression that was taking place in El Salvador at that time. These 32 women -- also included were four children, by the way, in that group -- disappeared in Honduras, and there were witnesses to their disappearance. Vans pulled up in front of the safe house where they were staying, and they were taken and never heard from again. And so, this was -- this happened in April of 1981, and I went to Honduras in May of 1982 and met with John Negroponte to find out what had happened to these 32 women. And John Negroponte said very clearly that the embassy in El Salvador did not know what happened to those women, that we would need to talk to the Honduran government to find out about their fate. We went back. We did speak with the Honduran government. We had meetings there, and they referred us very clearly to our American embassy and sent us back to the American embassy and told us we would need to go through them to find out what had happened to the women. We had two meetings with John Negroponte. The first, and then we went to the Honduran government, and then returned to John Negroponte with the information that we had been given from the Honduran government, and again, he denied clearly the whereabouts of these women. He was very specific in saying that the embassy in Honduras did not interfere in Honduran affairs. That was very, very clear. At the same time, we were talking to different people in Honduras, and it was clear from the people with whom we spoke that John Negroponte was working closely with General Alvarez, who was Chief of the Armed Forces in Honduras at that time. And he was facilitating, really, the training of Honduran soldiers and psychological warfare and sabotage, and many types of human rights violations. And by the way, the co-founder -- the founder and commander of battalion 316, who was General Discua, had been trained at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, which is very interesting. So, we see the close connections that there was there between what was going on in Honduras and the American government. AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sister Laetitia Bordes, speaking of the School of the Americas, we have just been joined on the telephone by Andres Contreris. He is joining us from Chile right now. He is co director of the film, Hidden In Plain Sight, which is about the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. He is also the person who, when John Negroponte was going through his confirmation hearings as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, stood up in the hearing room and protested. We welcome you to Democracy Now! Thanks for joining us Andres. ANDRES CONTRERIS: Amy it's really good to be with you, and I'm glad that you're really focusing on this very, very important issue. I not only disrupted Negroponte last year in April, but also in September of 2001 when he was having his hearing to become Ambassador to the United Nations. The reason that I stood up on both of those occasions is because I was trying to be a voice for the voiceless in Honduras. The sister of Manfredo Velazquez whose name is Venaida Velazquez, she was the founder of the Committee of the Family Members of the Disappeared in Honduras. She asked me to go to the hearing when Negroponte was to be confirmed to be Ambassador to the United Nations, and to be a presence there on his behalf. I did not plan to do anything at that time, but when Negroponte said in sworn testimony that he had never even heard of Battalion 316 until years after he left the post in Honduras, I couldn't believe this incredible lie that he was committing, which is a crime, and I decided to risk arrest by standing up and telling him that the people of Honduras consider him to be a state terrorist. This was two days after September 11. I was whisked out of the room at that time. Then last year in April, when he was being -- in the hearing to be confirmed to be Ambassador to Iraq, I also returned at that time because it just seems incredible that this man, who we consider to be a promoter of torture, knowing that that's what was going on in Honduras and Central America, this is the man who just before the Abu Ghraib scandal was breaking -- he was being -- he was under testimony then in the Senate, and he clearly went to Iraq having had the experience of covering up U.S. involvement in torture in Central America. So, this is a state terrorist that needs to be confronted. He needs to be accused of war crimes. He needs to be taken to trial. AMY GOODMAN: Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, can you elaborate on what Andres is saying? PETER KORNBLUH: I think Andres is absolutely correct that John Negroponte misled the Senate in his confirmation hearings about his knowledge of Battalion 316 about his knowledge of death squad activity. The C.I.A. did report to him on various atrocities that took place. There is some evidence in partially declassified C.I.A. Inspector General's report about the Battalion and its atrocities and about the reporting out of the embassy by both the C.I.A. officers and diplomatic attaches there that seems to imply that Negroponte preferred not to see honest, hard reporting going back to Washington on atrocities being committed by our very strong allies in Honduras. People have to remember, and certainly your listeners remember better than anybody, that they -- your