NucNews - March 25, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Nuclear Regulatory Commission praises SC nuclear plant operations (AP) March 25, 2005 http://www.wistv.com/global/story.asp?s=3124993&ClientType=Printable Hartsville - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says workers at the H.B. Robinson Nuclear Station in Hartsville reacted well in shutting down the reactor when a leak occurred last fall. Paul Fredrickson with the NRC in Atlanta was at the plant yesterday to deliver the public safety assessment for the station, operated by Progress Energy. Fredrickson says a leak occurred October 12th when the packing in a valve malfunctioned in the reactor's cooling system. Robinson's performance indicator was lowered from green to white for the final quarter of 2004. Green is the best of four levels, white is one step lower. The NRC says the leak posed no harm to Robinson employees or the public. The plant got a green rating for the rest of the year. Posted 9:11pm by BrettWitt -------- japan Kansai Elec says head to quit over nuclear accident Fri Mar 25, 2005 04:41 AM ET (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=5GCTQCIQ2JNXYCRBAEOCFEY?type=topNews&storyID=8003035 TOKYO, March 25 - Kansai Electric Power Co. said on Friday its president Yosaku Fuji would step down in late June to take responsibility for an accident that killed five people at its Mihama nuclear power plant last year. Kansai Electric's vice president Shosuke Mori, 64, will replace the 67-year-old Fuji, a company spokesman said. "Fuji had to work to prevent such an accident from happening again and will do so until the end of June," the spokesman said. Fuji joined Kansai Electric, Japan's second-biggest power utility, in 1960 and became president in 2001. Mori joined the company in 1963 and has been vice president since 2001. Last August, steam and water leaked from a broken pipe at the Mihama No. 3 unit in western Japan's Fukui prefecture, killing five workers and injuring six in the country's worst nuclear-related accident. Since the accident, Kansai has been in the spotlight for what critics have called its lax inspection practices. The pipe that leaked had not been checked since it started commercial operations in 1976. The Japanese government has a policy of supporting nuclear power, prompted by the country's lack of natural resources such as oil and natural gas as well as an international movement to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. Japan has the world's third-biggest nuclear power generation capacity after the United States and France. Its 53 nuclear generators in commercial use have a combined capacity of 47.122 million kilowatts and provide some 35 percent of its electricity. A new unit is undergoing a test run and is expected to start commercial operations in October. However, the industry has suffered years of scandals and accidents related to nuclear plants in addition to Kansai's. That accident followed an admission by top utility Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.T: Quote, Profile, Research) that it had falsified nuclear safety documents for more than a decade, a revelation that forced it to shut its 17 nuclear generators for checks some two years ago. -------- pakistan Pakistan mulls nuclear handover Critics ask why fuel-rich Iran needs nuclear energy Friday, 25 March, 2005 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4381815.stm Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is considering sending nuclear parts to a UN watchdog to help it investigate if Iran is developing atomic weapons. Pakistan admits its disgraced scientist AQ Khan gave Iran nuclear centrifuges. The centrifuges help produce enriched uranium that can be used for nuclear weapons or in power plants. The International Atomic Energy Agency found traces of uranium in Iran's equipment, which Tehran blamed on the second-hand Pakistani centrifuges. Two-year inquiry Earlier this month, Pakistan denied reports from sources close to the UN inquiry into Iran's nuclear programme that it would hand over the uranium-enriching components to inspectors. But now Gen Musharraf has told the Aaj television channel that Pakistan was considering a "one-off" offer to co-operate, either by sending parts to the IAEA in Vienna or hosting its inspectors in Pakistan. "We are considering and negotiations are under way and we will see," he said. "We have said, 'OK, we will give you them and you examine them outside, or maybe you [come] to us'. But once and for all, and after that, we've told them that once we do it, then don't ask next time." The BBC's Zaffar Abbas in Islamabad says the move is apparently aimed at clearing Pakistan's name in the controversy surrounding Iran's nuclear programme. US pressure The IAEA has been investigating Iran's programme for more than two years. AQ Khan - still a hero to many Pakistanis It is still trying to verify whether, as Tehran says, Iran's nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful. The US accuses Iran, a state already rich in gas and oil, of pursuing atomic energy as a screen to develop nuclear weapons. Only last week, Pakistan's foreign ministry rejected the suggestion Pakistan would hand over technology for inspection as baseless. "Pakistan has not been asked to give centrifuges, nor will Pakistan do so," Jalil Abbas Jilani told reporters. On her trip to Pakistan last week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Pakistan to tell Washington everything it knew about the AQ Khan nuclear weapons-smuggling network. Pakistan has admitted Dr Khan led an international network that was involved in transferring nuclear information and material to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea. Since this public confession, Dr Khan has remained under house arrest. However, he remains a hero to many Pakistanis and has received a presidential pardon. Pakistan has so far refused to allow foreign investigators to interrogate Dr Khan. -------- russia Russian atomic industry will not be short of natural uranium 25.03.2005, 15.23 (Itar-Tass) http://www.tass.ru/eng/level2.html?NewsID=1868343&PageNum=0 MOSCOW, March 25 - “Russia’s nuclear energy sector is steadily developing and this calls for increasing amounts of uranium to be mined”, Vice-President of the TVEL State Corporation Stanislav Golovinsky told Itar-Tass. The TVEL Corporation, he noted, is the only company “that is mining natural uranium in Russia today”. This job “is being done by the corporation’s three daughter enterprises: the Priargunskoye Mining and Chemical Complex in Chita Region, which annually mines three thousand tons of uranium, the Dalur Association in Kurgan Region, and the Khiagda Association in Buryatia”. The output of the two latter enterprises will reach one thousand tons of natural uranium each within the next five years. In the opinion of the TVEL vice-president, “more than five thousand tons of natural uranium will be extracted in Russia in the foreseeable future, while the annual requirement of the country’s atomic industry stands at eight thousand tons”. The shortage, Golovinsky explained, “will be made up from the available stockpiles of uranium and by processing irradiated nuclear fuel”. Officials of the corporation also said the output of uranium in the country “is to be guaranteed after 2010 by sinking new uranium mines”. Golovinsky said “new large uranium-mining enterprises could be built on the basis of some large deposits in South Yakutia. The first uranium from those mines is expected to be obtained by 2015,” he added. True, Golovinsky noted, “these deposits, sufficient for fifty years to come, cannot be tapped without government support”. Moreover, TVEL officials stated, “new uranium deposits are most likely to be found also in Karelia and East Siberia”. In 2004, the corporation “had invested in 51.5 million roubles in geological prospecting". ---- Soldier Detained in Russian Nuclear Missile Base for Smoking Dope on Duty Created: 25.03.2005 MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/25/missilesonhigh.shtml A serviceman of the strategic missile unit in Russia’s Siberia has been detained for smoking marijuana while on duty and selling drugs to his comrades, the Interfax news agency reported. A warrant officer at military unit No 28151 of the Glukhov Guards Division of the Strategic Missile Forces was detained on March 23 while selling marijuana to fellow soldiers. He did not resist arrest and military police chose not to place him in custody demanding a written pledge not to leave his unit instead. During questioning the serviceman confessed that he had smoked marijuana for over a year, both in joints and through a home-made pipe. He also said that he had repeatedly been on combat duty while under the influence of drugs. Commanders of the unit were quick to announce that the soldier had no access to the ’nuclear button’. They said the warrant officer served as a technician at a communications post. The Glukhov Guards Division is stationed near Novosibirsk in West Siberia. The division is armed with Russia’s newest Topol intercontinental ballistic missiles. -------- transportation Nuclear fuel headed to South Carolina Fri, Mar. 25, 2005 The State http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/11225237.htm CHERBOURG, France — Two ships outfitted with naval guns set sail for the United States this week loaded with a special commercial nuclear fuel made from U.S. weapons-grade plutonium, officials said. The four rods of MOX, as the transformed fuel is known, left the English Channel port Wednesday for Charleston, said a statement from Areva, the company that transformed the plutonium. The plutonium was taken from nuclear warheads to be transformed into a commercial fuel to help fulfill the terms of a September 2000 U.S.-Russia disarmament accord in which both countries promised to destroy 34 tons of military plutonium. The MOX is to be used at South Carolina’s Catawba Nuclear Station — a test run to confirm that the fuel works there. A MOX factory would then be built with French help at the Savannah River Site to dispose of the rest of the plutonium the United States agreed to destroy. -------- treaties Ratifying sea treaty a mistake March 25, 2005 Washington Times Editorial By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050324-075950-8001r.htm The Bush administration, and more than a few Senate Republicans, have chosen to support U.S. ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. They should reconsider. The fundamental flaws inherent in the treaty far outweigh any benefits the United States might hope to obtain by becoming a party. Indeed, the only real argument in favor of approving the treaty is that the United States should avoid upsetting an international consensus on this issue. In the past, the Bush administration has decisively and properly rejected this argument when fundamental issues of U.S. sovereignty are at stake. It should do so again. The treaty began life more than 20 years ago as an effort to remake the legal regime applicable to the Earth's oceans. The United States supported a number of the treaty's substantive provisions, especially the right of coastal states to a 12-mile territorial sea, a 200-mile exclusive economic zone and free navigation of the seas. It continues to believe that these represent sensible codifications of customary international law. Overall, however, the agreement would have been a stunningly bad deal for the United States, especially in the area of exploring and exploiting the deep sea- bed. Under these provisions, among other things, any American company wishing to undertake a sea bed project beyond U.S. territorial waters would have been required to survey two sites, making one over to an International Seabed Authority, along with the mining and navigational technology it uses. In addition, the authority's decision-making apparatus would have been weighted heavily in favor of the Third World, including nations with no sea coast. As former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick noted, "the formula for representation guaranteed that the industrialized 'producer' countries would be a permanent minority. And they would have a majority of obligations." Rarely has a more naked wealth-shifting scheme been devised, and the Reagan administration understandably balked. In the mid-1990s, a new supplementary agreement was negotiated in an effort to "resolve" the American objections, which were shared by a number of industrialized states. Unfortunately, although some provisions were modified — for instance, technology sharing would no longer be required and industrial nations would have more influence in the seabed authority decision-making process — the treaty's most fundamental flaw was not addressed. This is the notion that the oceans and sea bed beyond established national jurisdiction constitute "the common heritage of mankind, the exploration and exploitation of which shall be carried out for the benefit of mankind as a whole." The idea of a "global commons" is hardly new, but the treaty would effectively transform this remarkably fuzzy and pernicious concept from a rhetorical flourish into legal reality. For anyone who cares about the principle of national sovereignty — which is the very basis of our right to self-government, honors private property and believes that market forces lead to the most efficient utilization of natural resources — the idea of a "global commons" must ring alarm bells. Actually vesting authority over more than two-thirds of the Earth's surface — which is today open to American citizens as to others under customary international law — in an international governing body should be anathema. Obviously, President Bush does care deeply about American sovereignty — as he has proven on many occasions. So why does his administration support the treaty? It is difficult not to conclude that there has been some good old fashion horse-trading involved here. The argument goes something like this: "The administration is against so many international initiatives that our allies support, including the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol, that we have to give them something." Diplomatically, of course, such claims have some legitimate forces and, if only money were at stake in the treaty, they might well have merit here. But it's not only money. Since the Cold War's end, activists, academics and governments have pursued a dedicated effort to remake the very structure of global governance. In particular, with the growth and consolidation of the European Union, our allies have increasingly called the question on how the Earth's human communities should be organized. For nearly 400 years, this organization has been on the basis of independent nation-states, and it is in that context that the United States was born and its unique brand of democracy was well and truly established. By contrast, globalist or universalist ideas and institutions have in the past proven inimical to self-government and democracy, and there is every reason to believe that this will continue to be the case in the future, whether we deal with the Earth's oceans, its landmasses, or outer space. Until this issue is settled — preferably in America's favor — the United States should oppose the creation of independent international institutions with the capacity to exercise actual political and regulatory power — especially with respect to individuals. The CLOS would establish just such an institution and should, on that account, be opposed. A time may well come when the peoples of the Earth do constitute a single polity, sharing in the same belief and value systems, and fully capable of governing themselves as a whole. This time, however, has not yet arrived, and vesting real power over the oceans' vast resources in an institution controlled by international bureaucrats is simply not in the United States' best interests. David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. -------- ukraine Ukraine's proliferation skeletons By David Isenberg Mar 25, 2005 Asia Times http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GC25Ag02.html WASHINGTON - Recent stories about the alleged sale of 12 former Soviet nuclear-capable unarmed air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) to Iran and China - six to each nation - by Ukraine advance a long unfolding slow-motion scandal, but still leave many questions unanswered. Allegations of Ukranian arms sales to Iran and other countries have been around for years. For example, in November 2002 lawmaker Hryhoriy Omelchenko, a former reserve colonel in the Ukranian intelligence service, promised to lay out "proven facts" of Ukraine's arms sales "not only to Iraq, North Korea, China and Iran", but even other states, according to his office. Omelchenko is the same legislator who went public last month in letters to President Victor Yuschenko and the prosecutor general, Svyatoslav Piskun, with allegations of the smuggling operation. The 2002 charge came at the same time that Ukraine was in the news for a scandal over the alleged sale of Kolchuga air-defense radars to Iraq. It was then feared that the radars could be used to track Western aircraft in Iraq's no-fly zones. Former president Leonid D Kuchma himself was implicated several years ago in the sale of a highly advanced radar system to Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime. On secret recordings made by a former bodyguard in the president's office, likely in the summer of 2000, a voice resembling Kuchma's approved of the sale of the Kolchuga radar system through a Jordanian intermediary. The United States, as well as outside experts, authenticated the