NucNews - April 1, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
French Finally Confront Chernobyl Risks
Julio Godoy IPS-Inter Press Service, April 1, 2005
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=28118
PARIS, Apr 1 (IPS) - The French government concealed the enormous risks from radioactive clouds in the weeks following the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in April 1986, new evidence claims.
Official documents presented at a judicial inquiry in Paris this week supported claims made earlier by several independent scientists and by people suffering from cancer, especially of the thyroid glands.
The documents presented at the inquiry include a report by two nuclear scientists, Paul Genty and Gilbert Mouthon based on documents classified earlier as confidential. Their report says French authorities had "full knowledge" that radioactivity detected in France had surpassed safety levels.
The Central Service for Protection against Ionic Radiation (SCPRI, after its French name) "obviously concealed information at its disposal, and denied that high risks of contamination existed," they say. "As consequence, basic measures such as the administration of iodine (to the population at risjk) were never put in practice."
The explosion at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union, released numerous radioactive elements including iodine 131, an isotope that attacks the thyroids and provokes glandular cancer. Regular iodine pills are a known antidote.
Other documents that surfaced at the judicial hearings in Paris this week include minutes of government meetings at which officials warned of considerable health risks associated with the consumption of fresh vegetables and milk.
"We have figures (of radioactive contamination) that cannot be made public," an official had said at the meeting then. He gave an example: "goat milk: more than 10,000 becquerel per litre" (becquerel is a unit for measuring decay brought on by radioactivity).
European legislation at the time required that all food products containing more than 500 becquerel per litre of iodine 131 be taken off the shelves.
After the explosion at Chernobyl Apr. 26, all European governments ordered urgent measures to protect their people from radioactivity. In Germany the government banned consumption of fresh vegetables for a month, starting May 1986. It also banned fresh milk for children.. All swimming pools were closed, and sports activities in open air were declared dangerous.
The Italian government banned the sale of fresh vegetables starting May 12, and recommended that pregnant women and children under 10 avoid fresh milk. It set up strict border controls on all food products from abroad.
Similar measures were taken across Europe. Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Finland stopped children from playing in open air, and ordered substitution of fresh dairy products by powder milk.
Only France refused to take such measures. On May 6 that year the ministry of agriculture reassured people that "French territory, due to its distance (from Chernobyl), has totally avoided being affected by the radioactivity."
In another statement early in May, then environment minister Alain Carignon said the government had found "levels of radioactivity far below danger, five, ten, hundred times below dangerous levels."
But the documents presented at the inquiry this week show that French agencies commonly found radioactivity levels of between 2000 and 4000 becquerels per litre in milk and other food products.
The present judicial inquiry was initiated in 2001 by 51 people suffering from thyroid cancer, who associate their illness with the Chernobyl radioactive cloud, and by the Research Commission on Radioactivity, an independent group of scientists who have been studying nuclear contamination in France since the early 1990s.
"Even if we do not have all the conclusions yet, experts shows the dimensions of the cover-up launched by the government of the time," Emmanuel Ludot, legal representative of some of the victims of thyroids cancer, told IPS.
Ludot said his clients were not expecting any "confession" from the politicians who mismanaged the case, "but because the political responsibility is clearly established, the government should create an indemnification fund to aid the victims of the Chernobyl radioactivity to deal with their disease."
Stephane Lhomme, spokesperson of the group 'Get rid of nuclear power' said the French government had its own reasons for downplaying the risk.
"In France, which has 58 nuclear power stations, and depends up to 80 percent on nuclear power for the generation of electricity, governments do not want to associate nuclear power with health risks," he told IPS. "Therefore, Chernobyl was for the government at that time a most unwelcome catastrophe, whose risks had to be concealed, in order to avoid the emergence of people's opposition to nuclear power."
----
Whistleblower group targets Hanford workers with advertisements
By JOHN K. WILEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Friday, April 1, 2005 · Last updated 4:06 p.m. PT
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WST%20Hanford%20Whistleblower%20Ads
SPOKANE, Wash. -- A Hanford whistleblower group has begun airing television and radio commercials encouraging workers who have witnessed safety lapses at the federal nuclear reservation to step forward.
The spots feature Matt Taylor, a former Hanford nuclear reservation worker and whistleblower represented by the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit, public interest organization and law firm that paid for the ads.
"Matt Taylor's case is just one of dozens we encounter at Hanford every year," Tom Carpenter, GAP nuclear oversight program director said in a news release. "These ads encourage Hanford workers to take a stand to protect their community, the environment and themselves."
Hanford, part of the World War II Manhattan Project to make plutonium for nuclear weapons, stores about 53 million gallons of the most dangerous radioactive and chemical wastes in 177 underground tanks.
The federal nuclear reservation is now engaged in the cleanup of the nation's largest collection of nuclear waste, a $2 billion-a-year job involving some 11,000 workers.
The spots began running Thursday and primarily will run in the Tri-Cities and Yakima areas, where many Hanford workers live, GAP said.
Department of Energy Hanford spokeswoman Colleen French declined to comment specifically on the GAP ads, but said: "In general, the safety of employees is our number one goal every day. Any employee ... can make their concerns about safety known. We have an open door policy."
Taylor worked for Hanford contractors from October 1997 to October 2001, filing a series of work safety complaints and alleging harassment, blacklisting and retaliation.
In the commercials, Taylor says he believes in hard work, teamwork and community and tells his three sons they have to stand up for those beliefs "even when it's hard." Taylor has claimed he was subject to physical assaults and vandalism to his home and vehicle after filing safety complaints.
"I finally asked some questions. I got harassed for it, even got threats against my home. And like others who spoke up, I lost my job," Taylor says in the spots, which refer viewers and listeners to the GAP Web site.
Several Hanford contractors reached financial settlements with Taylor, who finally left Hanford in October 2001.
GAP has represented Hanford whistleblowers since 1987.
The organization pushed for passage last year of Initiative 297, which prohibits dumping additional nuclear wastes at Hanford before existing waste is removed.
In 1992, the Energy Department issued regulations to protect contractor employees who raise health, safety, environmental and management concerns and to require investigations and action on such complaints. The department expanded that in 1996 by creating an Office of Employee Concerns in Washington to help handle employee complaints. The office typically handles 20 such cases each year.
On the Net:
Energy Department: http://www.doe.gov
Government Accountability Project: http://www.whistleblower.org/
-------- britain
Canada Announces WMD Strategy
Friday, April 1, 2005 Global Security Newswire
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_1.html#8F17F26E
Canada has set out four strategic objectives to address the threat of an attack using weapons of mass destruction, a Canadian official announced in a press statement yesterday (see GSN, March 18).
The new strategy will focus on prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, according to Anne McLellan, deputy prime minister and minister of public safety and emergency preparedness (Canada News Wire, March 31).
-------- canada
Canada Announces WMD Strategy
Friday, April 1, 2005 Global Security Newswire
http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_4_1.html#8F17F26E
Canada has set out four strategic objectives to address the threat of an attack using weapons of mass destruction, a Canadian official announced in a press statement yesterday (see GSN, March 18).
The new strategy will focus on prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, according to Anne McLellan, deputy prime minister and minister of public safety and emergency preparedness (Canada News Wire, March 31).
-------- depleted uranium
Does US military 'recognize' its own regulations on DU?
Traprock Peace Center
April 1, 2005
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10827&l=i&size=1&hd=0
Traprock Peace Center
103A Keets Road, Deerfield, MA 01342 (413) 773-7427 www.traprockpeace.org
Together We Explore Nonviolence, Foster Community, Work to end war, Promote Communication & Take Initiatives on Environmental and Justice issues
Does US military 'recognize' its own regulations on DU?
Will it now comply with environmental and health care mandates for both US and Iraq?
Retired Major Doug Rokke, Ph.D. (USAR, retired), who was an Army health physicist during the Gulf war and was then responsible for trying to 'clean up' radiologically contaminated US equipment (RCE's) there, has been calling on the military to follow its own regulations < http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html >.
He and Damacio Lopez continue to make this call < http://www.traprockpeace.org/doug_rokke_damacio_lopez.html >.
These Army regulations and the "Handling Procedures for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" < http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf > specify stringent requirements for handling RCE's, as well as providing medical surveillance, training, and environmental protection among other requirements.
[You may also download the Procedures at the military's site: http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf ]. For instance, the regulations require protecting the environment in the war zone - Iraq in this case - (Army Regulation 700-48, 2-4) and medical care for any "individual" who "may have been exposed" to DU contamination. (Army Regulation 700-48, 2-5). (The US has used DU in many US states and other countries; we focus on Iraq here, given the current crisis and the huge amounts of DU used. The regulations apply wherever DU has been used.)
Reading these regulations and procedures, one must wonder how the US can justify - morally or legally - using such a weapon. (See the Karen Parker, J.D., article on the illegality of DU Weaponry under international humanitarian law: http://traprockpeace.org/karen_parker_du_illegality.pdf )
Very recently, two US military publications have taken noticee of the regulations. But again, what of the Iraqis - a people who will be left to live with what the US has left behind? And, will the military follow these reminders of their regulations, even concerning US soldiers?
The Nov-Dec, 2004 issue of the US military's Hazardous Technical Information Services Bulletin, VOL. 14 NO. 6; pages 7-8, references requirements for the "Management and Handling of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities." You may download the entire Bulletin here < http://www.traprockpeace.org/c0501.pdf >
or at the original military site - http://www.dscr.dla.mil/userweb/htis/nov-dec04.pdf (We offer a local download option because sometimes government documents disappear, and because some people do not like to pick up cookies at military websites.)
Dr. Abdul H. Khalid, Chemical Engineer, HTIS, writes:
The U.S. Department of Army (DA) Regulation (AR 700-48) outlines formal policy and procedures for the management of equipment contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) or radioactive commodities. This publication is available online at: http://traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf
The DA Pamphlet (PAM 700-48) recommends handling procedures for equipment contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) and/or other low-level wastes (LLRW). PAM 700-48 applies to DA commands, installations, and activities. The current revision updated symbols, removed obsolete publications, and added technical references. This publication is available at http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf
These documents are of great help to generators of excess radioactive materials who wish to collect and consolidate these materials in preparation for removals off-post.
He goes on to give contact information for Radioactive Waste Disposal Offices in order to receive "guidance on radioactive waste materials, their proper disposal procedures, and technical information on LLRW." See the Bulletin, pages 7-8, for the complete article: http://www.traprockpeace.org/nov-dec04.pdf
We note, though, that a regulation more than just "outlines formal policy and procedures..." Federal regulations are federal law. The regulation states "By order of the Secretary of the Army...[t]regulatin prescribes policy and procedures for the management of equipment contaminated with Depleted Uranium or radioactive commodities." (emphasis added)
In January, 2005, the Central Region Review - U.S. Army Environmental Center, Central Regional Office, Kansas City, MO
January, 2005 - Regions 6 & 7 picks up this thread. See the section Federal Actions - Other Regulatory Activity and General Information, page 27. (The regulation is not exactly highlighted as it was put on page 27, but it's there nonetheless). Download it here < http://www.traprockpeace.org/c0501.pdf > or at the government site - http://aec.army.mil/usaec/reo/c0501.pdf
The January note validates Mr. Khalid's article, as well as what Doug Rokke has been saying for years, to a point. I say "to a point" because it also understates the force of the regulations, turning law into mere policy. The January note reads:
Handling Procedures for Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities (DA PAM 70048) and Management of Equipment Contaminated with Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities (AR 700-48). Department of the Army pamphlet PAM 700-48 provides recommended handling procedures for equipment contaminated with depleted uranium and other low-level radioactive materials or wastes. Army Regulation, AR 700-48, outlines formal procedures and policies for the management of handling contaminated equipment. These documents can be accessed at http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p700_48.pdf and http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_pam_700-48.pdf.
Guidance on radioactive waste material, proper disposal techniques, and technical information is available from the following points of contact: Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Headquarters, 8725 John J. Kingman Highway, Suite 2533, Fort Belvoir, Virginia 22060, or telephone (703) 767-6331; Department of Defense, Army Industrial Operations Command Executive Agency, ATTN: AMSIO-SF, Rock Island, Illinois, or telephone (309) 782-2033; US Air Force, IERA/SDRH, 2402 E. Drive Brooks AFB, Texas, or telephone (210) 536 3489; Naval Sea Command Detachment, Radiological Affairs Support Office, PO Drawer 260, Yorktown, Virginia, or telephone (757) 887-4692.
