NucNews - March 27, 2005


-------- NUCLEAR 

 
-------- britain

Dounreay waste spreads further afield

By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
Sunday Herald - 27 March 2005 

http://www.sundayherald.com/48711 

Radioactive contamination from Dounreay has spread more than twice as far as previously thought, to a popular beach on the north coast.

Scientists from the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) found a fragment of irradiated reactor fuel on Dunnet beach, near Thurso, at around 9am yesterday. The beach is more than 12 miles east of Dounreay, much further than any other known site of contamination. The particle is only the second from Dounreay found on a public beach.

According to the UKAEA, hundreds of thousands of nuclear fuel fragments could have leaked into the sea from Dounreay in the past. Only around a thousand have so far been recovered.

The discovery at Dunnet has sparked fears that contamination could have been swept by sea currents to Orkney and down the east coast. “Everywhere they have looked, they have found these particles,” said Lorraine Mann of Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping.

“They are really dangerous,” she said. “Some of them are radioactive enough to kill outright.” The reason why particles have not so far been discovered on other beaches is that no-one has yet looked for them, she claimed.

The UKAEA started monitoring Dunnet beach at the end of January, this year in response to a request from the government watchdog the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa). On March 2 a stone contaminated with radioactive caesium was found.

The source of this contamination is still unknown. Tests have, however, ruled out the possibility that it came from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine in 1986.

Nevertheless, the find prompted the UKAEA to step up its monitoring of Dunnet beach. That is why scientists were combing the sand on Saturday and will be out again today.

UKAEA spokesman Colin Punler said yesterday's particle was characteristic of the fuel fragments that had been discovered at Sandside and around Dounreay. So far only a fifth of Dunnet beach had been monitored, he said, so more radioactive particles may be unearthed there.

A Sepa spokeswoman confirmed last night that it had been informed of the find.

----

Lights out for a new nuclear age in Scotland

Sunday Herald - 27 March 2005 
By Iain Macwhirter, Holyrood Commentary

http://www.sundayherald.com/48668 

 “New nuclear power plant needed to keep lights on, say MPs” – so read one of many headlines last week reporting the Scottish Affairs Select Committee report on power generation.

Only the report didn’t actually say that. Its recommendations specifically avoided proposing any new nuclear plants to replace Torness and Hunterston B, due to close in the next decade or so. In fact, it said any new plant would be rejected by the Scottish Executive.

You had to look pretty hard to find any references to nuclear power at all in this report. But the hidden hand of industry lobbying managed to make this rather confused and anodyne publication sound like a dire warning that renewable energy – wind and wave power, etc – is for the birds. That if we want to save the planet, we need to return to atomic power – quick. It was duly reported by the media that nuclear was back on the agenda.

There is a fast-breeder quality to pro-nuclear propaganda. It seems to be generated spontaneously, as if from nowhere, based on no new material. The only change in the debate about nuclear energy is that there is no change.

The economics of nuclear power still don’t stack up. There is still nowhere to put the waste; the existing plants continue to contaminate the environment; there are major unresolved safety problems; and the nuclear industry represents a major security threat in the age of international terrorism. Oh, and the Scottish parliament will still reject any application for a new power plant on planning grounds.

However, there is a widely held perception – indeed, a certainty among many Labour politicians – that nuclear is inevitable. After the general election, we’re told, a new generation of nuclear power stations will happen. The unions want it, the party wants it and the environment demands it. With the reality of global warming now beyond reasonable doubt, we’re told, nuclear is the only way to avert climatic catastrophe. The environmentalists are just going to have to lump it.

Well, maybe. It would be irrational to reject nuclear power generation out of hand as a replacement for burning fossil fuels. However, there are cheaper alternatives, including insulation and renewable energy, like wind and wave power, which should surely be examined first in any audit of energy supply – as indeed the select committee says.

Scotland has 25% of Europe’s renewable energy. There may be doubts about whether this can generate 40% of our supply by 2020. But that is only if you accept that demand continues to increase without limit. Insulation programmes could reduce massively the amount of energy we consume.

Anyway, when it comes to expense, nuclear power is way off the scale. The new nuclear decommissioning agency, which is being set up this week to clear up the mess left by the last generation of nuclear power stations, is going to have to find some £50 billion to do the job. That is a lot of money, and it won’t be the energy companies that pay.

The truth is that nuclear power is a ruinously expensive way of generating energy. Left to the market, there would never again be another nuclear power station, because no private operator could cope with the cost of decommissioning. The civil nuclear generation industry would never have been developed in the first place had it not been for massive state subsidies during the cold war – largely because the military needed plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Plutonium is the most toxic material known – a quantity the size of a grapefruit would be enough to kill every man, woman and child on Earth. Plutonium doesn’t exist in the natural world and is created only through nuclear fission. And everyone wants some of it – the Israelis already have it, as do the North Koreans.

This is why we are currently trying to stop Iran developing its civil nuclear power programme – because the mad mullahs might use some of the fissile material for bombs.

It is morally inconsistent for countries like Britain to be ordering countries in the Middle East to close down their reactors when we are planning to open up more of them. But that’s only part of the problem.

In an age of international terrorism, rogue states and Islamic jihad, nuclear power is a liability. Torness nuclear power station, sitting on the coast at East Lothian, is a prime target for an al-Qaeda plane bomb. It could irradiate much of the central belt of Scotland. Alarmist? Of course. But when we’re told that there are literally hundreds of terrorists in Britain already plotting an atrocity, you have to ask where they are likely to get the biggest bang for their terrorist buck.

It’s not just the power plants that are vulnerable. The big problem with nuclear power is the lack of any deep storage solution. The stuff has to be stored in tanks on the ground or moved around the country by train to plants like Drigg in Cumberland. More targets. More contamination.

And, of course, the one certainty of nuclear power is that contamination will happen. It will get out. It always does.

We were told by the men in white coats that nuclear power was fail-safe. But the history of the Dounreay plant has been one long broken promise. There have been explosions, leaks, accidents, mislaid isotopes – you name it – over the past 40 years. Countless radioactive particles have been spread around the beaches and rocks of Caithness, rendering some of the most beautiful stretches of coastline uninhabitable for anyone without a protective suit.

It is the same at Sellafield and round all nuclear stations. You don’t need a Three Mile Island or a Chernobyl disaster – it is happening insidiously all the time.

So couldn’t we just dump the stuff in space? Well, in theory yes – but you would have to make awfully sure that it didn’t fall back to Earth. There is enough of it loose already.

Committees have been looking at underground storage for 30 years, but nobody has found anywhere geologically stable enough. The truth is that the only safe place to store nuclear waste would be under the houses of parliament, because only then could you be absolutely sure that it would be looked after properly.

But people in supposedly “remote” areas like Scotland aren’t going to be fooled again, which is one reason that the next generation of nuclear power stations is unlikely to be built here.

The political opposition would be considerable. Yes, there are those, like Lord Sewel (of the motions) who argue that since nuclear power is a Westminster responsibility, the Scottish parliament would just have to thole it. But the key is not the plant, but the waste. Waste is a planning issue, and given the lack of any secure means of storage, planning consent will assuredly be refused.

So, forecasts of a new nuclear future for Scotland are premature. But that won’t prevent wishful thinking on the part of MPs with nuclear constituencies. Nor will it prevent the nuclear lobby – a group with considerable influence in Number 10 – from pressing its case. If Tony Blair is back after the election with a three-figure majority, and he decides Britain needs new nuclear power stations as a mark of national virility, that would be a different matter. Forget the economics; forget the science. What Tony wants, Tony tends to get. 

----

Secret DTI team gives green light for 10 new nuclear plants

By Clayton Hirst
UK Independent
27 March 2005

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=623950

A secret team within the Department of Trade and Industry is preparing the case for a programme to build nuclear power stations after the general election.

The small group of senior officials, known as Future for Nuclear, has for the past few months examined whether it is economically viable to build new nuclear reactors. A senior Whitehall source with connections to the group said that it had now, in effect, made that case for up to 10 new reactors.

The DTI has maintained that it has no plans to allow the construction of new nuclear power stations because it wants to give renewable forms of energy a head start.

The pressure for a nuclear building programme is not coming from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, who remains sceptical about nuclear power. Instead, the drive is from the Prime Minister, who is worried that without new nuclear plants, Britain will miss its target of a 20 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2010.

Within government, Geoffrey Norris, Tony Blair's special adviser on industry and business, is pressing the nuclear case. It is understood that he was instrumental in the creation of the DTI's Future for Nuclear team.

"Norris has fought hard to keep nuclear on the agenda," said the Whitehall source.

Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser, is also said to be lobbying for new nuclear build.

Mr Norris did not return calls and Sir David was unavailable for comment.

A DTI spokesman said: "Although nuclear power produces no carbon dioxide, its current economics make nuclear build an unattractive option and there are important issues of nuclear waste to be resolved."

However, in a sign that the Government is planning a debate on nuclear power, he said: "Any decision to build new nuclear power stations would need to be the subject of public consultation and [the] publication of a White Paper on those specific proposals."