controversial tapes, which also suggested Kuchma's complicity in the murder of an opposition journalist. Kuchma has repeatedly denied any role in those crimes. While there is no definitive smoking gun that Iraq received the Kolchuga systems, the presumption is that it must be considered likely, according to a report by a joint US-United Kingdom team. Interestingly, this was at the same time that US Special Operations Forces had been ordered to launch operations against arms supply lines to terrorists and the three rogue nations referred to by President George W Bush as the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran and North Korea. But apparently they did not know about the missile sale to Iran or were not authorized to conduct an operation against it. The larger point, however, is that Ukraine, under Kuchma, was widely known as a willing supplier of weaponry. Since taking office in January after the "Orange Revolution", Yushchenko has promised to investigate illicit weapons-dealings, including the allegation that election rival Kuchma approved the Kolchuga radar sale to Iraq. Ukraine's intelligence agency, the State Security Service (Sluzhba Bespeky Ukrayiny - SBU), launched its investigation of the case involving Iran and China on February 14, 2004, during Kuchma's presidency. It announced last year that it had "exposed and curtailed the activities of an international criminal group of arms traders who intended to export from Ukraine 20 air-launched cruise missiles". But the probe was not publicized until this February, when lawmaker Omelchenko wrote Yushchenko asking him to pursue a full investigation. According to Omelchenko, in 2000 Russian national Oleg Orlov and a Ukrainian partner identified as E V Shilenko, also a Russian national, exported 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles through a fake contract and end-user certificate with Russia's state-run arms dealer and with a firm called Progress, which is a daughter company of Ukrspetseksport, Ukraine's weapons-exporting agency. Orlov and Shilenko used the Ukrspetseksport state company to convey to Progress a forged contract on behalf of the Russian federal state arms company Rosvooruzheniye and an end-user certificate purporting to be from the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation for the delivery of 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles to that country. Omelchenko's letter says the cruise missiles were concealed in the arsenals of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, although in documents signed by senior ministry officials they were listed as having been destroyed. Ukrainian weapons dealers ferried missiles to China through a Ukraine-based cargo company run by a former secret service agent, according to Omelchenko. He also said that in 2001, weapons dealers sent ground targeting systems, maintenance equipment and missile technicians to Iran. Profits from the sales were estimated at US$2.1 million or more. Reportedly, Sarfraz Haider, an Australian businessman of Afghan-Iranian origin, said to be part of the arms trafficking gang, was killed, according to his family and a Ukrainian police report. He lived in Canberra and Sydney before moving to London and then Cyprus in 2000. His family originally believed his death in Cyprus last year was the result of a motorbike accident. But after an autopsy on Haider's body, the family now believes he was murdered. His neck had been broken and his aorta split, and there were signs of a struggle. The family claims Iranian agents paid Cypriot police to eliminate Haider because he knew too much. It still is not clear exactly what kind of missiles were sold to Iran and China. Press reports say it was the Kh-55 Granat. But according to GlobalSecurity.org there are actually three versions; the Kh-55, Kh-55-OK and the Kh-55SM. Production of the stretched-range version, the Kh-55SM, began in 1986. This was fielded in the 1990s. The modification provided for increased range, giving it an estimated reach of 3,000 kilometers. The Kh-55 has been in Russian service since 1984 as a nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile and can carry a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead. It is the Soviet counterpart to the US AGM-86 ALCM. It was originally deployed with strategic bombers Tu-95 MS and Tu-160. Yet according to the SBU, some of the ALCMs were of the Kh-55 as well as the Kh-55SM types. Who the Kh-55 missiles went to is unclear. Iran does not operate long-range bombers, but it is believed Tehran could adapt its Soviet-built Su-24 strike aircraft to launch the missile. The missile's range would put Israel and a number of other US allies within reach. After the collapse of the USSR some of the missiles and their carrier aircraft remained beyond the limits of Russia, in particular, in Ukraine and in Kazakhstan. Yet according to Bohdan Ferents, the lawyer for Volodymyr Yevdokimov - director of a cargo company, Ukraviazakaz, and one of at least six arms dealers secretly indicted in January for the missiles sale - the missiles were a far cry from being operational. In an article in the March 5 issue of the Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli, he says: In the first place, they were items made in 1987. Their service life is eight years. According to the technical specifications and instructions, their service life can be extended only if the factory designers are directly brought in - in other words, if there is a technical inspection, involving either a visit to the place where the missiles are stored or an inspection at the factory itself. Since 1992, the storage of these missiles has not, unfortunately, matched the requirements. The technical and process documentation for the missiles was removed from Ukraine to Russia - which makes it impossible to sell them for their original purpose. All the warheads - let's regard them as the weapon's main component - were sent off to Russia. Not a single warhead remains on Ukrainian territory. This raises the intriguing possibility that what actually transpired was not a sale but a con. Ferents said: "We call them 'items'. The evidence presented in the case material and tested in court enables one to talk about a typical swindle with regard to the intentions of Iran and China, which are trying to obtain weapons. In other words, the negotiations were about cruise missiles, but what was exported was mere junk." David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own. -------- u.s. nuc facilities -------- nevada State says feds' nuke rail plan broke laws By Suzanne Struglinski LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU March 25, 2005 http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/25/518506190.html?"yucca%20Mountain" WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department violated several federal laws when it decided to build a rail line in Nevada to move waste to the potential Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, Nevada's lawyers allege in court documents filed Thursday. In a 74-page legal brief filed in Washington, the state lays out its arguments against the Energy Department's transportation plans to ship waste across the country to Nevada. The department announced last April that it would build a 319-mile rail line in the "Caliente Corridor" to move waste to Yucca, the proposed nuclear waste repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and would use "mostly rail" to ship waste across the country. If the rail line is not be ready by the time the high-level radioactive waste needs to be moved, the department will ship the waste via truck. It is currently working on a environmental analysis of the Caliente route, which the department anticipates will be done this summer. Nevada claims this violated the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that requires environmental studies of federal projects. The state's lawyers argue the department did not do the required analyses prior to selecting the route and preferred method of transportation. "Lots of shortcuts were made that we think were inappropriate," said Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams. Nevada argues that the department violated the act by selecting the Caliente route without individually analyzing each transportation option. A final environmental impact statement released in February 2002 contained descriptions of the different options but the department selected the Caliente train route without even notifying citizens, ranchers or local governments about its intention to withdraw 308,600 acres of public land. Adams also said that while the department had public hearings on the project's general environmental study outside Nevada, it was unlikely residents in those areas knew the meetings were also about potentially moving waste through their states too. The state also argues that the department further violated the by failing to conduct a study on interim truck shipments and that the department moved ahead with the largest railroad construction project in 80 years without consulting the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that oversees rail projects. The Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval asked the Council on Environmental Quality to intervene regarding the board's lack of involvement with the proposed rail line, but chairman James Connaughton refused. Sandoval initiated the court case in September when he filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, the same court that threw out the nuclear waste storage project's 10,000-year radiation standard last year. The Energy Department has until April 25 to respond to Nevada's filing and Nevada will have until May 24 to file its response to whatever the Energy Department files. Final briefs are due by June 14. There is no date set yet for oral arguments. ---- It's time for GOP to get a backbone Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067. Columnist Jeff German March 25, 2005 LAS VEGAS SUN EDITORIAL http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/mar/25/518506192.html It was only a matter of time before fallout from the wounded Yucca Mountain Project reached President Bush. It came this week from an unlikely source -- Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, a Republican candidate for governor who is known for attracting business to Nevada rather than pointing out the dangers of storing nuclear waste here. In the wake of revelations that government scientists may have falsified documents to move the much-delayed project along, Hunt sent a letter Wednesday to Bush urging him to re-evaluate the evidence he used in 2002 to recommend sending the deadly waste our way. Hunt told the president the revelations "put serious doubts on the truth and accuracy of the sound science" the president relied upon. They were strong words that no other ranking Nevada Republican has managed to put in writing for the president's eyes. "This is very encouraging," says Bob Loux, the state's chief Yucca Mountain watchdog. "A good case can be made that the president was duped by the Energy Department. "There's an opening here for him to basically move away from the decision if he wants to." No one, however, is willing to bet that Bush will listen to Hunt -- who's not even her party's front-runner for governor -- and change his mind about Yucca Mountain in the immediate future. But imagine the motivation the president would have to take another look at the stalled project if other top Nevada Republicans, from Gov. Kenny Guinn on down, started putting more public pressure on the president when the opportunity arose. Even as Hunt was composing her letter on Tuesday, her fellow Republicans missed another chance to confront the administration directly about Yucca Mountain. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and other GOP leaders let Vice President Dick Cheney come to Reno without facing a single question about the reported rigging of scientific evidence at the project. It was a replay of what happened during the 2004 president race, when Bush and Cheney stumped in Nevada many times without having to be held accountable for their decision to make us the nation's nuclear waste dumping ground. Bush ended up winning our five electoral votes and his re-election over a Democratic challenger who had vowed to kill Yucca Mountain if he got to the White House. Just as in the campaign, reporters in Reno Tuesday weren't allowed to question Cheney, and the Ensign-led Republicans baby-sitting the vice president didn't lift a finger to put him on the hot seat. The Republicans showed the lack of backbone we've come to expect from them in this fight since Bush was first elected in 2000. Once more they made us look like fools. "They've helped the president carry the state twice, and he's done nothing but screw us ever since," says former Democratic Gov. Bob Miller. And the president will continue to screw us until Nevada Republicans have the courage to stand up to him when it counts. ---- Letter: Shoshone lawsuit deserves support March 25, 2005 LAS VEGAS SUN http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/25/518505908.html?"yucca%20Mountain" The United States government historically has a poor record of dealing with the Indian nations. But now we have the opportunity to uphold the 1863 Ruby Valley treaty with the Western Shoshone nation. Based on the provisions of the treaty, the Western Shoshones have filed a lawsuit against the federal government to prevent it from opening a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, which is located on their ancestral lands. Sen. Harry Reid has an opportunity to rectify his error in supporting a bill to compensate the Western Shoshones in exchange for federal control of the land. Reid, along with Congress and President Bush, wanted the Shoshones to accept $145 million for the land, as per the 1979 final report of the Indian Claims Commission. To their credit, the Western Shoshones have not accepted the money. When I called the offices of Sens. Reid and John Ensign, prior to this ill-advised legislation, I was told that the compensation would not affect other terms of the 1863 treaty in relationship to our fight against Yucca Mountain. Now there is an opportunity for our congressional delegation, led by our senators, to support the Western Shoshone nation's lawsuit, and along with it, the state of Nevada. FRANK PERNA -------- washington Nuclear Cleanup Team for Hanford's River Corridor Chosen WASHINGTON, DC, March 25, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-25-091.asp A new contract has been awarded for cleanup and remediation of radioactive contamination along the Columbia River Corridor on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington. The contract calls for cleaning up and taking down hundreds of obsolete facilities, remediating nuclear waste sites and burial grounds and placing deactivated plutonium production reactors into stable condition at the Department of Energy (DOE) facility. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday that Washington Closure, LLC, a new limited liability corporation, has been selected to do this work. The five member team includes the Washington Group International Inc., Bechtel National Inc., CH2M Hill Inc., Eberline Services Inc., and Integrated Logistics Services Inc. The Washington Closure team is expected to be at work at the end of June after a 90 day ramp up period. But several components of the new team are the same as those of the group that has been in place since 1994. The current holder of the Environmental Restoration Contract (ERC) is Bechtel Hanford Inc. and its preselected subcontractors - CH2M Hill Hanford Inc. and Eberline Services Hanford Inc. The Columbia River Corridor encompasses 210 square miles along the outer edge of the 586 square mile Hanford Nuclear Site. The contract does not cover Hanford's central plateau where 177 underground storage tanks containing more than 50 million gallons of high-level liquid waste are located. Work will include projects in Hanford’s 100 Area, where nine plutonium production reactors created material for nuclear weapons; the 300 Area, where uranium fuel was fabricated and laboratory facilities are located; facilities in the 400 Area, except the Fast Flux Test Facility; and two complex and highly radioactive burial grounds in the 600 Area. In November 2004, Washington voters approved Initiative 297, mandating cleanup of the massive contamination at Hanford, considered the most polluted site in the Western Hemisphere by the environmental groups that campaigned for passage of the measure. Congress has given states the legal authority to stop the DOE from adding more waste where ground water already is contaminated and hazardous wastes are not stored in compliance with applicable laws. This is the authority that I-297 utilizes. Nevada, New Mexico and other states have made use of this authority to stop additional dumping at contaminated sites in their states. Betty Means served as the campaign manager for Yes On I-297. She wrote in 2004, "The initiative requires that Hanford be cleaned up before any new waste is brought to the site. In the process, it protects the cleanup from budget cuts of nearly $1 billion between next year and 2011 - cuts already approved by the Department of Energy and the federal Office of Management and Budget. It will stop efforts to leave waste in the soil or at the bottom of leaking tanks." The DOE said in a statement Thursday, "We will prioritize demolition of facilities based on the hazard they present to workers, the public and the environment." From 1943 to 1987 Hanford produced plutonium for nuclear