[Please note: I did not add a link to the Traprock website in either of the above two military documents. They did indeed cite Traprock for a copy of the military's own regulations. We're flattered but surprised to be an offical source of federal law.]
Finally, someone in the military has taken note of the military's own regulations. Thank you Dr. Khalid. Still, the force of the mandate has been understated. Even if the military were encouraged to act concerning US soldiers posts, and what about the mess that the US (and the UK, to a lesser degree) have left in Iraq? The land and air are contamined by radioactive dust and debris from hundreds of tons of uranium muntions that have been used in Iraq since the first Gulf War.
We don't know how much DU was used in the current war. Estimates range from the military's figures of 100 plus tons, to about 2000 tons if DU was used in bunker busters. The US is not helping much to get to the bottom of this, as it has refused (unlike the UK) to divulge where it has used DU in Gulf War II. Even accepting US figures, about 450-500 tons would be a convervative estimate of the amount used since the first Gulf War. (I suspect it is much higher: http://traprockpeace.org/bunker_busters_kilpatrick.html .) Additionally, hundreds of Iraqi vehicles have been left behind, in violation of Army regulations.
Army Regulation 700-48, Section 2-4 (my emphasis added)
c. Handling.
(1) The unit/team/individual responsible for the equipment, whether friendly or foreign, at the time of damage or contamination is responsible for taking all action consistent with this regulation and DA PAM 700-48.
...
(6) All equipment, to include captured or combat RCE, will be surveyed, packaged, retrograded, decontaminated and released IAW Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, DA PAM 700-48 and other relevant guidance.
Further, the dumping (abandonment) of much of this equipment in open air 'grave yards' violates 700-48, 2-4:
e. Disposal.
(1) In general, environmental impact must be considered prior to equipment retrograde. Retrograde operations must minimize the spread of contamination preventing further harm to personnel and damage to equipment.
(2) Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment without approval from overall MACOM commander. If local disposal is approved, the responsible MACOM commander must document the general nature of the disposed material and the exact location of the disposal. As soon as possible the MACOM commander must forward all corresponding documentation to the Chief, Health Physicist, AMCSF-P, HQAMC. (emphasis added)
In the photo at right, Tedd Weyman of the Uranium Medical Research Center < http://www.umrc.net/ > inspects an Iraqi tank destroyed by DU, at a 10 hectare open air dump for destroyed Iraqi equipment, including RCE's. The photo is a copyrighted screen shot from the award-winning German public television documentary, "The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children." photo © 2003 Telepool http://www.telepool.de
US HAS ADMITTED HEALTH RISKS
We, in the anti-Du activist community, hear from US military apologists all the time that there is no evidence of adverse health effects. They're spinning rubbish. Without citing all of the scientific evidence here (that's a whole book - see the proceedings of the World Uranium Weapons Conference: http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_hamburg03.html), the military's own documents condemn their argument. For example,
-Occasionally, a US government memo becomes public - such as the Los Alamos memo (where proponency - lying - is the order of the day), or the Defense Nuclear Agency memo that admits to DU's threat to health - http://traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html
-Or, a military figure says some truth about DU in a non-public setting, such as a presentation to manufacturers
http://traprockpeace.org/wakayama2.pdf
-Or a Pentagon scientist, such as Dr. Alexandra Miller, reports some uncomfortable research (about chromosomal damage and bystander effects) as she did at MIT. Her presentation on the DU health panel at MIT, with Dr. Thomas Fasy, is available at http://traprockpeace.org/mit_health.html
-And sometimes GI's talk about the horror of fiendish DU fire - as happened after A-10's attacked Marines at An Nasiriyah with 30 mm DU rounds - http://traprockpeace.org/du_friendly_fire.html
Here's a quote from a Marine field historian who heard these testimonies:
"It's bad enough to be shot, but to be shot with a depleted uranium round that basically turns you into a hand full of mush."
- Col. Reed Bonadonna, field historian, talking to NPR's Jackie Northam
-And, sometimes, a freedom of information act request turns up an astonishing admission of 14 years of knowledge of DU's hazard to health: http://traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_milner.html
The Department of Defense is a huge organization. It can't control all information, and occasionally some truth gets out. It's up to us to act on that truth.
ACT
Call your elected officials and tell them (they work for you) to take action to abolish uranium weapons. And please call your favorite meda and ask that they cover the issue. Some media have given excellent coverage (RNNTV in metro NYC; WAMC in Albany; the Christian Science Monitor; Vanity Fair; King TV5 in Washington State; and the Seattle Intelligencier to name a few. But where are NPR, the New York Times and the Washington Post? Has your local media covered DU?
If media, a Congressional aide, or your organization is looking for an expert on DU, please call us - we'd be happy to offer suggestions.
Charles Jenks
Traprock Peace Center
Deerfield, MA
413-773-7427
(ask for Sunny Miller, Executive Director,
re: recommendations on experts)
-------- iran
Rethink on Iran's nuclear ambitions
01apr05 - REUTERS
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,12715064%255E663,00.html
FRANCE, Britain and Germany are considering letting Iran keep nuclear technology that could be used to make bombs, diplomats said yesterday.
Such a step would lead to a clash with Washington, which has backed European Union talks with Iran on condition Tehran renounce all activities that could produce nuclear fuel.
However, a US State Department spokesman dismissed the diplomats' remarks, saying Washington and the three big EU countries were still united in insisting Iran must halt all sensitive technology.
Sharing Washington's suspicions that Iran may be planning to develop nuclear arms, the EU trio has offered Iran political and economic incentives to scrap its uranium enrichment program, which can produce reactor fuel but could also give Tehran the capability to make bomb-grade material.
The EU has previously said nothing short of dismantling the project will convince it Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons. But diplomats said it was now considering letting Iran keep a limited enrichment program.
"The Iranians have been offering this for a long time. What's new is that the EU is thinking about it," one diplomat said.
Iran has repeatedly said it will never give up uranium enrichment, part of sensitive nuclear work it has frozen while talks with the EU continue. It says its nuclear program is aimed solely at producing electricity.
Iran yesterday gave reporters a rare glimpse of the heavily defended and controversial centrepiece of its nuclear program, sending another clear message that it was eager to resume enriching uranium.
"The people involved in the project are frustrated by the suspension," Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said after a group of journalists were allowed to accompany President Mohammad Khatami on a tour of the facility.
"They hope there is an agreement with the Europeans so that all activities can be resumed. Enrichment is Iran's right," he said.
The US immediately dismissed the tour as a media stunt.
----
US to keep pressure on Iran, North Korea
Friday, April 01, 2005 - (c)2005 IranMania.com
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=30606&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
LONDON, April 01 (IranMania) - The White House said Thursday it had no plans to change is approach to nuclear disputes with North Korea and Iran despite a new report warning that intelligence on their atomic programs may be shaky. "We've got to continue to work to improve our intelligence capabilities, and we've got to continue to confront the threats posed by the regimes of North Korea and Iran," said spokesman Scott McClellan.
"We're pursuing diplomatic approaches to get them to open up to the international community and fulfill their international obligations. That's what we're working to do," McClellan told reporters.
He spoke after a presidential commission said pre-war US intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "dead wrong" and warned that US spy agencies lack information about countries like Iran and North Korea.
"The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries," the panel said in its 600-page report.
Separately, US President George W. Bush indicated that he still believed in using the preemptive military force against rising threats, a doctrine he articulated after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and applied to Iraq.
"My administration will continue to make intelligence reforms that will allow us to identify threats before they fully emerge so we can take effective action to protect the American people," he told reporters.
"We need to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on the weapons of mass murder they would like to use against our citizens," Bush said as he unveiled the presidential commission's report on flawed intelligence.
Bush, who lumped Iraq with North Korea and Iran in an "axis of evil," ordered the war on Iraq on grounds that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and could give them to terrorists targeting the United States.
The commission said after a year-long enquiry that the flaws that crippled analysis of Iraq "are still all too common" and warned that US intelligence on countries like Iran and North Korea lacks critical information.
"Across the board, the Intelligence Community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the worlds most dangerous actors. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or 10 years ago," it said.
McClellan downplayed the report's potential impact on US policy towards Iran and North Korea.
"It's not un-similar to what we faced with the regime in Iraq, in terms of their history of deceiving the international community. These are two regimes, that have a history of not complying with their international obligations," he said.
The panel said its classified report included a chapter on US covert actions and another on Iran and North Korea, neither of which could be included in the unclassified version.
The commission said it reviewed US intelligence about "several countries that pose current proliferation threats, including Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.
"We can say here that we found that we have only limited access to critical information about several of these high-priority intelligence targets," the panel said in its report to President George W. Bush.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, Bush's rival in the 2004 election, said the commission report was "much more than a wake-up call."
"Not only was the intelligence dead wrong about Iraq, but with growing threats in Iran and North Korea we must take deadly seriously the commission's conclusion that we know disturbingly little about the weapons programs of hostile nations," he said in a statement.
----
IAEA Criticizes Iran Cooperation
Paul Kerr, Arms Control Today April 2005
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_04/Iran_Goldschmidt.asp
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Deputy Director-General Pierre Goldschmidt told the agency’s Board of Governors March 1 that Iran has failed to cooperate fully with the IAEA investigation of Tehran’s nuclear programs. Specifically, he said, Iran has failed to provide adequate information about its uranium-enrichment program to the agency and has also lagged in providing IAEA inspectors access to some facilities suspected of playing a role in nuclear weapons research. Iran has, however, continued to observe its November pledge to suspend its enrichment program.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters the next day that Iran should increase its “transparency” by providing the agency with all relevant information.
This board meeting marked the first time since March 2003 that ElBaradei did not present a written report about the IAEA’s investigation, which began in 2002. That probe has revealed that Tehran conducted a variety of clandestine nuclear activities in violation of its IAEA safeguards agreement. (See ACT, December 2004.) No new evidence of secret Iranian nuclear programs has emerged recently, although Goldschmidt did present new evidence regarding Iran’s already known uranium-enrichment program.
Safeguards agreements require states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to allow the agency to monitor their declared civilian nuclear activities to ensure that they are not diverted to military use. Although Iran has given IAEA inspectors access to its safeguarded facilities, as well as some others, the IAEA has limited authority to visit other sites without evidence that the government is conducting nuclear activities there.
Uranium Enrichment
Goldschmidt told the board that the IAEA has obtained new information regarding Iran’s P-1 gas centrifuge-based uranium-enrichment program, including new details about Iran’s initial acquisition of centrifuge technology.
Uranium enrichment increases the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope, producing either low-enriched uranium for civilian nuclear reactor fuel or highly enriched uranium (HEU). If enriched to high enough levels, HEU can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons. Gas centrifuges enrich uranium hexafluoride gas by spinning it at very high speeds.
Goldschmidt stated that Iran provided the agency with a document Jan. 12 purportedly describing a 1987 offer from a “foreign intermediary” that apparently included a disassembled centrifuge, as well as drawings and specifications for centrifuges and an enrichment facility.
According to the document, the intermediary also offered to supply Iran with equipment to produce uranium metal. Although some nuclear power reactors use this material as fuel, Iran has no such reactors. U.S. officials have expressed concern that Iran intends to produce uranium metal for fissile material or other nuclear weapons purposes.
Iran currently possesses a uranium-conversion facility designed to convert lightly processed uranium ore into several different uranium compounds, including uranium hexafluoride and uranium metal. According to the IAEA, Iran initially entered into discussions in 1991 with a “foreign supplier” to construct such a facility but decided six years later to build the facility itself after the supplier pulled out. It is not clear if this supplier is the intermediary who participated in the 1987 meeting.
Iran has told the agency that it received only some of the material described in the offer, Goldschmidt said, but he did not specify further. The IAEA previously reported that Iran received centrifuge drawings and components in 1987 but did not mention an offer of uranium metal production equipment.
Goldschmidt also did not identify the “foreign intermediary” mentioned in the document, and a Department of State official familiar with the issue told Arms Control Today March 15 that the IAEA is not yet certain who participated in the meeting. The agency has previously indicated that Iran received its centrifuge materials through a “clandestine supply network” run by former Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan.
The State Department official said that the United States believes Iran has not yet “come clean” with all the details of the 1987 meeting, some of which Washington believes would constitute important new revelations. In a March 2 statement to the IAEA board, U.S. Ambassador Jackie Sanders cited press reports indicating that the 1987 offer may have been “explicitly intended as the first of many ‘phases’ in future cooperation between Iran and that intermediary.”