It is expected that a government U-turn on nuclear power would require a major ministerial reshuffle. Along with Ms Hewitt, Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, is also uneasy about nuclear power. Mr Blair may also want a pro-nuclear Energy minister to replace Mike O'Brien, who has remained neutral on the issue.

Martin O'Neill, the Labour chairman of the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee, said: "Nuclear's time is about to come. By this time next year, I expect there to be a nuclear White Paper laying out all the various goods on the stall. My feeling is that the political mood is changing towards nuclear. There are a lot of people who, six to nine months ago, were anti-nuclear who are now changing their positions."

A "process of elimination" would lead the Government to turn to nuclear, as other "green" forms of electricity generation all have their flaws, he said.

Already, some of the world's leading nuclear companies are lining up consortia to bid for the expected nuclear building programme, which could be worth £8bn. The companies set to bid include the French nuclear giant Areva, UK construction company Amec and Westinghouse, the US arm of the state-owned BNFL. 

-------- business

Soaring Prices Put Shine on U.S. Uranium

Sun Mar 27, 2005 10:49 AM ET
(Reuters) By Belinda Goldsmith

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=TTDD2R1RDUZ2ECRBAEZSFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8007924

NEW YORK  - With soaring prices putting a new shine on uranium, U.S.-based producers expect to double output this year, but room to boost production is limited.

The price has spiked to about $22 a pound from $10 in 2002 as Asian nations build nuclear reactors to create electricity amid high oil prices and concerns over global warming.

This increased demand for uranium, a non-fossil fuel which creates no air pollution, has revived the nuclear industry, which had been virtually frozen since accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986.

U.S. President Bush has also called for renewed nuclear plant construction to be part of his energy policy, and four U.S. energy companies are mulling new nuclear plants.

The surge in prices as global demand outstrips supply has changed the economics of uranium, prompting miners to reevaluate reserves once deemed unviable.

"We expect the long-term uranium price to go up and this is reviving the industry," said Richard Cherry, president of privately-owned Cotter Corp. which reopened its Canon City mill in Colorado late last year.

Canon City is one of four U.S. mills still standing after several were dismantled in the 1990s, compared with 26 mills about 20 years ago.

Another, International Uranium Corp.'s. (IUC.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) White Mesa mill, restarts this week. U.S. Energy Corp. (USEG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) wants to reopen Shootaring Canyon, but this could take up to two years.

The fourth, the Sweetwater mill in Wyoming, which is owned by Kennecott Uranium Co., a unit of Rio Tinto (RIO.L: Quote, Profile, Research) (RIO.AX: Quote, Profile, Research) , has no plans to restart.

LIMITED ROOM TO EXPAND

With this renewed activity, the Uranium Exchange Co., a uranium broker, is forecasting production doubling this year to about 4.4 million pounds, just a fraction of the nation's previous output and its annual needs.

In the United States, uranium production plummeted from 43.7 million pounds of concentrate in 1980 to a low of 2.0 million pounds in 2003, with 2004 output estimated at 2.3 million pounds, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

Canada's Cameco Corp. (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's largest uranium producer, produced 2 million pounds of concentrate at two U.S. plants in 2004, and Texas-based Uranium Resources Inc. (URIX.OB: Quote, Profile, Research) produced the remainder.

Although U.S. output is expected to double this year, industry players see the room for output growth beyond that as severely limited by a lack of equipment. It can take years to get regulatory approval to build new facilities.

International Uranium Corp. (IUC) President Ron Hochstein sees U.S. production capped at about 7 million pounds a year in the medium term with few, if any, new mills and limited mining.

"It will take some time before we see any grassroots exploration and I wonder how much there will be in the United States because of the difficult permitting path," he said.

But the mills that can get up and working quickly expect to benefit from rising uranium prices. Cotter Corp., a unit of privately owned General Atomics, is bullish on the price of uranium and also vanadium, an alloy widely used in steelmaking, with its Canon City mill expected to produce 200,000 pounds of each this year and more next year.

"We expect the long-term uranium price to continue to go up as it will take a long time for supply to catch up with the new increased demand," Cherry told Reuters.

IUC expects its White Mesa mill to produce 500,000 pounds of uranium concentrate over the next year.

"We expect to see a continued improvement in uranium prices although not at the slope we saw in 2004," said Hochstein.

HIGH IMPORTS TO CONTINUE

A Cameco spokesman said his company expects its U.S. output in 2005 to increase to 2.3 million pounds, up from 2.0 million pounds in 2004, due to greater output from its Wyoming operations.

A spokeswoman for Kennecott said the company is evaluating all opportunities.

But even with production doubling in the United States, its output is minimal compared with annual demand for about 60 million pounds to power the nation's 103 operating commercial nuclear plants, which provide one-fifth of the nation's energy.

Imports hit 53 million pounds in 2003 -- the last EIA data available -- from 3.6 million in 1980, with this level of imports seen continuing as demand rises.

Power company, Duke Energy (DUK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , is considering building a nuclear plant at a yet undecided site. It is meeting with regulators this month and is set to make a decision in May.

Three other U.S. companies -- Exelon Corp. (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , Dominion Resources Inc. (D.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) -- are seeking advance approval to build new nuclear units.

"People are starting to realize that this is not just a short-term cyclical upswing but a significant change in the market," said Hochstein.


-------- europe

Chirac Sees EU Deal with Japan on Fusion Research

By REUTERS
Published: March 27, 2005
Filed at 11:16 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-france-japan-nuclear.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac
said Monday he believed the EU would soon reach
agreement with Japan over the site of a proposed
experimental nuclear fusion reactor.

Progress on the $13 billion international project
known as ITER (Latin for ``the way'') has stalled
as Japan and the EU vie to host the facility. The
EU has threatened to build the reactor alone if an
international consensus is not reached by July.

``I don't doubt an agreement can be reached
rapidly between the EU and Japan,'' Chirac told a
symposium on sustainable development in Tokyo.
ITER's six backers are divided evenly over the two
possible sites, with Cadarache in France backed by
Russia and China, while the United States and
South Korea are supporting Japan's bid to bring
the project to the northern village of
Rokkashomura.

``We hope for a solution with the six members of
the project. A solution within this framework is
our priority,'' Chirac said in an interview
published in the regional daily Tokyo Shimbun on
Monday.

``Tokyo has made constructive propositions that
allow us to create a framework for a balanced
deal. We hope that a consensus can be rapidly
formed,'' he added.

Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told
Chirac on Sunday that Japan had no intention of
withdrawing its proposal.

Nuclear fusion has been touted as a long-term
solution to the world's energy problems as it
would be low on pollution and use sea water as
fuel. Half a century of research has, however,
failed to lead to a commercially viable fusion
reactor.

Chirac leaves Japan Monday after attending a
banquet with Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko.




-------- india

India Weighs Buying U.S. Warplanes

Sun Mar 27, 2005 10:06 AM ET World - AP Asia

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050327/ap_on_re_as/india_us_fighter_planes

NEW DELHI - India is considering buying American F-16 fighter jets for its air force, a news report said Sunday, just days after New Delhi protested a U.S. decision to sell the same aircraft to India's neighboring archrival, Pakistan.

India's air force now depends mainly on aging Russian planes.

American fighter aircraft and weapons' manufacturers have submitted proposals to India, the Press Trust of India (news - web sites) news agency quoted Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee as saying in the eastern city of Calcutta.

"If the military aircraft and other weapons needed for our national interest are available from the United States, we will certainly consider them," Mukherjee said.

His statement Saturday came a day after U.S. officials announced the sale of F-16 jet fighters to Pakistan and signaled that India could move ahead with its own weapon buys. The two nuclear-armed neighbor countries have been rivals for decades, and have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.

India expressed "great disappointment" over the U.S. decision to sell fighter aircraft to Pakistan, and said doing so would tilt the military balance in the region and could harm India-Pakistan peace talks that began last year.

The United States has sold a variety of weaponry to India since lifting a ban on arms sales three years ago that had been imposed after an Indian nuclear test. Last year, in a move seen as a coup for India, the administration gave the go-ahead for Lockheed Martin to give India information for prospective sales of F-16s.

India's aging fleet of MiG-21 fighter jets — dating back to the 1960s — is the backbone of its fighter inventory, which also includes other MiG aircraft. Its 1,500-plane air force also has French Mirage and Anglo-French Jaguar planes.

On Saturday, Mukherjee said "cooperation in economic and other areas between the United States and India has increased manifold, but so far there has been no defense agreement between the two countries."

Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is scheduled to visit India next month to discuss disputes between the two countries. 


-------- iran

Iran says existing nuclear safeguards go far enough

TEHRAN (AFP) Mar 27, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050327091917.h0nsr0hj.html

A senior Iranian official insisted Sunday that existing nuclear safeguards already agreed by the Islamic republic were enough to provide guarantees the country will not develop the bomb.

"The Islamic Republic believes the objective guarantees that our nuclear activities are peaceful are provided by the additional protocol" to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran's UN envoy Mohammad Javad Zarif told state television.

Britain, France and Germany are engaged in a diplomatic effort aimed at securing "objective guarantees" from Iran that it will not seek nuclear weapons, and in return are offering a package of incentives.

But the sticking point is the enrichment of uranium, a process that can make fuel for atomic energy reactors but also the core of a nuclear weapon.