weapons, using nuclear reactors built along the Columbia river. Since the production of plutonium ceased, Hanford’s only mission has been cleanup. The DOE's Richland Operations Offices has set goals for the River Corridor Closure project. By December 31, 2005, the DOE wants the contractor to move all spent nuclear fuel into safe storage on Hanford’s Central Plateau. In addition, the contractor is tasked with remediation of 436 waste disposal sites, and the cocooning of five of eight nuclear reactors. The contractor will have to deactivate the 300 Area’s two radiological laboratories and demolish at least 30 percent of the buildings in the 300 Area. And the contractor must establish "a scientifically-sound, comprehensive strategy" to control 100 Area groundwater contamination sources. The goal of these activities is to clean up and make available for other uses 65 percent of the Hanford Site. “Awarding this important and high-profile contract is a major step forward in the Hanford cleanup,” Bodman said. “It will get us the best of what both large and small businesses have to offer – experience, innovation, and performance – to ensure we meet our commitment of safe, protective cleanup of this key area within the Hanford Site.” The “cost-plus-incentive-fee” contract is valued at approximately $1.9 billion over seven years, a savings of $2 billion to $3 billion over prior Hanford Site cleanup estimates. For every dollar the work comes in under Washington Closure’s “target cost,” the company will receive $.20 in additional fee; for every dollar in increased expense, it will lose $.20 in fee. There are also enforceable contractual requirements for small business participation. Sixty percent of the work must be subcontracted – with 50 percent of that subcontracted work going to small business. A minimum of three of every 10 contract dollars will flow to small business. The goal is to clean up this area of the Hanford Site by 2015, with incentives for Washington Closure to accelerate completion to 2012. Regulatory cleanup agreements will be met and Bodman said that early cleanup priorities will focus on those projects that pose the greatest risk to the environment. “Three qualified teams with the capability to perform this project each submitted a proposal,” said Paul Golan, principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management. The Washington Closure proposal was "an obvious best value" he said. Earlier this week the DOE announced another nuclear cleanup contract to be completed by 2012, this one for the Idaho National Laboratory, where many tons of highly radioactive waste are situated. Read the full ENS report by clicking here. -------- us nuc waste Lawmakers Seek Plan B for Nuclear Waste Fri Mar 25, 2005 4:13 PM ET Politics - U. S. Congress By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050325/ap_on_go_co/yucca_mountain_1 WASHINGTON - As problems mount with the government's plan to open a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada, lawmakers and industry officials are increasingly pushing for a Plan B. After the most recent setback for Yucca Mountain — a revelation last week that government workers on the planned dump may have falsified documents — a key House Republican urged the Energy Department to look at temporary waste storage solutions. And Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., is promoting talk of alternatives to Yucca Mountain, while nuclear utilities are already looking into other options. Many have begun building onsite storage for spent fuel and moving forward with plans for a private waste dump in Utah. They also are pursuing lawsuits against the government, seeking reimbursement for the cost of temporary waste storage. While the Energy Department remains committed to Yucca Mountain, there's a growing consensus that the dump — scheduled until recently to open in 2010 but now delayed indefinitely — can no longer be considered the only answer for disposing of the nation's nuclear waste. "What matters is getting rid of the fuel," said attorney Jerry Stouck, who represents nuclear utilities in lawsuits against the government. "I don't think Yucca Mountain is so important as a solution." Yucca Mountain, approved by Congress in 2002, is planned as a repository for 77,000 tons of defense waste and used reactor fuel from commercial power plants. The material is supposed to be buried for at least 10,000 years beneath the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But the project has suffered serious setbacks, including funding problems and an appeals court decision last summer that's forcing a rewrite of radiation exposure limits for the site. Some 55,000 tons of commercial reactor fuel and 16,000 tons of high-level defense waste are already waiting at sites in 39 states. The government, which originally promised nuclear utilities it would begin accepting their spent fuel in 1998, is facing billions of dollars in lawsuits for failing to make good on that pledge. That mounting liability prompted Rep. David Hobson (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, last week to urge the Energy Department official in charge of Yucca — Theodore Garrish — to start looking at alternatives. Hobson, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee panel that oversees the project, proposed an interim, aboveground storage facility at the Nevada Test Site or elsewhere to accept waste for up to 500 years, giving scientists time to develop new disposal solutions. "It doesn't take brain science to think that we could save money in the long run to get this stuff out of where it is and live up to an obligation, a contractual obligation," Hobson told Garrish at a hearing. He also suggested another look at reprocessing used reactor fuel. Garrish said the Energy Department remained "100 percent committed" to Yucca, but said he understood Hobson's complaints. Hobson's ideas aren't new. The Energy Department pursued interim "monitored retrievable storage" facilities in the late 1980s and early 1990s before abandoning the idea. The Bush administration has also proposed reviving reprocessing, which the United States abandoned in the 1970s over fears the resulting plutonium could be seized by terrorists or a rogue state. Yucca Mountain's chronic delays are forcing the ideas to the surface again, even from supporters. "There has been a sea change in the way the nuclear community looks at Yucca Mountain," said Marnie Funk, spokeswoman for Domenici, the Energy Committee chairman who is a Yucca backer but nonetheless is open to such discussions. "People are no longer saying Yucca Mountain has to be finished in order for the nuclear industry to have a revival in this country. You can still have a nuclear renaissance without Yucca Mountain, but that would mean at some point other options have to be discussed." The Justice Department (news - web sites) settled a suit with Chicago-based electric utility Exelon Corp. last August for a sum that could rise to $600 million if Yucca Mountain doesn't open until 2015. Other suits are moving forward, including one by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (news - web sites) that began this week in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Damages against the government are estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion if Yucca Mountain opens in 2010, 12 years after the government's contractual obligation to start storing the nation's nuclear waste, Garrish told lawmakers. Damages could be $1 billion a year after that, meaning the project's annual liability costs would nearly match its projected budget needs. The Energy Department has estimated the total cost of the project at $58 billion, but critics say it could rise much higher. In recognition of the delays, President Bush (news - web sites)'s 2006 budget request for the project was $651 million, about half what the Energy Department originally envisioned. Meanwhile, a group of eight utility companies is moving forward with plans for a private, aboveground dump on an Indian reservation in Utah. That won approval in February from a licensing board and is awaiting final Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval. Utah's congressional delegation opposes the project just as strenuously as Nevada lawmakers — including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid — oppose Yucca Mountain. Now, many Utah officials say they're beginning to agree with Nevadans, who favor leaving the waste permanently at utility sites. The nuclear industry and the Energy Department oppose that idea. "Pretty much the whole Utah delegation voted to do Yucca Mountain, and the premise there was we want that finished so it's not stuck in Utah," said Rep. Chris Cannon (news, bio, voting record), R-Utah. "But since that vote the world has changed a lot. It just sees to me that the transition has been such that it now becomes reasonable to say not Utah, not Nevada, nowhere." On the Net: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ymp.gov State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov -------- MILITARY -------- arms U.S. Moves to Sell F-16's to Pakistan Over Indian Objections By DAVID STOUT March 25, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/politics/25cnd-military.html?pagewanted=print&position= The Bush administration agreed today to sell Pakistan F-16 fighter planes in a major policy shift that was meant to reward Pakistan for its help in combating terrorism but was also certain to deeply antagonize Pakistan's longtime adversary India. President Bush telephoned Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and "explained his decision to move forward" on the sale, a White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, told reporters in Texas. Mr. Singh expressed "great disappointment," a spokesman in New Delhi told Reuters. Pakistan's information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, called President Bush's decision "a good gesture," one that shows that "our relations are growing stronger," Reuters reported. There were conflicting reports on how many F-16's might be involved in the sale, which would require Congressional approval. One Bush administration official said the number was 24, but another said it was still indefinite, Reuters reported. A State Department spokesman, J. Adam Ereli, said that both the number of planes and the terms of the sale had not been determined. Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Fairfax, Va., said the planes could cost $35 million each, Bloomberg News reported. With Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the administration may well get its way on the sale, but probably not without heated debate. Mr. Ereli described the sale as part of a wide-reaching effort "to improve security and improve prosperity and improve development" in the Subcontinent and surrounding region. He emphasized that the United States would gladly consider requests from India as well as Pakistan - both of which have nuclear weapons - to buy arms. Indeed, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited both India and Pakistan earlier this month, and there were reports that she had signaled American willingness to sell F-16's to both Pakistan and to India, if India wanted them. Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Jehangir Karamat, was reported to have told American officials last month that Pakistan would not object to India's buying the jets if Pakistan also had access to them. As for any possibility that Pakistan's acquisition of F-16's could reignite tensions between Pakistan and India, Mr. Ereli pointed to a recent thaw between the old rivals - "relations between India and Pakistan have never been better" - and said that "stability comes from a sense of security." "And to the extent that we can contribute to Pakistan's sense of security and India's sense of security, that will contribute to regional stability," Mr. Ereli said. The F-16 is made by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Operational since 1979, it comes in both single-seat and two-seat models and is one of the premier weapons in the Pentagon's air arsenal. It is designed both for air-to-air combat and for attacking targets on the ground. It is by far the most common fighter in the United States military and in the fleets of many Western allies. Washington sold F-16's to Pakistan in the 1980's, after Pakistan provided assistance to the forces that drove Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. But Congress ordered a halt to deliveries in 1990 in retaliation for Pakistan's pursuit of its nuclear ambitions. With its original F-16's now aging, Pakistan is no longer satisfied just to buy spare parts for its fleet and has been trying for years to acquire new planes. People opposed to the idea have said that Pakistan gets enough military aid from the United States as it is. And India has lobbied against Pakistan's acquisition of the planes because it fears Pakistan would use them if war between India and Pakistan broke out again, as it has several times in the past half-century. The United States' relationships with India and Pakistan, have long been sensitive. India is a democracy and would thus seem to have more in common with America than Pakistan. On the other hand, India sometimes sided with the Soviet Union during the cold war and obtained arms from the Soviets, while Pakistan tilted toward the United States. Then, too, the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, recommended that Washington move beyond ambivalence and mistrust in its attitude toward Pakistan and commit itself to providing aid for that country - both military assistance and support for the country's public school system as a counterweight for the sort of Islamic religious schools that foster extremism. But the commission emphasized that American support should be contingent on Pakistan's making progress toward democracy, curbing nuclear proliferation and confronting Islamic extremists. The commission, headed by former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, a Republican, and former Representative Lee Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, said, "It is hard to overstate the importance of Pakistan in the struggle against Islamist extremism." It added, "Within Pakistan's borders are 150 million Muslims, scores of Al Qaeda terrorists, many Taliban fighters, and perhaps Osama bin Laden." President Bush has courted Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and heaped praise on his government for aiding in the campaign against terrorism after 9/11. But Washington has been angered by Pakistan's willingness to export nuclear technology, including help that a rogue Pakistani scientist, A.Q. Khan, gave to Iran. But India, too, has long courted Iran, which President Bush once characterized as being part of an "axis of evil," with Iraq and North Korea. Moreover, despite their decades of enmity, India and Pakistan have lately began exploring a more cooperative relationship. India has wanted for years to build a natural gas pipeline from Iran, with whom it has ancient ties, to help meet its fast-growing energy needs. The pipeline would run through Pakistan. ---- India displeased after USA also sells F-16s to Pakistan 3/25/2005 12:30 PM http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-03-25-f16s_x.htm WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has agreed to sell sophisticated F-16 fighter planes to both India and its next-door rival Pakistan, administration officials said Friday, and India immediately expressed displeasure to President Bush. The diplomatically sensitive move — which the administration was ready to announce later Friday — rewards Pakistan for help in the war on terrorism but angers India, a U.S. ally and a fellow democracy. Bush, who is spending holiday time at his Texas ranch, called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh early Friday to tell him of the long-anticipated decision. The State Department planned to describe details of the sale later in the day. Singh "conveyed to President Bush his great disappointment over the United States' decision," Sanjaya Baru, the prime minister's spokesman said. Singh said sales to Pakistan endanger security in the region, Baru said. A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, linked the proposed sales of the planes, manufactured by Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin, directly to Musharraf's cooperation after the terror attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. This official maintained the sale would not upset the balance of power in the region. "Musharraf made the strategic decision on Sept. 14, 2001 to stand with the United States," the official said, noting that the report of the independent Sept. 11 Commission recommended the United States make a long-term commitment to Pakistan. A five-year, $3 billion assistance program is under way, the official also noted. "If the United States is giving the planes to Pakistan, it will create better feelings among the people for America," said Pakistan's information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "This will fulfill our defense requirements. We had been lagging behind (India) in conventional weapons. This will improve the situation," Ahmed said. The sales to two nuclear countries that have warred over the Kashmir territory could raise eyebrows among U.S. allies in Europe who are under White House pressure not to lift an arms embargo on China. The Bush administration argues that European weapons could contribute to rising tensions between Beijing and Taiwan. Pakistan struck a deal with the United States to buy the nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets in the late 1980s, but the agreement was scrapped in the 1990s when Washington imposed sanctions on Islamabad over its nuclear weapons program. Since then, Islamabad, which had paid in advance for the F-16s, has been pressuring Washington to supply the rest of the planes. Renewed sales to Pakistan would reflect U.S. gratitude for Pakistan's cooperation in the global hunt for terrorists. The United States had signed a separate $1.3 billion arms package to Pakistan last year. India had voiced its opposition to the resumption of supply of F-16s to Pakistan during talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she made a whistle-stop tour of South Asia last week. New Delhi is worried that arming Pakistan with the advanced jet fighters would tilt the military balance in South Asia and could adversely affect the ongoing peace dialogue between India and Pakistan. Rice had said the F-16 sales were a topic during talks in both India and Pakistan, but that she would not make any announcements during her tour. -------- asia Police Fight to Impose Order in Kyrgyzstan By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA Associated Press Writer Mar 25, 8:04 PM EST http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/K/KYRGYZSTAN_LOOTING?