Goldschmidt also described another possible Iranian connection to the Khan network. According to Iranian officials, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization learned in 1994 that an “intermediary” had offered to deliver 500 sets of P-1 centrifuge components and related designs to an Iranian company unaffiliated with the organization. Goldschmidt did not identify this intermediary.
Iran has acknowledged receiving the components and designs in two shipments during the mid-1990s, although Iranian documents provided to the IAEA in January 2005 give slightly different dates for the shipments within the same time period.
The IAEA has also been investigating Iran’s work on a more advanced P-2 centrifuge, but Tehran has not provided the agency with any new information about that program, Goldschmidt stated.
The agency is also continuing to investigate the sources of enriched uranium particles found in Iranian facilities. Iran has admitted to enriching uranium to very low proportions of uranium-235, but IAEA inspectors have found particles enriched to much higher levels. ElBaradei reported last November that the IAEA’s evidence so far “tends, on balance, to support” Iran’s claim that the particles came from imported centrifuge components. Other possible explanations include still-undisclosed Iranian nuclear experiments, as well as concealment of imported or domestically produced nuclear material.
IAEA inspectors have taken environmental samples at several locations in Pakistan in an effort to determine the uranium’s origin. Additionally, Goldschmidt told the board that the agency has reached an agreement with that country on the “modalities for sampling a number of old centrifuge components.” However, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Islamabad has not yet decided on the matter, Reuters reported March 25.
Goldschmidt also stated that the IAEA is to analyze environmental samples collected by inspectors in January 2005 from “locations” in a country where, according to Tehran, centrifuge components were stored en route to Iran. The State Department official confirmed a March 13 Agence France Presse report identifying the country in question as the United Arab Emirates, which was also a transit point for the Khan network’s shipments of centrifuge components to Libya. (See ACT, March 2004.) A 2004 British intelligence report stated that Dubai was the hub of Khan’s network since at least 2000.
Other Concerns
Goldschmidt further noted that Iran is continuing work on a heavy-water nuclear reactor, despite the IAEA board’s previous request that Tehran “reconsider” the project. (See ACT, July/August 2004.) The State Department official confirmed press reports that satellite imagery shows that Iran has begun pouring the reactor’s foundation.
Speaking to the board, Sanders dismissed Iran’s claim that the reactor is to produce radioisotopes for civilian purposes, implying that Iran actually wants the reactor to produce plutonium. The State Department official bolstered this argument by pointing out that Iran can produce the relevant radioisotopes in its Tehran research reactor, which is not even operating at full capacity.
Separating plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel is another method of obtaining fissile material. Goldschmidt said the IAEA is also continuing its efforts to determine the dates of Iran’s plutonium-separation experiments, which may have been conducted more recently than Tehran has claimed.
Additionally, Goldschmidt discussed IAEA inspectors’ visits to two sites in Iran where the country may have conducted clandestine nuclear-related activities.
He said Iran has not cooperated with the IAEA’s investigation of a physics research center that was operating at a site called Lavizan-Shian between 1989 and 1998. According to Goldschmidt, the agency wants more information concerning the center’s possible efforts “to acquire dual-use material and equipment that could be useful in uranium-enrichment and conversion activities.” Iran provided the agency with some relevant information in October but has apparently not cooperated further.
The site has previously attracted suspicion because of reports that Iran had razed buildings there in what may have been an attempt to conceal evidence of nuclear activities. ElBaradei reported last November that IAEA environmental samples taken at the site contained “no evidence of nuclear material.”
In addition, he said, following months of requests, IAEA inspectors visited the Parchin military complex in mid-January. Goldschmidt told the board that the inspectors “saw no relevant dual-use equipment or materials” but noted that their visit was limited in scope. The IAEA had identified four areas of interest but was only allowed to visit one, he said, adding that the IAEA is analyzing environmental samples taken during the visit. (See ACT, October 2004.)
Iran denied the IAEA’s request for an additional visit in a Jan. 27 note to the agency.
Suspension
Tehran has continued to abide by its November agreement to suspend its uranium-enrichment program for the duration of negotiations with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The two sides are attempting to reach a long-term agreement that is to include “objective guarantees that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
Addressing Iranian actions apparently designed to test the suspension agreement’s boundaries, Goldschmidt told the board that IAEA inspectors observed during December and January visits that Iran was conducting “quality control” work on centrifuge components that are not under IAEA seal. Iran told the agency in February that it had temporarily stopped this work pending discussions with its European interlocutors.
Goldschmidt also reported that Iran has begun constructing underground tunnels for storing nuclear materials near its uranium-conversion facility. Tehran notified the IAEA about the project, which Iran says began in September 2004, two days before agency inspectors visited the site Dec. 15. According to its safeguards agreement, Iran should have notified the IAEA earlier about the project, Goldschmidt said.
The State Department official described this violation as “minor” and added that Washington is not concerned about Iran conducting clandestine nuclear activities in the tunnels because the site is subject to IAEA monitoring. The project does, however, call into question Iran’s commitment to its suspension agreement, the official said.
Addressing another issue that had caused concern, Goldschmidt said that Iran has finished cleaning valves that had been removed from its pilot centrifuge facility located at Natanz. The valves are now in storage and monitored by the IAEA, he added.
----
Iran, Russia Reach Nuclear Agreement
Paul Kerr, Arms Control Today April 2005
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_04/Bushehr.asp
The conclusion of an agreement in which Russia will supply Iran with nuclear fuel for a 1,000-megawatt light-water nuclear power reactor marks the latest step in a decade-long controversy.
Russian Federal Agency for Atomic Energy Director Alexander Rumyantsev announced Feb. 27 that Tehran and Moscow had finally signed off on a deal to supply fuel for the reactor near the southern Iranian city of Bushehr for a period of 10 years. Although the United States has long opposed the reactor project, the Bush administration did not publicly criticize the agreement.
In 1995, Russia agreed to finish the reactor project, which is widely reported to be worth about $800 million. The original German contractor abandoned the project following Iran’s 1979 revolution.
A final deal was delayed several times as the two sides negotiated a provision that requires Iran to return the spent reactor fuel to Russia. The arrangement was designed to reduce the risk that Iran will separate plutonium from the spent fuel. Separated plutonium can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons. (See ACT, October 2003.)
Iran does not have a known facility for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to obtain plutonium, although Tehran has conducted related experiments.
Details
Although the full fresh-fuel delivery schedule has not been made public, Rumyantsev said that the first shipment will occur “some six months” before the reactor begins operation in late 2006. In a March 21 interview with Arms Control Today, a Russian government nuclear expert estimated that the spent fuel will not go back to Russia until 2011 at the earliest. The returned fuel will then be stored at a facility in the Russian city of Zheleznogorsk (formerly Krasnoyarsk-26).
There is some question, however, as to how long the spent fuel will need to remain in cooling ponds located in Iran before being sent to Russia. The Russian official’s estimate assumes that the fuel needs two years to cool. However, other Russian officials have told their U.S. counterparts that the fuel must stay in Iran between three and five years, a Department of State official told Arms Control Today March 21.
Both Russian and Iranian officials said the governments remain engaged in discussions about the possibility that Moscow might build additional reactors for Tehran.
Light-water nuclear reactors are considered more proliferation-resistant than other types of reactors. But the United States had wanted Russia to abandon the Bushehr project altogether, arguing that Moscow’s assistance would allow Iran to acquire expertise and dual-use technology that could aid it in developing a nuclear weapons program.
Undersecretary of State for International Security and Arms Control John Bolton told the House International Relations Committee in June 2003 that Iran could build “over 80 nuclear weapons” if it had access to sufficient fuel, operated the reactor for five to six years, and chose to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). This estimate assumes that Iran possesses a reprocessing facility.
The project was a point of contention during a May 2002 meeting between President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But U.S. officials said two months later that Washington would not publicly object to the reactor if Moscow took steps, such as requiring the spent fuel’s return, to mitigate the project’s proliferation risks, the State Department official said. Indeed, neither Bush nor Putin mentioned the issue during a joint press conference following a Feb. 24 bilateral meeting.
Russia contends that the reactor will not pose a proliferation risk because it will operate under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
IAEA safeguards agreements require states-parties to the NPT to allow the agency to monitor their declared civilian nuclear activities to ensure that they are not diverted to military use. Iran also signed an additional protocol to its safeguards agreement in 2003. That protocol augments the agency’s authority to detect clandestine nuclear activities. Tehran has agreed to abide by its provisions until Iran’s parliament ratifies the agreement.
Washington Reacts
Speaking to reporters Feb. 28, State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli would not say whether Washington approves of the deal. But he characterized it as representing a “convergence…of views between the United States and Russia about the problem posed by Iran’s nuclear program.”
The Bush administration has repeatedly asked Russia to help pressure Iran to end the latter’s uranium-enrichment program, which Washington says is a cover for a nuclear weapons program. Despite the recent fuel-supply deal, Tehran has said that it will continue to develop its own nuclear fuel cycle facilities.
The IAEA discovered in 2003 that Iran had an extensive, clandestine uranium-enrichment program. Tehran has suspended this program for the duration of negotiations with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The two sides are attempting to reach a long-term agreement that is to include “objective guarantees that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
Uranium enrichment increases the concentration of the uranium-235 isotope to produce either low-enriched uranium (LEU) for civilian nuclear reactor fuel or highly enriched uranium (HEU). If enriched to high enough levels, HEU can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons. The Bushehr reactor uses LEU.
A senior administration official told reporters in February that Russia has “made it clear” that it will not complete the reactor until “the Iranians have met all their international obligations.” Additionally, the State Department official suggested that Russia might use the fuel agreement as leverage to persuade Iran to cooperate with the Europeans.
Russia’s enthusiasm for such tactics is difficult to gauge. Putin displayed little alarm over Iran’s nuclear programs last month, stating that “Iran does not intend to produce nuclear arms.” Moreover, Moscow may not view Iran’s compliance with its European interlocutors’ demands as an “international obligation” because Iran is not legally obligated to suspend or dismantle its uranium-enrichment program.
Nevertheless, Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov explicitly stated March 1 that Iran should maintain its suspension, and Putin told reporters March 18 that Russia supports the Europeans’ negotiations.
The Bush administration previously said Moscow should condition the fuel supply agreement on Tehran’s conclusion of its additional protocol. Moscow hinted at such conditions, but the extent to which it linked the two issues is unclear.
----
Iranian cleric says US nuclear allegations are 'lies'
TEHRAN (AFP) Apr 01, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050401112745.nwqvnpvj.html
A senior Iranian cleric on Friday dismissed Washington's allegations that Iran is developping nuclear weapons as "lies" and said any US troops attacking the Islamic republic would be "cut into pieces".
"It is all a lie. Spreading lies is not a difficult job to do for liars," Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said in a Friday prayer sermon on Islamic Republic Day -- marking the 1979 referendum that saw an Islamic republic established.
Kashani said the international community "has access to all the areas and centers related to our enrichment activities".
"The US is now stuck in Iraq, so how could it then undertake anything on Iran's soil. It will be cut into pieces. It knows full well that it can not do anything," he said.
The United States accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and has not ruled out using force against Tehran, which inists its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy purposes.
-------- korea
Pyongyang call makes nuclear entanglement more complicated: analysts
SEOUL (AFP) Apr 01, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050401092456.btds2anq.html
Communist North Korea's call to broaden six-party talks into a regional disarmament forum left officials and analysts scratching their heads and seeing little to cheer about.
There was no official comment from South Korea and the United States said it was examining the statement while experts were divided on what it meant.
But most agreed that broadening the nuclear standoff beyond the Korean peninsula as requested by North Korea would add complexity to an already intractable dispute that has defied more than 30 months of high-level diplomatic maneuvering involving the United States, China and key regional players, they said.
"North Korea just made the nuclear entanglement more difficult to sort out," said Yun Duk-Min, an analyst at the state-funded Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security here.
"The statement suggests everything other than Pyongyang's willingness to come back to the six-party talks anytime soon."
Analysts were unsure where North Korea was headed with its latest initiative, but one suggested that the Stalinist state was looking beyond the current standoff to its future security and survival.
One matter pressing with increasing urgency on the impoverished North Korean regime is the burden associated with the upkeep of its 1.1-million-strong army, the fifth largest in the world.