The Europeans would prefer Iran to abandon its nuclear fuel cycle work altogether, going beyond the NPT and its additional protocol -- a text that boosts the inspection powers of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

But Iran is so far standing by what it says is a right to be able to fully exploit peaceful nuclear technology.

Zarif said Iran was also looking for "guarantees" from the European side.

"The Europeans should give firm guarantees that Iran will have access to nuclear technology as well as the political, security and economic cooperation," he said.

In separate comments, a spokesman for Iran's Supreme National Security Council said talks with the EU-3 would continue "despite a slow pace".

Ali Agha-Mohammadi reiterated that a complete halt to Iran's enrichment work was "unacceptable".

----

Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A15

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3983-2005Mar26?language=printer

Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."

Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago.

Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb. Either can be shaped into the core of a nuclear warhead, and obtaining one or the other is generally considered the most significant obstacle to would-be weapons builders.

Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. U.S. companies, including Westinghouse and General Electric, scrambled to do business there.

"I don't think the issue of proliferation came up," Henry A. Kissinger, who was Ford's secretary of state, said in an interview for this article.

The U.S. offer, details of which appear in declassified documents reviewed by The Washington Post, did not include the uranium enrichment capabilities Iran is seeking today. But the United States tried to accommodate Iranian demands for plutonium reprocessing, which produces the key ingredient of a bomb.

After balking initially, President Gerald R. Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete "nuclear fuel cycle" -- reactors powered by and regenerating fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis.

That is precisely the ability the current administration is trying to prevent Iran from acquiring today.

"If we were facing an Iran with a reprocessing capability today, we would be even more concerned about their ability to use plutonium in a nuclear weapon," said Corey Hinderstein, a nuclear specialist with the Institute for Science and International Security. "These facilities are well understood and can be safeguarded, but it would provide another nuclear option for Iran."

Nuclear experts believe the Ford strategy was a mistake. As Iran went from friend to foe, it became clear to subsequent administrations that Tehran should be prevented from obtaining the technologies for building weapons. But that is not the argument the Bush administration is making. Such an argument would be unpopular among parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which guarantees members access to nuclear power regardless of their political systems.

The U.S.-Iran deal was shelved when the shah was toppled in the 1979 revolution that led to the taking of American hostages and severing of diplomatic relations.

Despite the changes in Iran, now run by a clerical government, the country's public commitment to nuclear power and its insistence on the legal right to develop it have remained the same. Iranian officials reiterated the position last week at a conference on nuclear energy in Paris.

Mohammad Saeidi, a vice president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told the conference that Iran was determined to develop nuclear power since oil and natural gas supplies were limited.

U.S. involvement with Iran's nuclear program until 1979, which accompanied large-scale intelligence-sharing and conventional weapons sales, highlights the boomerang in U.S. foreign policy. Even with many key players in common, the U.S. government has taken opposite positions on questions of fact as its perception of U.S. interests has changed.

Using arguments identical to those made by the shah 30 years ago, Iran says its nuclear program is essential to meet growing energy requirements, and is not intended for bombs. Tehran revived the program in secret, its officials say, to prevent the United States from trying to stop it. Iran's account is under investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is trying to determine whether Iran also has a parallel nuclear weapons program.

Since the energy program was exposed, in 2002, the Bush administration has alternately said that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program or wants one. Without being able to prove those claims, the White House has made its case by implication, beginning with the point that Iran has ample oil reserves for its energy needs.

Ford's team commended Iran's decision to build a massive nuclear energy industry, noting in a declassified 1975 strategy paper that Tehran needed to "prepare against the time -- about 15 years in the future -- when Iranian oil production is expected to decline sharply."

Estimates of Iran's oil reserves were smaller then than they are now, but energy experts and U.S. intelligence estimates continue to project that Iran will need an alternative energy source in the coming decades. Iran's population has more than doubled since the 1970s, and its energy demands have increased even more.

The Ford administration -- in which Cheney succeeded Rumsfeld as chief of staff and Wolfowitz was responsible for nonproliferation issues at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency -- continued intense efforts to supply Iran with U.S. nuclear technology until President Jimmy Carter succeeded Ford in 1977.

That history is absent from major Bush administration speeches, public statements and news conferences on Iran.

In an opinion piece on Iran in The Post on March 9, Kissinger wrote that "for a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources." White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited the article during a news briefing, saying that it reflected the administration's current thinking on Iran.

In 1975, as secretary of state, Kissinger signed and circulated National Security Decision Memorandum 292, titled "U.S.-Iran Nuclear Cooperation," which laid out the administration's negotiating strategy for the sale of nuclear energy equipment projected to bring U.S. corporations more than $6 billion in revenue. At the time, Iran was pumping as much as 6 million barrels of oil a day, compared with an average of about 4 million barrels daily today.

The shah, who referred to oil as "noble fuel," said it was too valuable to waste on daily energy needs. The Ford strategy paper said the "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals."

Asked why he reversed his opinion, Kissinger responded with some surprise during a brief telephone interview. After a lengthy pause, he said: "They were an allied country, and this was a commercial transaction. We didn't address the question of them one day moving toward nuclear weapons."

Charles Naas, who was deputy U.S. ambassador to Iran in the 1970s, said proliferation was high in the minds of technical experts, "but the nuclear deal was attractive in terms of commerce, and the relationship as a whole was very important."

Documents show that U.S. companies, led by Westinghouse, stood to gain $6.4 billion from the sale of six to eight nuclear reactors and parts. Iran was also willing to pay an additional $1 billion for a 20 percent stake in a private uranium enrichment facility in the United States that would supply much of the uranium to fuel the reactors.

Naas said Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld all were in positions to play significant roles in Iran policy then, "but in those days, you have to view Kissinger as the main figure." Requests for comment from the offices of Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld went unanswered.

"It is absolutely incredible that the very same players who made those statements then are making completely the opposite ones now," said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Do they remember that they said this? Because the Iranians sure remember that they said it," said Cirincione, who just returned from a nuclear conference in Tehran -- a rare trip for U.S. citizens now.

In what Cirincione described as "the worst idea imaginable," the Ford administration at one point suggested joint Pakistani-Iranian reprocessing as a way of promoting "nonproliferation in the region," because it would cut down on the need for additional reprocessing facilities.

Gary Sick, who handled nonproliferation issues under presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, said the entire deal was based on trust. "That's the bottom line."

"The shah made a big convincing case that Iran was going to run out of gas and oil and they had a growing population and a rapidly increasing demand for energy," Sick said. "The mullahs make the same argument today, but we don't trust them."

Researcher Robert E. Thomason and staff writer Justin Blum contributed to this report. 



-------- japan

Koizumi stands firm to Chirac on Japan hosting nuclear project

TOKYO (AFP) Mar 27, 2005

http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050327122847.u4x04g62.html

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Sunday that Japan stood firm in its attempt to host a revolutionary nuclear reactor, amid EU pressure to let France be the site of the multibillion-dollar project.

Koizumi and French President Jacques Chirac discussed the deadlock over the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) during talks in Tokyo.

"Japan has no intention to withdraw its bid to invite ITER," Koizumi told a joint news conference with the French head of state.

"With President Chirac, we have agreed to continue our discussions to reach a mutually agreeable solution."

Before Koizumi's remarks, Chirac had said the Japanese leader made proposals on ITER "which seem to be a nature that could allow an agreement."

The project, which would emulate the sun's nuclear fusion, is designed to one day generate inexhaustible supplies of electricity, but is not expected to be operational before 2050.

The European Union has threatened to build the reactor in France unless Japan compromises by July.

The United States and South Korea support Japan's offer to build ITER in Rokkasho-mura, a northern Japanese village near the Pacific Ocean, while China and Russia back the EU bid for the southern French town of Cadarache.

Japan and the European Union reportedly have offered compromises to each other, proposing that one side get the main ITER reactor in exchange for the other hosting supporting research.


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



-------- florida

U. of Fla. to Replace Uranium in Reactor

Sunday March 27, 2005 5:31 AM (AP)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4894769,00.html

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Weapons-grade uranium used as fuel in a research reactor at the University of Florida will be replaced with a safer alternative, officials said.

The switch will reduce the likelihood that the fuel could be used to make weapons, said Bill Vernetson, the school's director of nuclear facilities.

Under a federally funded conversion program, the U.S. Department of Energy will replace the highly enriched uranium in the university's training reactor with a low enriched fuel.

The process is expected to take 15 to 18 months, university officials said.

The Nuclear Sciences Center reactor, built in 1959, contains less than 11 pounds of uranium. It is used to train students in a variety of fields, from geology to medicine.

Uranium that has been highly enriched with a fissionable isotope is a key component of nuclear weapons. Energy experts say as little as 25 kilograms, or about 55 pounds, can produce a bomb.