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) -- Gunfire, wailing sirens, dark deserted streets and groups of young men with armbands helping police confront looters: so began the Kyrgyz capital's second night after the country's sudden shift of power. Hundreds of pillagers wandered the rain-slick streets in mobs Friday, throwing stones at cars and seemingly seeking a repeat of the previous night, when the city was theirs and the unpopular President Askar Akayev had fled after 15 years in charge of this former Soviet republic in Central Asia. But this night, police were back on duty - cruising the streets in marked cars and shouting over megaphones for order. Groups of stick-wielding young men hovered outside shops and offices - this time to guard them. One of the front lines in the battle against looters was TsUM, the city's most important department store and the only one that survived Thursday night's plundering. A dozen officers - ambivalent about working for a new leadership whose legitimacy they questioned - joined about 100 volunteers in guarding the store Friday. Standing in the rain, the volunteers said they would defend TsUM - a fixture throughout the former Soviet bloc - all night long. One of the volunteers tore a piece of yellow cloth in two, using one strip as an armband and another to wrap it around an iron bar gripped in his hand. I asked him if he would really hit anyone with it. He smiled broadly and said: "Yes." TsUM was not attacked Friday night. Marauders drew close but were deterred by police who fired into the air to warn them off, witnesses said How the police fare will likely be a key test of the quickly appointed interim government's ability to restore order and establish credibility at home and abroad. Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a former opposition leader who was named acting prime minister and president, speedily appointed a Cabinet. Among the new government officials is Felix Kulov, who was released from prison during Thursday's turmoil and appointed coordinator of the country's law-enforcement agencies. "The city looks as if it has gone mad," Kulov said. The looting so far appeared limited to Bishkek, and officials in other cities tried to prevent it spreading. A statement purportedly from Akayev, the ousted president who was in an undisclosed location, warned that Kyrgyzstan was plunging into a dark time. The Red Cross reported dozens injured in the turmoil Thursday, while lawmaker Temir Sariyev said three people had been killed and about 100 injured overnight. Throughout the capital, police appeared to be trying to determine the location of groups of looters, then rushing to the area and going after them in vehicles and on foot, firing into the air. One such operation played out for some 10 minutes, shouts piercing the previously quiet street as shots filled the air with the smell of gunpowder. Earlier in the day, hundreds of poor treasure-hunters wandered up and down the five floors of a shopping mall that stood bare, its windows smashed and their frames charred. All the goods in this Turkish-owned Beta Stores mall were swept away in a rampage the previous night, but people sifting through the remaining trash still found things to take: metal scrap, empty boxes, broken mannequins. Almazbek Abdykadyrov was mounting several wooden boards on his bicycle. "I want to build a house; I don't have any material myself. Others are taking, so I'm taking, too," he said. Two teenagers carried a sink, saying it was "a present from Beta Stores." The area was littered with pieces of cardboard boxes and cloth and empty bottles. Shops that escaped damage Thursday night were closed, or their owners hung signs reading "we are with the people" in hopes of warding off attacks. Bishkek residents were frightened and shocked. An elderly woman told me she was shaking as she watched the looting overnight and cars passing by her windows until 3 a.m. stuffed with carpets and other goods, some even hauling refrigerators and other large appliances or pieces of furniture on the roof. "I've never seen anything as horrible as this in my entire life. Nobody was stopping them," she said, overwhelmed. Trying to restore order, Kulov held meetings with police and security officials and tried to persuade them to return to work. He pledged to "give a big battle to the pillagers." Some police were back on the streets Friday - but without their uniforms. They still appeared shocked by the storming of the government building the previous day. One of the officers guarding TsUM, a senior police lieutenant who would not give his name, said police were ready to resume service. But when asked if they would work under Kulov, he said: "We could, but how legitimate is he at the moment?" He was one of the police officers who tried to defend the government building on Thursday, and his memories of the seizure were still fresh. "It was slaughter," he said. "We were counting our missing like in war." He said dozens of police officers were injured, many seriously. But stopping the looters appeared to be the main task for now, and it reconciled the police with the opposition. "It was all started by provocateurs and then other people joined thinking that it's property belonging to the president's family and they have the right to part of it," Kulov said. One of the chains badly pillaged was Narodny shops, which belong to Akayev's son Aidar. Opposition supporters camping outside the government headquarters in Bishkek in three army tents denied their involvement in the night rampage. "It's those government-hired provocateurs who were trying to spoil our rally yesterday," said Kadyrbai Sodirov, referring to hundreds of men in plainclothes who clashed with the anti-Akayev rally before the seizure of the government building known as the White House. "Now they are trying to tarnish our image another way." But Saniya Sagnayeva, an analyst from the International Crisis Group, said she believed most looters had been on the opposition side Thursday. "It's a war of the poor against the rich," she said. "It is understandable: These young men are mostly from remote villages. They have no fridges, no radio at home. After their triumph at the White House, they think the city is theirs. It's winners' fever." Among the daylight pillagers at the Beta Store was one man who came for an unusual purpose. Vladimir Ivanenko had two small plastic bags full of what looked like rubbish. He said his bags contained shattered pieces of red and yellow glass, broken cups, torn photographs of Bishkek, the mountains and Lake Issyk-Kul - a popular regional holiday destination in this country of 5 million people. Ivanenko said he was going to use the pieces to create a picture that will embody "an epoch and a time." "The picture will be about shattered illusions. The red glass will symbolize blood and the yellow will symbolize lost illusions, and the torn pictures of Bishkek - our disappointment." -------- china China, U.S. interests conflict March 25, 2005 Washington Times By Barton W. Marcois and Leland R. Miller http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050324-075950-4488r.htm Lost amid the responses to President Bush's 2005 State of the Union speech was that of China's phlegmatic Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan. Twice asked by a reporter whether China shared the president's hope that democracy would take root in the Middle East, Mr. Kong artfully evaded the question, merely hinting that the issue was not on China's agenda. In fact, China's agenda is so different that it threatens to seriously undermine American initiatives in the Middle East. The United States and China have never seen eye-to-eye in the region, but the reasons for this have evolved over time. China's diplomacy in the Middle East began in the 1950s as an ideological crusade in support of socialist Arab leaders such as Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, but by the 1970s its focus had shifted to weapon sales. By the 1990s, China was actively supplying ballistic missiles to Syria, missile technology to Libya, and sensitive missile and nuclear technology to Iran and Iraq. In the new millennium, China's Middle Eastern strategy has shifted again, from part-time arms salesman to outright energy diplomacy. Under China's current Five-Year Plan, which publicly introduced the concept of energy security, China unveiled its "Twenty-first Century Oil Strategy" in February 2003. While this $100 billion program has a variety of domestic components, priority one is the securing of new energy sources abroad. The urgency of this mission can hardly be overstated. Since 2000, China has accounted for nearly 40 percent of the growth in world oil demand and is now the world's No. 2 oil importer. Experts predict the Chinese demand for crude will increase annually by 12 percent until 2020 and by 2025 China's daily imports will exceed that of the entire continent of Europe. To avert this growing crisis, China is undertaking major efforts to expand its energy relationships in Central Asia, Latin America and Africa. Yet here is where the conventional wisdom collides with the present reality. Many scholars have simply accepted that China wants to lessen its dependence on the volatile Middle East and the long, vulnerable supply lines through the Indonesian archipelago. All true. But what is actually happening right now is that China's dependence on the Middle East is increasing, not just in absolute terms but as a percentage of its oil imports. Five of its top six oil suppliers (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Yemen, and Sudan) are located in the Middle East, a region that now provides more than 60 percent of China's total crude imports. This figure may rise to 70 to 80 percent over the coming decade. On first glance, this may seem surprising. How can China hope to compete in the crowded Middle East with other oil-hungry nations, particularly the United States? The answer is that China plays by a different set of rules. As China's support for the rogue regimes in Iran and Sudan has made clear, moral constraints and human-rights considerations are not pillars of Beijing's foreign-policy calculus. While Tehran threatens to go nuclear and Khartoum continues its genocide in Darfur, Beijing has used its clout (and U.N. veto) to shield these regimes from international sanctions. In return, it receives entree into two important energy markets. Furthermore, unlike private Western oil companies who are beholden to shareholders and profit margins, Chinese state-owned oil-traders have been given the mandate to secure long-term energy relationships by offering hugely discounted rates, production-sharing arrangements and technical know-how. The fact that China has overpaid for recent ventures in Oman, Sudan and elsewhere is telling. Rather than investing in money-makers, China is buying footholds throughout the Middle East. These footholds are popping up everywhere. While China's relations with Saudia Arabia and Iran have received the most press, its dealings in countries such as Oman and Sudan are even more extraordinary. In Sudan, China is the single largest shareholder of an oil company consortium that dominates Sudan's oil industry and the chief investor in the country's largest pipeline. In Oman, a phenomenal 85 percent of the country's oil exports is currently earmarked for Beijing. China is also ensconced elsewhere: In 2004, China inaugurated its first joint oil venture with Syria, made major inroads into Yemen, and expanded its presence in Egypt, Libya and Algeria. To safeguard these assets, China is constructing a massive harbor for oil tankers in Gwadar, Pakistan, at the tip of the Persian Gulf. This will allow it a permanent naval presence in the Arabian Sea. From these developments, two observations can be made: First, China is now a major regional player — and one that clearly does not share the American vision of a free and democratic Middle East. Second, China's Middle East agenda is quickly shaping up to be a direct challenge to that of the United States'. In addition to remaining a strategic competitor for resources, China's leverage may become increasingly dependent on its ability to undercut U.S. initiatives. If China has indeed adopted the role of spoiler, as its recent actions in Iran and Sudan seem to indicate, then Chinese intransigence — not Islamic extremism — may prove to be the X factor in the 21st century Middle East. Barton W. Marcois, a principal at RJI Capital Corp., served as principal deputy assistant secretary of Energy under President Bush. Leland R. Miller, a China specialist, is a lawyer in New York. -------- iran Iran stocking high-tech arms for Iraqi insurgents, U.S. fears 3/25/2005 2:46 PM (AP) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-03-25-arming-iran_x.htm VIENNA, Austria — Iran is quietly building a stockpile of thousands of high-tech small arms and other military equipment — from armor-piercing snipers' rifles to night-vision goggles — through legal weapons deals and a U.N. anti-drug program, according to an internal U.N. document, arms dealers and Western diplomats. The buying spree is raising Bush administration fears the arms could end up with militants in Iraq. Tehran also is seeking approval for a U.N.-funded satellite network that Iran says it needs to fight drug smugglers, stoking U.S. worries it could be used to spy on Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan — or any U.S. reconnaissance in Iran itself. The United States has a strict embargo on most trade with Iran, which it accuses of supporting terrorist organizations and trying to build nuclear arms. It also has imposed sanctions on dozens of companies worldwide over the past decade for supplying Tehran with equipment that could be used for nuclear or conventional warfare. Much of the military hardware has been hard to hide — sales of tanks and anti-ship missiles by Belarus and China, or helicopters and artillery pieces from Russia have been well documented by U.S. authorities and international nongovernment agencies. Other weapons are smuggled and may be revealed only by chance — such as the consignment of 12 nuclear-capable cruise missiles delivered by Ukrainian arms dealers to Iran four years ago but divulged by Ukrainian opposition officials only recently. The smaller weapons and related material Iran is amassing may not be as eye catching. But they are of U.S. concern because of their origin — through U.N.-funded programs or technically advanced western countries — and because they could harm U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan or ultimately Iran, which President Bush has not ruled out as a military target. Iran says it needs the satellite network, high-tech small arms bought on the European arms market and night-vision goggles, body armor and advanced communications gear through the U.N program to fight drug smugglers pouring in from neighboring Afghanistan. "We need assistance," Pirouz Hosseini, Iran's chief delegate to U.N. organizations in Vienna told The Associated Press, dismissing U.S. fears as "a political stance not based on realities." But such high-resolution satellite imagery could reveal what U.S. troops in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan are doing on the ground — or that they could show the Iranians what the United States is seeing as it spies from outer space for evidence of illicit Iranian nuclear activity. And with Iran suspected of backing insurgents in Iraq, Washington fears some of the equipment bought in Europe or delivered as part of the U.N.