"North Korea is now drawing a larger picture than the past six-party talks envisioned. It wants to change the decades-old armistice into a peace treaty with the United States," said Koh Yu-Hwan of Dongguk University.
"It is impossible for North Korea to resuscitate its collapsed economy without disarmament," he said.
He said the United States would find it hard to accept the North Korean demand at a time when it is not even clear whether Pyongyang is really armed with nuclear weapons as it claims.
North Korea has never tested a nuclear device, and no hard evidence exists to back up its claims, according to officials and experts.
"North Korea seeks to make its possession of nuclear arms a fait accompli and wants to be accepted as a nuclear power like Pakistan," said Koh.
"It wants to gain economic and diplomatic rewards by cutting the nuclear issue down very fine, like a salami," he added.
In the foreign ministry statement, released Thursday by the official Korean Central News Agency, Pyongyang said it wanted the six-party talks transformed into a disarmament forum to tackle what it called the US nuclear threat to the Korean peninsula.
North Korea wants future talks to focus on ways "to completely remove the US threat of nukes and a nuclear war from the peninsula and its vicinity," it said.
The talks should provide "a platform for seeking comprehensive ways of substantially and fairly realizing the denuclearization of the peninsula, not just as a bargaining ground where a give-and-take-type way of solution is discussed."
The South Korean government was officially silent on the statement but a senior official in the foreign ministry said that it came as no surprise because it reflected North Korea's recent drive to ratchet up the standoff.
Last month Pyongyang said that it had manufactured weapons, then that it intended to make more, and more recently that it had succeeded in building more bombs.
Han Song-Ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations, said the statement was also meant to underline the North's demand for a peace treaty to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.
"We have been persistent in our position that the armistice agreement must be replaced with a peace treaty during the past rounds of six-party talks but this demand has been consistently ignored by the US side," he said.
The nuclear standoff erupted in 2002 when the United States accused the North of operating a secret uranium-enrichment program.
----
US dismisses N Korea talks offer
Friday, 1 April, 2005 BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4400693.stm
The chief US negotiator, Christopher Hill, said the offer was not helpful and not serious.
Pyongyang withdrew indefinitely from six-nation talks on its nuclear status in February.
On Thursday, it said the focus of any future talks should no longer be on the North alone, but on regional disarmament by all parties involved.
Mr Hill said that if the North Koreans wanted to make "sarcastic" statements, they should come back to the talks and make them there, and not put out what he called "silly" press statements.
The BBC correspondent in Seoul, Charles Scanlon, says the exchange underlines the width of the gulf between the two sides.
Until now, North Korea has been demanding security guarantees and economic assistance in return for a nuclear freeze. It now seems to be aiming for a much more ambitious outcome, our correspondent says.
'US threat'
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday that Pyongyang had only felt compelled to build its own arsenal because of the threat from the US.
"The US keeps many tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea on a permanent basis. And it is ceaselessly shipping nuclear strike means there," the spokesman said.
"The US claims that if the DPRK [North Korea] dismantles its nuclear weapons first, it will be given 'collective assurances for security' and get a 'benefit'. This is, however, nothing but a gangster-like logic urging the DPRK to disarm itself and yield to the US domination."
He added that because Pyongyang now possessed nuclear weapons, rather than just the means to make them, the talks' emphasis should change.
"Now that the DPRK has become a full-fledged nuclear weapons state, the six-party talks should be disarmament talks where the participating countries negotiate the issue on an equal footing," he said.
Since 2002, three rounds of discussions involving the US, Russia, the two Koreas, Japan and China have sought to ease tensions on the peninsula, with little success.
In February, North Korea said it was pulling out of the process, claiming it was furious that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had branded it an "outpost of tyranny".
-------- latinamerica
Missing Radioactive Capsules Cause Venezuela Alert
Story by Tomas Sarmiento
REUTERS VENEZUELA: April 1, 2005
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30190/story.htm
CARACAS - Venezuelan authorities have launched a nationwide hunt for two capsules of radioactive material that went missing this month and which could kill people exposed to them, officials said on Thursday.
One of the two missing capsules of radioactive Iridium-192, which were being used in equipment to check oil industry pipes for faults, disappeared from a barge on March 15 in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela's western oil producing hub.
The other went missing after apparently falling off the back of a workers' truck on March 21 in the eastern oil producing state of Monagas, Angel Diaz, Director of Nuclear Affairs at Venezuela's Energy Ministry, told Reuters.
"They were lost through negligence... We're in a state of emergency ... we're looking for them," he added.
Venezuela's National Guard, Civil Defense Service and police were also involved in the hunt for the capsules, which were encased in protective containers of depleted uranium about the size of a lunchbox.
Authorities appealed to the public not to open the red and yellow containers, which carried radiation warning signs.
Diaz said if they were opened everyone within a range of at least five yards (metres) would be exposed to harmful radiation.
"The health and lives of people around would be at risk," he said. "Since they're quite heavy, people might think they have something valuable inside."
Iridium-192 emits powerful gamma radiation. It is often used in treating prostate cancer and in detecting faults in underground industrial pipes.
Authorities were concerned that some people might try to use the capsules to cause harm.
"They could be used in a malicious fashion. Someone might try to place these capsules near a person or a place where people were gathered, for terrorist purposes," Venezuela's Civil Defense chief Antonio Rivero said.
Rivero said authorities had no leads so far as to who might have the capsules.
-------- russia
U.S., Russia Seek Help on Plutonium
Claire Applegarth, April 2005 Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_04/US_Russia_Plutonium.asp
The Department of Energy is looking for international donations to help pay the substantial costs of shutting down Russia’s three remaining nuclear reactors that produce weapons-grade plutonium.
This program, originally assigned to the Pentagon in 1997, works cooperatively with Russia to provide replacement fossil-fuel energy plants for the two Siberian cities that house the three reactors. The Energy Department assumed responsibility for these activities in 2002, which then became known as the Elimination of Weapons-Grade Plutonium Production program. The program is currently managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The Energy Department, which in 2002 estimated that the program would cost less than $470 million, sharply revised its estimates in 2003 after accounting for Russian inflation, escalating labor costs, and contractor fees. Though the program’s baseline cost will not be determined until June, officials now estimate that total costs could reach close to $1 billion.
Accordingly, the United States is now seeking support from other countries. As a first step, it recently convinced potential contributors to attend a conference in Spiez, Switzerland, Feb. 8-9. Those states included Canada, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The conference, primarily sponsored by the Swiss government, discussed how to shift these communities away from the nuclear industry. Russian officials have asked for aid in cleaning up decommissioned sites and creating new employment opportunities for the local workforce in the wake of the reactors’ shutdown.
The conference goals reflected a shift in the program’s emphasis since coming under the aegis of the Energy Department. Originally, the program had been aimed at converting the reactor cores of the three nuclear plants so as not to produce weapons-grade spent nuclear fuel. But U.S. and Russian officials concluded in 2001 that eliminating weapons-grade plutonium production could be better accomplished by building replacement fossil-fuel plants to provide much-needed heat and electricity.
Currently, these nuclear reactors produce a cumulative 1.2 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium annually, or enough by some estimates to produce 300 nuclear weapons a year. The designs of the 1960s-era plutonium reactors also predate the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, the site of the 1986 nuclear accident. The United States is expecting to shutter two of the three reactors by December 2008 through the refurbishment of a fossil fuel plant located at the Russian city of Seversk, a project that is targeted to be more than 60 percent complete by the end of fiscal year 2006. The Energy Department has requested $132 million for the program in its fiscal year 2006 budget request, a 200 percent increase over the 2005 allocation. NNSA Administrator Linton F. Brooks, in a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee March 2, said that the budget request was “fully adequate” to shut down the two nuclear reactors at Seversk.
But shutting down the third Russian plutonium-producing reactor near Zheleznogorsk entails constructing a new fossil fuel plant, a venture that, according to the Energy Department, requires at least $100 million from international donors to meet its completion target date of 2011. So far, the United Kingdom has pledged $20 million to the effort, to be spread over a three-year period, and Canada has offered $7 million.
According to a June 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office, the United States did not count on Russian funding for the effort. Nevertheless, Russia has aided the projects by offering some suggestions on how to operate the plants more cost effectively and by purchasing land.
The Energy Department’s budget request for fiscal year 2006, should it be approved by Congress, would decrease funding for activities at Zheleznogorsk compared to the fiscal year 2005 allocation because of the current emphasis on closing the reactors at Seversk and in anticipation of heightened international support.
-------- treaties
The 2005 NPT Review Conference:
Can It Meet the Nuclear Challenge?
Jean du Preez, Arms Control Today April 2005
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_04/duPreez.asp
The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was designed to link the concerns of those who acquired nuclear weapons but did not desire further proliferation with those who had not acquired nuclear weapons but wanted the potential to make use of nuclear energy.
In the resulting NPT “bargain,” the non-nuclear-weapon states promised the nuclear-weapon states[1] that they would not acquire nuclear weapons. In return, the nuclear-weapon states promised their non-nuclear counterparts “the fullest exchange” of nuclear technology (given compliance with safeguards obligations) and “good faith negotiations” to engage in nuclear disarmament.
The terms of this bargain seem to have been necessary to codify the emerging norm against the proliferation of nuclear weapons in that particular political and strategic context. The discriminatory nature of this arrangement, however, embodied in the divergent legal obligations of the two categories of states-parties, has been the underlying source of many of the NPT’s deficiencies and disagreements since its entry into force 35 years ago.
When the NPT states-parties meet in New York in May at the 2005 Review Conference, they will be confronted with the most difficult challenges the NPT has ever faced. Tackling these problems requires that states-parties, individually and collectively, muster the political will to implement all their obligations under the treaty. The review conference can play an important role in this process by turning the spotlight on today’s nonproliferation and disarmament challenges and identifying collective and national responses to deal with them.
It is important that they do so in earnest and not seek to fix the cracks in the NPT’s armor through carefully scripted and often watered-down consensus language for the sake of a “successful outcome” or final document. Failure to focus on and resolve these tough issues, even though doing so may require difficult decisions and hard compromises, runs the risks of making the NPT irrelevant and leading to the eventual downfall of the regime. Yet, if judged by preparatory discussions, there seems to be a sense of complacency among many states-parties to confront these challenges head on.
Promoting Universal Adherence
The near universality of the NPT has succeeded in creating a nonproliferation norm that has made the world safer by significantly raising the political cost of making nuclear weapons. Its inability to become fully universal, however, is a major failure with potential serious consequences. Still, states-parties may have to accept that three states with nuclear weapons will remain outside the treaty. The NPT does not permit India, Pakistan, and Israel to join as nuclear-weapon states,[2] but they are not likely to give up their nuclear weapons anytime soon. Although the goal of persuading these states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals should not be abandoned, it is likely to be achieved only when the five declared nuclear-weapon states get rid of theirs.
Instead of symbolic efforts to convince the three states to join the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states, it would be more useful to press these states to commit themselves politically to the nonproliferation obligations similar to those to which the nuclear-weapon states adhere: preventing proliferation exports, securing nuclear weapons and materials, reducing the role of nuclear weapons in their national security policies, and eschewing nuclear testing.[3]
Of course, endorsement by the conference to engage the three de facto nuclear states in this manner would create political difficulties for and require an adjustment in the policies of several non-nuclear-weapon states, such as South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Egypt, and Indonesia, who have consistently rejected attempts to recognize the three non-NPT states as de facto or de jure nuclear-weapon states.
Preventing Further Withdrawals
The need for universality raises a related challenge: retaining states-parties as members of the treaty. North Korea’s announced withdrawal—the first state-party to do so—raises the issue of the “irreversibility” of NPT commitments. Although the treaty allows any state-party to exercise its sovereign right to withdraw from the treaty (Article X), no formal mechanisms exist to respond to a state’s withdrawal: a deficiency that North Korea exploited in order to gain the capability to produce nuclear weapons and rescind its obligations. If Pyongyang does have nuclear weapons, as it recently claimed, does this mean that North Korea should be viewed as a de facto nuclear-weapon power outside the treaty?
The treaty’s near universal acceptance probably owes a great deal to Article X. Yet, North Korea’s withdrawal raises some difficult questions about the circumstances under which a state-party should be allowed to exercise this right. Do states-parties have the right not to recognize another state’s sovereign right to withdraw? Should Article X be changed or reinterpreted? Given the lack of an automatic enforcement mechanism and the apparent inability of members of the UN Security Council to act on North Korea’s violations, this clause has the potential to be used again, making a mockery of the treaty’s objectives.