-------- nevada

The Yucca Mountain Basket

By George F. Will
Sunday, March 27, 2005 Washington Post; Page B07

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2221-2005Mar25?language=printer

YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. -- Things have a grand scale out here. The Nevada Test Site adjacent to this mountain is bigger than Rhode Island but smaller than Nellis Air Force Base, which also is adjacent. But the biggest thing is the dispute, now roiling a second decade, about carving a nuclear waste repository in this mountain's innards, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Bush administration says that sound science proves this: Because of the aridity of this eastern end of the Death Valley hydrologic basin and because of what scientists have learned about the mountain's reaction to the sort of heat that will be generated by the slowly decaying waste and because metallurgical advances will make waste containers extraordinarily durable, no significant corrosion can threaten the structural integrity of containers that will hold the waste for at least 10,000 years -- and probably 80,000.

Not so, says Steve Frishman, a geologist employed by Nevada. He insists that enough water will reach the metal containers to cause, within just 200 years, seepage of radioactive waste that will threaten the groundwater and irrigation systems. He says that by emphasizing metallurgy, his adversaries prove that they have to disregard the principal criterion for a satisfactory repository -- that "geology is the workhorse." He says geologic disposal of nuclear waste is feasible in rock less porous to water than this mountain is -- in granite deposits of a sort found from Minnesota to North Carolina. For Nevadans who are not scientists, all they want to hear is: Not here.

NIMBY -- not in my back yard -- is a normal response, but Nevada is mostly back yard: 92 percent of the state is owned by the federal government. And Nevada has a history of being put to unusual uses.

In 1864 it was rushed into statehood before it had the required number of residents because President Lincoln thought he might need its three electoral votes. When the Comstock Lode's silver was exhausted, so, too, was Nevada: Between 1880 and 1900, while other mountain states' populations tripled, Nevada's declined, from 62,266 to 42,335. Some Easterners, thinking that one senator for each 22,500 people was ridiculous, suggested stripping Nevada of statehood.

But Nevada, practicing "entrepreneurial federalism," built a gaudy future from the marriage of divorce and gambling. Some states had competed for the "migratory divorce" business -- people shopping for the most permissive laws. In 1931 Nevada crushed competitors by enacting a six-week residency requirement for divorce and by legalizing gambling.

This not notably decorous state rests on what it decorously calls "gaming," an industry that prospers from people not understanding risks with thrown dice or shuffled cards. Risk assessment tests rationality, and Oscar Goodman, the flamboyant former mob lawyer and current mayor of Las Vegas, is flunking the test when he promises to block any truck passing through his city carrying nuclear waste. Well.

Union Pacific freight trains rumble less than a half a mile behind many of the 75,000 hotel rooms on the Strip. Some tank cars contain chlorine gas and other hazardous materials. An industrial society uses, and hence transports, vast quantities of them, weighing their benefits against their risks and trying to reduce the latter.

Mayor Goodman, relax: Very little nuclear waste will come to Yucca Mountain by truck. Most will come by rail, on a line not yet built, that will loop far around the metropolitan area's 1.6 million residents. In the past 40 years more than 2,700 shipments of spent nuclear fuel have been transported more than 1.6 million miles. Four highway and four railway vehicles were involved in accidents, but no container of nuclear materials failed.

Las Vegas is farther from this mountain than 161 million Americans are from 125 nuclear waste storage facilities in 39 states. These sites are much less secure than Yucca Mountain would be, with the material 1,000 feet below ground and the mountain located next to the Nuclear Emergency Support Team at Nellis.

The nation should generate much more than the one-fifth of its electricity nuclear power currently produces. Forty percent of the Navy is nuclear-powered. More nuclear waste is produced daily.

Nevada has two tactics. It is insisting on a degree of certainty -- absolute certainty, over 100 millennia -- that is unreasonable, even considering the stakes. And it is making testable assertions about geological and metallurgical matters about which scientists are reaching conclusions that are beyond reasonable doubts.

Three truths: America must store nuclear waste more safely, can never prove perfect safety forever and hence cannot store waste anywhere it will be welcomed. An axiom: Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.

georgewill@washpost.com 



-------- MILITARY 



-------- afghanistan

The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda

Reviewed by Linda Robinson
Sunday, March 27, 2005 Washington Post; Page BW08

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63166-2005Mar24?language=printer

NOT A GOOD DAY TO DIE
The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda
By Sean Naylor. Berkley. 425 pp. $25.95

Operation Anaconda was not one of the U.S. military's finest moments. In March 2002, five months into the war in Afghanistan, American commanders decided to mount an attack to root out Afghan and foreign fighters who had holed up in the eastern Shahikot Valley, which was ringed by mountains that reached 12,000 feet. Until then, the war had been fought with a combination of U.S. Special Forces, anti-Taliban Afghan militias and precision-guided air power, but U.S. conventional forces had arrived in Afghanistan and were anxious to get into the fight.

U.S. Central Command decided to put a U.S. Army general, Buster Hagenbeck, in charge, and his staff planned a large battle using conventional, special operations and Afghan forces to attack the valley. The most senior al Qaeda leaders had almost certainly fled into neighboring Pakistan by then, but Special Operations forces who had carried out an early reconnaissance of the valley estimated that a large number of hard-core foreign militants were still hiding there. Until the very eve of the battle, however, American forces believed that the extremists numbered at most 200 and that they were in the valley, not the surrounding mountains. Those two facts, compounded by a welter of mishaps, poor decisions, and unclear lines of authority, would spell disaster for the first days of the biggest battle Americans had fought since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

For Not a Good Day to Die, Army Times reporter Sean Naylor has doggedly pursued the full story of Operation Anaconda from the time he was "embedded" with 101st Airborne Division troops who fought in the battle. For the next two years he strove to interview the many participants in this complex operation, often against the wishes of their commanders. Naylor does an admirable job of exposing the many shortcomings that plagued this chapter of the Afghanistan war, although he does not sort the major from the minor failings or linger over the broader lessons. What the book lacks in analytical heft, however, it more than makes up in drama. Readers without a knowledge of military jargon will find it slower going.

Anaconda got off to an abysmal start when the Afghan militia that was to lead the charge into Shahikot came under fire from an American AC-130 gunship. A Special Forces chief warrant officer was killed, and the militia was thrown into a disarray from which it never really recovered. This particular band of Afghans, unlike other more experienced forces, had been training and fighting with the Special Forces for only a few weeks.

On the heels of that friendly-fire tragedy came another debacle that is the best-known episode of the two-week operation. Navy SEAL commandos assigned to infiltrate the mountaintops around Shahikot came under heavy fire as they attempted to land. One commando fell from the helicopter and was captured and killed as the damaged Chinook limped away. A Ranger rescue force unwittingly landed on the very same spot and was mercilessly chewed up by enemy fire. Ranger Capt. Nathan Self, his men and the Nightstalkers aircrew fought through some of the ghastliest conditions that any Americans have ever braved. The intense fighting led to another fateful decision -- not to risk landing another aircraft to extract casualties until nightfall -- that resulted in another American death.

Much of what happened could be attributed to the inevitable fog of war, especially given the formidable terrain. But the plan and command structure had grievous flaws that should have been detected and corrected. The principal error was the inadequate intelligence about the size and disposition of the enemy: It turned out that there were at least 1,000 well-trained militants dug into the mountainsides, armed with mortars and heavy machine guns. That made a hash of Hagenbeck's plan to chopper in conventional forces to the valley floor where, in broad daylight, both men and machines became sitting ducks for the waiting guns. Because they did not expect such heavy resistance, the conventional troops were not deployed with their artillery sections or a full complement of attack helicopters. Finally, inadequate air support from bombers overhead left the men vulnerable in the first day of the battle.

The basic problems of Anaconda, Naylor concludes, were "CENTCOM's decision to treat the operation as a pickup game and its failure to establish a clear, tight chain of command for the operation; the reliance on aircraft to provide almost all the heavy firepower; and the overriding belief in all higher headquarters that the war was virtually over." Some of these lessons were heeded in the subsequent war in Iraq, where coordination between air and ground forces, and conventional and Special Operations forces, improved. Friction points remain -- specifically the tendency of far-off commanders to use technology to micromanage -- but Naylor overemphasizes the importance of personality, intramural and interservice rivalries. In particular, he places great stock in one Delta Force officer's account and does not provide any countervailing viewpoint by SEAL commanders, whom he apparently was not permitted to interview.

Anaconda raises the broader issue of whether large conventional set-piece battles or Special Forces with precision-guided bombs are the best way to fight the terror wars. The answer is, "It depends." There were options to deal with the Shahikot other than massing forces, but having decided on a frontal attack, sufficient conventional tools should have been brought to bear. Even so, it's impossible to know whether a fully equipped conventional force would have killed more than the 800 enemy tallied, or whether they would have done any better in keeping Osama bin Laden from slipping over the Pakistan border some months earlier, as the author believes. The one certainty is that more U.S. officers now have combat experience than at any time since the Vietnam War, and thus ample opportunity to put these lessons learned into practice. The U.S. military also clearly needs to expand its repertoire to include more nuanced and less kinetic forms of dealing with unconventional, hidden threats. A longer-term effort to win over the Shahikot area's population, for example, could have paid major dividends in intelligence and even local opposition to the foreign presence. Since the U.S. military has not released its own official inquiry and after-action reports, this important book stands as the definitive account of a tragic chapter in that learning experience. •

Linda Robinson is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and the author of "Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces."