-backed anti-drug fight could be used against U.S. troops there, say Western diplomats here who are familiar with U.S. concerns. Austrian officials with access to counterintelligence information told AP that Iranian diplomats in European capitals routinely focus on securing arms deals. Like the Western diplomats, the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Just four months ago, U.S. and Austrian authorities arrested two Iranians in Vienna on charges of trying to illegally export thousands of sophisticated American night-vision systems for Tehran's military — a powerful force in the region. In a more recent — and legal — deal, Iran last month took delivery of hundreds of high-powered armor-piercing snipers' rifles with scopes from an Austrian firm, as part of a consignment for 2,000 of the weapons. Confirming the sale, Wolfgang Fuerlinger, head of Steyr Mannlicher GmbH, told AP that U.S. Embassy officials had expressed concerns the arms could make their way to Iraq for use against American troops. The Austrian government approved the sales in November after concluding that they would be used to fight narcotics smugglers. While wary of Iran's ultimate purpose, other European countries also have sanctioned similar deals when convinced Tehran would use the equipment to fight the drug trade, said an Austrian official, declining to offer details. A draft proposal obtained by AP, to create a regional satellite network that would survey Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq is on hold, with Iran shifting it to the U.N. office on drugs and crime after opposition stalled it in the U.N. office on space affairs, also based in Vienna. "The U.S. and Britain and France had questions as to what the intention and purpose of the proposal is," a senior U.N. official told AP, requesting anonymity because of the sensitive topic. "One of the worries — is it only drugs they are worried about or something they could use to track other things?" Still, suspect material is reaching Iran in connection with an aid program created in 1996 by the U.N. drugs office, which also provides training, vehicles and other help to fight what is generally acknowledged as a serious drug problem. An internal U.N. summary of the program lists France and Britain as providing night vision equipment, mobile global positioning systems, computers and body armor to help Iranian anti-smuggler attempts. Iranian officials confirmed such items were shipped. A diplomat familiar with the program described the shipments of sensitive equipment as "likely in the hundreds." In London, the Foreign Office confirmed 250 night vision goggles were approved by the British government two years ago for use by Iranian border patrols along the Afghan border. Another shipment of 50 body armor vests and 100 body armor plates was en route as of last week, as part of British help to Iran that's exempt from a strict embargo and arms and related material, said Foreign Office officials. Diplomats with access to Iranian program material said other exemptions to the British embargo in recent years have included parts originally manufactured for military aircraft engines that Iran said it needed for its oil and gas industries, aircraft instrumentation components and gas turbine parts that also had possible military applications. American officials in Vienna and Washington refused to comment on the procurements beyond saying the Bush administration is opposed to all efforts by Iran to buy weapons and any other militarily useful equipment. But the diplomats in Vienna say that American opposition to such procurements is complicated by the fact that even Washington agrees Iran has a drug-smuggling problem. Afghanistan last year supplied more than 90% of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin, the U.N. anti-drug agency says. While the source of most heroin in the United States is Colombian or Mexican, heroin from Afghan opium — most of it transiting Iran — makes up 90% of what's available on Europe's streets, explaining British, French and other European interest in stanching the flow. Iran says more than 3,000 of its police officers have died in the last 10 years battling drug smugglers, some equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers. In a report last year, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said Iranian intelligence had shown him pictures of a drug convoy of more than 60 vehicles with armed escorts crossing from Afghanistan to Iran. -------- prisoners of war Army Probe Finds Abuse at Base Near Mosul By MATT KELLEY Associated Press Writer Mar 25, 2005 8:11 PM EST http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/P/PRISONER_ABUSE_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME WASHINGTON (AP) -- An Army investigation found systematic abuse and possible torture of Iraqi prisoners at a base near Mosul just as top military officials became aware of abuse allegations at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, documents released Friday showed. Records previously released by the Army have detailed abuses at Abu Ghraib and other sites in Iraq as well as at sites in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The documents released Friday were the first to reveal abuses at the jail in Mosul and are among the few to allege torture directly. An officer found that detainees "were being systematically and intentionally mistreated" at the holding facility near Mosul in December 2003. The 311th Military Intelligence Battalion of the Army's 101st Airborne Division ran the lockup. "There is evidence that suggests the 311th MI personnel and/or translators engaged in physical torture of the detainees," a memo from the investigator said. The January 2004 report said the prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions were violated. Top military officials first became aware of the Abu Ghraib abuses in January 2004, when pictures such as those showing soldiers piling naked prisoners in a pyramid were turned over to investigators. The resulting scandal after the pictures became public tarnished the military's image in Arab countries and worldwide and sparked investigations of detainee abuses. The records about the Mosul jail were part of more than 1,200 pages of documents referring to allegations of prisoner abuse. The Army released the records to reporters and to the American Civil Liberties Union, which had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. "They show the torture and abuse of detainees was routine and such treatment was considered an acceptable practice by U.S. forces," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said. Guards at the detention facility near Mosul came from at least three infantry units of the 101st Airborne, including an air-defense artillery unit. The investigating officer, whose name was blacked out of the documents, said the troops were poorly trained and encouraged to abuse prisoners. According to the report, the abuse included: - Forcing detainees to perform exercises such as deep knee bends for hours on end, to the point of exhaustion. - Blowing cigarette smoke into the sandbags the prisoners were forced to wear as hoods. - Throwing cold water on the prisoners in a room that was between 40 degrees and 50 degrees. - Blasting the detainees with heavy-metal music, yelling at them and banging on doors and ammunition cans. No one was punished for the abuses, however, because the investigating officer said there was not enough proof against any individual. The report did not say what actions might have amounted to torture or which individuals might have committed them. The investigator ruled that troops were responsible for the broken jaw of a 20-year-old detainee who had been rounded up with his father, a suspected member of the Fedayeen Saddam guerrilla group. The records released Friday also contained details of several other abuse investigations. In one case, soldiers admitted they had rounded up suspected looters near Baghdad in the summer of 2003, then stripped them naked and told them to walk home. The staff sergeant in charge of that unit said he knew what he did was wrong but that he wanted to humiliate the looters so much they would never return. The sergeant said he was afraid another unit at their base had shot and killed a looter without being punished and would shoot others. "I didn't want to kill him," the sergeant wrote of one looter, "so I decided to teach him a lesson." The sergeant was given an "other than honorable" discharge and two other soldiers involved in the stripping incident were given letters of reprimand, said Army spokesman Col. Jeremy Martin. "The command took aggressive action to hold individuals accountable," Martin said. In another incident, soldiers from a Howitzer battery beat three detainees in September 2003. Martin said all four received nonjudicial punishment, which can include letters of reprimand, fines or reductions in rank. The soldiers said they were angered by what the detainees had done. One prisoner had shot at U.S. soldiers while hiding behind a group of children, they claimed, while another was accused of forging passports for possible terrorists. "I think any American and soldier would have acted as I did," a soldier wrote in a statement. On the Net: ACLU: http://www.aclu.org ---- Prison shortage Inside the Ring March 25, 2005 By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050324-114419-7900r.htm It's the Army that maintains a network of detainee camps and prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq. But now the Air Force plans to get more involved. Headquarters sent out a message yesterday asking for 100 airmen to volunteer for "detainee operations duty in Iraq." Applicants from grades of senior airmen to master sergeant must have a current top-secret clearance, an outstanding performance record and "certification from their commander that they possess the maturity and judgment for this duty." Character counts. The Army is beleaguered by a number of prison camp scandals in which detainees were abused, and in a relatively few cases killed. The Air Force message says airmen will be called on for interrogation and analysis. Since those are not typical Air Force missions, candidates will have to undergo interrogation classes at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The classes include the Initial Interrogator Course and the Enhanced Analyst and Interrogator Training Course. -------- spies Goss says CIA ban excludes terrorists March 25, 2005 By Shaun Waterman UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050324-114414-9779r.htm CIA Director Porter J. Goss told lawmakers that the ban on assassinations by U.S. intelligence is still in force, but that it does not prohibit the agency from killing the terrorist enemies of the United States. The assassination ban, contained in Executive Order 12333, "would not bar the use of lethal force in self-defense, for example, in appropriate cases against members of al Qaeda planning attacks against the United States," Mr. Goss said. His comment, an unusually candid statement about an area of law and policy that officials rarely touch on in public, came in a series of written answers to questions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The CIA declined to comment on the remarks, but according to one former senior intelligence official, the decision to get around the ban, rather than to rescind or waive it, was made soon after the September 11 attacks. "They wanted to keep the ban in place," the former official said. The self-defense exemption "was a legal fabrication to save face, to say, 'Yes, it still applies, but just not in these cases.'Â " The former intelligence official said some Bush administration lawyers used a theory of anticipatory self-defense to justify their legal analysis that the ban did not apply to terrorists. The Clinton administration had a similar reluctance to repeal the ban, despite the 1998 attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Richard A. Clarke, who led the White House's counterterrorism efforts under President Clinton and in the early part of President Bush's first term, said this reluctance resulted in "a very Talmudic and somewhat bizarre series of documents" from the Clinton White House that gave extremely specific authorities for particular operations. In testimony to the joint congressional inquiry into the September 11 attacks, which was declassified last year, Mr. Clarke said there was enormous resistance to the idea of authorizing the deliberate killing of specific people, even bin Laden. "The administration, and particularly the Justice Department, did not want to throw out the ban on assassination," he told the inquiry. "There was concern ... that we not create an American hit list that would become an ongoing institution that we could just keep adding names to and have hit teams go out and assassinate people," Mr. Clarke said. Some in the Clinton administration -- reportedly including Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger -- had suggested as long ago as 1998 that the assassination ban should be amended to legalize killings specifically authorized by the president. But others maintained that such changes were unnecessary because the ban didn't cover killings that were carried out to defend the United States against an attack and because the president could issue overriding policy orders. -------- us Navy To Resume Bombing Runs, Exercises On Chesapeake Bay Islands Associated Press, March 25, 2005 http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3030325&nav=23iiX5pU (AP) - The Navy has proposed resuming bombing and strafing runs and life-fire military training exercises on islands in the Chesapeake Bay, nine years after the exercises were suspended, officials with the Patuxent River Naval Air Systems Command in Maryland said. Expanded, year-round, day-and-night military exercises on Bloodsworth Island and three tiny islands near Tangier Sound are necessary because the nation is at war, Navy officials said Thursday. "Recent international events have shown that maintaining national security and global stability requires U.S. military forces to be ready for ... threats and challenges," the Navy wrote in a draft environmental assessment mailed in the past few days to officials on the Eastern Shore, watermen, local citizens and others with a stake in the area. Military operations were performed on Bloodsworth Island for decades until 1996, when the Navy voluntarily suspended all bombing and firing of ordnance because it did not have an adequate safety plan, according to the report. "In the past, operations at Bloodsworth Island have included the use of live ordnance," said Bob Coble, deputy public affairs officer for Patuxent Naval Air Systems Command. "But this will only involve the use of inert or nonexplosive ordnance," he said. Navy personnel would also fire machine guns and other small weapons with steel bullets as they conduct simulated combat with amphibious assault craft and other activities, according to the environmental report. Since 1996, the Navy has conducted occasional aerial exercises and search-and-rescue practices on the islands for eight months a year. No exercises have been staged during the waterfowl hunting season from October to mid-February. Some residents of nearby Dorchester County already complain about the noise from these exercises and fear worse racket from A-10 "Warthog" warplanes, Hellfire missiles, cluster bombs and amphibious assault craft. Watermen said Thursday that they don't like the plan for increased activity because it will mean the military will use helicopters with bullhorns to expel them from a 26-square-mile "danger zone" around the islands for periods totaling almost two months a year. The waters around the island are fertile and popular grounds for crabbing and fishing, and dozens of watermen tend perhaps 7,000 crab pots in the danger zone. "This would be devastating to the watermen," said Ben Parks, president of the Dorchester County Seafood Harvesters Association. "You've got God knows how many watermen using that area, and you're talking about losing prime time for crabbing, plus a big part of the charter boat industry." In the report of more than 100 pages the Navy mailed Feb. 25, it says neither the public nor the environment would be harmed by a resumption of bombing on the island, this time with non-explosive ordnance. "Wetlands vegetation disturbed by military operations would quickly recover after cessation of the activities," the report said. "The action is not expected to result in significant impacts on the quality of the human environment." Richard Alan White, a 61-year-old writer who lives at the tip of Middle Hooper Island, a few miles north of the affected islands, said the Navy should conduct its training exercises somewhere far out into the ocean, not in an enclosed and populated area such as the Chesapeake. He said he didn't want the Navy to return to its practices during the Cold War in the mid-1980s, when destroyers and war planes would blast away at Bloodsworth Island. The roar of engines and explosions was so loud that it was hard to focus on anything else, White said. "Whenever those war machines come by, it chases everything natural away," White said. "They used to fire these Gatling guns at the island, and it sounded like the whole sky was ripping apart like a zipper. It was really disturbing." The Navy is soliciting public comments on its proposal through March 31. It plans to hold public hearings at 3:30 p.m. March 14 at Deal Island School in the town of Deal Island, at the same time the next day at the Holiday Inn Express in Cambridge, and at the same time March 16 at Lakes & Straits Volunteer Fire Company in Wingate. Bloodsworth Island, about 12 miles north of the Virginia line, covers 5,361 acres. Together, it and its small neighbors Adam, Northeast and Pone islands are about the same size as Annapolis. Visitors who have hunted and kayaked in and around the islands describe them as wild and beautiful, but dotted with unexploded bombs -------- war crimes France puts off war-crimes vote March 25, 2005 By Nicholas Kralev THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050324-092630-2809r.htm France yesterday delayed a U.N. vote it had sought on a resolution referring war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region to the International Criminal Court after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier that Washington would oppose the measure. Miss Rice, in a telephone conversation with Mr. Barnier, did not use the world "veto," but she used diplomatic language that implied such an outcome, U.S. officials said. The officials also suggested that Paris might withdraw the resolution altogether, saying a more general U.S. version of the text is more in France's interest than its own draft. "Their resolution talks only about the ICC, and if we vetoed it, it would be dead," one official said. "Ours is not that specific and leaves the door open to different options, including the ICC." A veto, however, would be difficult for Washington to exercise, because it might be perceived as blocking the punishment of those responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands in Darfur, U.S. and foreign diplomats said. That is why, they added, the United States and France prefer to reach a compromise before a text is put to a vote. But the signals from Paris yesterday were hardly conciliatory, with officials there saying the ICC is the best venue to try Darfur cases. "The ICC was specifically conceived to try those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as those committed in Sudan," a French Foreign Ministry representative said. The Security Council approved another U.S.