Some have argued for specific legal judgments on withdrawal or specific emergency mechanisms to cope with these crises, but arguing over the legality of a withdrawing state’s actions could take years and detract from efforts to deal with the underlying causes of a state’s withdrawal. Further, it is doubtful whether a caucus of NPT states-parties or an emergency meeting of states-parties could accomplish more than the Security Council or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors.
Still, a number of steps could be taken to deter possible future withdrawals, making it clear that such action would entail real consequences.[4] Some of these steps might be taken in the context of the 2005 Review Conference.
First, states-parties should agree that no state will be rewarded for threatening to withdraw in order to extract some economic or security benefit and that no state will be allowed to renege on its obligation to the NPT if its withdrawal is used to avoid consequences or noncompliance with the NPT. In particular, the 2005 Review Conference has the responsibility to express itself on North Korea’s announced withdrawal. Failure by the states-parties collectively to respond to one of the most significant events in the treaty’s history would also make a mockery of the treaty.
Second, states-parties might agree that withdrawal from the treaty cannot free a non-nuclear-weapon state from the obligation not to use fissile material and production facilities, including those of indigenous origin, acquired prior to its withdrawal for weapons purposes. Although difficult to enforce, such an agreement would signal that the states-parties will challenge attempts to exploit Article X.
Some other measures might be taken outside the context of the NPT. For example, the Security Council should stiffen its resolve to act promptly when a state indicates its intention to withdraw. Additionally, to prevent a sense of insecurity among other states-parties as a result of a withdrawal, the Security Council might also issue a statement of support for the security concerns of any state-party that feels threatened. States should also suspend all assistance to the withdrawing state’s nuclear program and consider cutting off other forms of assistance. In the end, the withdrawing state must realize it will be worse off than it was prior to making the decision to pull out of the NPT.
Inability to Enforce Compliance
The NPT lacks an automatic enforcement mechanism to deal with violators. Through the IAEA Board of Governors, the Security Council is available to address treaty violations, including through the application of Chapter VII measures such as the use of force or economic sanctions. Yet, the IAEA board and the Security Council are not independent institutional actors; they are often politically divided and, therefore, fail to take action. The Security Council’s divisions over North Korea have already been discussed. Likewise, the IAEA board has been divided on how to deal with Iran’s failure to fully implement its safeguards agreements since the issue arose more than two years ago.
Several proposals have been submitted to strengthen the treaty’s enforcement mechanism, ranging from a permanent secretariat to an NPT executive council and meeting of states-parties with plenipotentiary powers. Given the differences among stakeholders, however, it is not clear that any special body tasked to enforce compliance would be any more vigorous in adopting enforcement mechanisms than the existing institutions.
The conundrum any mechanism would confront would be similar: what is the best action to take if the IAEA finds a state in noncompliance with its safeguards agreements? Should the international response be swift and perhaps include the destruction of nuclear facilities and/or long-term sanctions, or will the states-parties be faced with the same dilemmas they currently face over Pakistan and India? Even more challenging would be how to respond if a nuclear program is detected in time to prevent proliferation. Should the state in question be returned to the perceived status quo ante through verified dismantlement of its nuclear program, or should it be punished?[5]
Rather than focusing on altering enforcement mechanisms, the conference and subsequent discussions might more usefully concentrate on when enforcement mechanisms would be needed. In other words, these efforts could focus on drafting appropriate criteria to prove unambiguously that another state-party has a nuclear weapons program.
Weakness of Article VI
The weakness to enforce treaty obligations also relates to the flip side of the nonproliferation deal: nuclear disarmament. Many non-nuclear-weapon states believe that the nuclear-weapon states are no longer fully committed to their obligations under Article VI of the treaty to make good faith efforts toward disarmament. They are especially bothered that some nuclear-weapon states appear to have walked away from the “unequivocal undertaking” given at the 2000 NPT Review Conference to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as part of “13 practical steps” toward nuclear disarmament. This highlights what many view as one of the fundamental weaknesses in the treaty: the absence of a time frame for disarmament. While the nuclear-weapon states have always refused to accept such a time frame, many non-nuclear-weapon states now rightfully argue that, if the nonproliferation objectives of the treaty are to be backed by stricter verification and enforcement measures, so should the treaty’s disarmament objectives.
The 2000 interpretation of Article VI, moreover, does not stand in isolation; it should be considered against the backdrop of the package of decisions adopted in 1995, which included the indefinite extension of the treaty. In fact, most non-nuclear-weapon states, particularly those from the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), were concerned in 1995 and remain concerned that the indefinite extension would eliminate the only leverage to press for nuclear disarmament built into the treaty. The tacit threat in Article X that the treaty could expire if not renewed in fact provided a timebound framework, albeit a very vague and weak one.
What should remain clear is that the 1995 package allowed all states-parties to support the indefinite extension while also providing several practical steps for achieving progress toward nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. The 2000 Review Conference reaffirmed this program of action, including the “unequivocal undertaking,” and agreed on a set of specific practical “systematic and progressive” steps to implement Article VI.
Although these undertakings are of a political binding nature, they certainly derive from and are linked to the legal commitments and undertakings provided for in the treaty. Most importantly, the treaty clearly would not have been indefinitely extended had it not been for the program of action on nuclear disarmament built into the package that allowed that decision to be taken.
The trend by some nuclear-weapon states, such as the United States, to roll back or, in some cases, simply ignore many of these political commitments and undertakings point out yet another weakness in the way the treaty is being implemented. If the nuclear-weapon states are allowed to cherry-pick which commitments they consider applicable, then why are non-nuclear-weapon states refused the same privilege?
Consider the nuclear-weapon states’ 1995 and 2000 pledges to negotiate and work for the early entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Today, at least one nuclear-weapon state, the United States, has reneged on that agreement. If the principle of quid pro quo is to be applied, non-nuclear-weapon states could rightfully stop upholding commitments in a way that the nuclear-weapon states would find distasteful. For example, the 2000 Review Conference reinterpreted the treaty so that the “inalienable right to nuclear energy” is now tied to IAEA safeguards requirements enumerated in Article III as well as the treaty’s general nuclear nonproliferation requirements espoused in Articles I and II.
Likewise, with regard to the 1995 and 2000 requirements on the nuclear-weapon states, France has argued that each review conference’s decisions should be considered in isolation. Does Paris really want to undermine other decisions taken at those fora, such as backing full-scope safeguards as a condition of supply for fissionable material and related equipment and endorsing the 1997 Model Additional Protocol as an improvement on previous safeguards agreements?
Such an approach could also put into question the continued validity of the 1995 decision to extend the treaty indefinitely. Naturally, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse that decision. What would be more important, however, is to ensure the continued commitment by all states-parties, especially those who were critical of it in 1995, to that decision, if not the other core bargains in the treaty itself.
A compromise approach would be for states-parties to focus their attention on reaching agreements on the nuclear disarmament obligations, commitments, and undertakings that could be implemented in the foreseeable future and in the period before 2010, without negating those that were agreed on in 1995 and 2000. Some of the more specific measures could include agreements on:
• The necessity to achieve the early entry into force of the CTBT while maintaining existing moratoria on nuclear testing;
• The need for the nuclear-weapon states to take further steps to reduce their nonstrategic nuclear arsenals and not to develop new types of nuclear weapons in accordance with their commitment to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies;
• The need for the Conference on Disarmament (CD) urgently to resume negotiations on an internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, taking into account both nuclear disarmament and nuclear nonproliferation objectives;
• The completion and implementation of arrangements by all nuclear-weapon states to place fissile material no longer required for military purposes under international verification;
• The establishment of an appropriate CD subsidiary body to deal with nuclear disarmament;
• The imperative of the principles of irreversibility and transparency for all nuclear disarmament measures and the need further to develop adequate and efficient verification capabilities.
One realistic compromise at the 2005 Review Conference would include a reaffirmation by the states-parties to restart negotiations urgently on an internationally verifiable fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT) and an agreement to adopt comprehensive safeguards agreements[6] plus the Model Additional Protocol[7] as the standard for safeguards inspection of the non-nuclear-weapon states. Of course, doing so would require a change in position of at least one nuclear-weapon state, the United States, which does not consider the FMCT effectively verifiable. Since the nuclear-weapon states’ pledge to seek a verifiable FMCT and the entry into force of the CTBT was integral to the treaty’s indefinite extension, the further pursuit of these objectives, in part or in whole, is needed to ensure progress at the conference.
Article IV: An Inalienable Right Or a Potential Loophole?
A focus of the nuclear-weapon states at the conference is sure to be Article IV, the treaty’s provision that provides for an “inalienable right” to nuclear energy. When considering accounts of the early negotiating history of the NPT, it is clear that Article IV was not intended to restrict this right beyond those activities prohibited under the treaty. Notably, however, the original drafters did not envisage that every state should be entitled to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle, given the near nuclear-weapons-ready status associated with uranium-enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities.
A small number of non-nuclear-weapon states—North Korea, Iraq, and Libya—have in recent years misused this right as cover to do research on or actually develop nuclear weapons capabilities. Likewise, the current concerns over Iran’s nuclear intentions yet again highlight the potential risks of allowing NPT member states to develop an entire nuclear fuel cycle under Article IV legitimately without having a sufficient mechanism to gauge their nuclear intentions objectively.
The potential consequences of these developments and the ultimate outcome of the North Korean, Iranian, and Libyan nuclear controversies may generate unpredictable consequences for the NPT and the IAEA. Although vastly different in nature, recent proposals by President George W. Bush and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei to control or limit access to civilian nuclear fuel production may make sense, given the vulnerability of Article IV. These proposals, however, are based on the premise that non-nuclear-weapon states in full compliance with the treaty’s obligations should agree to restrict a sovereign right further. In this regard, it is noteworthy that several non-nuclear-weapon states with large stockpiles of highly enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium, such as Japan and Germany, have already rejected attempts to include civilian fissile material in the scope of a future FMCT and would likely reject attempts to restrict their large civilian nuclear industrial capabilities further.
Because any such proposal would introduce a “new deal” with added restrictions on non-nuclear-weapon states, it would have to be met with reciprocal obligations by the nuclear-weapon states. Germany, for instance, made it clear at the 2004 Preparatory Committee session that “A de facto restriction of Article IV should be accompanied by far-reaching nuclear disarmament measures by the nuclear-weapon states (with a view to maintaining the balance of the fundamental bargain underlying the NPT).”[8]
A possible way for the conference to address the apparent weakness of Article IV would be for all states-parties to reaffirm their interpretation of Article IV and its relationship with Articles I, II, and III and to interpret the right to peaceful use of nuclear energy. Precedence for interpreting specific articles of the treaty and their relationship vis-à-vis other treaty articles or agreements in light of changed circumstances already exists. As indicated before, at the 2000 Review Conference, the states-parties interpreted the rights under Article IV to be in conformity with Article III. Clearly, the right applies only to states-parties with comprehensive safeguards agreements in place.
Similarly, the states-parties could agree that, while recognizing the right to use the atom for peaceful purposes, ownership of the capability, which could be used to develop nuclear weapons, places a special responsibility on states concerned. This approach, together with an agreement to apply the comprehensive safeguards agreements and the Model Additional Protocol to those agreements, could significantly strengthen the IAEA’s ability to verify compliance.
A more radical approach likely to face strong opposition from many non-nuclear-weapon states would be for the conference to agree that states-parties under investigation of violating their safeguards agreements or that have been found by the IAEA board to have failed to comply with their obligations should lose the right to develop their own enrichment and reprocessing capabilities. Agreement on how to enforce this approach, especially in the case of countries that could pursue indigenous development of these capabilities, may be very difficult.
Outdated Safeguards
A related weakness in the treaty is the outdated safeguards requirement in Article III. Soon after the treaty’s entry into force, it was considered sufficient for non-nuclear-weapon states to conclude comprehensive safeguards agreements with the IAEA as a mechanism to verify compliance with the NPT. The agency’s experiences during the early 1990s in Iraq and North Korea, however, proved that those safeguards were insufficient. These experiences led to the adoption of a new voluntary standard, the 1997 Model Additional Protocol, which substantially expands the IAEA's ability to detect clandestine nuclear activities.