audience and many others in this country -- made Reagan's policy in Central America controversial and managed to get Congress -- push Congress to cut off aid to the Contras. So, any negative reporting on our main allies' activities in Honduras would have given further ammunition to the critics of Negroponte's policies, Reagan's policies, et cetera. That's why there are strong indications that he squashed this reporting. He certainly was critical to the Contra war effort. What he had told the sister about not interfering in Honduran affairs is quite frankly laughable, because he was named essentially the Proconsul. He essentially was a fallback to the age of gunboat diplomacy when the U.S. Ambassador ran a Central American country. In the early 1980's, he was in that position in Honduras. I'm holding a declassified White House document which is from 1983, and it's a memo to the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. It begins, “Ambassador Negroponte, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, has recommended that we increase the number of weapons issued to the F.D.N. forces.” The F.D.N., of course, was the leading contra force and the one most strongly associated with massive human rights violations of civilians in Nicaragua. And in his memo, Negroponte has apparently recommended that the United States send 3,000 additional rifles to the F.D.N. forces, and his recommendation is approved by the President. There are two little R.R.'s, Ronald Reagan, and a yes box under the recommendation in his options memo. So, you get a sense from these declassified records of how important Negroponte was and the type of odd role he played, stepping out of his position as ambassador, a diplomat, and essentially putting on the hat of the C.I.A. station chief and pushing forward the Contra war. AMY GOODMAN: When you heard, Peter Kornbluh, that John Negroponte had been promoted yet again from U.N. Ambassador to Iraq Ambassador and now to become the Director of National Intelligence, what was your reaction? PETER KORNBLUH: Well, part of it is that this President, George Bush, has resurrected many of the Iran-Contra criminals, if you will, or people who certainly tarnished their own careers and the image of the United States by their activities in the Iran-Contra operations. John Negroponte was certainly one of them. You know, I -- I thought that this was not the person that the 9/11 commission had in mind when they wrote for the need -- described the need for us to reconfigure our intelligence committee and have a very, very forceful person at the top. John Negroponte's resume is a diplomatic one, aside from his involvement in the paramilitary operations in Honduras, and he has no deep background in the intelligence community, other than being a State Department official who received intelligence during the course of his positions as head of embassies in the Phillipines, Honduras, Mexico, and at the United Nations, et cetera. So this was -- and everybody is treating it as somewhat of a surprise. Obviously, not the first choice of the President, either. We know that he went to three other people before he finally arrived under pressure at picking John Negroponte. AMY GOODMAN: Apparently among them, Robert Gates, the former Director of C.I.A.? PETER KORNBLUH: Robert Gates, who had been already been D.C.I., Director of Central Intelligence, and apparently did not want to be D.N.I., Director of National Intelligence. AMY GOODMAN: Let me put that same question to Laetitia Bordes, American nun, who met with John Negroponte in 1982 over the fate of dozens of nuns in Honduras. Your reaction, as you have watched John Negroponte's career as he moves up in the U.S. government? SISTER LAETITIA BORDES: Yes. When I heard the news yesterday, I must say I was devastated, absolutely devastated. I wondered, can things get any worse, really, and I am frightened for our own country. I think of what happened in Central America and countries like Honduras, like El Salvador, like Guatemala, where ordinary people organized for justice, for their basic rights and they disappeared. And I'm wondering if that's the road that we are on now, when we hear the President saying that John Negroponte's responsible for getting the information that we need and gathering all of the intelligence, and you know, stopping them before they stop us. That kind of language. It really frightens me. Sometimes I feel that we're on a rollercoaster, and we're headed down, and there's no one pulling the switch. And I think that the switch ought to have been pulled on John Negroponte years ago. When the Senate nominated him --approved his nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N., that was their fault. When once again, they approved his nomination as Ambassador to Iraq, I mean, they bear the responsibility for that. Right now, his confirmation is going to come before the Senate again. Are they going to approve this nomination? I mean, when is all of this going to stop? That is what I'm asking. When is it going to stop? AMY GOODMAN: If I recall correctly, Democratic Senator Dodd of Connecticut opposed the confirmation of John Negroponte as Ambassador to the U.N. on the grounds of what he had done in Central America, but when it came to his being nominated and confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Senator Dodd backed off the protest he had