-sponsored resolution yesterday authorizing a 10,000-strong peacekeeping force for southern Sudan to monitor a January agreement that ended a 21-year civil war. Both the U.S. and French drafts on Darfur were circulated in the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. France had indicated that it would put its version to a vote yesterday but then decided on a delay until next week to allow other council members more time to make up their minds. "After we put forward the text, certain delegations asked us for a delay to consider it," France's ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, told reporters in New York. China was the first to ask for more time, which is not unusual in the 15-member council. The United States, France and China have veto power as permanent members, as do Britain and Russia. The Bush administration opposes the ICC, to which the United States is not a party. Washington fears politically motivated prosecution of U.S. officials and soldiers. France's proposal to try Darfur cases at The Hague-based court automatically would leave the United States out of the process to bring to justice those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Washington has made clear that such an option is not acceptable. Different options -- the ICC, a U.S.-proposed ad hoc Tanzania tribunal or an African panel for "justice and reconciliation" suggested recently by Nigeria -- should be considered, said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli. But a French diplomat said the matter was urgent, and that it would take "a lot of time and money to create an ad hoc tribunal before anything happens." -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- homeland security / national intelligence Former director wants FEMA out of Homeland Security 3/25/2005 Associated Press http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2005-03-25-witt-fema_x.htm NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Department of Homeland Security has hampered its ability to deal with hurricanes and other disasters, former FEMA Director James Lee Witt said Friday. Emergency managers and other state and local officials attending the National Hurricane Conference applauded Witt when he urged that FEMA again be made a separate agency, saying it still could focus on all hazards whether terrorist attacks, earthquakes, floods or killer storms. "The emphasis is not there like it used to be," Witt later told reporters. "Putting FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security has minimized their effectiveness in responding, in planning and training, the national hurricane program, everything." Witt also urged more spending on the hurricane program, which is facing potential cuts, and said the agency has been too slow in passing on federal emergency funding to where it is needed. "Put the money down to the state and local government," he said to more applause. "Let them do their job. They know what to do." Local officials in Florida, which was hit by a state record four hurricanes last year, also have complained about delays in getting reimbursement for millions of dollars spent for debris removal and other cleanup costs. The agency, meanwhile, has come under fire for distributing $30 million in assistance to about 13,000 residents of Miami-Dade County although not hit by hurricane force winds. One Florida congressman, Rep. Mark Foley, R-West Palm Beach, has threatened to introduce legislation to separate FEMA because of those issues. In Washington, FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule said there are no plans to remove the agency from Homeland Security's structure. Rather, she said, being included in the sprawling department has let FEMA respond more quickly to disasters by using Homeland Security resources like ships, planes and helicopters. Being a part of Homeland Security "greatly enhances our fundamental mission, which is to prepare for, respond to and help victims from any disaster - earth quakes to tornados, from floods to terrorism," Rule said. "Now we're part of a larger response entity, with greater resources, and greater reach than we ever had standing alone," she said. The hurricane conference's chairman, John Wilson, public safety director for Lee County, Fla., said he thought the commitment of people within the agency is more important than how it is structured. "If that can be done with Homeland Security, good. If it can't, then maybe there's an argument to make it different," Wilson said in an interview. "If you're in an organization where your focus and your mission is blurred, then James Lee Witt has a point." Wilson, however, noted FEMA has not seemed to lack public exposure since becoming part of Homeland Security. Rule said that in 2002, the year before FEMA merged with 21 other agencies to create the Homeland Security Department, FEMA responded to 49 major disaster declarations and provided assistance to three declared emergencies. By comparison, FEMA responded to 68 major disasters and seven emergencies in 2004 - the most in any single year in nearly a decade, Rule said. Witt served as FEMA director under President Bill Clinton from 1993 through 2001. He now is CEO of the International Code Council in Falls Church, Va., and told the conference Florida's hurricanes last year proved that tougher building codes can reduce storm damage. Witt said he was a part of the Cabinet when FEMA was an independent agency and often spoke directly to the president about agency matters. He doubted FEMA's present director, Mike Brown, has the same kind of access. Fifteen percent of money spent on each disaster was allocated to preventing future damage during the Clinton administration but now has dropped to 7.5%, Witt said. Such mitigation projects save money in the long run, he said. ---- Chemicals ordered removed March 25, 2005 By Tarron Lively THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20050324-103730-3107r.htm D.C. Public Schools Superintendent Clifford B. Janey issued a protocol yesterday for removing potentially dangerous chemicals from schools, after a series of mercury contaminations and the revelation that a previous removal effort was incomplete. The nine-page protocol lists more than 200 chemicals including mercury, chlorine, chloroform, ether, hexyl alcohol and nicotine. The protocol was issued to the principals of each of the city's roughly 150 public schools. The school system's Hazmat Removal Team, D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services and the American Association for the Advancement of Science helped create the protocol and will handle the removal and disposal of the materials. "Based on the realization that hazardous materials still exist in our schools, I have issued a new directive," Mr. Janey said. He said the sweep of schools began earlier this week and will take about two or three weeks. School administrators ordered all potentially hazardous materials removed after an October 2003 mercury spill at Ballou High School in Southeast. The incident closed the building for more than a month, and cleanup cost at least $1 million. A student who was charged in the case had taken the mercury from a science lab. Mr. Janey became superintendent about 10 months after the initial order. He and other administrators thought all potentially hazardous materials had been removed. However, investigations into the recent mercury incidents at Cardozo High School and Hardy Middle School revealed that potentially hazardous materials were still inside schools. The March 7 spill at Hardy, at 1819 35th St. NW, occurred when a thermometer was broken accidentally in a science room, authorities said. The students responsible for the first of three discoveries at Cardozo said they took the mercury from a science lab inside the school, at 1300 Clifton St. NW. Police have charged three students in connection with the contamination. "This time we will take all necessary steps to prevent further loss of instructional time due to incidents such as those at Cardozo and Hardy," Mr. Janey said. Cardozo reopened Monday. The school was closed for most of three weeks so Environmental Protection Agency crews could remove the mercury. Mercury was first found to be placed at Cardozo on Feb. 23. The school briefly reopened March 2 before six more BB-sized drops were found on a third-floor stairwell. At least 50 students' shoes tested positive for mercury contamination that day. Mercury was found a third time at Cardozo on March 6, but it was not clear whether the placement was new or overlooked by crews cleaning the first spill. Cardozo students were bused to the University of the District of Columbia for classes from March 8 to Monday, while crews cleared the school. School officials closed Cardozo indefinitely March 11 after crews found six containers of potentially hazardous materials, including mercury, in three of the school's science labs. EPA officials said they also recovered nine mercury thermometers and several mercury thermostats. School officials at first denied reports that mercury was still inside Cardozo, saying it had been removed from all schools after the Ballou spill. Mr. Janey said materials discovered inside the school included unsecured chemicals, some of them unlabeled, that were catalyzed, decomposed or aged beyond their shelf life and could become unstable. The cleanup and testing, which included the screening of hundreds of student lockers, was completed March 18. The final costs associated with the incidents at Cardozo have not been announced. -------- prisons / prisoners Inmates' letter writing curbed March 25, 2005 By Brian Witte ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20050324-103730-2620r.htm BALTIMORE -- State prison inmates are no longer allowed to write letters to each other, a policy change that was made months after officials discovered a letter offering thousands of dollars in bounties for killing a former warden and nine correctional officers, a corrections spokeswoman said yesterday. The author of the letter pledges 25 percent of the bounty for stabbing someone on the list and 10 percent "if you knock their head off." A union representative for the officers said the letter has correctional officers concerned about their safety. He contends that more staff support is needed in a system where officers are outnumbered by inmates 48-to-1. An Eastern Correctional Institution (ECI) officer on the list already has been attacked inside the facility, but corrections officials haven't verified whether the beating and the letter are linked, said Priscilla Doggett, spokeswoman for the Maryland Division of Correction. However, Carl McVeigh of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Council 92, said he can't believe that there isn't a connection. "To me, any reasonable and prudent person who sees his name on a hit list with a dollar amount next to it that apparently has been around since the fall -- to me, any reasonable and prudent person would say, 'Uh oh. He's on the list. It happened to him,'Â " Mr. McVeigh said. Robert Kupec, a former warden at the facility, received the letter last year before he resigned, Miss Doggett said. It was addressed to members of the Bloods gang inside the ECI. It contained a list of 10 names, including the warden's, with different amounts of money next to them, ranging between $5,000 and $30,000. Mr. Kupec referred the letter to an internal investigative unit, but Commissioner Frank C. Sizer Jr. didn't become aware of the letter until after October, Miss Doggett said. Before finding out about the letter, corrections officials already were taking measures to improve intelligence gathering, Miss Doggett said, and the list "increased our belief" that more needed to be done. "We were already headed there, but then when this came along, it substantiated the need to do the things that we're trying to do," Miss Doggett said. Miss Doggett said other policy changes have been made, but she wasn't able to discuss matters relating to intelligence. She also said more attention is being focused on dangerous groups in the state's prisons. "We have identified several security threat groups within our system, and we're looking at that," she said. The policy change forbidding inmates to write to each other went into effect in February. The only exceptions will be for inmates who have relatives in prison, and they will need to get approval before they can correspond. Earlier this month, the facility was on lockdown for the second time in two weeks, after a facilitywide security sweep uncovered a homemade weapon. There are about 3,150 inmates at ECI in Westover. The prison is the largest employer in Somerset County. -------- POLITICS -------- propaganda wars ‘Gunner Palace’ blasts through Iraq War rhetoric By WALLACE BAINE Santa Cruz Sentinel film writer March 25, 2005 http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2005/March/25/style/stories/01style.htm After two painful years of hope and hellfire, maybe it’s time to move beyond the inarticulate salutes to Americans troops in Iraq and honor them another way, by attempting to see the experience of the Iraq War through their eyes. Such is the appeal of "Gunner Palace," a scruffy documentary focusing on a U.S. artillery unit stationed at the former palace of Uday Hussein in Baghdad. That the film feels fresh and immediate is less the film’s glory and more the shame of the media environment that surrounds it. In a world with a less coercive relationship between government and media, there would be no reason to make films like "Gunner Palace." That’s because this is the kind of thing that would likely be on TV all the time if the media weren’t programming the Iraq War like a sweeps-week spectacle to government specs. Give filmmaker Michael Tucker credit for moving beyond the hot extremes of rhetoric that the news media regard as the real story. Tucker somehow snakes past the pro-war and anti-war ramparts that have obscured the soldier’s experience in Iraq to create a story that’s remarkably matter-of-fact. The servicemen and women here are neither snarling, arrogant occupiers nor dewy-eyed heroes. Instead, they’re recognizable as more-or-less typical American young people bumping along through their tours of duty with more-or-less good humor and competence. Interestingly, Tucker and his co-director Petra Epperlein (who’s also his wife) chose to cover the same unit that Time magazine featured in its "The American Soldier — 2003 Person of the Year" issue. Where Time sounded the trumpets of glory, bathing its subject in glow of selfless service, "Gunner Palace" allows the soldiers themselves to set the tone. The result is a film filled with impromptu rap performances and guitar solos, kids wide- eyed at their adventures but filled with dread at the unknowns they face. Yes, these are sympathetic portraits. But Tucker doesn’t flinch from showing American troops in circumstances in which they play the callous occupier. The film was shot in late 2003 amidst the half-ruins of the garish palace of Saddam Hussein’s sadist son Uday, now the "gunner palace" of the First Armored Division’s 2/3 Field Artillery unit. Shots of American soldiers throwing pool parties in Uday’s sumptuous pool carry all kinds of symbolic political meanings. It’s the eye of Tucker and Epperlein for this kind of metaphorical image that gives the film a potent punch. In the fall of ’03, no one recognized the name Abu Ghraib as shorthand for American-style brutality, so images of Iraqi detainees merrily being shipped off to Abu Ghraib provide a chilling sense of pre-cognition. But overall, the fighting men in the film — there’s only one female soldier profiled — come off as candid and complex individuals, neither gung-ho guerillas or cynical mercenaries. Some of them question the necessity of the U.S. presence in Iraq; others lament that the folks back home are blissfully ignorant of the dangers they face. Tucker is with them as they chill at Uday’s, as they patrols streets seething with anti-American animosity, and as they execute midnight raids in private homes looking for insurgents. The soldiers go about their job with level-headed skill, but also admit how much they fear bombs hidden in trash cans and paper bags. Reportedly, soldiers who’ve seen the film praised it for authenticity, which is good enough for me. If there’s anything to fault here, it’s that the film may be too short. At a crisp 85 minutes, it doesn’t allow a full-bodied portrait