Given the latest experiences with North Korea, Iran, and Libya, the NPT states-parties could agree that the strengthened safeguards system should constitute the treaty’s mandatory safeguards standard. Still, even with the Additional Protocol, IAEA inspectors are hard-pressed, especially in secretive societies, to determine if a state intends to develop a nuclear weapons capability and prevent it from doing so. Even with its full implementation, the Additional Protocol only provides the agency with more extensive abilities to verify capabilities, not intentions. Thus, a state can still legally develop a “break-out” capability even if it is under IAEA supervision.
Dealing with New Players: Nonstate Actors and Terrorists
A related emerging weakness in the treaty’s design is that it was meant to deal with state entities only. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, concerns have increased that subnational terrorist groups are working to acquire nuclear weapons. Moreover, treaty members have witnessed an increased proliferation of nuclear weapons technologies, including the discovery of a network of clandestine nuclear smuggling activities from a nonparty state with nuclear weapons—Pakistan—despite increased efforts by supplier states to control these technologies. Because the treaty presumed that acquisition of nuclear weapons technologies would come from technologically advanced states, it fails to address indigenous technology development and transfer by nonparties and nonstate actors, including individuals, commercial and criminal entities, and terrorists.
No mechanism, other than that of individual states and institutions such as the Security Council, exists to deal with this emerging challenge. The adoption of Security Council Resolution 1540 was clearly meant to address this weakness. Its strength is that it requires all states, as opposed to only member states of the Nuclear Suppliers Group or the Zangger Committee, to implement export controls related to nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Yet, many states remain concerned about the Security Council’s legislative role in adopting broad, as opposed to case-specific, measures applicable to all states. States are also concerned about the practical implications of implementing the measures. Still, states-parties critical of the resolution are likely to find it difficult during the review conference to oppose references to the resolution as an important tool to deal with nonstate actors, including terrorist and clandestine networks.
Instead, states, particularly NAM members, are likely to argue that Resolution 1540 clearly stipulates that none of the obligations set forth in it “shall be interpreted so as to conflict with or alter the rights and obligations”[9] of NPT states-parties. They may also use the occasion to press for the assistance that the resolution offered to states “lacking the legal and regulatory infrastructure, implementation experience and/or resources for fulfilling the above provisions.”[10]
The Unresolved Issue of Negative Security Assurances
One of the original shortcomings of the treaty was that it did not provide legally binding assurances against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states—so-called negative security assurances—in exchange for the commitment by these states not to acquire nuclear weapons themselves. During the early stages of the treaty’s negotiations, the NAM, to see their security interests addressed in the NPT, successfully backed an initiative in the UN General Assembly in 1966[11] calling on the Conference of the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament “to consider urgently the proposal that the nuclear weapons powers should give an assurance that they will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states.”[12]
Cold War divisions prevented this from becoming reality, however, and the nuclear-weapon states adopted the position[13] that the pursuit of security assurances be addressed “in the context of action relating to the United Nations, outside the nonproliferation treaty itself but in close conjunction with it.”[14] Therefore, the NPT opened for signature without any nonuse commitment by the nuclear-weapon states.
In 1968 the Security Council adopted Resolution 255, recognizing the pledge by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States that the council would have to act immediately to provide assistance to a state attacked or threatened with a nuclear weapon. Many nonaligned states, however, indicated that such a positive security assurance fell short of their expectations and expressed the need for a negative assurance in the form of a multilateral, legally binding commitment.
Since then, the nuclear-weapon states have made or updated unilateral, nonlegally binding pledges establishing criteria for the granting of negative security assurances to non-nuclear-weapon states. These combined pledges provided the non-nuclear-weapon states with bargaining leverage at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference. Acting just prior to that conference, in 1995 the Security Council adopted Resolution 984, which acknowledged the pledges by the “nuclear five,” marking the first real, politically binding negative security assurances.
Nevertheless, at least two nuclear-weapon states—the United States and the United Kingdom—made qualifying statements following its adoption. The conference itself called for further steps to be considered to assure the non-nuclear-weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons and that these steps could take the form of an international, legally binding instrument. The 2000 Review Conference Final Document included a clear and unambiguous statement that legally binding security assurances would strengthen the NPT regime. The final document also called for recommendations on these proposals in time for the 2005 Review Conference.[15] These have not been forthcoming and are blocked by a clear divide between three nuclear-weapon states (France, the United Kingdom, and the United States) opposed to legally binding assurances and Russia and China, who at least to some extent backed the majority of non-nuclear-weapon states on this issue.
These assurances have become particularly important to the non-nuclear-weapon states, given recent developments in U.S. and Russian policies. In particular, the non-nuclear-weapon states have become concerned by the potential use against them of such nuclear weapons as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), or “bunker buster.” Considering the principled reasons behind the need for such assurances and the strong support by the NAM and the New Agenda Coalition[16] for the need to negotiate a legally binding instrument linked to the NPT, this issue, if not addressed properly, has the potential to generate serious problems at the 2005 Review Conference. The New Agenda Coalition, likely to be supported by the nonaligned states, called for the establishment of a subsidiary body at the conference to consider security assurances.[17] Therefore, continued opposition by the nuclear-weapon states to discuss the issue could potentially derail the conference before it begins.
Several options exist on how to address the non-nuclear-weapon states’ quest for legally binding negative security assurances, ranging from a negotiated draft protocol to the NPT, a treaty negotiated in the CD, strengthened security assurances provided in the protocols to existing nuclear-weapon-free zone treaties, or unilateral security assurances such as those provided to Ukraine and those sought by North Korea. Regardless of how such assurances are to be formulated, it would be important to recognize that assurances offered within the context of the NPT, as opposed to another forum, would provide a significant benefit to NPT parties. They would serve as an incentive to those who remained outside the treaty or those who may consider leaving the regime. As such, security assurances should be granted only to states that have forgone the nuclear weapons option and not to those who are still keeping their options open. They should not be applicable to non-NPT parties or to states-parties aspiring to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. This would strengthen the regime and confirm the continued validity of the NPT and its indefinite extension, while addressing concerns over possible scenarios in which some nuclear-weapon states may consider using nuclear weapons.
Conclusion
Although the period since 2000 has seen undesirable nuclear proliferation developments, the overwhelming majority of NPT non-nuclear-weapon states have demonstrated their commitment to and compliance with their obligations. Yet, many non-nuclear-weapon states remain unsatisfied with the emphasis currently placed on the different elements of the NPT, believing that disarmament should be given increased priority. The nuclear-weapon states, by contrast, remain primarily, although not exclusively, concerned with nonproliferation.
A successful conference should ensure that the various governments of states-parties and their bureaucracies begin to get serious about implementing all their obligations. A divisive debate, however, in which some states attempt to reinforce the treaty’s core bargains while others attempt to reinterpret or negate them, will undermine the treaty regime.
In this context, individual elements of the NPT’s bargains cannot be approached singularly; neither can one or another of these elements be ignored or minimized. The proponents of individual proposals need to realize that the pursuit of an immediate national objective risks undermining the entire package of bargains that make up the NPT regime. Such approaches may set additional challenges that the 2005 Review Conference will not be able to meet.[18]
The NPT’s continued vitality and effectiveness as an instrument to achieve the international community’s common goals and as a building block for maintaining international peace and security is dependent on the implementation of the treaty as a whole. An approach at the 2005 Review Conference that focuses on the achievable; maintains the balance between the core NPT bargains; and does not attempt to reinterpret, negate, or withdraw from existing obligations, commitments, and undertakings will allow the conference to meet the core challenges flowing from the treaty’s inherent deficiencies.
ENDNOTES
1. China, France, Russia (then the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States.
2. Article IX (3) of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) specifies that “a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to January 1, 1967.” Only five states detonated nuclear devices prior to this date.
3. George Perkovich et al., “Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security,” June 2004.
4. Some of these steps are based on ideas presented by U.S. Deputy Under-Secretary of State Andrew Semmel at a NPT workshop hosted by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Annecy, France, on March 7-8, 2004.
5. John Simpson, “Universality, Non-compliance and Reform of NPT Procedures: Some Thoughts on a Complex Policy Nexus,” Presentation at “NPT: Towards the 2005 Review Conference,” Tokyo, February 2005.
6. INFCIRC 153 (as amended).
7. INFCIRC 540.
8. Working paper by the Federal Republic of Germany at the third session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2005 NPT Review Conference.
9. UN Security Council Resolution 1540, S/RES/1540, April 28, 2004, par. 5.
10. Ibid., par. 7.
11. UN General Assembly Resolution 2153 A (XXI).
12. “Developments Regarding Positive and Negative Security Assurances Since the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: Background Paper Prepared by the Secretariat,” NPT/Conf.2000/6, March 21, 2000 (hereinafter UN security assurances background paper).
13. The Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland took this position. France and China were the other two nuclear-weapon states at that time. The former, which did not join the NPT until 1992, abstained from the Security Council resolution. China’s seat at the United Nations was held by Taiwan at the time of the NPT.
14. Action “outside” the NPT has come to mean resolutions by the Security Council and conduct in the context of nuclear-weapon-free zones. See UN security assurances background paper (quoting ENDC/PV.375, March 11, 1968) (emphasis added).
15. “2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: Final Declaration,” 2000, NPT/CONF.2000/28 Parts I and II, pt. I.
16. A cross-regional group of states-parties (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden) that were instrumental in extracting disarmament commitments (the 13 practical steps) from the nuclear-weapon states at the 2000 Review Conference.
17. See “New Agenda Coalition Substantive Recommendations to the Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2005 NPT Review Conference,” NPT/CONF.2005/PC.III/11, April 26, 2004.
18. See Peter Goosen, “The Core NPT Challenges Flowing from 1995 and 2000,” Paper presented at “Atlanta Consultation II: On the Future of the NPT,” 2005.
Jean du Preez is director of the International Organizations and Nonproliferation program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
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The Bush Administration and Verification
Wade Boese, Arms Control Today April 2005
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_04/NA_Verification.asp
Since taking office, the Bush administration has opposed or bypassed opportunities to codify measures to check compliance with three arms control treaties. Yet, the U.S. government’s lead office for assessing worldwide adherence to arms control obligations—the Department of State’s verification and compliance bureau—insists the current administration is second to none in supporting effective verification.
Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance Paula DeSutter and her colleagues in the bureau see no contradiction. In one of the cases, they say, a blooming relationship with Russia has made extensive verification superfluous. In the other two cases, they say, the proposed approaches would have proved ineffective in checking cheating and instilled a false sense of security as they leaned too heavily on what the administration views as limited international verification methods.
DeSutter would like to reduce the reliance of other states on international verification means and regimes and shift them toward taking greater national initiative and responsibility for verifying compliance. Yet, some former top U.S. government officials and international officials maintain that the importance of international inspections should not be underestimated, noting that international bodies assessed Iraq’s pre-war weapons programs more accurately than the United States and other foreign governments, and are less susceptible to having their findings swayed by national agendas.
Defining Verification
Verification involves collecting and analyzing information to determine whether parties to an agreement are abiding by its terms. Verification aims are threefold: deterring cheating, detecting violations, and providing confidence that all parties are adhering to their commitments.
Because it is generally acknowledged that an agreement cannot be perfectly verifiable, governments must determine what margin of verification uncertainty they can bear. One consideration is whether it is cost effective to add further measures to increase certainty.
Another trade-off pits the benefits of greater information on others against the costs of granting them reciprocal rights.
The U.S. willingness to accept uncertainty has varied over time depending on the administration and the agreement. The Bush administration maintains its tolerance for uncertainty is low.
The verification and compliance bureau evaluates an agreement’s verifiability by several factors, including the other parties’ status as friend or foe, their compliance history with other obligations, incentives to cheat, the potential dangers of undetected cheating, and what is being constrained. Chris Ford, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance, told Arms Control Today Feb. 7 that “[t]he precise contours of what it means to be verifiable will vary according to context.”
In a Jan. 28 speech, DeSutter spelled out the Bush administration’s view of what constitutes effectively verifiable. “The degree of verifiability must be high enough to enable the United States to detect noncompliance in sufficient time either to have the violation reversed or, particularly in the case of intentional noncompliance, to reduce the threat presented by the violation and to deny the violator the benefits of his wrongdoing,” she said.
National Means and Methods
Two different methods of verification have traditionally held center stage: national technical means, such as satellites and radars, and on-site inspections and monitoring.
