NucNews - March 29, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Steam Leak Shuts Down NJ Nuclear Plant Mar 29, 2005 5:47 pm US/Eastern (AP) http://kyw.com/Local%20News/local_story_088174818.html TRENTON, N.J. - Operators of the Hope Creek nuclear power plant are investigating why a weld inside a containment building failed, causing a radioactive steam leak that led to the problem-plagued plant’s latest shutdown. The slow leak began sometime in February, just weeks after the nuclear reactor went back online Jan. 26. That followed a 3 ½-month shutdown due to a more-serious steam leak elsewhere in the plant, Chic Cannon, spokesman for plant operator PSEG Nuclear, said Tuesday. The latest problem caused the plant to be shut down Sunday night, but could be diagnosed and fixed, and the plant restarted, within a few weeks, Cannon said. “This was a very slight leak,” he said. “It’s a large industrial facility, so you’re going to have things like this.” Cannon said no radioactivity was released outside the plant and no workers were harmed in either of the steam leaks, which he said were unrelated. The latest leak was noticed in February inside the containment building, and the leak’s volume had been increasing slowly to a maximum of about three quarts of water per minute. Late Sunday night, plant workers cut the reactor back to 5 percent power, entered the primary containment building in protective suits and determined steam was leaking from a short, rarely used pipe welded at right angles to another pipe going to the reactor coolant system, Cannon said. Workers later removed insulation around the pipe joint and began trying to determine what caused the weld’s flaw. Cannon said the pipes were installed at least 20 years ago, before the plant came online in 1986. He said workers now are checking other pipe welds with similar configurations. The Hope Creek plant is one of three nuclear reactors, along with Salem 1 and 2, operated by PSEG Nuclear at a complex in Lower Alloways Creek Township in Salem County along the Delaware River. One of the nation’s largest nuclear generating stations, the plants together provide electricity to more than half of PSEG’s 2 million New Jersey customers. Diane Screnci, spokeswoman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the agency last August put all three plants under additional oversight indefinitely, requiring more frequent and more stringent inspections. “We expect the plants to find and fix problems” promptly, she said. “Our inspections the past few years have noted issues with that.” NRC reports on the plants over the past year cite “numerous indications of weaknesses in corrective actions and management efforts to establish an environment where employees are consistently willing to raise safety concerns.” “We found examples of unresolved conflict and poor communication between management and staff, as well as underlying staff and management frustration with poor equipment reliability,” state the reports. Watchdog group Unplug Salem has said all three plants should be shut down, arguing that repeated, relatively small problems indicate inadequate maintenance. The group wants a vibrating recirculation pump at Hope Creek replaced as soon as possible, but NRC has agreed to let PSEG wait until the plant’s next refueling, scheduled for spring 2006. Cannon and Screnci both said the current shutdown won’t affect those plans. “We feel this leak is probably caused by the vibrations from the circulation combo,” Unplug Salem director Norm Cohen said. “If I was running the corporation, I would want to replace the shaft now and not risk having an accident.” Last Thursday, Salem 1 reported a piping system leak that exceeded NRC limits. It allowed a small amount of water from the reactor coolant system to cross over a valve that wasn’t tightly closed and into an adjoining pipe. That was quickly fixed by tightening the valve, Cannon said. Newark-based Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. is merging with Chicago-based Exelon Corp., which owns the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Ocean County and co-owns the Salem I and II plants with PSEG. The merger would make the new company the biggest U.S. operator of nuclear power plants. -------- australia Our new nightmare: the United States of America By Tom Allard and Louise Williams March 29, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Our-new-nightmare-the-United-States-of-America/2005/03/28/1111862327556.html?oneclick=true Australians are as just as concerned about United States foreign policy as Islamic extremism and regard the US as more dangerous than a rising China, according to a new poll. The Australians Speak: 2005 survey, commissioned by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, found 57 per cent of Australians were "very worried" or "fairly worried" about the external threat posed by both US foreign policy and Islamic extremism. "We asked about a series of threats from the outside," said the institute's executive director, Allan Gyngell. "Most startling of all was the precise equivalence of Islamic fundamentalism and US foreign policy as a source of concern. "The question is whether this is a response to a particular administration or a broader cultural drifting apart." More than two-thirds - 68 per cent - said Australia took too much notice of the US in its foreign policy deliberations. The findings would not be welcomed by the Howard Government, which has railed against perceived anti-Americanism and emphasised the importance of the alliance as the US takes a more unilateralist and activist posture in world affairs. The Lowy Institute found that 72 per cent regarded the US alliance as very important or fairly important. But in another finding, the survey of 1000 people found respondents were strongly opposed to siding with the US over Taiwan should conflict flare between Taipei and Beijing. Mr Gyngell said he was also very surprised that China rated so positively. Only 35 per cent of respondents had concerns about China's growing power. "It's not that I thought Australians had a particularly bellicose view on China, but people see opportunities in China, both economically and strategically." Taiwan is an issue of acute sensitivity at the moment, with tensions escalating with the mainland after China's parliament rubber-stamped a decree warning the province of dire consequences if it declares independence. Asked if they had positive or negative feelings about a list of 15 different countries, institutions and regions, respondents rated the US only 11th, six percentage points ahead of Indonesia, which has traditionally been viewed as a threat by many Australians. Fifty-eight per cent of those surveyed viewed the US positively, compared with 94 per cent for New Zealand, 86 per cent for Britain, 84 per cent for Japan, and 69 per cent for China. Fifty-one per cent thought a free-trade agreement with China was a good idea, compared with only 34 per cent for the US deal. Unfriendly nations acquiring nuclear weapons and global warming were considered more worrying than international terrorism. Asked about Australian foreign policy goals, most support came for "improving the global environment", with 75 per cent judging it to be "very important". Protecting jobs and strengthening the economy rated as high, followed by combating terrorism and preventing nuclear proliferation. Promoting democracy rated bottom. The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 per cent. -------- britain Sellafield 'wind down' to begin Tuesday, 29 March, 2005 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/4389675.stm Work on decommissioning Sellafield is due to begin in April Cumbria's nuclear industry is preparing for arguably its biggest challenge since it was established in the 1950s. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will assume responsibility for the clean-up of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing complex from 1 April. It marks the start of work to wind down the site, with the loss of thousands of jobs over the next 10 years. The government has pledged massive support for the area after the West Cumbria-based NDA begins work. The arrival of the NDA has been blighted by a row over state help to Sellafield owner British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). The European Commission (EC) called into doubt a proposed £40bn transfer of liabilities from BNFL to the NDA. Pension provision The trade union Amicus has called for permanent staff to be retrained to carry out the decommissioning work and plans to oppose the outsourcing of any core work. Amicus general secretary Derek Simpson said: "We need to maximise the number of job opportunities available through the decommissioning process by re-skilling Sellafield workers. "Unless we start training people now, we are in danger of damaging the whole of UK manufacturing and disadvantaging Sellafield workers and the whole Cumbrian economy. "Amicus is committed to maintaining our members' terms and conditions at Sellafield - ensuring that pay and pensions provision are not threatened by the outsourcing of work." The union says permanent staff posts at Sellafield are likely to be cut from 12,000 now to 4,000 by 2011. The government has pledged to create "high quality jobs" to replace those lost during and after the decommissioning process at Sellafield. ---- Britain Mulls New Nuclear Power Stations - Newspaper REUTERS UK: March 29, 2005 http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30107/story.htm LONDON - Britain is preparing the case for building nuclear power stations if Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government wins an election expected in May, the Independent on Sunday newspaper reported. The newspaper cited a senior civil servant as saying a small group of senior officials had made the case for constructing up to 10 new nuclear reactors. The group had carried out a study, known as "Future for Nuclear", on whether it was economically viable to build new plants, the paper said. Blair's Downing Street office said it did not recognise the story and any decision to build new plants would be subject to public consultation. Blair's government has said it will not close the door to more nuclear power capacity -- which scientists say is in many respects a relatively clean energy source. With a growing political commitment in Europe to delivering big cuts in carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto protocol on global warming, Europe's pro-nuclear lobby believes the tide may be turning in its favour. CLIMATE CHANGE The nuclear issue has also crept up the agenda as Blair has vowed to make progress on climate change during his presidency this year of the G8 group of industrialised nations. The Independent on Sunday said the pressure for a nuclear building programme was coming from Blair who was worried that without nuclear power, Britain would miss its target of a 20 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2010. The newspaper quoted its civil servant source as saying that Blair's special adviser on industry and business, Geoffrey Norris, was pressing the case. "Norris has fought hard to keep nuclear on the agenda," the source was quoted as saying. But some members of Blair's government have reservations. British Trade and Industry Minister Patricia Hewitt noted earlier this month that questions remained over the nuclear option's true costs and the problem of nuclear waste storage. The financial difficulties the sector can face were highlighted when the country's main nuclear generator British Energy came close to insolvency. In 2002, a slump in wholesale power prices pushed the nuclear power producer to the brink of insolvency. Shareholders and creditors approved a debt-for-equity swap last year to rescue the company and its shares relisted in January. A second newspaper, The Business, reported that British Energy was talking to leading institutions about private funding for a nuclear power building programme. The company said nothing was on the cards. "British Energy has got no current plans for new nuclear plants," a spokesman said. "The focus for us is to continue with the restructuring and ensure that the existing plants are operating efficiently and reliably." ---- Nuclear power? The budget announced £30m a year more for energy research - but will any of that go into nuclear projects? Linda Nordling looks at the options Tuesday March 29, 2005 The Guardian