-------- africa

A step too small for Sudan

March 27, 2005 Washington Times Editorial

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050326-103549-2824r.htm

Thursday's decision by the U.N. Security Council to deploy a robust force to Sudan is a step in the right direction, but remains a woefully inadequate response to the world's worst humanitarian disaster. The council must now choose from a menu of better but flawed options.

    The council unanimously passed a resolution introduced by the United States to deploy 10,000 peacekeepers and 715 civilian police officers to Sudan's southern region to reinforce a peace agreement reached in January. It brings to an end one of the world's most protracted and horrific conflicts.

    The council's move, though, really does nothing to address the ongoing, and therefore more urgent, conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur. While a new power-sharing government in Sudan will be better equipped to negotiate a future settlement with Darfur rebels, the killing in Darfur continues. A large peacekeeping force is needed to put out the genocidal fire that still rages there and has made almost 2 million people homeless and killed about 300,000. Darfur refugees continue to be robbed and violently attacked every day by marauding militias, known as the Janjaweed.

    An African Union force of about 2,000 soldiers and monitors is stretched much too thin to put an end to the attacks on civilians and aid workers. This week, an U.S. Agency for International Development worker was shot in the face in Darfur during an ambush of a humanitarian convoy. AU officials need to either bolster their troop presence or acknowledge that they have not been able to supply the necessary troops. That would open the way for the council to approve a peacekeeping force for Darfur.

    First, though, the council must be willing to put the necessary pressure on Khartoum to allow peacekeepers into Darfur. Algeria, China and Russia are reticent to apply that kind of pressure, and the people of Darfur are suffering as a result. The international community should also be putting pressure on Darfur rebels to come to an agreement with Khartoum.

    A report released on Thursday regarding the widespread sexual abuses by U.N. peacekeepers around the world highlights the potential pitfalls of U.N. troop deployments. But in Darfur, such a deployment, combined with a stronger will at the U.N. Security Council to hold Khartoum accountable, remains the most promising option for bringing some level of peace. 


-------- asia

Revolution, in a Couple of Hours
In Kyrgyzstan, Plans for Patient Organizing Dissolved as Protesters Unexpectedly Took Control

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A15

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3982-2005Mar26?language=printer

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, March 26 -- The plan called for yurts, and patience.

A small army of protesters weary of the stiffening, unresponsive rule of President Askar Akayev was to assemble on a great plaza outside the presidential headquarters in the capital. The plan, according to organizers of the demonstration, was for participants to listen to speeches, chant slogans and, as the sun set, begin a vigil, reclaiming their country by sleeping in yurts, the domed, supremely portable tents made of skins and sticks popular in Central Asia.

The camp-out would put a Kyrgyz stamp on a rebellion that opposition leaders said was inspired in part by recent uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine, two other former Soviet republics where the populace had grown unhappy with the autocrats in power. In both countries, mass demonstrations sparked by disputed elections went on for weeks, wearing down the incumbent while opponents honed plans for an orderly transfer of power.

But nothing went quite as planned in Bishkek on Thursday.

When the first few thousand protesters arrived at the plaza, the president sent thugs to break up the demonstration. Incensed, a few dozen young protesters returned and simply broke past police guarding the presidential headquarters, known as the White House. To the cheers of thousands assembled below, the youths broke a window and chucked out a portrait of Akayev, who, after nearly 15 years in power, disappeared from the scene.

It all took a couple of hours.

"Nice words, 'coup d'etat,' 'revolution,' '' said Kurmanbek Bakiyev, an opposition figure who was installed as acting president that night. "But what happened on the 24th of March was not planned by anyone beforehand, neither by people who came to the rally nor by others.

"Nobody expected and nobody prepared for this event."

That much was clear almost immediately. As soon as darkness fell Thursday, hundreds of young men turned to looting, unleashing a spasm of destruction that emptied or burned more than 100 stores in a capital abruptly devoid of uniformed police.

The next morning, the hallways of parliament filled with the sound of workers hammering shut the front doors. Inside, two legislatures were meeting: One was elected five years ago. The other was seated this month, after disputed elections that set in motion the wave of outrage.

The rebellion sprang up almost simultaneously in several remote places, and came together in cities in the notably poorer south. When it crested in the mountains that bisect Kyrgyzstan, what shattered was the brittle government of a man whose son drove a Hummer in a country with a per capita income of about $300.

"It was a natural outcome," said Emil Aliev, a senior official in an opposition party called Dignity. "The main forces were a very severe social and economic situation, in the background of wide-scale corruption."

Akayev came to power as a reformer. Trained as a physicist, he had led the country since 1990. Kyrgyzstan became independent when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, but ties with Russia remain strong. The United States has heaped aid and praise on the little country, which, under Akayev, tolerated a free press and encouraged the proliferation of nonprofit civic groups, regarded as the cornerstone of a democratic society. Under Akayev, Kyrgyzstan also broke out of a state-controlled economy, welcoming foreign investment in a country of 5 million blessed with staggering beauty but few of the mineral resources of its neighbors.

"He did a lot for Kyrgyzstan," Bakiyev, the acting president, said of Akayev.

But after more than a decade in office, Akayev's rule took on trappings of dynasty. His family grew visibly wealthy, with Akayev reportedly taking a share of a gold mine and his son opening a string of luxury specialty stores -- the looters' first target Thursday.

And although Akayev, 60, promised to relinquish the presidency as required by the constitution at the end of his third term in October, he had not acted like a man heading for retirement.

Parliamentary elections in February proved pivotal. Akayev's government disqualified prominent opponents, while his daughter and son were eased onto the ballot. International observers called the Feb. 27 ballot badly flawed. A runoff two weeks later produced a chamber dominated by novices with economic or clan ties to Akayev.

"We filmed the chairman of the election commission telling people to vote for certain candidates, sitting beside the ballot box: 'Okay, you, vote for this person,' " said Marat Sultanov, a former chairman of the central bank and finance minister turned lawmaker.

Sultanov's supporters took to the streets on March 13 in Chong Alay, in the southwest near the border of Tajikistan, a corner of the country so remote the people do not have television.

"The main thing is, people didn't want to be humiliated any more," Sultanov said.

At the other end of the country, an incumbent candidate, Arstan Maliev, was disqualified from the race. Residents blocked highways in protest in two towns, and two-thirds of ballots came in unmarked, Sultanov said.

Events in the southern city of Jalal-Abad, Bakiyev's base, presaged the fall of the capital. On March 21, a crowd of 3,000 overwhelmed security forces and took over the main government building.

"That was the beginning," said Edil Baisalov, leader of the opposition Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, made up of civil groups.

Demonstrators soon took over Osh, the largest city in the south. But as the protests grew, Akayev only stiffened, brushing aside talk of negotiations.

"Power structures can't show weakness when faced with color revolutions," he declared March 23, referring to Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Georgia's Rose Revolution.

Members of the opposition -- calling themselves the People's Movement of Kyrgyzstan -- began discussing taking the rebellion to the capital. A coordination council of 40 people was named that included many prominent politicians, among them Bakiyev, a former prime minister.

But the country's most prominent political prisoner, Felix Kulov, was operating independently. Kulov, a former mayor of Bishkek and KGB chief, issued orders from jail by coded letters and a smuggled cell phone with Internet access, said Aliev, his deputy in the Dignity party. The party turned out hundreds of marchers.

Civic activists such as Baisalov also played a crucial, if sensitive, role. The earnest, lanky activist had been inspired by the uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine, and had even visited Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, to study the Orange Revolution. He recalled the words of victorious opposition leaders from both countries when they later met at a Carpathian resort, jointly heralding a "third wave" of democratic transformation would sweep the globe.

"We knew what they were talking about," Baisalov said. "We knew that wave was going to hit us."

But Baisalov said he also knew the uprisings were criticized as being promoted by Western powers. Keenly aware of the American aid dollars in his own group's budget, he said he cut off personal contact with Bakiyev's group and others around March 17.

Each opposition group's thinking, however, ran along the same lines. The plan for Bishkek, according to opposition figures interviewed this week, was to slowly grind down Akayev, much as the movements in Ukraine and Georgia had done to their leaders.

On Wednesday night, as demonstrators arrived from outlying regions by bus and car, organizers gathered in the capital. "The rally was supposed to press President Akayev for negotiations," Bakiyev said.

The day started with a rally outside the clinic of an eccentric physician. When the marchers approached the White House, they were met by thugs wearing track suits and wielding clubs.

Blood flowed, and although there were no fatalities, the clash was a turning point. Instead of dispersing, the young protesters who had taken the brunt of the attack regrouped and marched back. By now, the crowd had swollen by several thousand, with bystanders joining the throng as it proceeded through the streets.

"The White House was taken by about 40 people," said Bakit Bakitaev, a government worker who watched the final assault. The protesters proceeded so fast that they never had time to agree on a color: The young men at the front donned yellow headbands; other marchers dressed in pink.

"The people followed like they were watching a soccer game," Bakitaev said.

Those wearing yellow headbands were beaten back twice by the 500 police and soldiers manning the iron fence around the executive office building. On the third attempt, the supporting crowd lurched forward as well, quickly overwhelming the guards.

"I am very much disappointed that we had a premature revolution," Baisalov said.