of its subjects. As intriguing as they are, it’s hard to isolate individuals in the film as they remain one indistinguishable mass, the same kind of simplification of which Time is guilty is saluting The American Soldier. "Gunner Palace" should be just the beginning of a fuller understanding of the day-to-day lives of American troops in Iraq. But even it turns out to be the definitive document of the war, it fulfills its duty with every bit of the agility and commitment of the soldier it covers. We’ve sent these young people over there to police a hostile and dangerous country. The least we can do is walk a mile in their boots. Contact Wallace Baine at wbaine@santacruzsentinel.com. -------- voting Carter to Head Elections Panel Bipartisan Group Will Look for Ways to Improve Voting in U.S. Friday, March 25, 2005; Page A11 Reuters http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64340-2005Mar24?language=printer Former president Jimmy Carter will lead a bipartisan commission to examine problems with the U.S. election system, American University's Center for Democracy and Election Management said yesterday. Carter, a Democrat whose Carter Center has monitored more than 50 elections around the world, will co-chair the private commission with Republican James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush. Former Senate minority leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), a Democrat who lost his seat in the 2004 election, will also participate. "I am concerned about the state of our electoral system and believe we need to improve it," Carter said in a statement. He said the group will assess "issues of inclusion" in federal voting and propose recommendations to improve the process. "We will try to define an electoral system for the 21st century that will make Americans proud again," he said. Although disputes over recounts and voter eligibility marred the 2000 U.S. presidential election, international monitors in place in November 2004 reported that the polls were mostly fair. Still, concerns emerged about exceedingly long lines that kept voters from the polls in several states, including Ohio, whose 20 electoral college votes ultimately decided the election in President Bush's favor. The Center for Democracy and Election Management, which will organize the work of Carter's commission, said the group will conduct two public hearings -- the first on April 18 at American University in Washington and the second at Houston's Rice University in June. The Commission on Federal Election Reform aims to produce a report to Congress on its findings by September. -------- ACTIVISTS Students participate in Fayetteville peace march Over 3,000 activists attended the Mar. 19 march in Fayetteville, N.C. By Holly Butcher Friday, March 25, 2005 The Guilfordian http://www.guilfordian.com/news/2005/03/25/Features/Students.Participate.In.Fayetteville.Peace.March-903608.shtml March 19 marked the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In response to a war already costing 1,535 American lives, Military Families Speak Out and Veterans Against the War organized a peace demonstration at Fort Bragg "to make 2005 the last year of the occupation of Iraq," according to www.ncpeacejustice.com. "It was a powerful statement for those who have loved ones in the military to be in Fayetteville and make our opposition to the war and our love for the troops known," said Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, in a phone interview with The Guilfordian. "We marched with veterans for peace, leading others in the peace and justice movement in what was the largest support our troops rally in a base town since the Vietnam War." The demonstration began with a march and ended in a four-hour forum with speakers and music. Speakers included Greensboro Civil Rights Activist Rev. Nelson Johnson, Kelly Dougherty, co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Muslim-American Public Affairs Council member Khalilah Sabra, Spanish journalist Maribel Permuy Lopez, and Lessin, among others. Nearly 3,000 activists and 100 military families came to the demonstration. According to the Washington Post, there were 800 other demonstrations, protests in every state. In Fayetteville, Michael Hoffman, a former Marine artilleryman during the invasion of Iraq and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, got the most applause for his rousing speech describing how: "Two years ago today, many of us standing on this stage were ready to wage destruction on Iraq," reports the Washington Post. ""We know that the only solution to the problem that we have created is to end the occupation now." One of the broader purposes of the march was to show support for the soldiers and understanding of the sacrifices of military families. "There are all these stereotypes that exist from the anti-Vietnam War movement; the peace movement during that era didn't do a good job making it clear that they supported the troops," said sophomore Adam Waxman, member of the March 19th Mobilization Committee. "When troops get home, often times the government abandons them. They don't have enough health care or opportunities for the wounded, and the peace movement during Vietnam didn't say 'you can come to us and we support you.' Instead they reacted very negatively and emphasized civilian casualties and stuff the soldiers found offensive." Saturday's movement was different, as it focused on supporting the troops by bringing them home. "This is two years into the war in Iraq, and we have tremendous respect for soldiers, military families and veterans who oppose the war," said Lessin. "I think that we who are military families and in the military and ex-military communities have been very welcome in the peace movement. I think that was something that was struggled with during the Vietnam years and has been done better this time around." Here at Guilford, a group of activists formed the March 19th Mobilizing Committee in order to bring a substantial portion of Guilford students to Fort Bragg. "I think it's great that we got a bus full of people, (but) it's unfortunate that more didn't come out," said Committee member and sophomore Rachel Marx. "Perhaps we could have mobilized more people." "This is such an important event - people are dying - and some people just seemed apathetic to the whole situation," Marx said. "The most interesting part was that we got to see a lot of protesters who were straight-up normal folks - military families and veterans that were speaking on the war," said Committee member and senior Cesar Weston. "Once I found out it was being sponsored by organizations and people that were parts of military families and veterans themselves, I knew it was something I wouldn't mind supporting at all." Behind the rally there was a small counter-demonstration organized by the Free Republic. However, the presence was small and had little effect on the activists: "Counter-demonstrations never have any impact at all and the Free Republic is a joke to the left community," said Marx. "But they have every right to come out an express themselves." "The one thing I heard when we were walking in was '8 million Iraqis holding up their middle fingers,'" said first-year Kelsey McMillan. "It seemed totally immature and they were so far away it didn't really matter." Despite the small counter-protest, activists and speakers walked away with a clear message. "I think it's important that this be an illustration that there needs to be something done about Iraq; we all need to come together and recognize the fact that people come from all kinds of perspectives and that can't resort to red-baiting," said Marx. "What we're saying is that we have to end the occupation," said Lessin. "There has to be tremendous recourses in the form of funds and money going to help with reconstruction, clean up of the depleted uranium and dealing with the damage that was caused. But we don't think that help comes in the form of 150,000 troops with guns." -------- Israeli Youth Refuse Military Service "When Mazali brought attention to depleted uranium (DU) in ammunition used by the Israeli army, it prompted a series of discussions in the Knesset.." By Sonia Nettnin PalestineChronicle.com Friday, March 25 2005 @ 04:16 AM EST http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050325041602284 Chicago, IL (PC) - Israeli writer and feminist peace activist, Rela Mazali, spoke about New Profile’s movement in Israel; and the effects of military service on Israeli society and the Palestinian people. Mazali is a major figure in the peace and feminist movement in Israel. She is one of the founders of New Profile, a grassroots organization that challenges militarism in Israeli society by providing support for Israeli youth who conscientiously object to Israel’s military conscription law. “We want a new profile for Israeli society,” she said. “We want to change it into a real civic society.” As former Director of Projects and Development for the Association of Israeli Palestinian Physician for Human Rights, she established a 1993 Tel-Aviv conference with the theme: The International Struggle against Torture and the Case of Israel. Over a dozen countries sent 450 delegates for the conference, which included torture survivors from the Occupied Territories. In 2001, Mazali created the widely-used slogan: “We Refuse to Be Enemies,” which the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace in Israel included in their public campaigns. Later that year, she was a keynote speaker at the Jewish Unity for a Just Peace Conference (JUNITY) held in Chicago, which encouraged Jewish-Americans to speak against the occupation. When Mazali brought attention to depleted uranium (DU) in ammunition used by the Israel Defense Forces, it prompted a series of discussions in Israel’s Knesset. Testimonies and Feminism in Action In 1993, Mazali worked on the documentary “Testimonies,” where Israeli soldiers described how they suppressed the first Palestinian intifada (uprising). Several years later, she expanded the testimony experience to young conscientious objectors. Through online outreach, New Profile collected the testimonies of women refusers into an online booklet. “We provided them a space to annunciate, to give name to these feelings they didn’t understand,” Mazali explained. Young women refusers created information packages for Israelis going through the conscientious objector process in the future. Today, refuseniks throughout Israel use New Profile’s online resources. New Profile made refusal to military service visible to the public and the international community. Moreover, it developed public discourse about Israel’s militarized society. Through the lens of feminist critique, New Profile examines Israel’s continuous reinvestment in warfare and armament, as well as the hierarchical values it assigns for sociologically-designated masculine and feminine roles. When Israel’s military Conscious Committee exempts youth from the military, the committee assigns the objector Profile 21 - mental and emotional unfitness for duty. However, New Profile inverted the derogatory meaning of the phrase by redefining it as a change in society. Through feminist analysis, New Profile shows how Israel’s Ministry of Education militarizes the education system so when youth graduate high school; they are ready to enlist for conscripted service. In Israel, military service is the law, so the government and its legal system determine it has high value. Israeli society dictates a man’s masculinity depends on his military service. As a result, there is no distinction between manhood and soldier hood because the latter sociologically determines the former. “They assume this is how they become real men,” Mazali said. “Gender is deeply embedded in the militarization of any society.” Military Education and Culture Israel’s visual culture communicates soldier hood. New Profile had a traveling exhibit, not allowed in Israel’s schools, which contained youth textbook and magazine covers, along with children’s books. The pictures portrayed Israeli solders from a romanticized perspective. Through people-to-people initiatives, the exhibit traveled to a Palestinian Women’s Training Center in Nazareth, where it provided a backdrop to youth workshops. In some Israeli schools, geography classes concentrate on battlefields. The constant media exposure to war imagery becomes a natural part of Israeli society. When a toddler boy falls down and cries a typical response from the witnessing adult: “Don’t worry; it will pass by the time you enlist.” The government raises parents to raise their children for enlistment, and make it a normal part of life. “War is the reality,” Mazali said. “It’s a widely acceptable, reasonable way to go.” She sees this military construction of Israeli culture and society as the perpetuation of organized violence. On Israel’s Independence Day, which is the Palestinians Al-Nakba (the Catastrophe), one municipality has Israeli pre-school children watch a military parade of soldiers and weaponry. Soldiers greet the girls and boys, and a senior officer addresses them. Instructions for the children are: “Walk straight, walk in an orderly fashion.” For Israelis, military education begins at a young age. Mazali questioned why Independence Day is not about democratic and civic values. New Profile strives for educational intervention of societal practices in the public space. For instance, when a parent questioned a principal at a school about the study of battlefields, he responded: “You provide me with alternative curriculum.” She did. The class studied water consumption instead. When the Ministry of Education initiated entrance of IDF officers into a high school, New Profile drew up a petition and numerous educators signed it. New Profile’s protest drew the media’s attention. After the introduction of new military courses in the high schools, the group established a petition and held demonstrations. Members of New Profile provide consultation for parents of conscientious objectors about the exemption process. Many parents of COs believe the myth that refusal to military service hurts their sons and their daughters down the line, and it prevents them from future opportunities. When one parent asked: “Won’t it hurt him?” Mazali responded: “Well, won’t military service hurt him?” The Future Israel has separate military conscious committees for men and women. Recently, lawyers who actively defend COs communicated to New Profile that the military Conscious Committee for women will be disbanded, so there will be one committee. Mazali does not think it will help Israeli women who petition for exemption. Every year, 50 per cent of the candidates for military conscription do not enlist for service. Year-to-date, around 1400 Israeli youth refused military service. Founded in 1997, New Profile does not employ a hierarchical structure. Its members rotate leadership positions, which are held by women. Men are members also. Most of the work is by a core group of 50 volunteers. Their eldest member is 74 years-old. Audience members asked Mazali if she thought about leaving Israel. “A sense of belonging has become entwined to my responsibility to work on things that are unacceptable,” she said. Her most recent book is Maps of Women’s Goings and Stayings and she is the author of education curricula for children’s rights and peace education. The New Profile web site contains condensed versions of her extensive research in gender equality, the value of women in Israeli society and violence against women in the military. What keeps Mazali going? “The youth,” she said. --------- Kyrgyzstan Protests Topple Government Friday, March 25th, 2005 Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/25/1516254 Opposition protestors in Kyrgyzstan took over the presidential compound and other government buildings yesterday, effectively bringing President Askar Akayev's government to collapse. We speak with the director Asia Program at the International Crisis Group. [includes rush transcript] Yesterday opposition protestors in Kyrgyzstan took over the presidential compound and other government buildings, effectively bringing President Askar Akayev's government to collapse. This is the third government in a former Soviet Republic to fall due to popular uprising- in the past year and a half. Georgia and most recently Ukraine also ousted their leaders in popular uprisings. Askar Akayev had led Kyrgyztan since 1990, before it gained independence from the Soviet Union. The takeover began on Thursday morning in the outskirts of the capital, Bishkek. The Associated Press reported that about 1,000 protestors rushed towards the presidential building, entered the front and smashed the windows with stones. Akayev's whereabouts are currently unknown though there was speculation that he may have sought sanctuary in the Russian airbase outside the capital. Both the U.S and Russia have military air bases near Bishkek and about 1,000 U.S troops are stationed there. - Robert Templer, Directs the Asia Program at the International Crisis Group. RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more... AMY GOODMAN: This is U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. ADAM ERELI: Obviously, we are following events in Bishkek and Kyrgyzstan closely. I can’t confirm for you specific movements. We’re following reports closely. But I don't have any confirmation of the whereabouts of the President or his entourage. What I can tell you is that we’re working with our friends in the U.N., in the O.S.C.E., and the international community to urge both government officials and protesters both to refrain from violence and to engage in constructive dialogue. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe envoy, Mr. Peterle, is meeting with opposition figures in Bishkek. Our Ambassador, in coordination with the O.S.C.E. and others, plans to meet opposition figures including Mr. Bakiev and Mr. Kulov. We’ve been in contact with our Russian friends and Kyrgyzstan’s Central Asian neighbors to make sure we're all in sync on the need for a peaceful solution. I would say our overall approach to the situation is to support the efforts of the Kyrgyz people to build a stable and prosperous democracy and to work with the other members of the international community to achieve a peaceful solution to the current situation. AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli. We are turning to Robert Templer, who is the director of the Asia Program for the International Crisis Group, who joins us in our Firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now! ROBERT TEMPLER: Thank you. AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain the situation in Kyrgyzstan? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, I think for some time now the opposition has been gathering steam, partially to do with the levels of corruption, the mismanagement of this country and the degree to which Akayev has really tried to strangle any sort of political dissent or political opposition to him. He rigged the recent parliamentary elections, and that's caused an explosion of anger, which has boiled up into this popular uprising, and we’ve seen the results yesterday. JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, this is largely a Muslim country, isn't it? What's been the impact, obviously, of the growing unrest in other sections of the Muslim world within Kyrgyzstan? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, it is a Muslim country, but it's a very secularized country on the whole. There is some links to Islamic groups in the south of the country, particularly a group called Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which is a fairly extremist organization, although non-violent organization. But most of the country is relatively moderate. The long period of Soviet rule obviously had a major impact on Islam in this region. But also, Kyrgyz are nomadic people. They don't tend to be particularly strong Muslims. They don't particularly – they’re not particularly dogmatic Muslims. So Islam hasn’t played a critical role in this, but there's definitely an effort by Islamic groups in the south to try and take advantage of some of the situations going on now. AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the situation in the capital? I mean, this is now a country without a government. ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, there was still some looting going on today. I spoke to people in our office in Bishkek, and they said that there were some police out on the streets, but they weren't doing very much to stop looting. A lot of the big stores, a lot of which were owned by the Akayev family, have been completely stripped of all goods. A lot of things are shut up, but people are sort of wandering around the streets. It's a very mixed atmosphere. On some levels there's some tension, on other levels it seems to be returning to normality in some ways. JUAN GONZALEZ: Wasn't Akayev, when he first came to power, seen basically as a supporter of the liberalization or reforms that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union? Or what happened in trajectory of his rule? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, he became increasingly hard-line over the years. He did start off as a reformer. The early years were fairly democratic. And in fact, he was simply much better than any of the other leaders in Central Asia. In some ways this is – it’s a good thing that he’s gone, but it will be much better to have gotten rid of a number of other dictators in that region. He started off fairly moderate. He moved to a more hard-line position. He was encouraged in this to a certain degree by the Russians in recent years. He was encouraged by his fellow dictators across Central Asia to move to a more hard-line position. But Kyrgyzstan never really had the state structures to impose the sort of really intense police state that exists in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It simply never had the capacity to do that. There was always an opposition. There was always an active N.G.O. community. There have always been very effective politicians there who stood in opposition to him. So he was never able to control things in the way that other Central Asian leaders have. AMY GOODMAN: Robert Templer is with the International Crisis Group. We have to break. When we come back, I want to ask you about the U.S. and Russian vying for power in Kyrgyzstan. You’ve written also about neighboring Uzbekistan and about how the U.S. has supported the ruler there, despite tremendous human rights abuses, and what about the role in Kyrgyzstan. That’s coming up here on Democracy Now! [break] AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War & Peace Report. Robert Templer is our guest, Director of the Asia Program for the International Crisis Group, in our studio. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Juan. JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’d like to ask you: both the United States and Russia have military bases in Kyrgyzstan. That must be one of the few countries in the world that have bases by both of these military powers. ROBERT TEMPLER: I think it's probably the only one. There's been a lot of competition between the two countries to a certain degree over Akayev and access to these bases. Akayev, in recent years, has tended towards the Russian side. The Russians are very much viewing this as an illegal overthrow, something that was outside of constitutional rule in Kyrgyzstan, and they're certainly going to blame it very much on U.S. interference. Although, I spent the past four years to get trying to get people in D.C. to be interested in Kyrgyzstan, and, you know, there are maybe ten people there who actually know where it is, and then most of those are in the Pentagon. So it really hasn't been something that's been pushed by the U.S. government in any way. Well, having said that, the U.S. Ambassador has played a very critical role in the past few weeks. And he’s been very good at criticizing Akayev, criticizing the fraudulent elections, and pressing for an investigation into those elections. AMY GOODMAN: Who’s the opposition? ROBERT TEMPLER: Sorry, the --? AMY GOODMAN: Opposition. ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, the opposition from within the U.S.? AMY GOODMAN: No, the opposition there. Who did he beat? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well -- AMY GOODMAN: Or who did he rig the elections against? ROBERT TEMPLER: The opposition is very divided. It's a whole mix of different people. They do seem to be coming together in the past few days, and I hope that they can map out a program to hold elections. There's no critical figure in the way that there was in Georgia or in Ukraine, so it's very much up in the air who’s going to emerge as the leader. AMY GOODMAN: Uzbekistan. Tell us about Uzbekistan and the U.S. role there, and then how that relates to Kyrgyzstan? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, Uzbekistan is simply one of the worst police states on earth. I mean, this is a country where you can be arrested for going to a mosque, for having a beard, for any sort of religious activity that strays out of the state's definition of what it is to be a Muslim. It's a place where people get boiled to death in prisons. And yet, this is a place that the U.S. government has a very close relationship with. There are military bases in Uzbekistan, and Karimov, the dictator there, has had a fairly close relationship with the Bush administration. There's a lot of frustration in Washington, as well, about his failure to reform, his failure to open up the country economically and the declining social situation there. The -- JUAN GONZALEZ: And it is certainly not one of the countries that President Bush mentions when he talks about the spread of democracy or opening up in the Middle East. ROBERT TEMPLER: No, it isn’t at all. And yet even groups like Freedom House and whatever, rank it in the same level as North Korea, in terms of its complete absence of freedom and human rights then. AMY GOODMAN: But it has a military base, a U.S. military base. ROBERT TEMPLER: It does have a major base that services the operations in Afghanistan. AMY GOODMAN: And how does Uzbekistan relate to Kyrgyzstan next door? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, they both occupy large areas of the Ferghana Valley in the south. And there's a real concern that Uzbekistan might intervene in southern Kyrgyzstan if the situation there disintegrates. The town of Osh, which is a major bazaar town in the south of Kyrgyzstan, has been much more chaotic than Bishkek, and there's certainly Islamic groups vying for power there. There are criminal groups that have been operating there. And in this situation, there's a real worry that you may see a recurrence of some of the ethnic violence that was directed against ethnic Uzbeks. If that happens, Uzbekistan might take the opportunity to intervene, and I think people will be working very hard to make sure that Uzbekistan stays out of the situation in Kyrgyzstan. JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the living conditions of the people in Kyrgyzstan? Clearly in Russia there has been a huge deterioration in living standards of many Russians since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What is happening in Kyrgyzstan? ROBERT TEMPLER: Well, they have declined very seriously. They're better than they are in a number of other neighboring countries. They're probably better than they are in Uzbekistan now, and better than Tajikistan. But still, they have declined very markedly in the past 15 years. A lot of Kyrgyz are going to Kazakhstan and Russia for migrant work. There's a huge array of poverty, very difficult to find jobs. Particularly problems in the south where pretty much all of the industry in the Ferghana Valley was wiped out. So, very severe problems in terms of the economy. JUAN GONZALEZ: And is there any major investment, foreign investment or U.S. investment, in Kyrgyzstan? Any major resources that western nations might covet? ROBERT TEMPLER: There’s quite a lot of gold, and there are a number of major gold mines there which have been very much linked to the Akayev family. They’re mostly run by Canadian companies rather than U.S. companies. But gold is probably the most significant resource. Kyrgyzstan also provides most of the water for the rest of Central Asia, and that's going to be a critical resource that it could make more money from. AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much, Robert Templer, Director of the Asia Program for the International Crisis Group, for joining us today. ROBERT TEMPLER: Thank you. --------- Hersh speech blasts Bush and war policy March 25, 2005 By Amy Feigenbaum News Editor rebistalgn.com.ar The Wesleyan Argus http://www.wesleyanargus.com/article.php?article_id=923 Seymour Hersh, one of America's most respected investigative journalists, criticizes contemporary politicians in speeches. Seymour Hersh confirmed existing worries about Bush's next four years in office during a Tuesday night lecture in the Memorial Chapel. Hersh forecasted a protracted war in Iraq, an obstinate president who will remain indifferent to anti-war sentiments, and an economic collapse. In his talk "Chain of Command: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," Hersh criticized both Republicans and Democrats, stressing the need for new faces in Congress. Hersh is one of America's most renowned investigative journalists, currently writing for The New Yorker on military and security matters. In 2004, Hersh helped expose the Abu Ghraib abuses. Hersh began his lecture by describing Bush's vision of the war in Iraq and the effects his beliefs will have for the future of US intervention. "Bush thinks he's doing the right thing in Iraq," Hersh said. "He's completely committed whether it's finishing his father's work, for divine reasons, or manifest destiny. Over 1,500 body bags have come back and another 1,000 or 2,000 body bags wouldn't stop him." The justification for the U.S. invasion, he said, is not oil or Israel as many have thought; it is Bush's uncompromising beliefs. "It's really terrifying," Hersh said. "Street marches and demonstrations wouldn't change what he's going to do. Even when Bush was asked by a high ranking government official if the US was losing the war in Iraq, Bush said 'you mean we're not winning?'" Professor Martha Crenshaw from the Government department questioned Hersh's opinion of Bush. "None of us know what motivates Bush," Crenshaw said. "There are some, Professor Gergen [at the Kennedy School of Government] at Harvard [who] see Bush as a good leader, someone who is flexible and pragmatic. You get a different picture of the president from different things you read." According to Hersh, Bush's vision has presented several negative implications for the ear in Iraq. Bush has kept the American people in the dark about what is actually going on. There are no embedded journalists and few reporters in Iraq, which allow military activity to go unchecked. The administration's use of the word "insurgents" in Iraq gives the wrong impression of militants, making them seem unorganized and barbaric. They in fact should be called "resisters," because they are simply resisting the US occupation. These resisters are more methodical than Bush or the media have given them credit for. "[The resisters] are letting the Americans have Baghdad," Hersh said. "Most of the Iraqis left the city before the U.S. invaded. And the attacks that occurred during that time seemed random to us. They were taking down their existing structures systematically." According to Hersh, the insurgent violence, along with an upcoming presidential election, created the impetus for Abu Ghraib. Bush wanted to gain the most information he could in the shortest amount of time. "While Americans value privacy, Arabs work on shame," Hersh said. "Men cannot see men naked, it's against the Koran. The photos that were taken could be used as blackmail against these prisoners. The President and his administration knew what was going on, according to Hersh; they had inspected Abu Ghraib and praised its work. According to Hersh, the American troops in Abu Ghraib were deeply affected by the torture they inflicted. He compared their actions to those of the US soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, which he exposed in 1969. "I gave them a good boy," Hersh quoted one mother of a soldier involved in the My Lai massacre. "And they gave me back a murderer." Abu Ghraib is just one example of covert military behavior, Hersh said, but it goes deeper. In recent months, the military has even been hiding where U.S. troops are located. Most troops are being killed in Ramadi, not Baghdad. The new plan of attack is to take over one city at a time with the goal of making Iraqis more afraid of U.S. troops than insurgents. The military believes that this is the best way to make Iraqi's safe. The marines, however, do not have the intelligence to make this mission successful and eventually, Hersh said, it will result in a civil war. On the subject of Afghanistan, Hersh claimed that the violence was completely unnecessary. "More than 70% of the Taliban didn't want bin Laden as a leader," Hersh said. "Meanwhile, we have declared victory when warlords control the military bases and a mafia society is in control." Hersh's most recent articles in January 2005 revealed that the U.S. has been conducting covert operations in Iran to identify targets for possible strikes. While both the Bush administration and the Iranian government have denied these allegations, Hersh claims that the U.S. will not stand for Iran having nuclear power. "We'll do something in Iran," Hersh said. "The Bush administration has long been planning it. This is the worst presidency and the worst war at the worst time in history that I can see. The Congress does not stand up to Bush. Their problem is that they're down 20 IQ points a man since the 1960's." While his lecture gave a pessimistic view of the next four years, he did offer hope for the upcoming Congressional elections. In the last election, he noted an emerging pattern in the West, which he called community building. Our government needs new leadership, he said. The people need to support better politicians and than work to get these people elected. Most students trusted Hersh's credibility but questioned his extreme negativity of the current political situation. "It seems like he's well connected with very powerful people," said Josh Cohen '05. "He's credible--fame allows people to confide in him and so he becomes a great source of information." "If anything good can come out of all of this mess, maybe it will be that people will develop a more critical perspective about those in power, and military recruiting will suffer," said Mark Bray '05. Professor Philip Pomper of the History Department has been friends with Hersh since elementary school and invited him to speak at Wesleyan. "You never can guess when you're playing softball with someone on the south side of Chicago, what they are destined to become," Pomper said. "But when you can balance advocacy with actuary, you can make a compelling case. And that's just the kind of man he is. A man of conviction." --------