http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1446917,00.html The future of nuclear power is a potato too hot for any of the large political parties to handle in the run-up to the general election. But this month's science and national budgets together herald winds of change for nuclear research. In its 2003 energy white paper, the government committed itself to cutting carbon emissions by 2020. Acknowledging that nuclear energy emits no carbon, it would "keep the nuclear option open". But how, it would not say. Critics of the white paper said its targets were unreachable without new investment in nuclear energy. Spearheaded by the industry leader, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), the nuclear lobby warned that without new research funds and training for nuclear engineers to replenish the ageing workforce, the door on fission would close. The same lobbyists should have been pleased to see a near doubling for energy research in the budget this month. Funds will rise from £40m a year to £70m by 2007-08. The bulk of it will be distributed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which said applications to do all types of research underpinning the UK's future energy supply would be considered, including nuclear. However, BNFL did not respond to the budget announcement. Nor, surprisingly, did it welcome the UK's signing, on February 28, of an agreement on international collaboration with Canada, France, Japan and the US for research on the next generation (Generation IV) of fission reactors. In fact, BNFL has become almost mute over the past 12 months. It could be that it wants to avoid a pre-election debacle that could scare the winning party into retreat on nuclear power. Off the record, both Tory and Labour sources have said that they will tackle the nuclear question head-on after the election. With this and last month's signature in mind, we could well see more funding for international collaboration in the not too distant future. However, getting public acceptance for new nuclear build, or even a new fission research effort, will not be easy. In Finland, where new build is already taking place, it took the government eight years to get the public on its side. In the end, it succeeded by pointing to the creation of jobs and environmental benefits. It remains to be seen whether the British public would respond to such discussions as the pragmatic Finns did. In the meantime, there is the extra £30m to compete for. None of it is guaranteed for nuclear research. Nor will all of it pay for more projects, since the UK research councils have to pay a higher proportion of university overheads from September this year. But what there is should set nuclear researchers thinking about projects they might want to do should more funds come on stream after the election. More details about how the EPSRC will spend its money until 2008 will be announced in late May. · http://www.epsrc.ac.uk Linda Nordling is news editor of Research Fortnight. ln@researchresearch.com -------- business Energy Metals Corporation Announces $9 Million Bought Equity Financing Tuesday March 29, 2:18 pm ET Press ReleaseSource: Energy Metals Corporation http://biz.yahoo.com/ccn/050329/f2a22036a21d7dfbd8e12b2677239451.html?.v=1 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(CCNMatthews - March 29, 2005) - Energy Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE:EMC - News; "EMC") announces that it has entered into an agreement with a syndicate of underwriters, led by Sprott Securities Inc., to purchase as principal 3.0 million units at a price of $3.00 per unit for gross proceeds of $9 million. Each unit shall consist of one common share and one half of one share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant shall be exercisable at any time for one common share at a price of $4.00 per share for a period of two years following closing. EMC has granted the underwriters an option to increase the size of the offering by an additional 1.0 million units at the same price exercisable at any time prior to closing. The Company shall pay a commission of 6% of the gross proceeds of the offering. In addition, the underwriters will be issued on the closing date Broker Warrants equal to 6% of the number of units purchased under the offering. Each Broker Warrant shall be exercisable at any time for one common share at $3.00 per share for a period of two years from the closing date. Closing is scheduled to occur on or about April 19, 2005. The net proceeds of the offering will be used to advance EMC's prospective uranium properties in Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, for the potential acquisition of additional properties and for general corporate purposes. The offering is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, completion of satisfactory due diligence by the underwriters and the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals. Energy Metals Corporation is a Canadian listed company involved in the mineral resource sector. EMC has adopted a corporate strategy focusing on the acquisition, exploration and development of established uranium assets in the United States. This long-term strategy has been designed to take advantage of the growth in U.S. and world-wide electrical energy demand. This increasing demand is occurring at a time when uranium mine supplies are dwindling and inventories are being depleted. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF ENERGY METALS CORPORATION "signed" Per: James G. G. Watt Chairman and Director Contact: Energy Metals Corporation James G. G. Watt Chairman and Director Phone: (604) 684-9007 Fax: (604) 408-4799 info@... www.energymetalscorp.com THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS PRESS RELEASE. -------- china Proposed uranium deal to China raises weapons concerns Australia is negotiating to supply fuel for 40 to 50 new nuclear power plants in China By Janaki Kremmer | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 2005 edition http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0329/p04s01-woap.html SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – The Howard government has begun negotiations with Chinese officials to sell uranium to the energy-hungry Asian giant in a deal that is expected to be signed within 12 months. Judging by the standards of supply and demand, the deal makes complete sense. China is expected to build 40 to 50 nuclear power plants over the next two decades and needs uranium to fuel them. Australia has it. China's Pacific neighbor is sitting on 41 percent of the world's easily extractable uranium. The sale would be so good for Australia's coffers that the opposition has decided to back it. But the talks come amid close international attention to nuclear proliferation, as well as US concerns about arms sales to China. The uranium deal, critics say, raises uncomfortable questions about whether the uranium could be diverted to further China's nuclear weapons arsenal. "It is setting a dangerous precedent of selling to a new country which is not an open society," says David Noonan, campaign officer on nuclear issues at the Australian Conservation Foundation. "We have concerns also about where this nuclear waste is going to be dumped and whether there will be enough checks in place to see that low-enriched uranium used for fuel is not then going to be reprocessed to produce plutonium - which is of course used to make bombs." In recent years, Chinese officials have globetrotted from Russia to Latin America to Canada in an effort to ink new energy supply deals. China's booming manufacturing economy requires enormous amounts of energy to keep its factories running. Australia is already a crucial energy supplier for China. Last year Canberra signed a $19 billion deal to supply China with liquefied natural gas and the two countries are expected to begin free trade talks when Prime Minister John Howard visits Beijing this month. To help meet its energy demands, China has indicated that it is going to expand its nuclear-power capacity beyond its current nine nuclear plants. In discussing the proposed export of uranium to China, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Parliament last month that the deal would only go through if China agreed to safeguards to ensure that the uranium would not be used to build nuclear weapons, would not be given to other countries, and would be safely handled. But critics say that past international efforts at safeguards have not stopped some nations from using uranium for nuclear weapons programs. "Australia pins all its hopes on the nuclear nonproliferation treaty which both [China and Australia] are signatory to," says James Courtney, a nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace. But "if things turn ugly over Taiwan, China could well decide to pull out of the NPT, and other than declaring war on China there is no way that you could get that uranium out." Mr. Noonan cautions that there is no way of identifying "my uranium" from "your uranium" once it has left these shores. "Once the Australian yellowcake mixes with Chinese uranium, we won't be able to keep tabs on what is ours and what is not. In any case once China gets our uranium it could easily free up its own stockpiles for military use, and then Australia would be seen as being complicit in its military program," he says. However, China already has a significant stockpile of nuclear materials to draw upon if it wanted to build more weapons. A 1999 report by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control cites estimates of up to 4 tons of plutonium and 23 tons of highly enriched uranium - enough material for more than 2,000 nuclear weapons. The department of foreign affairs and trade in Canberra says that, so far, the US has not commented on the possible uranium deal. "Frankly, there is no bilateral safeguards agreement yet that anyone can take a look at to comment at this time," says an agency spokesman. But Noonan says there is another reason for the silence. "The main reason [why the US is not going to comment] is that Westinghouse is trying to sell four nuclear reactors to China, with an encouraging loan of 40 percent, in order to keep the nuclear industry in the US functioning as the US is not building any more reactors in its own country," he says. The British-owned Pittsburgh-based company is believed to be bidding for the sale, along with the French firm Areva and its joint-venture partner Siemens. Russian and Canadian companies have also expressed interest in this project. Former president Bill Clinton cleared the way for US reactor sales to China in 1998, under a bilateral cooperation agreement after Beijing promised not to sell nuclear technology to Iran. Despite proliferation concerns, the uranium deal will probably go through, says Alan Dupont, strategic analyst at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. "The anti-uranium lobby's principal argument has been undercut as there is a recognition that nuclear power is useful in order to reduce global warming," he says. -------- europe Germany to invest $73-mil in nuclear waste facility in 2005 Freiburg (Platts) -- 29 March 2005 http://www.platts.com/Nuclear/News/9345250.xml?S=n Germany's federal environment ministry has earmarked Eur56-mil ($73-mil) this year to start decommissioning at the Morsleben nuclear waste storage facility, in eastern Germany, the country's nuclear protection agency (BfS) said Tuesday. Final decommissioning of the facility, which has not received any waste since 1998, is scheduled to start in 2009 and is expected to take about 15 years. In 2000, Germany invested Eur20-mil in decommissioning work at the unit. German nuclear power plants operate intermediate storage facilities on site, and waste fuel rods are transported to reprocessing units in France and the United Kingdom. Intermediate storage facilities can store 80-170 castors, or about 1,000-2,000 tons of waste. This story was originally published in Platts European Power Alert http://www.europeanpoweralert.platts.com -------- health Inner-city lead poisoning blamed on airborne dust Scientists develop formula to predict spikes in number of cases By Rick Callahan Sat, Mar. 26, 2005 Associated Press http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/11238149.htm INDIANAPOLIS – Public health officials have made dramatic strides in the past quarter-century reducing childhood lead-poisoning cases, but thousands of inner-city children are still exposed each year to the brain-damaging metal. The reason, according to a new study, may be in the air. Scientists have found evidence that lead-tainted urban soils kicked up by summer winds fuel seasonal spikes in lead poisoning cases by filling homes and playgrounds with airborne dust. Health experts said the findings – that inner-city kids are exposed to windblown lead during their most active months of outdoor play – could help them find new ways to reduce lead poisoning, which can cause brain damage, behavioral problems, slowed growth and hearing loss. “This is an eye-opening paper,” said Jonathan E. Ericson, a professor of environmental health at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved with the research. Scientists at three universities reviewed meteorological records, lead soil concentrations and epidemiological results for about 32,000 children in Indianapolis, New Orleans and Syracuse, N.Y., between 1994 and 2003. Using a computer model, they found they could predict with high accuracy the average monthly blood-lead levels among urban children in the three cities, based on local weather conditions and soil moisture and lead levels. The culprit appeared to be dry, windy summer weather that picked up lead dust in the top few inches of urban soil, said Gabriel Filippelli, a professor of geology at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis who co-authored the study. The model was 98 percent accurate in predicting blood-lead levels among children in Indianapolis, where those levels spiked from June to September, Filippelli said. “When we found this in Indianapolis, we thought ‘No, this can’t be right.’ So we applied this same model to these other cities and it matched the blood lead data for them as well,” he said. For Syracuse and New Orleans, the model was 61 percent and 59 percent accurate in predicting blood-lead levels, respectively. Though the results were less accurate than in Indianapolis, the researchers said the findings in all three cities were statistically significant. Scientists at Xavier University and State University of New York in Syracuse also participated in the study, which will be published in the June issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. About 434,000 American children ages 1 to 5 have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief of the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, said lead-based paint residue in and around older homes is still regarded as the primary cause of childhood lead poisoning. But she said the study is compelling and adds to the potential lead sources public health officials need to consider. “The fact is, lead is everywhere,” Brown said, noting that decades of auto emissions from now-banned leaded gasoline and industry have spread lead dust to remote corners of the globe. “There’s a fine mantle of lead dust that covers just about every surface.” She said the study shows the need to plant grass or place mulch on bare soil in urban areas to prevent children from ingesting lead when soil dries out. Ericson, of the University of California, Irvine, said more research was needed over larger geographic areas to rule out other variables that could explain the study’s findings. But he said the findings appear to explain why high lead levels have been found in children who live in urban neighborhoods with unpainted brick houses and no obvious source of lead-based paint. That could be useful for Western cities such as Los Angeles with dry, naturally dusty climates, he said. Tom Neltner, executive director of the Indianapolis-based advocacy group Improving Kids’ Environment, said the findings suggest that lead dust adds to the accumulation of the heavy metal in children who also ingest paint residue. “The fact that it gives all of us a little extra lead in our blood when there’s no safe level is a real concern,” he said. -------- japan KEPCO resignations too little, too late to restore public trust The Yomiuri Shimbun, March 29, 2005 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20050327wo14.htm Strong public criticism of Kansai Electric Power Co. apparently lies behind the resignations of two senior executives Friday to take responsibility for a fatal steam blowout last summer at a nuclear power plant that killed 4 people and injured 7. But the long delay in offering a sop to public opinion indicates the company still has a long way to go to fully regain public trust. The resignations of President Yosaku Fuji and Chairman Yoshihisa Akiyama came more than seven months after the incident at the No. 3 reactor of Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Mihamacho, Fukui Prefecture. The fatal steam blowout occurred as a result of the wall of a steam pipe becoming eroded to below government standards. An Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry investigation team said KEPCO's corporate morals were underdeveloped in recognizing the importance of maintaining safety standards. The reason KEPCO took so long to offer up two executives to placate public wrath was that the firm's management insisted on viewing the fatal incident as an unavoidable labor accident. And as such, there was no need for the company's top brass to resign to accept responsibility--even though they were ultimately responsible for the incident, a KEPCO board member said. The METI investigation team, from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, succeeded in shedding some light on the shortfalls in KEPCO's management system this month. The investigation revealed that the company had failed to inspect parts of the plant at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant other than the damaged section of the No. 3 reactor, even though it knew the wall of at least one pipe had been eroded to below government safety standards. The slow reaction by KEPCO management in demonstrating its commitment to prevent similar incidents, prompted the investigation team to release a final report which in which it attacked KEPCO's mind-set of placing emphasis on efficiency rather than safety. Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Shoichi Nakagawa has repeatedly condemned KEPCO saying the incident was a result of human error. Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) is gearing up to mount yet another attack on KEPCO and the responsibility it bears at the House of Representatives' Trade and Industry Committee. "Given the bitter public sentiment, they (KEPCO executives) finally found it impossible to evade responsibility," an official in the power industry said. METI, which administers the nuclear power industry, welcomed Fuji's decision to resign to accept responsibility for the fatality. "They presented a good example to other companies, which should raise awareness of compliance (with safety standards) and having a sense of mission in the industry," a senior official of the Natural Resources and Energy Agency said. But it remains unclear how far the resignations have gone in restoring public faith in nuclear power. The government and utility companies have long said that high safety standards and the understanding of local residents were essential in promoting nuclear energy. However, Tokyo Electric Power Co. was found to have fabricated inspection records at one of its nuclear power plants in August 2002. Public distrust of the government's nuclear power policy reached a peak after the accident at the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant. Fuji's decision to step down shows that nuclear safety is not simply a slogan, but an issue that could change corporate management. But some METI officials are not quite convinced given that Akiyama, who is in charge of personnel management at KEPCO, is to remain in his post for another year. -------- transportation We Could Breathe Easier The government must increase the security of toxic chemicals in transit. By Richard A. Falkenrath Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Washington Post; Page A15 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8328-2005Mar28?language=printer The basic strategy al Qaeda used on Sept. 11, 2001, was to strike a common, poorly secured commercial system in a way that would cause catastrophic secondary effects. The terrorists did a better job of identifying the vulnerability associated with fully fueled commercial airliners than the government did -- and they exploited this vulnerability to terrible effect. Now, because of the work of the Transportation Security Administration, commercial aircraft in the United States are all but impossible to hijack. But the terrorist is an adaptive enemy. One central question in homeland security is whether terrorists will again locate a catastrophic civilian vulnerability before the government gets around to addressing it. There are an infinite number of potential targets in America that, if attacked, could result in hundreds of civilian casualties. The number of potential targets that could result in thousands of civilian casualties is, however, finite and knowable. In the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for identifying these potentially catastrophic targets, analyzing their security schemes and taking action if the security arrangements are deficient. It is in general a bad idea to call attention to America's most serious civilian vulnerabilities. Government officials should never do so and should not be asked to. Private citizens should do so with care, and only when the government fails to act. Of the all the various remaining civilian vulnerabilities, one stands alone as uniquely deadly, pervasive and susceptible to terrorist attack: industrial chemicals that are toxic when inhaled, such as chlorine, ammonia, phosgene, methyl bromide, and hydrochloric and various other acids. These chemicals, several of which are identical to those used as weapons on the Western Front during World War I, are routinely shipped through and stored near population centers in vast quantities, in many cases with no security whatsoever. A cleverly designed terrorist attack against such a chemical target would be no more difficult to perpetrate than were the Sept. 11 attacks. The loss of life could easily equal that which occurred on Sept. 11 -- and might even exceed it. I am aware of no other category of potential terrorist targets that presents as great a danger as toxic industrial chemicals. The federal government has the authority to regulate the security of chemicals as they are being transported on roads, railways and waterways. With only one minor exception, the administration has not exercised this authority in any substantial way since Sept. 11. There has been no meaningful improvement in the security of these chemicals moving through our population centers. In a desperate step, the D.C. council recently voted to ban hazardous material shipments through downtown Washington. This ordinance is clearly good for Washington, but it is bad for the other parts of the country that will absorb the diverted chemical loads. Furthermore, its economic burden falls principally on CSX Corp., the company that owns the two rail lines through downtown Washington. CSX is suing to block implementation of the ordinance. The federal government is supporting CSX's effort, an awkward position for a security-conscious administration that has so far failed to mandate a systematic, nationwide reduction in the vulnerability of this sector. The administration can and should act immediately to enhance the security of toxic chemicals in transit nationwide; no new legislation is required. Specifically, the departments of Homeland Security and Transportation should promulgate regulations that will, over time, require chemical shippers to track the movement of all hazardous chemicals electronically; to report this data to DHS in real time; to use fingerprint-based access controls for all chemical conveyances; to adopt container signs that do not reveal the contents to most observers; to perform rigorous background checks on all employees; to strengthen the physical resilience of chemical containers; to reduce chemical loads; to ship decoy containers alongside filled containers; and to install perimeter security at loading and switching stations. Violators should suffer harsh civil and criminal penalties. But the federal government does not have authority to regulate the security measures inside chemical plants and storage facilities. President Bush has twice called on Congress to pass legislation granting the Department of Homeland