made earlier. When you heard Andres Contreris, about this nomination yesterday while you were in Chile, what was your response, and do you think that there will be Democrats who will raise the kinds of issues that you are raising, Andres? ANDRES CONTRERIS: You know, Amy, in terms of democratic protest, it seems like what they will probably do again is have another “love-fest,” which was the description of the last Senate committee hearing when he was to become Ambassador to Iraq. Here in Chile, they're very mindful of the role that the United States and C.I.A. had in the coup of 1973, and as Sister Laetitia is talking, it seems in some ways that our country is -- is practically a Chile in 1972, and we are approaching more and more what could become an overt military dictatorship with folks like Negroponte in power, with Elliot Abrams being promoted, and all of the ones who have committed human rights crimes are the ones who are being rewarded. Those who are the most experts in what the C.I.A. engages in constantly as “plausible deniability,” they are the experts in this horrendous kind of policy, and they're the ones who are really going to be pushing the buttons in terms of U.S. war making around the world. A month ago, Amy, we heard that from Newsweek that Salvador option was being implemented in Iraq. What we're seeing is that the U.S. military is losing the war there, and so the Salvador option was really a policy of death squads. And it's no coincidence that Negroponte, having been the Ambassador in Honduras where he was very much engaged in this kind of support for death squads was the Ambassador in Iraq and this is the kind of policy that was starting to be implemented there, which is not just going after the resistance itself, but targeting for repression and torture and assassination the underlying support base, the family members, and those in the communities where the resistance is. These kinds of policies are war crimes, and these officials need to be called to accountability. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Andres Contreris, if people want to find out about your film, Hidden In Plain Sight, where do they go on the web? ANDRES CONTRERIS: Thank you, Amy. They would go to hiddeninplainsight.org. We are going to be screening the film here in Chile tonight. We screened it at the World Social Forum in Brazil. I have been traveling in the Southern cone of Latin America talking about the role of the School of the Americas, and U.S. support for torture. AMY GOODMAN: And Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive, if people want to see the documents that the National Security Archive has on this period, where can they go? PETER KORNBLUH: Well, the National Security Archive has a very prominent website, nsarchive.org. The key documents on Negroponte are not up on the site at the moment, but they are in our collections, our Iran-Contra collection. There is some citations to them, and use of them in our book, the Iran-Contra scandal, the declassified history. I'm sure they will be circulating around, and if there are any Democratic Senators who wish to address Negroponte's role in Honduras, during the questioning for confirmation of this post, they certainly will have these documents in their hands. AMY GOODMAN: Maybe even Republican Senators as well? PETER KORNBLUH: I would doubt there are going to be very many of those who will challenge his nomination, Amy. Hopefully you are right, and there might be a few. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, as well as Sister Laetitia Bordes, the Catholic nun with the Society of Helpers, the Catholic community of women, speaking from San Bruno, California. To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359. -------- POLITICS -------- us politics House approves class-action act By Charles Hurt THE WASHINGTON TIMES February 18, 2005 http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050217-114809-3830r.htm The House overwhelmingly passed the Class Action Fairness Act yesterday, setting the stage for President Bush to sign into law as early as today the most sweeping federal tort reform measure in more than a decade. "After 10 years of tireless work on multiple fronts, our efforts are finally paying off, and the Republican Congress has passed the first substantive lawsuit abuse reform bill," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican. "This bill is a major accomplishment and it will make history." The bill, which passed the Senate last week and is the first major policy push by Republicans in this Congress, aims to halt some of the largest frivolous lawsuits in which lawyers bag huge fees and plaintiffs score pittances. It passed the House yesterday on a 279-149 vote. Specifically, the bill diverts large, multistate class-action lawsuits from state courts into federal courts to stop lawyers from shopping their cases around the country in search of generous state judges and juries known for awarding huge verdicts. One such jurisdiction -- Madison County, Ill. -- reported a glut of suits filed in recent months as the legislation appeared likely to pass into law. The law also will enhance judicial scrutiny of settlements where coupons are awarded to plaintiffs to ensure that legal fees are not too generous by comparison. Yesterday's vote was a major victory for Mr. Bush, for whom tort reform has been a linchpin