Questions about legitimacy loom. Bakiyev attended his first news conference Saturday flanked by officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 55-country body based in Vienna, which gave its blessing to the new government. The United States and Russia have also signaled support.

"Kyrgyzstan now is in a very complicated legal space," Bakiyev acknowledged. "The coalition ceased its operation yesterday. Now we have a government."

Citing the constitution, he said the old parliament would remain in power until its term expired April 15. At that point, power would shift to the new parliament elected under Akayev.

A new president will be elected June 26, Bakiyev said, again citing the constitution.

Meanwhile on the street, rumors flew of "a thousand horsemen" headed for Bishkek. It was, in fact, a column of several thousand counter-protesters marching toward the capital on foot from Akayev's home town. A day earlier, the deposed president had insisted he still held office.

"So we have two presidents, two governments, two parliaments," said Omurbek Tekabayev, a lawmaker who was reelected, and thus assured a seat in both legislatures. "The opposition really was not ready."


-------- prisoners of war

Changes Proposed for Guantanamo Tribunals

Reuters
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A12

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4270-2005Mar27?language=printer

NEW YORK, March 26 -- The Defense Department is considering major changes to the military tribunals that the Bush administration established to prosecute foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing military and administration officials, the newspaper said the proposed changes were detailed in a more-than-200-page draft manual for the tribunals that has been circulating among Pentagon lawyers.

However, there are reservations about effecting the changes because of the opposition of Vice President Cheney, the newspaper said.

The changes, which would come after widespread criticism from the federal courts, foreign governments and human rights groups, include strengthening the rights of defendants, establishing more independent judges to lead the panels and barring confessions obtained by torture, the newspaper said.

Military officials said the draft, modeled after the Manual for Courts-Martial, was written under the auspices of the official in charge of the tribunals, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Altenburg. Officials said the changes would generally move the tribunals, or "military commissions," more into line with the judicial standards applied to members of the U.S. military in traditional courts-martial, the Times reported.

President Bush first authorized the commissions after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The administration's willingness to restructure the commissions -- a central part of its strategy for fighting terrorism -- is uncertain, the Times said, with some officials seeing the changes as premature. A lawsuit challenging the legality of the commissions is now in a federal appeals court.

Some White House supporters of the reforms have changed jobs, leaving a small group of officials led by Cheney who oppose switching to the commission rules unless forced to do so by the courts.

"There are a number of folks who would like to make changes," the Times quoted one Pentagon official as saying about the rules governing the military commissions. But, the official added, "Cheney is still driving a lot of this."

Cheney's counsel, David Addington, rebuffed a question of possible modifications to the commission procedures at an interagency meeting this month on detainee policy. "We don't need any changes in the commissions," U.S. officials quoted Addington as saying. A spokesman for Cheney's office did not respond to requests for comment on the counsel's views, the Times said.

----

US foils Iraqi bid for 'Great Escape' through 600ft tunnel

By Stephen Kahn
27 March 2005 UK Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=624032

An audacious bid by Iraqi prisoners to mount a mass breakout from the country's main detention centre has been thwarted after US military police found two escape tunnels.

Using a bucket cut from a water container and a shovel made of tent material, prisoners had dug a 600ft route out of Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. But the plot was foiled just before they could make a break for freedom on Friday.

Iraq's answer to the Great Escape ended when guards noticed mounds of mud in the toilets. Detainees had been trying to flush away the dirt dug out of the tunnels but the pipes became blocked.

A search revealed an escape shaft leading out of the camp from under one of the camp's eight compounds. The tunnel was 12 to 15 feet deep and as wide as three feet and had reached beyond the main security fence. A smaller, 300ft route was also discovered.

The prisoners covered the entry to the main tunnel with a false floor made from the wooden slats of their beds and a two-foot layer of dirt.

More than 6,000 suspected Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters are held in Camp Bucca, near the southern town of Umm Qasr. The facility is twice as large as the notorious Abu Ghraib in Baghdad and holds nearly two-thirds of all the detainees in Iraq.

"We were very close to a very bad thing," said Major General William Brandenburg, US commander of detainee operations in Iraq. He added that the prisoners were probably waiting for the dense fog that often rolls in from the Persian Gulf to fall before making their move. "There was a good chance they would have got out of the camp."

US army spokeswoman Major Flora Lee said the scheme was the most extensive effort at a mass escape they had encountered. "There have been a few other attempts at digging a tunnel but nothing of this size."

The lengths to which the inmates had gone suggested the plan was to spring more than 100 prisoners, said Colonel James Brown, the commander of the unit in charge of the camp. He added that his men now expected to find more tunnels elsewhere in the base.

Col Brown said that he had made his troops watch the 1963 movie The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, which tells a story of Allied airmen attempting to break out of a German prison camp during the Second World War. "It's a great movie," he said. "The trouble is we tend to view life through a lens of who we are and not who somebody else is. There are a lot of good lessons for us there."

Just hours after the escape routes were discovered, the camp was visited by General George Casey, the commander of the multinational force in Iraq. He inspected the premises and presented a medal to the soldier who found the larger tunnel.

Elsewhere in Iraq yesterday, a car bomb struck a US military patrol in Baghdad, killing two American soldiers. South of the capital, Iraqi troops backed by US forces detained 121 suspected insurgents and uncovered a big weapons cache during a joint raid.

An Iraqi official said the operation at the town of Musayyib turned up hundreds of Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as car bombs, machine guns, rockets, mortar rounds and other munitions.

It was also announced yesterday that a US marine was killed on Friday during a "security and stability" operation in strife-torn Anbar province, a heavily Sunni Arab region west of Baghdad that contains the flashpoint cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

In all, 1,524 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

The man expected to become Iraq's next prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said the country's new coalition government could be launched this week. "God willing, the government could witness its birth in the coming few days," said Mr al-Jaafari, a leading member of the Shia alliance that won the most parliamentary seats in Iraq's 30 January election.

Attempts to convene meetings of the new legislators have been delayed by negotiations between the various groups attempting to set up a coalition administration. 


-------- russia / chechnya

For Russians, Police Rampage Fuels Fear
One Town Draws Attention to Widespread Torture and Killings

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4009-2005Mar26?language=printer

BLAGOVESHCHENSK, Russia -- In this town in central Russia, last Dec. 10 was a cold, snowless Friday opening the holiday weekend when Russia celebrates its constitution. The rights enshrined in that document, as well as many residents of Blagoveshchensk, were about to take a beating.

At 11 p.m., the main street, a long drag of crumbling apartment blocks and street-level stores, seemed eerily quiet to Anastasia Rozhenkova when she emerged from a friend's apartment. In the darkness, Rozhenkova, 19, hurried to a store to buy some cigarettes while her husband lingered over his farewells.

"From nowhere, people wearing black masks grabbed me and twisted my hands behind my back," Rozhenkova recounted in an interview. "They pushed me onto the ground and kicked me."

In those first moments, Rozhenkova said, she didn't know if she was being mugged by thieves or kidnapped by terrorists: "I was in shock, terrified." But as she was dragged to a nearby bus, her lip and nose swelling from the kicks, her calves and thighs burning from baton strikes, Rozhenkova realized she was not in the hands of bandits.

She had been arrested.

Between Dec. 10 and Dec. 14, hundreds of Blagoveshchensk residents were arrested and beaten by local police and masked special forces from the regional Interior Ministry, according to people and officials here. The sweep, designed to crack down on what the authorities said were assaults on police officers and a spiking crime rate in the town of 30,000 people, turned into a police riot.

The violence ranks among the most graphic illustrations of the failure of Russian police to embrace the rule of law since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the state's inability or unwillingness to impose it on them. The abuses have fueled a profound crisis of public confidence in the criminal justice system, at a time when the government of President Vladimir Putin seeks to galvanize citizens to fight terrorism, crime and corruption.

The events in Blagoveshchensk have drawn widespread condemnation, led to the dismissal of three senior police officers and a prosecutor, and prompted local and federal investigations. Nine police officers have been charged with abuse of power.

"The necessity of conducting such an operation was not in doubt, but the way the operation was executed was really bad," said Ruslan Sharafutdinov, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in the Republic of Bashkortostan, where the city is located. "What I mean to say is that they overdid it."

The regional prosecutor's office has accepted more than 200 complaints from residents and so far has found that 120 residents are "injured parties" entitled to legal redress, according to the Interior Ministry. Most of those detained, like Rozhenkova, were held for one night.

A Not Uncommon Story

For human rights groups and legal scholars, Blagoveshchensk is unusual only for its scale and the fact that the regional Interior Ministry admitted to widespread violations. Every year, in huge numbers, Russians are beaten, tortured and sometimes killed by the police, according to reports by human rights and government agencies, opinion polls and revelations from high-profile cases.

According to a nationwide survey published this month by the Levada Center in Moscow, 71 percent of respondents said they didn't trust the police at all while 2 percent thought the police act within the law. That number approaches zero when people working in law enforcement and their families are factored out of those likely to have been surveyed. In a separate poll this month by the Public Opinion Foundation, 41 percent of Russian respondents said they lived in fear of police violence.

"The violations are so gross and the problem is so deeply penetrated that it's going to take years to correct," said Vladimir Lukin, Russia's ombudsman and a former ambassador to the United States.