Security this authority. The 108th Congress declined to do so. It is often alleged -- incorrectly -- that lobbying by the chemical industry was behind Congress's inaction. The real reasons had to do with the full agendas of the committees involved; the administration's competing legislative priorities; and the obscure, esoteric and theoretical nature of the issue. The voluntary security enhancements many of the larger chemical firms have implemented -- in some cases with assistance from the Department of Homeland Security -- are a step in the right direction but are insufficient. Congress should promptly grant powerful authority to regulate chemical-plant security to that department as the president has requested. There is no silver bullet to improving the security of chemicals that are toxic when inhaled. A layered, nationwide approach is required. It is right and proper for the government to require industries to take on the security costs of their activities. The immediate cost of these regulations would be borne by the chemical industry. Over time, costs would be passed on to consumers, and the market would adjust to a new, more socially responsible equilibrium. The real losers would be al Qaeda and its successors. The writer was deputy homeland security adviser to President Bush until May 2004. He is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and senior director of the Civitas Group, an advisory and investment services firm serving the homeland and national security markets. -------- treaties Carter pushes for renewal of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Associated Press Tue, Mar. 29, 2005 http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/local/11258326.htm ATLANTA - Former president Jimmy Carter writes that the U.S. "is the major culprit" in what he calls the erosion of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. "While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including anti-ballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating 'bunker buster' and perhaps some new 'small' bombs," the former president wrote in a column published Tuesday in The Washington Post and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states," Carter wrote. Renewal talks for the treaty are scheduled in May, but Carter said the U.S. and other nuclear powers seem indifferent to its fate. He said all nuclear weapons states should agree to non-first use, with the U.S. taking the lead and that NATO should de-emphasize the role of its nuclear weapons and consider an end to their deployment in Western Europe. The U.S. should curtail development of the "infeasible missile defense shield," he wrote. He said the talks should deal with proliferation in the Middle East. "Iran must be held to its promises under the NPT," he wrote. Information from: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, http://www.ajc.com -------- u.s. nuc weapons CDC halts funding of fallout study Project examined effects of atomic testing in Nevada LAS VEGAS SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS March 29, 2005 http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/mar/29/518520157.html?nuclear SALT LAKE CITY -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has halted funding for a study on the connection between radioactive fallout and thyroid disease among people living downwind of aboveground atomic testing in Nevada during the 1950s and early 1960s. The study, which already had cost $8 million, has rechecked about 1,300 of 4,000 former students who lived in southwestern Utah and eastern Nevada, plus a control group of Arizona residents. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that no further funding is available for this study," Michael McGeehin, director of the centers' Division of Environmental Hazards Health Effects, said in a March 21 letter sent to Dr. Joseph L. Lyon, a University of Utah researcher who has been studying the fallout issue for decades. "CDC does not have the resources to extend funding for this study beyond the current budget period." Lyon, who headed the investigation, said he was loath to call it a cover-up, but it seemed the federal government does not want to know about health effects of fallout on American citizens. "That's the only interpretation I can place on it," he said. McGeehin advised Lyon to close out the study by Aug. 31. David Cherry, spokesman for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the lack of funding comes from an administration that has discussed new nuclear weapons. Cherry said there is more than an academic aspect to the study. He called it a "preventative medicine element" and said the government should be obligated to check up on affected people. "They should be screened regularly," he said. Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, who as a UNLV political science professor has studied the politics and polices surrounding nuclear weapons testing, said this shows the government "is willing to cut funds because this is a low priority and it might reveal something they don't want to hear. "It's terrible and their (the victims') families are affected," she said. "The federal government is cutting everything and there are not many of these people left. There are not a lot of votes in Utah and those people already voted for this administration." For decades, there has been debate over how the more than 900 atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, affected downwind residents in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Past studies produced conflicting conclusions as to whether the fallout caused increased numbers of cases of particular types of cancer. The first studies began in the 1960s and ended with the federal researchers concluding that fallout had not increased disease among the downwinders. Lyon's studies, beginning in 1977, concluded that fallout did cause increased incidence of cancer downwind. After the trial of a lawsuit filed on behalf of possible victims, a federal judge in Utah concluded that fallout was to blame for some of the illnesses. But his ruling was overturned on appeal on grounds of government immunity. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 to provide for payments to downwinders who contracted certain cancers and other serious diseases. In 1993 a new study by Lyon and colleagues found radioactivity from the detonations increased the incidence of thyroid tumors 3.4 times over the expected rate among schoolchildren who were exposed to the highest doses. The latest study was an attempt to re-examine the residents. Some scientists suspect health effects may develop slowly for thyroid disease and that there may be lifelong risk. Lyon said the study is incomplete and analysis has not been carried out yet, so he is hesitant to talk about results. McGeehin said a special emphasis panel -- a board of scientific experts from outside the CDC -- reviewed Lyon's protocol and recommended that the study not be funded beyond the 2004 grant award. "I've been working on this now since 1977," Lyon said. "I'm about ready to retire, and I'm sort of saying, 'I'd like to finish up this thyroid study and get more definitive information.' " -------- nevada YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Falsification suspicions spur hearings Senate, House sessions in April to focus on possibility that scientific studies for nuclear waste project are suspect By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Las Vegas Review-Journal http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Mar-29-Tue-2005/news/26172351.html WASHINGTON -- Congress is broadening its hearings on Yucca Mountain after disclosures that quality-assurance documents for the proposed nuclear waste repository might have been falsified. Leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee announced Monday they have scheduled an April 7 hearing on the Nevada nuclear waste site. A House subcommittee led by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., is preparing for an April 5 hearing. The Senate committee chairman is Pete Domenici, R-N.M., an influential voice on nuclear issues who aides said is open to examining other options for nuclear waste storage while the Yucca Mountain Project is mired in delays. Domenici spokeswoman Angela Harper said the committee is compiling a witness list and defining the scope of its inquiry. In the House, Porter has called on the Energy Department to provide copies of an estimated 20 e-mails in which a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist suggested that some quality-assurance documents related to climate studies and water infiltration to the repository level had been falsified. The March 16 disclosure has prompted at least three investigations at the Energy Department and the Department of Interior and has provided critics of the nuclear waste program with fresh ammunition to challenge the project. Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Brian Sandoval are among Nevada representatives scheduled to testify before the House subcommittee. The U.S. Geological Survey work accounted for only a part of a broader DOE analysis, the industry newsletter Nuclear Fuel reported Monday citing USGS and an unidentified source. The source told the newsletter the work in question did not affect the repository's safety calculations. But others have said that the issue of water travel through the mountain is crucial and that the disclosure raises new credibility problems for the Energy Department. A troubled quality-assurance program has been considered an Achilles heel for the Yucca program, and Nevada officials were weighing whether to highlight information that more than a half dozen geologists received copies of the e-mails but did not report them. Also Monday, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gave a boost to the proposed repository, saying that Yucca Mountain remains "the safest option" for disposing of nuclear fuel. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, stepped into a dispute involving a National Academy of Sciences report that questioned the safety of radioactive spent fuel stored in 45-foot-deep pools of water at nuclear reactor sites. "Temporary storage in spent-fuel pools will never be as secure at disposal in Yucca Mountain," Barton said. "The National Academy of Sciences report is one more argument for finishing Yucca Mountain," Barton said. "A single, remote, underground facility would be impervious to aircraft impacts, far more difficult for terrorists to penetrate and safer than storage facilities scattered across the country." According to excerpts of a secret report that have been made public, an academy panel of scientists concluded last summer that more needs to be known about the terrorism risks of keeping nuclear waste in pools of water. The report suggested the nuclear industry consider storing more spent fuel in above-ground cement, lead and steel casks. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Nils Diaz said in a letter to Congress last week that the recommendation to move more spent fuel into the dry casks was based on "scenarios that are unreasonable." Joe Egan, Nevada's lead nuclear waste attorney, said the academy report gives weight to arguments by the state and other Yucca Mountain critics that nuclear waste can be stored in casks at reactor sites for hundreds of years rather than be taken to a central repository. "This is one more piece of evidence in a shifting paradigm, to the point where Yucca is no longer necessary for the survival of nuclear power," Egan said. -------- utah Nuclear storage sounds like substantially risky bet for Utah By Marjorie Cortez Deseret Morning News Tuesday, March 29, 2005 http://deseretnews.com/dn/view2/1,4382,600121945,00.html?textfield=nuclear Like most Christian churches, my church teaches that gambling is a menace to society, that Christians should abstain from gambling and should minister to those victimized by gambling. As religious tenets go, abstaining from gambling is a no-brainer for me. It's not just an issue of morality, it's an issue of economics. I can think of a million other ways to spend my hard-earned money than to feed it into a slot machine or wager it at the roulette table. Being cooped up in a smoke-filled building with people, some of whom are gambling away their rent and grocery money, is not my idea of entertainment. I say this as a person who has scratched a couple of lottery cards in her day. I played nickel slots in Wendover twice. I've bet on horse racing. I've become convinced it would be more satisfying to light money on fire and watch it burn than to squander it away at a gaming table. Different means, same outcome. A few years ago, I covered an initiative campaign to legalize horse-race betting in Utah. As you may recall, it failed miserably at the polls. Opponents of the initiative said giving the OK to pari-mutuel wagering would open the door to gaming on Indian reservations, which was another reason to keep gambling out of Utah. Utah and Hawaii remain the only states that prohibit gambling. Elsewhere, many tribes consider gambling their economic salvation. They say it creates tourism, jobs and economic development. No one talks about the accompanying social problems that come with acquiring material gain by chance and at the expense of one's neighbor. I don't like gaming because it fosters the notion that work is unimportant and that all of our problems can be solved with money. I've thought a lot about gaming in Utah in recent weeks in the context of the Skull Valley band of Goshutes, which has negotiated with a consortium of nuclear power utilities to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods on the tribe's reservation in Tooele County. I'm not suggesting that a full-scale Caesar's Palace-like casino would have been the answer to the Goshutes' economic woes. But with that option off the table, the tribe may have landed on a substantially riskier proposition on its reservation: becoming the de facto Yucca Mountain. The risks are much different, I'll grant you. Most people gamble at their own peril, although the negative impacts of gambling do not confine themselves to the individual throwing down the poker chips or feeding coins into a slot machine. If Mom or Dad bets the mortgage, the entire family's security is jeopardized. Moving spent nuclear fuel rods to Utah would likewise imperil the entire nation, with little prospect of benefit to the public. But If I was a terrorist bent on making a nuclear weapon, I'd be smacking my lips at the prospect of stealing or hijacking a truck or train carrying spent nuclear fuel rods across the county. Five years ago I would have dismissed such talk as the stuff of an action-adventure motion picture. After four commercial jets were hijacked and used as missiles to plow into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a fourth that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, we'd better be open to the prospect of any and all possibilities. If the spent fuel rods are as safe as the utilities purport, why not leave them where they are until a permanent solution can be determined? The business deal between the Skull Valley Goshutes and Private Fuel Storage, the consortium of utilities, is proprietary, so the financial benefit to the tribe for permitting the disposal on their land is speculative at best. It would be accurate to say that it's very lucrative. A billion dollar baby, one might say. The issue is further complicated by a federal law that requires the U.S. government to take nuke waste off the hands of nuclear power operators. Eight sites have closed their doors, and operators are spending about $5 million a year to secure each site until the government comes up with a permanent solution. Add to that the potential of a legal settlement for the government's delays in assuming responsibility for the waste. Is it just me, or does it feel as though other interests are gambling away our security? It's yet another game of chance we can't afford to play. Marjorie Cortez is a Deseret Morning News editorial writer. E-mail her at marjorie@desnews.com -------- us nuc waste Nuclear Power Plants Turning to Dry Casks for Storing Used Fuel March 29, 2005 — By Erica Werner, Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7425 WASHINGTON — About 40 percent of the nation's nuclear power plants have begun moving spent fuel out of cooling pools and into massive dry casks, embracing a storage approach that a National Academy of Sciences panel said offers safety advantages. The nation's 64 active nuclear power plants, which together house 103 reactors, all now store nuclear waste in pools of water after it is removed from reactors. Eventually, the spent fuel is supposed to be shipped to a national nuclear waste dump planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada. As Yucca Mountain has been delayed, utilities are increasingly moving some of the waste from pools to huge metal or metal-and-concrete casks. That method is now employed at about 25 active U.S. nuclear power plants, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group. NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes said Monday that both storage methods are safe -- contrary to the findings of the National Academy of Sciences panel, which told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the vulnerability of spent nuclear fuel pools to terrorist attacks needs urgent new study. The Academy panel also said that in some cases, the NRC might find it prudent to move spent fuel from cooling pools to dry cask storage more quickly. Agreeing with industry, the NRC said either form of storage "provides reasonable assurance that public health and safety, the environment and the common defense and security will be adequately protected." The NRC also said the additional analyses recommended by the Academy panel, including studies of possible attacks by large aircraft or explosives, were "more than is needed." Watchdog groups contend the casks are safer than the pools, especially when the pools reach capacity. But the dry casks are more expensive -- a cost that would be born by the power plant owners and the government, which is being sued by utilities for failing to make good on a promise to accept their nuclear waste starting in 1998. The report by a 13-member National Academy panel of nuclear scientists and power plant experts was delivered to the NRC last summer. It remains classified but portions were released to lawmakers this month as part of a report Congress requested from the NRC. The Academy's executive officer, E. William Colglazier, criticized the NRC report and an accompanying letter by commission Chairman Nils Diaz as misleading and incomplete. Colglazier also said the NRC was delaying attempts by the Academy to release a declassified, public version of the panel's study as required by law. "In our feeling it all could have been avoided if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had approved a release of a public version of our report in a more timely manner," Colglazier said Monday. NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the agency was working with the Academy on releasing a public report that doesn't contain information of use to terrorists. She wouldn't comment on Colglazier's criticism of the NRC letter and report beyond saying, "Our letter made the points as we see them." Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., accused the NRC of trying to withhold information from the public by failing to approve a declassified report, and asked the agency's inspector general to investigate the issue. -------- MILITARY -------- arms India Quietly Welcomes U.S. Decision to Sell Arms to Both South Asian Nuclear Rivals (Bokhari/Marcelo, Financial Times, March 29) http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_3_29.html#732AE955 Although it has publicly criticized the U.S. decision to resume fighter aircraft sales to Pakistan, India is quietly welcoming the shift in U.S. policy to allow much greater defense cooperation, experts said yesterday (see GSN, March 28). The Bush administration announced Friday that it would end a long-standing ban and allow Pakistan to purchase F-16 fighters. The ban had been imposed in 1990 as part of U.S. policy to discourage nuclear proliferation. (Pearson/Chakravarty, Agence France-Presse I/Sify.com, March 29). “We see [the sale] as unnecessary,” Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee said yesterday. “The reasons and arguments for this step are not valid as one doesn’t need F-16s and such lethal weapons to fight terrorism. These are for full-fledged war.” (Agence France-Presse II, March 28) The new U.S. policy, however, also includes a willingness to sell India advanced combat aircraft, including the F-18 fighter, and to provide other technologies as well, including command and control systems, early warning radars and missile defenses, Agence France-Presse reported today. Indian officials have publicly said only that they would consider the U.S. offer, but, “Even India, with a long tradition of making foreign policy self-goals, will find it hard to say ‘no’ to the extraordinary offer the Bush administration has put on the table — a promise to assist it in becoming a world power in return for resumption of arms sales to Pakistan,” said longtime South Asian commentator C. Raja Mohan. Mohan expressed doubt that India was genuinely concerned about seeing more F-16s in Pakistan. “Today, no one in India can credibly argue that additional F-16s in Pakistan’s hands will alter the military balance in South Asia,” he said. India has already acquired more-advanced Su-30 combat aircraft from Russia and is shopping for additional aircraft from other countries as well, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse I). Under the deal announced Friday, Pakistan is expected to purchase at least 25 F-16C and F-16D aircraft and to upgrade about 28 older versions already in its arsenal, the Financial Times reported today. The deal would be worth about $1 billion, according to Pakistani officials. ---- US Arms Industry Fishing in Troubled South Asian Waters by Ranjit Devraj March 29, 2005 (Inter Press Service) http://www.antiwar.com/ips/devraj.php?articleid=5369 NEW DELHI - By offering nuclear-capable F-16 Falcon fighters to Pakistan and the even more advanced F-18 Hornets to India, Washington has shown a cynical readiness to profit from the long-standing rivalry between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors, say analysts. "This is a bit like the Aesop's fable in which two cats fighting over a loaf take their dispute to a monkey for settlement," said P.R. Chari, research professor at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, a prestigious think tank devoted to security in South Asia. In an interview with IPS, Chari said what was happening was all too obvious. "The Americans must be laughing all the way to the bank." Chari pointed to reports in the Washington Post on March 16 that said the sale of F-16s to Pakistan may have saved 5,000 jobs in U.S. President George W. Bush's home state of Texas where the plane's builder Lockheed Martin Corporation was located. According to the Post, Lockheed and other global defense manufacturers depend on sales of sophisticated military hardware to boost their profits. The F-16 deal was "likely to be as warmly greeted in Fort Worth as it is in Karachi," the paper said. According to Chari, there was little doubt that U.S arms contractors were now eyeing India's much larger market that has been closed to them since 1974 when India first exploded a nuclear device. Washington at the time reacted by imposing an arms and dual-use technology embargo on this country. India, which signed a military pact with the former Soviet Union in 1971, has traditionally sourced its defense needs from Moscow, although it also maintains squadrons of French Mirage fighters as well as British Jaguars. But rapidly expanding ties in recent years between India and the U.S., the world's two largest democracies, have seen a progressive lifting of sanctions and moves toward defense cooperation. A visit to New Delhi on March 15-16 by U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice produced a welter of new concessions covering not only the sale of F-16 and F-18 combat aircraft but also possibilities for co-production. Lockheed has so far sold F-16s, currently costing $25 million apiece, to 24 countries, and the aviation giant also makes the deadly fighters in Europe, South Korea, and Turkey. As far as Pakistan is concerned, Washington would actually be resuming deliveries of F-16s halted in 1990 after a U.S. law barred military exports to Islamabad on suspicions that it was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons. For India, the real icing on the cake was an offer by Rice of cooperation in India's civilian nuclear energy program, which has since 1974 cut its own path with support from Russia and France as result of U.S.