policy goal. He campaigned vigorously on the issue and this bill in particular. He is expected to sign it as early as today. "[The bill] will help protect people who are wrongfully harmed while reducing the frivolous lawsuits that clog courts, hurt the economy, cost jobs and burden American businesses," he said yesterday. "Junk lawsuits have driven the cost of America's tort system to more than 240 billion dollars a year -- greater than any other major industrialized nation," Mr. Bush said. "This bill is an important step forward in our efforts to reform the litigation system and to continue creating jobs and growing our economy." Opponents of the bill -- all Democrats -- say the legislation will undermine plaintiffs' ability to seek redress from large corporations that have deep pockets and armies of lawyers. They accuse Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress of working at the behest of corporate interests -- particularly the insurance industry -- which have donated generously to Republican efforts. "In the 1960s, President Kennedy used to say, 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,' " Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, said on the House floor. "Today, Republican leaders in Washington have issued a new challenge: 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country club.' That is what this bill is all about." Like many Democrats opposed to the legislation, Mr. Markey said it will "repeal the protections that have been placed upon the books for two generations that ensure that the individual in our society is given the protection which they need." While on the opposite end of the debate, Republicans agreed that the bill was one of historic proportions. "I'm pleased to join my colleagues here today who support taking a historic first step towards breaking one of the main shackles holding back our economy and America's work force -- lawsuit abuse," said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican. The Class Action Fairness Act is part of a broad assault Republicans are levying against rampant litigation and the trial attorney industry, one of the biggest financial backers of Democratic causes. Another key element of that assault is the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Prevention Act, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday and is headed to the Senate floor for a final vote. That bill aims to unclog the courts of meritless bankruptcy claims and limit some of the abuse by claimants. Those changes include limiting a debtor's ability to run up significant debt just prior to bankruptcy and capping the value of a primary residence eligible to be shielded from creditors. The class-action bill, sponsored by Virginia Reps. Robert W. Goodlatte, a Republican, and Rick Boucher, a Democrat, was first introduced nearly 10 years ago and has been blocked by Democrats ever since. "Presently, the only winners are the lawyers who may get a half-billion dollar payday," Mr. Goodlatte said. "This law will help ensure that real plaintiffs with real grievances are protected against settlements that give the lawyers millions and mere coupons to the consumers." One of the most outrageous cases, the congressman said, was one in which a bank was sued and the class of plaintiffs' lawyers walked away with millions. The purportedly injured plaintiffs, meanwhile, were paid just 33 cents each. But in order to recover their award, the plaintiffs had to mail in a request, complete with a 34-cent stamp they had to pay for themselves. Yesterday marked the fourth time the House approved the measure, each time with an increasingly larger majority. In the Senate, the legislation had been stalled since October 2003 by a filibuster lodged by 41 senators, all but two of whom were Democrats. The bill passed the Senate last week with support from 72 senators. -------- voting Just Another American Publicity Stunt With Constant Violence Making Daily Life an Uncertainty, a Forced Election Does Little for Iraq BY Anna Schlotz and Snehal Shingavi Friday, February 18, 2005 Daily Californian (Berkeley) http://www.dailycal.org/particle.php?id=17679 “Don't ask us to join, because we will tell you to leave.” Despite the fanfare with which the elections in Iraq have been broadcast into American homes, the balloting of increasingly smaller sections of the Iraqi population only begins to expose the hypocrisy of proclaiming democracy under military occupation—where men and women with guns and tanks at every corner tell you to vote, even though water, electricity, medicine, and housing are still at best unreliable features of daily life. Elections in which the names of candidates were not announced, where most Iraqis could not name more than a few of the 7,700 people running, and where the major parties were forced to drop the demand for American withdrawal timetables from their election platforms. These were not in fact civil rights at their best, but another orchestrated American P.R. maneuver along the lines of the toppling of the Saddam statue and Bush landing on an aircraft carrier. Would Thomas Paine have tolerated American elections under British bayonets being called free? Should Iraqis really be understood to be any different? Did the British portrayal of the 1765 Stamp Act riots as terrorism delegitimize the necessity or the validity of the American Revolution? If