Police brutality extends well beyond the breakaway republic of Chechnya, where widespread human rights violations have been documented in 10 years of armed conflict.

In the Volga River city of Nizhniy Novgorod in 2002, for instance, Dmitry Ochelkov, 26, said police had covered his face with a gas mask with the air supply cut off, according to the human rights group Committee Against Torture, a U.N. body. Activists say this is a fairly common interrogation practice known as the "little elephant."

In the republic of Tatarstan in 2003, a number of juvenile offenders reported being submerged in water from toilets while others said they had rags shoved down their throats. And in Moscow last year, a man the police suspected was a terrorist was beaten so badly while in custody that his wife was subsequently unable to identify his corpse.

"Such cases are typical and widespread," said Olga Shepeleva, a lawyer at the Demos Research Center for Civil Society in Moscow, which monitors police abuse. "There is nothing exceptional about them."
Murder 'Victim' Turns Up

In September 1998, Alexei Mikheyev confessed to the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl in Nizhniy Novgorod after what he said was nine days of torture, including electric shock, in a local police station. In an interview, he said he felt as if his body was exploding when the wires, which were attached to his earlobes, were turned on.

When Mikheyev was brought to the prosecutor's office after that, he retracted his statement. He was then sent back to the police station for further questioning on the instruction of a prosecutor. Faced with more physical abuse, he said, he threw himself out a third-floor window, breaking his back; he now walks with the aid of crutches and sometimes uses a wheelchair.

The girl he allegedly killed returned home the day after his suicide attempt. She had disappeared with a group of partying young people.

In the intervening years, prosecutors were reluctant to press charges against the police officers involved. They dropped 23 preliminary investigations and reopened their probes only after Mikheyev's lawyers exposed legal irregularities in the decisions to drop the case, according to Igor Kalyapin, chair of the Committee Against Torture in Nizhniy Novgorod, which took up Mikheyev's case. "Prosecutors sabotage these cases," he said.

The investigation was reopened for the 24th time late last year, after the European Court of Human Rights agreed to hear the case.

"When the European Court intervened, an order came down from the prosecutor general's office to investigate the case and charge somebody," said Kalyapin. Four policemen are under investigation, he said. Requests to the prosecutor's office to provide someone to discuss the case did not lead to an interview.

"I want them punished," said Mikheyev, who rejected an out-of-court settlement. "I want this country to accept responsibility for the actions of its police. And I don't want this to happen to anyone again."

Hard numbers on how many officers are charged with illegal use of violence are not publicly available; that category of offense is not among the crime statistics published by the Russian Interior Ministry. But violence and other criminal activity is on the rise among the 4 million police officials in Russia, according to federal officials.

"Between 2001 and 2004, the number of crimes amongst police rose hugely," Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov told a gathering of prosecutors in January. "Ordinary citizens know and feel the actual situation for themselves."

Public opinion surveys suggest that the problem is endemic. According to three nationwide and three regional surveys conducted between the spring of 2002 and the summer of 2004, up to 5.2 percent of Russians have suffered violence at the hands of the police.

"The prevalence of abuse suggests that roughly 6.2 million Russian adults are victimized by police violence in a two-three year window," Theodore P. Gerber of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Sarah E. Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington wrote in a draft paper scheduled for publication this fall. "These numbers are in fact quite staggering and imply that police abuse is indeed widespread even commonplace in contemporary Russia."

Much of the abuse is driven by the need for confessions or testimony to support prosecutions that are otherwise lacking in evidence, human rights activists said. "Our estimate, based on interviewing judges who hear cases, is that at least one-third of all convictions, and probably more, are based on evidence that was extracted using physical force," said Kalyapin. "Police can beat suspects in any country, but in Russia the problem is simply massive."

The crackdown in Blagoveshchensk was organized by the Interior Ministry after five policemen were allegedly assaulted in the center of town as they tried to arrest some local businessmen. Sharafutdinov, the ministry spokesman, said there was no order to use violence or wear masks, but that the police on the ground lost control.

"You can't rule out a Chechnya syndrome," he said, noting that the 17 Interior Ministry troops who took part in the operation, along with 130 local police, were veterans of the conflict in the Caucasus.

Around 8 p.m. on Dec. 11, Alexander Kosov, 29, was grabbed as he stood outside a store with his year-old child, who was in a stroller. The baby, he said, was left behind on the street by the police despite his protests. Kosov's wife was shopping nearby and happened to return to the child within minutes of Kosov's departure.

Another man, Alexander Shabanov, 27, slashed his wrists at the police station on Dec. 12 after he was arrested for a second time. A third man, Sergei Fedoseyev, 19, said he was forced to shout "I love the police!" as he was struck with a baton.

Over four days, 388 people were swept off the streets and taken to the police station, where officials acknowledge many were beaten with batons. About 170 of those arrested were initially charged with minor offenses, including public drunkenness, according to the Interior Ministry.

On March 1, the republic's Supreme Court rescinded all the charges.

"They behaved like fascists," said Alexei Raschyoskov, 29, who had surgery for internal bleeding and a ruptured bladder after he was struck with a rifle butt when arrested in the center of town on Dec. 11.

Russian Constitution:  
http://www.fipc.ru/fipc/constit/
http://www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/rs00000_.html
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/docs/ruscon93.htm


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE



-------- human rights

Reservation Life Grinds Down Indian Youths

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
Mar 27, 5:41 AM EST

http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/S/SCHOOL_SHOOTING_DESPAIRING_TEENS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME	

RED LAKE, Minn. (AP) -- The obituary in the small town paper was heartbreaking: Chase Albert "Beka" Lussier, born Dec. 23, 1989, died March 21 at Red Lake High School. A freshman who played basketball and loved computer games. Six paragraphs down, beside the photograph of a chubby-cheeked, smiling boy, came this sentence: "He spent his time juggling life between his family and his son."

A father at 15. Dead three months later. Shot with eight others by an alienated, despondent upperclassman who, at the end of his 10-minute walk through Red Lake High School, turned one of his guns on himself.

The deaths, conspicuous in their senselessness, highlight the problems that American Indian teenagers have been quietly suffering in greater numbers than most adolescents: suicide, violence, depression and pregnancy.

By themselves, the numbers for the Red Lake Indian Reservation are staggering. A state survey conducted last year of 56 ninth-graders showed that 81 percent of the girls, and 43 percent of the boys, had considered suicide.

Nearly half the girls said they'd actually tried to kill themselves. Twenty percent of boys said the same - numbers about triple the rate statewide.

"I don't have an explanation for that," said Brenda Child, who teaches American Indian history at the University of Minnesota and grew up on the reservation. Her cousin, 14-year-old Ryan Auginash, was shot in the chest during 16-year-old Jeff Weise's march through the campus.

She doesn't want to view the shootings through the prism of American Indian troubles. "I see it as a problem of a young man who was deeply depressed," she said. "Sadly, that can happen anywhere."

Here, where the Red Lake band of Chippewa has lived in isolation on more than 830,000 acres in northern Minnesota since 1889, such things are not openly discussed.

It simply is not their way. For much of the week, they slammed the door of their reservation to the prying eyes of television cameras and reporters who wanted to know why Weise shot his grandfather, a tribal policeman everyone knew as "Dash," and the man's girlfriend, then drove to the high school entrance behind the wheel of his grandfather's police car. Weise, wearing his grandfather's gunbelt and toting a shotgun, opened fire at the front door, by the lone metal detector.

Tribal elders have said little, as have residents. Some students have been more open, describing Weise as a depressed, friendless boy who talked of shooting people.

On Web site postings, Weise described himself as "nothing but your average Native-American stoner" and described his life on the reservation as "every man's nightmare. This place never changes and it never will."

Weise had not always lived on the reservation. He arrived after his father committed suicide four years ago. His mother, a heavy drinker, was severely injured in an alcohol-related auto accident. The boy had nowhere else to go.

Some on the reservation say Weise had been seeing a professional and taking medication for his depression, which is evident on Internet postings such as this one, where under a section titled "A Little About Me," he typed "16 years of accumulated rage suppressed by nothing more than brief glimpses of hope, which have all but faded to black."

On Thursday, outside the hospital in Bemidji, a small town 32 miles south of the reservation, Andrew Auginash was there to visit his wounded brother, Ryan. "I don't want anything bad said about our reservation," he said. "It's like any other place."

The Minnesota survey of Red Lake students said they assaulted other classmates and used more alcohol and drugs than other students across the state.

Nationwide figures show that American Indian teenagers commit suicide at three times the national rate; are involved in alcohol-related arrests at twice the national average, and die in alcohol-related incidents at 17 times the national average.

They are third-highest in teen pregnancies, behind Hispanics and blacks.

"My mother moved us off the reservation when I was very young. And I am very glad she did that," says Bill Lawrence, publisher of the Native American Press-Ojibwe News, a 5,000-circulation weekly newspaper in Bemidji.

"The kids there come from drugs, alcohol, broken families, abuse," he says sadly. "To grow up under these circumstances is a tremendous ordeal. And to consider suicide means you think there is no other way out."