-led embargoes. As for the fighter deal, analysts like Chari saw little use for either India or Pakistan to be buying expensive nuclear-capable aircraft when they were not likely to be put to actual use. Chari said neither country needed aircraft to deliver nuclear bombs against each other since both possessed missiles with more than adequate range. "After 1994 when both countries declared themselves as nuclear powers, they came close to an all-out war twice – during the 1999 Kargil war and the 2002 border standoff – but on both occasions they desisted from resorting to the nuclear option," he said. India and Pakistan have been at pains to improve relations, soured by a long-standing dispute over the territory of Kashmir, and are currently engaged in "cricket diplomacy" with a Pakistani team currently touring India as part of a series of confidence-building measures. Rice had words of praise for this peace initiative, but ironically, her actions were matched with the U.S. decision to sell neighbors with a history of more than half-a-century of hostilities sophisticated military hardware. "The logic of escalating military preparations contrasts with the logic of dialogue and reconciliation," said Prof. Achin Vanaik, a well-known anti-nuclear activist who teaches at Delhi University. What was interesting to note, Chari said, was that from a position of imposing sanctions against both India and Pakistan for carrying out the 1998 tests, Washington has come round to supplying both countries with platforms capable of delivering nuclear bombs. "It just shows that Washington has a flexible enough foreign policy to accommodate what it judges to be in its own best interest, and this includes such issues as nuclear proliferation," Chari said. That "claws in, claws out" approach has seen Washington first offering F-16s to Pakistan during the war to rid Afghanistan of its Soviet occupiers in the 1980s and then reneging on it on the grounds that Islamabad was pursuing a clandestine nuclear program Toward the end of the Clinton administration, Washington tilted heavily toward India, attracted by its large, rapidly opening market, while Pakistan hovered on the brink of being declared a failed state. Post 9/11, the boot was again on the other foot and Pakistan found itself designated a major non-NATO ally for its role in Washington's war against terror in Afghanistan and deemed fit once again to receive F-16 fighters. Indeed, said Chari, many of the so-called concessions made toward South Asia by Rice were best seen in the context of the upcoming review of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and Washington's eagerness to deflect criticism from its own failings in South Asia. Indian analysts have been critical of Washington's failure to prevent the alleged supply of nuclear weapons know-how and parts from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program to Iran, North Korea and Libya. On Monday, India's External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh said it was time that the world took a close hard look at clandestine proliferation. He declared that for its own part, India was ready to sign a global treaty on no-first-use of nuclear weapons. Singh said as things stood, the security environment in South Asia was seriously undermined by nuclear weapons technology and parts flowing into and out of the neighborhood. ---- Chavez arms sale row splits Spain Rajoy said Venezuela's opposition shared his misgivings Tuesday, 29 March, 2005 (BBC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4391615.stm Spanish government plans to sell military equipment to Venezuela have been branded a "monstrous error" by political opponents. The deal involving ships and transport planes worth 1.3bn euros ($1.7bn; £1bn) was denounced by Spain's conservative opposition leader Mariano Rajoy. Venezuelan foes of President Hugo Chavez had also criticised it, he said. But politicians of the governing Socialist party hit back, saying the sale would create jobs in Spain. The row in Spain follows international concern over Venezuelan plans to buy 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles from Russia. The US state department has accused Venezuela of starting an arms race and has suggested the rifles could end up in the hands of Colombia's left-wing Farc rebels. But Venezuela and Russia have both dismissed the US objections, saying the deal does not break international law. 'Chavez yoke' Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is attending a four-nation summit in Venezuela that also brings together Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The arms deal is expected to be signed on Wednesday. On the eve of the signing, Mr Rajoy, who leads Spain's opposition Popular Party, told local television: "I think that what we are doing today in Venezuela in selling arms to Chavez is a monstrous error that the Spanish government should absolutely not make." He added: "It's something that has met with blanket criticism across the whole of the Venezuelan opposition... who suffer under the Chavez yoke." But Socialist Party manager Jose Blanco said the sale would provide employment for Spanish workers - including those at the publicly-owned Navantia shipyards, which he said had been left "technically bankrupt" by the previous Popular Party government. This is not the first time that Spain's two main parties have been at loggerheads over relations with Venezuela. In December, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos drew fierce protests for suggesting that the Popular Party government of former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had supported a failed coup bid against Mr Chavez in 2002. ---- Arms buying powers shifted ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 29, 2005 http://www.washtimes.com/business/20050328-111234-2990r.htm The Pentagon's top weapons buyer yesterday took away the Air Force's authority to oversee 21 major programs with a combined value of $200 billion. The move, called temporary, was made because of a civilian leadership vacuum at the Air Force after the departure last week of Peter Teets, who was undersecretary of the Air Force as well as acting secretary. Mr. Teets had been filling in since James Roche resigned as secretary in January. It also comes in the wake of the Air Force's handling of a multibillion-dollar Boeing aircraft lease deal that collapsed last year and led to the conviction of former Air Force executive Darleen Druyun on charges of conspiring to violate conflict-of-interest rules. Druyun admitted in court that she favored Boeing on deals worth billions of dollars because the company gave jobs to her daughter and son-in-law. Her admission led to a detailed Pentagon review of her nearly 10-year tenure as a key weapons buyer for the Air Force and prompted rival defense companies to file protests over Boeing contracts awarded during that period. The episode has taken a toll on the Air Force. The White House has not nominated anyone to replace Mr. Roche as Air Force secretary, a post that requires Senate confirmation. Some think the current Navy secretary, Gordon England, will get the nomination. Also, no one has been nominated to replace Mr. Teets as the undersecretary, and the post of Air Force acquisition chief has been vacant since Marvin Sambur left in January. With Mr. Teets gone, the most senior civilian in the Air Force is Michael L. Dominguez, who has served since August 2001 as assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs. Mr. Dominguez is a 1975 West Point graduate and Army veteran. His policy responsibilities have included force management and personnel, equal opportunity and diversity. His official biography indicates no experience in weapons buying. In yesterday's announcement, the Pentagon said it was giving decision-making authority for the 21 major Air Force weapons programs to Michael Wynne, the No. 2 Pentagon civilian in charge of weapons procurement. The No. 1 slot has not had a Senate-confirmed holder since May 2003; Mr. Wynne was nominated for the top spot, but his nomination -- and others in the Air Force -- have been blocked by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, as part of a long-running dispute over the Boeing lease deal. The 21 programs fall into a category that normally allows key decisions to be made by the military service's own executives rather than rise to the level of the Department of Defense. The Pentagon said it removed authority from the Air Force "to ensure continuity of program oversight" -- suggesting that Air Force leadership is too thin to handle the big decisions. The 21 programs include a $59.2 billion Boeing contract for C-17A Globemaster II advanced cargo aircraft, and a $31.7 billion Boeing and Lockheed Martin contract for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. Decisions on moving these and other programs beyond certain designated milestones will be made by Mr. Wynne rather than by an Air Force official. The Pentagon said it has set no timetable for restoring Air Force oversight. -------- biological weapons Anthrax dumped near Saddam palace March 29, 2005 By Charles J. Hanley ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050329-125828-2605r.htm An Iraqi scientist has told U.S. interrogators that her team destroyed Iraq's stock of anthrax in 1991 by dumping it practically at the gates of one of Saddam's main palaces, but never told U.N. inspectors for fear of angering the dictator. Rihab Rashid Taha's decision in 2003 to remain silent stoked suspicions of those who contended Iraq still harbored biological weapons, contributing to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq two years ago this month. "Whether those involved understood the significance and disastrous consequences of their actions is unclear," the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group says of Mrs. Taha and colleagues in its final report on the search for Iraq weapons. "These efforts demonstrate the problems that existed on both sides in establishing the truth." The anthrax mystery had bedeviled U.N. inspectors since the 1990s, when Iraqis said that they had made 2,191 gallons of the bacterial substance before the 1991 Gulf War. Anthrax is considered highly suited for biowarfare because its spores are easily produced, durable and deadly when inhaled. The Iraqis said they destroyed all of the anthrax in mid-1991 at their bioweapons center at Hakam, 50 miles southwest of Baghdad. The U.N. specialists, who scoured Iraq for banned arms from 1991 to 1998 and again in 2002 and 2003, confirmed anthrax had been dumped at Hakam. But they also found indications that Iraq had produced an additional, undeclared 1,800 gallons of anthrax. In early 2003, chief inspector Hans Blix put the seeming discrepancy high on his list of Iraq's "unresolved disarmament issues," complaining that Iraqis must be withholding information. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell dwelled on an anthrax threat in his February 2003 speech seeking U.N. Security Council authority for war. But the mystery of the missing anthrax appears to have been resolved in a little-noted section of the Iraq Survey Group report, a 350,000-word document issued Oct. 6. The British-educated Mrs. Taha, who ran the Hakam complex in the 1980s, told interrogators her staff carted off anthrax from Hakam in April 1991 and stored it in a bungalow near the presidential palace at Radwaniyah, 20 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. teams report. Later that year, the crew dumped the chemically deactivated anthrax on grounds surrounded by a Special Republican Guard barracks near the palace, the report says. Australian microbiologist Rod Barton, who took part in Iraq Survey Group interrogations, said in a recent Australian Broadcasting Corp. interview that the disposal was carried out in July 1991, when Iraqi orders were issued to destroy all bioweapons agents immediately. Then, through the years, Mrs. Taha and other Iraqi officials denied the "missing" anthrax ever existed. "The members of the program were too fearful to tell the regime that they had dumped deactivated anthrax within sight of one of the principal presidential palaces," the Iraq Survey Group says. -------- business Defense Dept. to Supervise Acquisitions for Air Force By Renae Merle Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page E01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8065-2005Mar28?language=printer The Defense Department announced yesterday that its acquisition chief temporarily will take over supervision of nearly two dozen procurement programs from the Air Force, which has been operating for months without several of its top civilian leaders. This "action is not a punitive one, rather it is meant to assist the Air Force by overseeing and providing advice on important Air Force programs during a time of transition," Michael Wynne, the Pentagon's undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said in a statement. Wynne will make major decisions on the programs until a new Air Force secretary is in place, the statement said. The 21 programs, worth about $200 billion, include missile and space projects as well as Lockheed Martin Corp.'s $6.23 billion C-130J Hercules and Boeing Co.'s $59.21 billion C-17 Globemaster cargo plane programs. The Air Force's two largest weapons systems, the F/A-22 jet and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, already are supervised by the Pentagon. The Air Force's acquisition process has been under scrutiny since a former top procurement official, Darleen A. Druyun, admitted showing Boeing favoritism before taking a job with the aerospace giant. For example, Druyun told prosecutors she showed Boeing favoritism in the competition for the C-130 modernization program. Last month, the Government Accountability Office recommended and the Air Force agreed to hold a new competition for at least part of the contract. Two of the Air Force's top civilian leaders -- Secretary James G. Roche and Marvin R. Sambur, the acquisitions chief -- resigned last year following controversy over a program to lease and then buy tanker aircraft from Boeing. The Air Force also needs to replace former undersecretary Peter B. Teets, who oversaw space programs, and served as acting secretary until his retirement last week. Michael L. Dominguez, the assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, is now the acting Air Force secretary. The White House declined to comment on when it would nominate a new Air Force secretary and it is unclear how long the arrangement will last. The Pentagon asked the Air Force to provide a list of all significant decisions scheduled during the next six months. The Air Force said in a statement that it "welcomes [the Pentagon's] guidance and oversight." "There are just not the people there that can sign the necessary documents," said Brett Lambert, a defense industry consultant. "There needs to be a clear line of authority for decision making. "The way that all of the secretaries have been treated recently, I am not sure there is a long line of applicants for any job," Lambert added. "It's a very difficult position. This administration really wanted to give the secretaries a lot of power and teeth in a corporate perspective. The unintended consequence of that is that they had a lot more scrutiny and politicization than they have before." -------- koreas S. Korea bars secret video of the North A tape of a public execution, smuggled into South Korea, is kept off the air By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, March 29, 2005 edition http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0329/p01s04-woap.html SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – On a bleached and scratchy video image smuggled out of Kim Jong Il's closed regime, blindfolded prisoners are tied to white posts on a rocky landscape, shot three times, and dragged away. The rare video footage of summary executions in North Korea - a practice considered routine in the North but never captured on film - was taken by hidden camera March 1 and 2, and smuggled through China to South Korea. At the time, refugee groups in Seoul were ecstatic. It looked like a human rights slam-dunk: Refugees from the North have long described summary executions - public spectacles where prisoners are shot moments after a death sentence is proclaimed. The shootings are a form of social control via terror, experts say. Yet in a twist not anticipated by underground groups that carried off the filming, South Korean TV authorities have not let the video be broadcast. The tape has been aired worldwide; Japan recently aired three exhaustive reports. But due to intense though indirect pressure by Seoul officials, the North Korean execution tapes, purportedly of "middlemen" who help refugees escape to China, are not yet available for viewing by Koreans in the South. The indirect censure adds to frustration among those documenting the gulags and torture in the North. They charge indifference in the South to evidence of manifold suffering by ethnic siblings across the demilitarized zone. It also raises anew questions about a five-year policy in Seoul of studiously avoiding acts that might upset Pyongyang, for fear of harming fragile North-South relations. South Korea's ambivalence about a get-tough policy with North Korea may also factor into the mechanics of the six-party talks over the North's recently declared nuclear program. "We have told of many public executions [in the North]. But officials in Seoul always ask us for material evidence," says Pak Sang Huk, an escapee from the North. "Now that we have evidence, they don't want to see it.... The people who brought this tape through China were speechless when they visited KBS [Korean Broadcast Service] studios, and were shunned." Mr. Pak claims those who filmed the executions risked their lives to do so. Seoul's effort to avoid broadcasts of negative images or facts about North Korea is part of a larger strategy dating to the Sunshine Policy and Korean summit of 2000. In this view, unification of North and South can't be achieved if the South criticizes or acts in a manner that the North deems hostile. "Kim Jong Il holds public executions to show the Kim family is omnipotent," says Jae Jin Suh of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. "It is naive to think that Pyongyang will respond to a push by Seoul to change and treat its people better. We need to focus on what is effective, not what we think we should say." Of late, the South has stopped raising the North's abuses in international bodies. In 2003, South Korea withdrew from a UN Geneva process when it required a vote on North Korea's human rights record. In 2004, Seoul abstained from voting. A new South Korean defense white paper released this month after a three-year delay, deletes a former reference to the North Korean Army as the "main threat." Critics say that to stifle or disallow comment about the unpredictable Kim leaves the South in the position of being influenced or governed by Kim's own whims. Supporters of Sunshine say that patience is needed, and a return to hostile accusations could create a standoff that would slow foreign investment in the South. Critics say millions are suffering now. The taped executions took place near Hoeryang, along the Chinese border. South Korean intelligence officers have told Western reporters the tape is far too detailed to be a fake. Yet officially the tape's authenticity is "still under investigation." North Korean refugees claim that an underground group called Youth League for Freedom shot the tape, which records about 104 minutes over two days. The camera is held at mid-body and initial images are of a rush of dark winter coats, a thronging crowd, police officers pushing people into line. Some 1,500 persons appear scattered around a rocky ravine. At one point, a white "propaganda truck" pulls up and over a megaphone one hears a charge read out. The accused are described as prostitute traffickers. (Sources insist the executed were helping Koreans escape the North.) In due course, white posts are hammered into the ground. Then two men are escorted from a tent. Their arms are tied to the post. People stand on top of bicycles to see. A woman is heard to say, "I can't watch this." A police chief's voice calls out, "Aim, fire, fire, fire." Nine shots by three soldiers ring out from behind the prisoners, who instantly fall. An official with a megaphone can be heard saying, "How pathetic is the end of these traitors of the fatherland." Such footage is rare, coming from one of the world's most closed states. Since 1956, North Korea has been sorted into a hierarchy of those with greater or lesser adoration for the ruling Kim family. At the top is a "core class" of supporters, followed by a "wavering class" whose loyalty is questioned, and a "hostile class" that are outcast. The Kim family "recognizes only a part of the population," notes Stephen Bradner, a veteran US adviser in Seoul. "The rest are considered disposable." Evidence of a system of gulags where hundreds of thousands of the hostile class live has been confirmed by satellite imagery. From 1995 to 1999, between 1 and 3 million starved to death. Detailed knowledge of the North is difficult to obtain. Nearly half the geographical area is off limits. Distrust of foreigners is profound. A fifth of the population are alleged to be informers, and a half dozen security agencies compete with each other to quash dissent, say US sources. What the tape shows, apart from punishment seemingly in excess of the alleged crime, is that the accused have no lawyer, are not allowed to speak, and have no appeal, says Abraham Lee, a human rights lawyer in Seoul who also heads Refuge Pnan, which offers sanctuary for refugees. US and Japanese sources describe a practice of stuffing rocks in the mouths of the accused - making them unable to shout out last words against the regime. Many activists express dismay at a disinterest in the fate of fellow Koreans. Gyeng-seob Oh, who runs the newsletter NKnet, says, "When I first saw the footage, I thought it would be front-page news. But South Korea, the most important market for this information, was not interested." The only public airing of the tape in Korea came March 25 in a basement room of the Seoul National Assembly Library. One refugee testified that Pyongyang had in recent years declared that executions should be kept indoors. A large public outdoor gathering suggests that a crackdown may be under way, experts mused. Another refugee plaintively asked the group what South Koreans will say to North Koreans "once North Korea is liberated. "What will we say when they ask us, 'What did you do to help?' " -------- space Plans by U.S. to Dominate Space Raising Concerns Arms Experts Worried at Pentagon Push for Superiority By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 29, 2005; Page A02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7995-2005Mar28?language=printer Arms control advocates in the United States and abroad are expressing concern with the Bush administration's push for military superiority in space. A series of Pentagon doctrinal papers, released over the past year, have emphasized that the U.S. military is increasingly dependent on space satellites for offensive and defensive operations, and must be able to protect them in times of war. The Air Force in August put forward a Counterspace Operations Doctrine, which described "ways and means by which the Air Force achieves and maintains space superiority" and has worked to develop weapons to accomplish such missions. On March 1, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed a new National Defense Strategy paper that said the use of space "enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation." A key goal of Rumsfeld's new strategy is "to ensure our access to and use of space and to deny hostile exploitation of space to adversaries." The Pentagon is developing a suborbital space capsule that could hit targets anywhere in the world within two hours of being launched from U.S. bases. It also is developing systems that could attack potential enemy satellites, destroying them or temporarily preventing them from sending signals. Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center and an arms control official in the Clinton administration, said the United States is moving toward a national space doctrine that is "preemptive and proactive." He expects the Bush administration to produce a new National Space Policy statement soon that will contrast with the one adopted in 1996 by President Bill Clinton. "We adopted the traditional U.S. position of being a reluctant space warrior," Krepon said of the Clinton position. "Space was to be used for peaceful purposes, but if someone messed with us, we couldn't allow that to happen. But it was not our space policy preference." Krepon last week attended a conference in Geneva organized by the Chinese and Russian governments on preventing an arms race in outer space. Moscow and Beijing have for years promoted a new treaty to govern arms in space, since the current international agreement prohibits only nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction in space. One of those attending last week's session was Hu Xiaodi, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Disarmament Conference. At a U.N. disarmament meeting last year, Hu criticized efforts to achieve "control of outer space," as well as research into weapons that can be used there. "It is no exaggeration to say that outer space would become the fourth battlefield after land, sea and air should we sit on our hands," he said. Krepon said a new treaty is needed because "if the U.S. proceeds to weaponize space, anyone can compete, and that makes sure everyone loses." Theresa Hitchens, vice president of the Center for Defense Information, also attended the Geneva session and said a low-ranking U.S. diplomat attended as an observer but did not speak. She said experts there discussed where the issues stood and how one could verify a treaty for space security. "That included a code of conduct and even just banning kinetic anti-satellite weapons," she said. Analyzing the proposed Pentagon fiscal 2006 budget just sent to Congress, Hitchens and her colleagues pointed to $60.9 million for an experimental XXS spacecraft whose "microsatellite payloads" could attack enemy satellites. Another $68 million is earmarked for a Near Field Infrared Experiment that would use infrared technology to disable enemy satellite transmissions. Pentagon officials make no secret that they are working on new defensive systems to protect the nation's satellites. "I think everybody that I know in the United States military and the Department of Defense understands the important role that our space assets play in our national security," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former head of the Space Command, told the House Armed Services Committee March 10. "One of the biggest issues that we had to deal with was trying to figure out what was happening to a particular capability if the function was interrupted." One system under development would be able to identify a ground station or satellite interfering with U.S. satellites, so that it could be destroyed. As another defensive measure, the United States last October announced deployment of its first mobile, ground-based system that can temporarily disrupt communications from an enemy satellite. The Counter Communications System uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to silence transmissions from a satellite in a way that is reversible. Two more units are due later this year. -------- spies Bush approves tough new plan to battle spies By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published March 29, 2005 http://www.wpherald.com/North_America/storyview.php?StoryID=20050329-102820-2614r WASHINGTON -- Nearly 80 Americans have been caught spying since 1985, and the Bush administration has launched a more aggressive anti-spying effort to better combat foreign intelligence activities, according to a new strategy report made public yesterday. The National Counterintelligence Strategy was approved March 1 by President Bush, marking the first time that the U.S. government has sought to formulate a comprehensive counterspy program, said Michelle Van Cleave, head of the office of the national counterintelligence executive, a White House-level intelligence post. The strategy calls for "specific counterintelligence policies for attacking foreign intelligence services systematically via strategic counterintelligence operations," stated the report, which was released yesterday. The new strategy "will require substantial changes in the conduct of U.S. counterintelligence," Miss Van Cleave said. "These changes include a renewed intelligence focus on hostile services and intelligence capabilities, including those of terrorist groups, and proactive efforts to defeat them," she said. The strategy will call for the FBI, CIA and other intelligence components to "identify, assess, neutralize and exploit foreign intelligence activities before they can do harm to the United States." The 22-page report said the Americans arrested for passing classified data to foreign governments caused strategic damage that, in a time of war, could have been worse. The spies included the 1980s spy ring headed by John A. Walker Jr., which supplied U.S. military code secrets to Moscow for more than 17 years; the Army spy ring led by Sgt. Clyde Lee Conrad that passed NATO secrets to the Soviet Union for more than 18 years; and espionage by CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames, who sold secrets to Moscow for more than nine years. Other damaging spy cases in recent years include the case of FBI Agent Robert Hanssen, who gave Russia vital intelligence secrets for more than 21 years, and the case of Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Ana Montes, who spied for Cuba for more than 15 years until her arrest in 2001. The report stated that the spy cases "reveal a systemic vulnerability" and lack of a "comprehensive focus" on protecting U.S. secrets. U.S. counterintelligence "must be transformed into a more coordinated, communitywide effort to help neutralize penetrations of our government," the report said. In addition to protecting secrets, the new strategy aims to protect U.S. technology from theft by adversaries. "Today, more than 90 countries target sensitive U.S. technologies," the report said, noting that in addition to secret operations, foreign governments use businessmen, scientists and foreign students to steal trade secrets and other high technology. The new strategy calls for replacing the current counterintelligence system, which is fragmented, lacks centralized leadership and focuses too much on individual spy cases, the report said. In addition to policies aimed at attacking foreign spies, the new system will have an array of human, technical and computer counterintelligence activities. -------- us US prepares classified watch-list of 25 unstable countries By Guy Dinmore in Washington Published: March 29 2005 03:00 Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b7b6a460-9fee-11d9-b355-00000e2511c8.html The US intelligence community is drawing up a secret watch-list of 25 countries where instability might precipitate US intervention, according to officials in charge of a new office set up to co-ordinate planning for nation-building and conflict prevention. The list will be drawn up and revised every six months by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which synthesises intelligence for strategic planning, according to Carlos Pascual, head of the newly formed office of reconstruction and stabilisation. Conceived out of the acknowledged failure of postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the new State Department office amounts to recognition by the Bush administration that it needs to get better at nation-building - a concept it once scorned as social work disguised as foreign policy. But its small budget - $17m (€13m, £9m) requested from Congress this year and $124m in fiscal 2006 - reflects a lack of commitment, according to advisers. They say the administration remains deeply divided about the merits of nation-building and the international institutions that do it. Mr Pascual told a two-day conference last week on Reconstructing and Stabilising War-Torn States, organised by the independent US Institute of Peace, that the NIC would identify countries of "greatest instability and risk", to clarify priorities and allocate resources. The watch-list was classified, according to a spokesperson. However, another official gave the example of conflict-torn Nepal, saying it was the subject of a special study on fragile states by USAID, the government aid agency. USAID declined to comment. Although Mr Pascual, a former ambassador, will act as the lead co-ordinator between civilian agencies and the Pentagon, officials stressed creation of the new office did not mean the US was bent on nation-building through military action. While internal arguments still rage about how to deal with Iran, for example, senior members of the administration would prefer to see regime change brought about by opposition groups rather than by direct US military intervention, according to advisers who spoke privately. Mr Pascual said conflict prevention and postwar reconstruction of failed and failing states had become a "mainstream foreign policy challenge" because of the dangers of terrorist groups and the availability of weapons of mass destruction. His goals were to prevent conflict, but also to prepare to react quickly when the US military had to intervene. Post-conflict work would focus on creating laws and institutions of a "market democracy", he said. Planning would include forming a "reserve corps" of specialist civilian teams and devising reconstruction contracts in advance with private companies and NGOs. James Dobbins, former special US envoy to Afghanistan, welcomed the new office, saying the administration was beginning to learn from its failures. Nicholas Burns, the newly appointed under-secretary of state for political affairs, played down the military aspect and linked the new office with the "transformational diplomacy" advocated by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state. -------- OTHER -------- imf / world bank / wto (economics) Push for Wolfowitz counterweight at World Bank By Andrew Balls in Washington, Martin Arnold in Paris and George Parker in Brussels Published: March 27 2005 18:50 Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/12240d7a-9ee6-11d9-82f0-00000e2511c8.html European finance ministers are pushing for a top European official at the World Bank to provide a counterweight to Paul Wolfowitz, the US candidate to succeed James Wolfensohn as bank president. Mr Wolfowitz, who last week met representatives from Europe and developing countries in Washington, is expected to be confirmed in the post on Thursday. Before then, European officials are trying to organise that Mr Wolfowitz visit European finance ministers to discuss his vision for the bank. Mr Wolfowitz has agreed to listen to the arguments for greater European representation at the bank, officials said. France wants a strong new European deputy, mirroring the division of jobs at the International Monetary Fund. -------- ACTIVISTS Protesters jailed in Belarus as fears grow of regimes falling By Julius Strauss in Moscow (Filed: 29/03/2005) UK Telegraph http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/29/wbela29.xml Authorities in Belarus yesterday jailed about a dozen protesters who called for the resignation of the authoritarian leader of the country, Alexander Lukashenko, at a demonstration last weekend. The central court in the capital, Minsk, handed down sentences of around 15 days in jail to some of the several hundred-strong crowd which gathered outside the president's office on Friday. The sentences came as authoritarian leaders across the former Soviet Union have stepped up measures against popular opposition forces following the overthrow of the regime in Kyrgyzstan last week. The uprising is the latest to overthrow an authoritarian regime in the former Soviet Union and comes hard on the heels of Ukraine's orange revolution late last year. There is now a growing sense that other authoritarian regimes might soon fall too. The most obvious targets for popular wrath are the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. In Russia, authorities are also nervous after the orange flag of revolt was recently hoisted during anti-Kremlin demonstrations, mostly comprised of pensioners protesting at a loss of state benefits. Adding to the growing sense of regional instability, about 200 protesters in the southern Russia republic of Ingushetia demonstrated yesterday against the regional president, a Kremlin appointee. They called for Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB man whose repressive policies have taken the unstable republic to the brink of rebellion, to step aside. Ingush police and army forces surrounded the demonstrators but did not move in apparently for fear of provoking violence. President Putin has done much to concentrate power in his own hands but his supporters fear that the Ukrainian scenario could be repeated in Russia.