U.S. officials argue that many states have over time incorrectly equated these two methods with being the whole of verification. This conclusion, from Washington’s perspective, has led them to become passive observers in the verification and compliance process because they believe they lack the appropriate means or expertise to participate.
DeSutter and Ford argue that one particular manifestation of this passivity is too much faith in international on-site inspections and monitoring. Although such mechanisms can contribute useful information, the U.S. officials say data gathered by these means only speak to certain locations and times. “Our problem is with oversold on-site inspection,” DeSutter told Arms Control Today Feb. 7.
To rectify this problem, the bureau last year began urging that “national means and methods” replace “national technical means” as the term of art. This preferred wording encompasses all sources of information available, including human intelligence, open source media, the internet, and commercial satellite imagery. By awakening states to the universe of data to which they have access, the administration’s hope is that they will become more self-reliant in verification.
DeSutter said that the reliance by states on international sources of verification has led some governments to default to international inspectorates or institutions in shaping national treaty compliance judgments. International organizations, she pointed out, are not parties to treaties and should have no say in compliance rulings.
“Neither the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] nor the OPCW [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] were created, constituted, or mandated to make compliance judgments,” DeSutter said. The OPCW is the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the IAEA is responsible for verifying that non-nuclear-weapon states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) do not use their peaceful nuclear programs to pursue nuclear weapons. IAEA officials can determine whether a state is complying with its obligations to assure the international community that its nuclear technologies are being solely used for peaceful purposes, but it is up to the NPT states-parties to determine whether any noncompliance constitutes a treaty violation.
The Bush administration has expressed some frustration with the IAEA over its handling of Iran, which Washington accuses of illegally seeking nuclear weapons. It also repeatedly cast doubt on the efficacy of inspections in Iraq by the IAEA and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).
The Bush Approach Applied
The administration’s skepticism toward international verification measures and preference for national verification has been apparent in its approach toward two treaties: the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans germ weapons, and the proposed fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT).
Beginning in 1995, states-parties to the BWC began negotiations to fashion a legally binding protocol of verification measures, including on-site inspections, for the instrument. Concluded amid Cold War tensions, the treaty only provides for countries to consult about noncompliance concerns and lodge complaints with the UN Security Council.
Six months after taking office, the Bush administration announced its opposition to the proposed protocol, sinking it. The administration argued that the protocol would impose an unacceptable burden on legitimate commercial biological research and government biodefense programs, while not deterring cheaters.
DeSutter dismissed the contention that, even if the protocol had flaws, it was better than nothing. She argued, “We have a verification regime [for BWC]. We collect all the information that we can possibly collect.”
DeSutter described the rejected protocol as “a feel-good agreement that would not have increased our overall confidence that we had gotten a handle on people’s biological weapons programs.”
Likewise, the proposed FMCT, which aims to halt production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons purposes, would include countries with “very, very poor records of compliance with their other obligations,” DeSutter said. Presumably, she is referring to Iran and North Korea, although NPT outliers India, Israel, and Pakistan would also be involved.
Washington had subscribed since 1995 to negotiating an effectively verifiable FMCT, but the Bush administration reversed course in July 2004. (See ACT, September 2004.) Aside from involving countries that the United States distrusts, the administration contends that the difficulty of verifying a final treaty would be compounded by the challenge of confirming the date of production and purpose of any suspicious fissile material. Another potential loophole cheaters could exploit would be to hide their misbehavior under the cloak of a naval nuclear fuel program, to which inspectors would unlikely be granted access. The U.S. Navy opposes opening up its nuclear fuel program to outsiders.
These factors make it impossible, in the administration’s view, to construct a useful formal verification regime. Instead, the administration advocates that a future FMCT be verified through national means and methods. The U.S. proposal has met stiff foreign resistance, and negotiations have yet to start. (See ACT, March 2005.)
Robert Einhorn, who ended his nearly 30-year career in government as a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation in August 2001, told reporters Sept. 2, 2004, that “[o]ne of the problems here is that the United States over the last 50 years has taught the world all too well that you need effective verification for arms control agreements.” If the administration succeeds in its FMCT approach, he warned, “[t]here would be countless compliance disputes all the time without any mechanism to resolve them.”
A few foreign government officials have suggested to Arms Control Today that the administration’s position on verifying FMCT might simply be a pretext for not negotiating a treaty it does not really want.
By contrast, when it came to a third treaty—with Russia—the administration did not see verification as too difficult, only unnecessary.
In 2002, the Bush administration conceded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that their mutual plans for nuclear reductions be codified. However, as then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice explained May 13, 2002, the administration felt no need to “dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T.’”
As a result, the May 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) totaled fewer than 500 words and lacked verification provisions. (See ACT, June 2002.) Washington and Moscow agreed to use the extensive 1991 START verification measures to help validate their new commitments to reduce their operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads down to 1,700-2,200 apiece by the end of 2012. Unless extended, START will expire in 2009. At that point, a former U.S. verification official told Arms Control Today, the two capitals will be “flying blind.”
DeSutter said Feb. 7 that SORT is not effectively verifiable, but that matters little because of the friendlier U.S.-Russian relationship. Ford added, “We did not understand this to be a situation in which there was a really high danger of people trying to run around breaking rules.”
Lessons From Iraq
As the administration tries to sell others on its verification approach, it is working in the shadows of the Iraq experience.
Bush ordered the March 2003 invasion of that country to eliminate its suspected biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs, which the administration charged existed despite international arms inspectors’ failure to find any evidence supporting this claim. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which led the U.S. search for proscribed Iraqi weapons following the invasion, concluded last year that Baghdad had no actual weapons, except for some illegal short-range ballistic missiles, or active programs as Washington alleged.
David Kay, the first ISG leader, told Arms Control Today in a March 5, 2004, interview that international verification proved effective in disarming Iraq. Noting that the Iraqis “really feared” inspectors, Kay said, “international inspection is even more important now than it ever was” and “the on-the-ground examination of what’s going on is irreplaceable.”
The verification and compliance bureau did not respond to a question about what verification lessons it drew from Iraq.
To be sure, Iraq, by virtue of the disarmament terms it agreed to as the losing power of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, presented a unique case. Inspectors possessed far greater authority than traditional international verification regimes that rely upon the inspected party’s consent.
Still, the limited legal authority of an international regime inside a country is greater than that of another state. In a Feb. 4 Arms Control Today interview, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei contended, “You can send a couple of agents to look around, you can send a satellite station to take a picture, but there is no substitute for the legal authority of international organizations to be on the ground.”
Speaking in June 2004 with Arms Control Today, former UNMOVIC head Hans Blix said another advantage of international inspectorates is their independence from capitals that might try to influence verification work and compliance conclusions to support national agendas. “In the national governments, I think there has been a risk of blurring,” he stated.
A Means, Not an End
Although the U.S. verification and compliance bureau and its international counterparts may not agree on the most effective verification approaches, they do concur that verification is not an end in and of itself. All agree verification is a tool for providing assurances about security concerns and sounding an alarm if a threat arises.
In a series of speeches over the past year, DeSutter has warned, “Without the concerted action of all states-parties [to an agreement] to insist upon strict compliance and to hold violators accountable for their actions, the national security of all nations will erode and global stability will be undermined.”
After Iraq, however, it remains to be seen how the U.S. emphasis on national verification and a devaluation of international institutions and methods will translate into greater collective will and action for enforcing compliance.
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UN Panel Approves Anti-Nuclear Terrorism Treaty
Fri Apr 1, 4:34 PM ET World - Reuters
By Irwin Arieff
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050401/wl_nm/nuclear_security_un_dc_1
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A new global treaty to keep nuclear weapons out of terrorists' hands took a major step toward approval on Friday with its adoption by a U.N. treaty-writing committee.
The document, the 13th international anti-terrorism convention and the first completed since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, next goes to the 191-nation General Assembly, which is expected to adopt it within weeks.
The pact would then be opened for signature on Sept. 14 in New York, clearing it for ratification by governments. It would take effect 30 days after ratification by 22 nations.
"Nuclear terrorism is one of the most urgent threats of our time. Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and change our world forever," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the treaty-drafting committee, congratulating it on its decision to adopt the text by consensus.
All 191 U.N. members have seats on the committee.
The treaty would oblige governments to either prosecute or extradite individuals who threaten people, property or the environment while possessing radioactive materials or nuclear devices, to ensure they cannot find safe haven in any country, said Rohan Perera of Sri Lanka, who chaired the negotiations.
It also would create mechanisms for helping governments to deal with a nuclear threat or prevent one, and to exchange information and technical assistance.
It does not address, "in any way, the issue of the legality of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons by states," according to the approved text.
SEVEN YEARS TO NEGOTIATE
The pact was first proposed by Russia in 1998 and took seven years to negotiate. Moscow acted following media reports of attempted black market sales of nuclear materials after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
"Today we have concluded very serious work to strengthen the effectiveness of collective efforts to fight the terrorist threat whose cruel and ubiquitous nature calls for very decisive action of the international community," Russian Ambassador Andrei Denisov said.
Washington also welcomed the committee's adoption of the treaty and hoped it would give fresh momentum to a separate comprehensive anti-terrorism pact that has been stalled for years in the same committee over the definition of terrorism, State Department attorney adviser Hal Collums said.
Annan has called for that pact to be approved by September 2006 and he told Reuters on Friday, "we are making progress."
A final deal on the text of nuclear treaty approved by the committee on Friday was reached on Thursday after four countries agreed to withdraw proposals that had drawn the opposition of others, committee officials said.
Pakistan had wanted the treaty to apply to nuclear threats by governments as well as so-called "non-state actors." Cuba proposed that it cover government armed forces.
The United States had wanted to add language stating that the peaceful use of nuclear materials should not be used as a cover for weapons development, and Iran had sought language endorsing the free exchange of nuclear equipment and materials for peaceful purposes.
Also essential to the deal was a compromise offered by Mexico detailing the treaty's relationship to laws on armed conflict, diplomats said.
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India agrees to ratify IAEA pact on nuclear safety
Friday April 1, 12:11 AM Associated Press
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050331/ap/d89622bg0.html
India said Thursday it would ratify a worldwide pact on maintaining international safety standards at nuclear power plants.
India's External Affairs Ministry said New Delhi will ratify the Convention on Nuclear Safety of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, but a statement didn't say when.
A foreign ministry spokesman traveling with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couldn't be reached for comment.
The IAEA convention legally binds signatories to maintain international benchmarks in the construction, operation and regulation of civilian nuclear power plants, and requires countries to submit regular reports on safety standards.
India has six nuclear power plants with seven more under construction, according to the Web site of the federal Nuclear Power Corporation of India.
It was unclear Thursday why India decided to ratify the convention now, after it came into effect in 1996
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuclear fuel cycle is low in emissions
Friday, April 1, 2005 Toledo Blade
Letters to the Editor
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050401/OPINION03/504010352/-1/OPINION
To reply: http://www.toledoblade.com/contactus
Helen Caldicott's March 16 diatribe against the Nuclear Energy Institute was loaded with false claims about the nuclear fuel cycle.
Her claim that uranium enrichment plants use electricity generated from "two coal plants" is untrue. There is only one enrichment plant in the United States - in Paducah, Ky. By contract, it obtains electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority's fleet of power plants, so about 40 percent of its electricity comes from non-emitting nuclear and hydroelectric power plants.
Ms. Caldicott also mangles the truth with her claim of CFC gas emissions from the uranium enrichment process. The Paducah facility doesn't produce CFC-114, more commonly known as "Freon." It uses it as a coolant for safety purposes in its enrichment operations. There is some leakage into the environment, but this amount is well within Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. In addition, Freon is no longer manufactured in the U.S. The enrichment plant uses Freon recycled from cars and home air conditioning units.
USEC, the company operating the Kentucky facility, has an active Freon leak-reduction program under way and has applied for a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a build and operate a centrifuge enrichment plant that will not use any CFCs.
Although all industrial and manufacturing activities have environmental impacts and produce waste byproducts, nuclear power has one of the smallest environmental impacts of any source of electricity and manufacturing processes.
In fact, a study by the International Energy Agency in 2003 showed that the entire nuclear energy life cycle resulted in the second-lowest emissions of greenhouse gases next to wind, which is hardly a technology Americans can rely on today to provide the round-the-clock, bulk electricity supplies that nuclear power plants provide.
Scott Peterson
Vice President
Nuclear Energy Institute
Washington, D.C.