Lawrence is a member of the Red Lake band and has relatives and friends on reservation, he says. "Only the most gifted students can overcome this stuff. A lot of kids don't go to school. About 50 percent don't graduate. How do you go on after that? They're not qualified to get a job or go to college."

Sister Patricia Wallis has lived at the reservation, off and on, since 1951, working at a mission that has a school and convent. To Wallis, the problems here come from grinding, dehumanizing, relentless poverty.

"They're not able to succeed in school. If something happens, or someone dies, or there's been an accident, they don't come regularly. Some stay at home because they have to baby-sit their siblings or they have to help out."

Another problem is housing, she said. There aren't enough places to live on the reservation, so families and cousins and children live crowded together in single homes. This has worsened lately, Wallis said, because many who left to make their way in the outside world are now returning in large numbers after failing to find any kind of work because they have no experience or training.

"When you put a lot of adults and children together in one house, you get bedlam," Wallis said. "The children get no rest, they get no sleep, arguments break out between the adults and they come to school carrying all this."

Wallis has not lost hope, and she is careful in choosing her words to describe life here for young people. "I love these people with all my heart," she says.

Then she tells the story of a sixth-grade boy whose father got a new girlfriend. The woman didn't like the boy. "She said "Either he goes, or I go.' And guess who had to go? Now he's living with his cousins and he's suffering."

The boy grew angry in class at the reservation, she said, and he was pulled out by his relatives and sent to public school.

Children and teenagers here, despite the isolation and the cultural importance of turning inward, have only to sign on to the Internet, or turn on the satellite TV, to see that other people, in places not that far way, have things they don't.

"If you've never really been loved, how can you love yourself?" she asks. "How can you make something out of yourself?"

Associated Press writer Joshua Freed contributed to this report from Bemidji, Minn.



-------- OTHER



-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)

Wolfowitz: 'Important Things' to Do

Sunday, March 27, 2005 Washington Post; Page B07

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2220-2005Mar25?language=printer

With a vote on his nomination to head up the World Bank expected this week, Paul Wolfowitz has sought to calm the storm over his nomination by speaking out. In an exclusive interview with Lally Weymouth of Newsweek and The Post, he talked about his new job and about the Iraq war and its aftermath. Excerpts:

Q. This week, what are you going to tell the Europeans as to why you think that you would be a good head of the World Bank?

A. I want to tell the Europeans why I think I would be [a good president]. But also, I want to listen to them, hear their views and better understand their expectations for the Bank.

But what's the answer to the question, why you and the Bank?

I believe deeply in the mission of the Bank. I believe that reducing poverty and promoting economic development is one of the important things we need to do to leave our children and grandchildren with a better world. . . . I think I have a lot of the skills that can accomplish that successfully.

When did you actually decide you wanted this job?

Well, I was working hard at an important job that I'm in right now and which I find very fulfilling, and I got an inquiry as to whether I would be interested in being nominated for the World Bank. And I didn't have to think about it terribly long to think that this was a huge challenge that would be something that I thought I could really contribute. . . .

I think this is an incredibly important job. I think [current president] Jim Wolfensohn has demonstrated how important it can be. And I think in terms of [President Bush's] goal and all of our goal of expanding the realm of freedom in the world, there's both a political dimension and an economic dimension, and they're not tightly linked, but they support one another.

Your opponents have, of course, been saying you are going to use the Bank to pursue the Bush administration's philosophy of pushing democracy all around the world.

No, but I think when the Bank performs its mission, which is reducing poverty and promoting economic development, it makes it more possible for people around the world to achieve their own goals of freedom and democracy.

Do you see a different Bank under you than under Wolfensohn?

I think the differences will be less significant than the similarities. And of course, if I get the job, I will be responsible to the 184 countries that are members of the Bank, and I need to be clear about what their agendas are.

So who is your biggest opponent among the Europeans? The French?

Well, I would say that on the whole the reaction from the Europeans has been very constructive. They're looking to make sure that if I'm approved I have a good understanding of their concerns, one of which is the priority they attach to the Bank's work in Africa.

What are the other European concerns?

Making sure that the senior management of the Bank has adequate representation of the diversity of the Bank and, in particular, that some of the many highly qualified Europeans are playing roles in the senior management. I don't have any problem with that.

Isn't the argument that you and [John] Bolton [the president's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations] represent a unilateralist American push in international organizations?

Well, I think that's a misreading of President Bush. But, John Bolton is going to the U.N. as the president's representative. . . . If I become the president of the Bank, I will be working as an international civil servant responsible to the entire membership of a global organization. It's different. It doesn't mean U.S. views are irrelevant, and they have an important voting share, but they're one of many voices.

So it's not fair to link the two appointments?

No. . . . I know people tend to do that, but I think each have their separate logic. I've had a lot of experience, including particularly when I was in Indonesia as ambassador, living in a different country and understanding the problems of a developing country, understanding both the good and bad of foreign assistance -- and there's a lot of good. I'm not somebody who thinks we can do without it. But I think there are a lot of ways to improve it, and I think one way to get more foreign assistance . . . is to demonstrate that it can be used effectively.

Do you agree with Wolfensohn's reforms and plan to continue them?

Certainly I agree with many of the key thrusts that he started. I think the decentralization thrust is very laudable, [as is] his emphasis on the need to combat corruption and to develop good governance as an essential part of economic development. Generally I like the direction he's set the Bank in.

Do you think that what's going on in Lebanon and the recent vote in Iraq are vindications of your policies in Iraq?

I know people use that word a lot, and I wouldn't. I think we still have a lot more work to do. . . . But I think that I have believed and continue to believe that the desire of people to be free and to choose their own leaders is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It's not utopian . . . I think it's realistic to figure out how to mobilize that force on our side because we are the natural allies of people with those goals.

Do you take responsibility for any mistakes made in planning for the war in Iraq, and what do you see as the key mistakes? Dissolving the army?

There's so much finger-pointing that goes on. It's a long exercise to dissect all the things that are wrong that are said about why this has proven to be difficult. And the notion that there was no planning is simply wrong.

You mean that there was planning for the aftermath?

There was a lot of planning, and the State Department was involved in the planning. The usual phrase is, there was no planning for the post-conflict phase. And the real problem is that the conflict hasn't ended, and that there is an enemy still out there actively trying to prevent the emergence of a new Iraq. . . . I think people shouldn't have been surprised that a regime that had burrowed into Iraqi society over 35 years and killed and tortured and intimidated people so effectively didn't quit just because they were driven out of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.

But do you think there were mistakes? We said we were going in to get weapons of mass destruction and there were no weapons of mass destruction, so there were obvious mistakes, right?

And there were some great successes as well. And I think if people want to go through this exercise, instead of first deciding who they want to blame, they ought to first do an assessment and put the pluses up there with the minuses. 



-------- ACTIVISTS

Thousands Protest In Taiwan
China 'Can't Tell Us What to Do'

By Tim Culpan
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3945-2005Mar26?language=printer

TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 26 -- Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese marched through Taipei on Saturday to voice their opposition to an anti-secession law recently passed by China that authorizes the use of force against the island if it moves toward formal independence.

Chanting support for peace and democracy, the demonstrators carried banners and signs through the streets, proclaiming the law, which China approved March 14, an act of aggression against Taiwan's 23 million inhabitants.

"We're here because we need to support Taiwan and send a message to China that they can't tell us what to do," said Tony Liu, 51, a businessman who joined the protest with his wife.

The protest, organized by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, condemned China's pledge to use "non-peaceful means" as a last resort should Taiwan move toward formal independence. President Chen Shui-bian, an ardent nationalist and independence advocate, marched with other officials in his party but did not address the crowd. Leaders of the opposition Nationalist Party stayed away.

Chen and his party had called for a million people to turn out. Police declined to estimate how many took part. Local news media said more than 500,000 and perhaps up to a million people were on the streets at one point or another during the protest, which lasted through the afternoon.

The march ended outside the presidential palace with a concert that took on the jovial atmosphere of a street festival. After the concert, Chen took to the stage and joined the crowd in chants of "protect democracy, love peace, defend Taiwan," then in singing folk songs alongside other party figures and rally organizers.

The Chinese government asserts that Taiwan is part of its territory, but Taiwan's elected leaders insist it is an independent, sovereign country. The United States formally recognizes only the Chinese government, but it sells arms to Taiwan and has pledged to help defend it.

Chinese authorities began drafting the anti-secession law last fall, when Chen's government was planning to take several steps regarded by China as a way to inch the island toward independence. These included changing the names of state-owned enterprises to emphasize "Taiwan" instead of "Republic of China" and altering the constitution.

But by the time China's National People's Congress passed the law, Chen's administration had already vowed to limit any constitutional changes, and had dramatically cut back its anti-China rhetoric. The atmosphere across the Taiwan Strait improved further when China and Taiwan exchanged direct charter flights during the Lunar New Year holidays this year.

The warming trend has returned to a wintry chill, however, since the law was passed. Joseph Wu, chairman of Taiwan's cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters that any negotiations with China have been put on hold. "What we're waiting for and hope for is what they say and do to rectify the damage caused by the anti-secession law," he said.

Correspondent Edward Cody in Beijing contributed to this report.