not, should Iraqis then be expected to accept the murder of loved ones by ever-smarter bombs and torture in modern Abu Ghraibs, the destruction of their homes and hospitals to find nonexistent WMDs and the permanent contamination of their soil by depleted uranium without protest? The Iraqi resistance is an organic movement of fathers, sons, mothers, and daughters who are Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, working class, intellectuals, secular, Islamist, and Arab nationalists all united by their opposition to the occupation. Singling out a minority of “fanatical” Iraqis as representative of the entire resistance is only a way of vilifying the right of Iraqis to independence, even as history has demonstrated time and again that the nastier the occupation, the more vicious the resistance. The US will not even recognize the hypocrisy—and the Orwellian nature— of blaming foreign fighters for the instability in Iraq, as if the marines were an indigenous institution. The anti-war movement has a responsibility to support the resistance as the struggle for the basic human rights of freedom from occupation, self-determination, and the ability to live with dignity; and to place the blame for chaos, civil war and terrorism squarely at the feet of American bombs and foreign policy. After all, the only thing standing in the way of U.S. plans to attack North Korea, Iran or Syria is the implacability of Iraqi resistance. We believe it has become impossible any longer to be anti-war without also being pro-resistance. The occupation will only end if the Iraqi people are successful at dealing increasingly decisive blows to a U.S. military that shows no signs of leaving. So, the anti-war movement has to take two important steps. First, it must give platform and support to cases of military personnel and families whose opposition to the war is becoming greater. And second, it must hurt the American war machine where it will be felt the most: military recruitment. The third circuit court in FAIR v. Rumsfeld ruled in November that universities can legally deny military recruiters access to campuses because the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy discriminates against gays and lesbians. And in January, the marines reported they were unable to meet their recruiting quotas and that the war in Iraq was the single greatest reason young people did not want to enlist. This provides the anti-war movement with an opening not only to protest the military’s discriminatory policies and its targeting of low-income and minority students, but also to provide a real referendum on the war—one the last elections did not provide. We urge the administration of UC Berkeley to take a stand. Tell military recruiters they are not welcome on campus. Gay and lesbian students deserve our support and deserve to learn in environments free from discrimination. Students should not have to choose between an education and war. Iraqi people deserve genuine freedom. Anna Schlotz and Snehal Shingavi are part of something or other. Send comments to opinion@dailycal.org. (c) 2003 The Daily Californian Berkeley, CA dailycal@dailycal.org -------- ENERGY -------- alternative energy EPA Invites States Into Clean Energy-Environment Partnership WASHINGTON, DC, February 18, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-18-09.asp#anchor2 Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will launch the new Clean Energy-Environment State Partnership Program together with 10 charter states. California, Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas are the charter states. EPA will announce the new program at the National Association of State Energy Officials' 2005 Energy Outlook conference. Under the voluntary program, EPA assists states as they develop and implement action plans to improve air quality, decrease energy use, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and enhance economic development. The program is based on maximizing the use of energy efficiency, renewable energy and other clean power options. With the demand for energy expected to climb 40 percent by the year 2025 and about 126 million people living in counties where monitored air is unhealthy at one time or more during the year, many states are seeking to integrate their energy and environmental policies to protect public health and ensure electricity reliability, energy security and economic development. The EPA estimates that if all 50 states implemented cost-effective clean energy-environment policies, the expected growth in demand for electricity could be cut in half by 2025, and more demand could be met through a cleaner energy supply. This would mean annual savings of more than 900 billion kilowatt-hours and $70 billion in energy costs by 2025, while preventing the need for more than 300 power plants and the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 80 million of today's vehicles. "EPA is pleased to initiate a new effort to help states work on cost-effective energy and environmental strategies that make sense for their air, their electricity systems, and their economies," said Jeffrey Holmstead, EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation. Under the new partnership program, states to work with EPA to develop and implement a state-specific Clean Energy-Environment State Action Plan that contains one or more clean energy-environment goals. EPA provides Partner States with access to a comprehensive technical assistance package of planning, policy, technical, analytical and information resources and helps direct them to other federal programs that support clean energy-environment strategies. In addition to receiving technical assistance from EPA, partners benefit from learning from their peers about successful programs and policies at work in other states, identifying themselves as environmental and clean energy leaders, and receiving EPA recognition for the environmental benefits that result from their efforts. Examples of policies and programs that states may choose to pursue as part of their Clean Energy-Environment Action Plan include energy efficiency incentive programs to promote technologies that can lower emissions and save consumers energy costs and programs to support the adoption of cost-effective green power. For information on the program and Charter Partners, go to: http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy. -------- ACTIVISTS A Doctor Whose Mission Is Peace and Prizes By Nora Boustany Friday, February 18, 2005 Washington Post; Page A26 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33679-2005Feb17?language=printer When Ole Danbolt Mjoes, a professor of medicine who specializes in the heart, is not in a lecture auditorium or his lab, he devotes his time to the topic of peace, his "other interest," as he calls it. Mjoes, 65, is chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a team of five individuals who select the peace laureate each year. The committee's work is largely secret: Names of the candidates are not released, although some are made public or are leaked by people nominating them. But during a stop in Washington last week on his way to the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Mjoes divulged a few hints about the process. Feb. 1 was the deadline for submitting nominations for this year's peace prize, and 166 candidates' names were submitted. When the committee, which is based in Oslo, Norway, meets next week, members can put forward additional names for consideration. The recipient is usually announced in October, and an award ceremony takes place in December. Mjoes said that new trends had emerged in the selection process. For example, out of 112 peace laureates, 12 have been women, not a large percentage, but an irreversible trend, he said. In 2003, Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and activist, became the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to win the prize. Mjoes said her writings showed there was "no contradiction between the understanding of Islam and the notion of human rights." Last year's laureate, Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist, received the honor for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. By selecting Maathai, Mjoes said the committee established an opening for those "who improve living conditions on the earth, on the road to peace." It was "our way of signaling a new criterion had been introduced," he explained. "It is about how we live together, share resources . . . about preserving the Earth." According to Mjoes, the three classic criteria in the past were: "doing excellent things for brotherhood . . . and, I say, sisterhood"; work on the reduction of arms and arms control; and arranging peace conferences, which, Mjoes acknowledged, is now "out of style." The nominations of organizations, instead of just individuals, was established early on. The International Committee of the Red Cross received the prize in 1917, 1944 and 1963. Doctors Without Borders won in 1999. In Oslo yesterday, Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told the Reuters news agency that 29 organizations had been nominated for 2005. The prize plays different roles in the lives of the recipients. In the case of Ebadi and other human rights or democracy activists, the international platform often has provided protection. For South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who at the time was trying unsuccessfully to be granted a meeting with President Ronald Reagan, receiving the prize in 1984 opened doors. The morning after the announcement was made, Tutu received his long-awaited call from the White House, Mjoes said. There has been speculation that tsunami relief work is high on the agenda this year. But former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, rock star Bono and Pope John Paul II have also been mentioned as nominees. Mjoes urges people to ponder how to make the components of peace more permanent. For example, he said, the border zone between Russia and Norway has long been tranquil. "Why is that?" he asked. What mechanism between people can make more peace than war? What happens in areas of the world where there is peace, but political, economic and cultural disparities exist? Fighting is sometimes stopped for days in war zones such as Sri Lanka, so children can be vaccinated. Why not expand those five days? Mjoes said one person who should have received the honor but never did was Mahatma Gandhi. At his talk in Minnesota, Mjoes quoted Gandhi: "When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Think of it! Always!" ---- Nepal cuts phone lines to thwart protests Associated Press 2/18/2005 http://www.soundclick.com/stations/stations.cfm?id=121461 KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Police in Nepal arrested 57 opposition protesters Friday as King Gyanendra plunged the Himalayan country into a communications blackout, cutting phone service to thwart efforts to organize nationwide rallies against his recent seizure of power. The rallies, scheduled for Nepal's annual celebration of democracy called Democracy Day, were the first major protests planned against the king. Only eight protesters showed up in the capital, Katmandu, and they were promptly arrested. The poor turnout could be attributed to the king cutting phone services for almost 10 hours Friday and authorities detaining dozens of opposition leaders after he assumed power Feb. 1. On Friday, at least 36 people were arrested in Janakpur town and 13 in the Himalayan resort town of Pokhara, police said. In the capital, activists from the opposition Nepali Congress guided journalists to protest sites. Eight activists eventually emerged from a narrow lane and started shouting slogans against the king in a busy Katmandu market. "Death to autocracy! Down with the autocratic king!" they yelled. But they fled within minutes as a column of police in blue raced down the lane with truncheons and shields, followed by police cars blaring loud sirens. All the demonstrators were arrested. Hours earlier, the 55-year-old king celebrated Democracy Day, marking the end of autocratic rule in Nepal in 1951, by attending a military parade. Many residents of the capital city also participated. In a message to the nation, Gyanendra said he took control of the country only to save democracy from communist rebels and corrupt politicians. The Royal Nepalese Army had tightened security Friday, fearing attacks by Maoist rebels, spokesman Brig. Gen. Dipak Gurung said. Since the king's takeover, the rebels have refrained from major assaults, except for an attack on a jail. More than 10,500 people have been killed in Nepal's insurgency since it started in 1996. The crackdown on demonstrators came a day after a U.S. State Department official in Washington said the monarch assured the Bush administration he will begin restoring democracy within 100 days. The official said Washington would consider suspending its security aid for Nepal if the king failed to follow through on that pledge. Britain was considering similar action, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Friday during a tour of India. "We are very keen to see the restoration of a representative government and democratic freedom as essential steps toward a sustainable peace process," Straw told reporters in New Delhi. "We don't believe there is any future from the current situation." For days following the royal takeover, Nepal's communications links to the outside world were virtually severed. Landline phone links later resumed, although mobile phone service has remained disconnected. Political leaders, students, human rights activists, journalists and trade unionists have been detained. The United States, Britain and other nations have recalled their ambassadors in protest. Gyanendra rejected the criticism in his message Friday, saying the imposition of monarchic rule was necessary because corrupt and squabbling politicians had failed to effectively fight the insurgency. He said "terrorist activities" — typically meaning rebel attacks — and "politics far removed from the common man" had put the country's democracy at risk, adding to "growing disillusionment with democracy itself." The king's words resonated with some residents of Katmandu interviewed Friday. "The king did the right thing. These politicians are so corrupt and so inefficient. They needed this. That's why you see no support for the rally today," said Damodar Chowdhary, a 22-year-old taxi driver. ---- Neo-Nazi group plans historic site rally Associated Press 2/18/2005 http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-02-18-yorktown-nazi-rally_x.htm NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Citing the First Amendment right to free speech and peaceable assembly, the National Park Service granted a neo-Nazi group's request to hold a rally at a national monument to democracy. The National Socialist Movement plans to hold a rally June 25 at the Yorktown Battlefield, Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst said Friday. "Because this is a First Amendment issue, it cannot be turned down," Litterst said. However, the group probably will not have the rally on its chosen site — Surrender Field, which is where the British army surrendered to Gen. George Washington to end the Revolutionary War. Litterst said no group has ever been permitted to use that field, which is a popular tourist attraction. The National Socialist Movement, which claims to be the nation's largest Nazi party, did not respond to requests for interviews Friday, but the Minneapolis-based group said on its application that it chose the Yorktown Battlefield because of a desire to honor Washington. They say Washington held anti-Semitic views — a position disputed by many scholars. The group's application said up to 300 people will demonstrate at the southeastern Virginia park, but only about 100 showed up when it held a similar rally last September at Valley Forge National Historical Park. They were heckled by twice as many counter-demonstrators. Litterst said the Park Service would have a substantial police presence at the Yorktown rally.