-------- nevada
Yucca e-mails called damning
April 01, 2005
By Suzanne Struglinski
LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/apr/01/518539018.html?"yucca%20mountain"
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., called
e-mails on the alleged falsified information on
the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump
"damning" but would not discuss details to avoid
compromising ongoing criminal investigations.
Porter complained today the Energy and Interior
departments have not cooperated in giving his
House subcommittee redacted documents so the
public could access some information on the most
recent Yucca controversy.
"My goal was to not interfere with the criminal
investigation," Porter said. "They have not
complied with my request so we are doing it
ourselves."
The Energy Department announced its discovery of
potential falsified documents on the Yucca
Mountain project March 16, based on e-mails
written between 1998 and 2000 by a U.S. Geological
Survey employee.
Porter said the documents indicate a "very serious
breach of trust" but would not comment on specific
details.
The FBI and the inspector generals of both
department are investigating the situation.
The House Federal Workforce and Agency
Organization subcommittee, chaired by Porter,
received a set of unredacted e-mails documents
this week, which Porter reviewed Thursday night.
Redacted document were supposed to be made
available at 9 a.m. PST today, but were delayed
because Porter's subcommittee attorney had to
redact documents themselves.
Porter said he is prepare to subpoena any
additional document either department does not
turn over. There is some overlap between the two
departments' documents but each mainly has
different information related to the alleged
falsification.
"Our first priority is the public," Porter said.
"I'm prepared to do whatever it takes for the
public to have access to this information."
He said the redacted documents would contain
useful information.
Porter will hear from both departments' inspector
generals at a hearing Tuesday as well as Nevada
Gov. Kenny Guinn, Attorney General Brian Sandoval
and other state officials.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who will also testify
Tuesday, called on the Energy Department to stop
its work on the project's license application as
the investigations take place.
Meanwhile, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee has postponed its hearing focusing on
the status of the Yucca project until further
notice. Committee spokeswoman Angela Harper said
the committee already had a full schedule for the
week with a conference on water challenges and
moving forward with the Energy Bill. A House panel
will begin marking up its version of the bill next
week.
---
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Federal agencies criticized
Energy, Interior officials ignore panel's requests for e-mails
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Friday, April 01, 2005
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-01-Fri-2005/news/26199144.html
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jon Porter charged Thursday that government agencies are stonewalling Congress by not allowing the public release of e-mails that suggest Yucca Mountain documents may have been falsified.
Porter, R-Nev., said a confrontation is looming after Energy Department and Interior Department officials did not send a House subcommittee redacted copies of the e-mails and other documents at the heart of the allegation.
"DOE and (the Interior Department) are not being cooperative," said Porter, the subcommittee chairman. "We requested redacted documents to make sure we could preserve an ongoing criminal investigation and they have not complied with our request."
The agencies did turn over unredacted documents, but Porter said that only filled part of the request.
Porter said the development complicates plans to make the e-mails public in advance of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
Without redaction of certain names and potentially incriminating material, the documents contain information that might jeopardize investigations being conducted within the two departments, and now at the FBI, he said.
FBI officials Thursday confirmed it has become involved in pursuing the Yucca Mountain allegations, raising the possibility of criminal activity within the nuclear waste project.
"We are involved. We have been assisting the Department of Energy in looking into the matter," said David Schrom, an FBI spokesman in Las Vegas, who declined to disclose further information.
Porter said attorneys with the Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization were examining the dispute with the federal departments. He said he planned to have the documents released today one way or another.
"I'm not surprised and it is to be expected, because that is how (the Energy Department) has operated in the past," Porter said. "At this point, we are going to force them to provide redacted versions or redact them ourselves."
The Energy and Interior departments acting jointly sent unredacted material to the House subcommittee this week.
Porter said he examined more than 90 pages of e-mail messages and internal memos.
He said the documents chronicle 30 to 40 e-mail conversations plus memos in which officials ponder initial courses of action when the potentially harmful information surfaced last month.
Porter said Thursday the material he reviewed was "very disturbing and very damning." He wouldn't describe the documents in detail, however, citing the dispute over their release.
Energy Department spokesman Mike Waldron said Thursday that DOE "has been working to provide the committee with as complete documentation as possible."
Responding to Porter's charge, Waldron said DOE officials were not stonewalling.
"When this situation came to light (Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman) personally issued a statement explaining what the problem was," Waldron said. "It is in the department's interest to comply with Congressman Porter's request in the most complete manner possible."
One DOE official said department officials concluded, "It would not serve the purpose of any investigations for (documents) to be made public in a redacted form."
Controversy has been simmering since Bodman and Charles Groat, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, disclosed on March 16 that a worker had indicated in electronic messages between 1998 and 2000 that he fabricated documentation of work at the nuclear waste site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Officials with the Geological Survey said the fabrication dealt with processing data used in computer models that attempt to predict how surface water will move through the mountain under certain climate conditions.
Water flow is a key issue in determining whether a Yucca Mountain repository can be deemed safe. Nevada leaders who have long fought the project have charged the allegations cast a long shadow over the entire project.
Nevada's senators said they welcomed the FBI's pursuit of the allegations.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said FBI participation underscores the significance of the matter, potentially raising it to criminal levels.
Reid called for the Energy Department to put the Yucca program "on hold" while multiple investigations continue.
"Falsifying legal documents is clearly a crime, and should be prosecuted," Reid said. "Falsifying these particular documents, and creating fake scientific data about the storage of nuclear waste would have also put the health and safety of Nevadans in grave danger."
Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., had urged the FBI and the Justice Department to enter the case.
"The FBI's involvement in this investigation is very important to ensuring that the truth is revealed," Ensign said. "For too long, the Department of Energy has run this show with little or no oversight from outside agencies."
----
E-Mails Reveal Fraud in Nuclear Site Study
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: April 2, 2005
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/politics/02yucca.html
WASHINGTON, April 1 - Government employees studying
whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be a
suitable place to bury nuclear waste acknowledged
in e-mail messages to each other that they had
made up details about how they had done their
research in order to appear to meet quality
standards, according to some of the messages made
public on Friday.
Some of the frank exchanges included instructions
to erase them. The Energy Department, which is
trying to open a waste repository at the mountain,
100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, disclosed the
existence of the e-mail messages two weeks ago. On
Friday, a subcommittee of the House Committee on
Government Reform released dozens of pages of the
messages.
One analyst wrote that a computer program had
generated data he could not explain, so he
withheld it from the quality assurance department,
known as QA.
"Don't look at the last 4 lines. Those are a
mystery," wrote the scientist, who the
subcommittee said was an employee of the United
States Geological Survey, a part of the Interior
Department. "I've deleted the lines from the
'official' QA version of the files."
"In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the
ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that
were actually used," he wrote. The message was
dated November 1999.
B. John Garrick, the chairman of the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board, a group of independent
experts established by Congress to monitor the
Energy Department, said that it was too soon to
draw conclusions but that "it is disturbing to see
such loosely framed discussions between
scientists."
Before releasing the messages, the subcommittee
removed the names and titles of the senders and
the recipients, and deleted other words that made
the full context of some of the messages difficult
to ascertain. But the theme was that employees
were performing work they did not believe would
meet standards set by the quality assurance
inspectors, and were sometimes falsifying their
work in ways that they believed would satisfy the
inspectors.
In a message dated April 22, 1999, a scientist
wrote that he did some calculations by hand and
that the computer program he wrote, presumably to
do those calculations, "is not in the system." He
wrote that he feared he would be "taken to the
cleaners" by the inspectors because his work did
not refer to an established procedure laid out in
a scientific notebook, and he asked if he should
create such a notebook "and back-date the whole
thing??"
The author of another message noted in January
2000 that he could not document the way certain
work was done. "I can start making something up,
but then the (deleted) projects will need to go on
hold," he wrote.
In an e-mail message in March 2000, a government
worker wrote that he did not know when software he
had used had been installed. "So I've made up the
dates and names," he wrote. "If they need more
proof I will be happy to make up more stuff, as
long as its not a video recording of the software
being installed."
The chairman of the panel that released the
messages, Representative Jon Porter, Republican of
Nevada, pointed out that the Energy Department and
the White House had repeatedly said that their
recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site was
based on "sound science."
"If the project has been based upon science, and
the science is not correct, it puts the whole
project in jeopardy," said Mr. Porter, a longtime
opponent of Yucca Mountain plan. "I believe these
e-mails show science is not driving the project;
it's expedience to get the job done."
In a well-done scientific investigation, he said,
the methods used to derive predictions about
crucial factors like water infiltration should be
transparent and reproducible.
A lawyer who represents the State of Nevada,
Joseph Egan, said that after reading the messages,
"you can't even say it's wrong; you have to say
it's not reliable."
"You don't know how badly they've fudged this
stuff," Mr. Egan said.
Some of the correspondents explicitly discuss
problems and say they do not believe that they
make any material difference to the ability of the
mountain, a volcanic structure on the edge of the
Nevada Test Site, to hold the waste for thousands
of years.
But the issue of quality control is crucial to the
Energy Department because to open a repository, it
must win the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, which has scuttled some projects
because of quality assurance problems. In one case
in the 1980's, the commission forced the owners of
a nuclear reactor to abandon their project, after
they had spent nearly $2 billion and when the
reactor was said to be 98 percent complete,
because of questions about whether some welds had
been made properly and inspected adequately by
qualified inspectors.
The subcommittee on the federal work force, which
released the e-mail messages, plans to hold a
hearing on Yucca Mountain on Tuesday. The
witnesses include several prominent opponents,
including Gov. Kenny Guinn of Nevada and Senator
Harry Reid, also of Nevada, the Democratic leader.
----
Yucca probe focuses on possibly faked data
E-mails suggest efforts aimed at clinching nuclear waste project
Associated Press Updated: 8:09 p.m. ET April 1, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7361346/
WASHINGTON - E-mails by several government scientists on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump project suggest workers were planning to fabricate records and manipulate results to ensure outcomes that would help the project move forward.
"I don't have a clue when these programs were installed. So I've made up the dates and names," wrote a U.S. Geological Survey employee in one e-mail released Friday by a congressional committee investigating suspected document falsification on the project.
"This is as good as it's going to get. If they need more proof, I will be happy to make up more stuff."
In another message the same employee wrote to a colleague: "In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used." QA apparently refers to "quality assurance."
The e-mails were in a batch of correspondence released in advance of next week's hearing by the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Work Force and Agency Organization, chaired by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.
The Energy and Interior departments revealed the existence of the e-mails March 16, and inspectors general of both departments are investigating. The FBI also is conducting a probe, according to a subcommittee staffer.
10,000-year burial
Yucca Mountain, approved by Congress in 2002, is planned as the nation's underground repository for 77,000 tons of defense waste and used reactor fuel from commercial power plants. The material is supposed to be buried for at least 10,000 years beneath the Nevada desert, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Many Nevadans and some environmentalists say the waste can never be safely stored and the plan puts local residents at risk. There also are concerns among others outside the state that hauling the waste to Nevada puts at risk those along the routes.
But the Bush administration, the energy industry and others say a central storage site is needed, and would provide better security for tens of thousands of tons of commercial and defense waste now housed at sites in 39 states.
The e-mails were written from 1998 to 2000 and circulated among a team of USGS scientists studying how water moves through the planned dump site, a key issue in determining whether and how much radiation could escape.
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey validated Energy Department conclusions that water seepage was relatively slow, so radiation would be less likely to escape.
Science by peer pressure Many of the dozens of pages of e-mails released appear to involve not initial scientific experiments, but rather attempts to provide documentation of work done in the past.
The Energy Department is working to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to run the dump, and must turn over extensive documentation.
The e-mails provide a window into the environment surrounding the project, first considered over 20 years ago. Names and some proper nouns were blacked out by congressional staffers before they were released.
"Science by peer pressure is dangerous but sometime (sic) it is necessary," says one message, by a second scientist at the geological survey.
The emergence of the e-mails was the latest setback for Yucca Mountain, which has also suffered money shortfalls and an appeals court decision last summer that is forcing a rewrite of radiation exposure limits for the site. The Energy Department recently abandoned a planned 2010 completion date, and department officials have not given a new date.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Yushchenko says previous Ukraine regime sold missiles to Iran, China
WASHINGTON (AFP) Apr 01, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050401075342.zcqhiywb.html
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said in an interview late Thursday that nuclear-capable cruise missiles were sold illegally to Iran and China under Kiev's previous regime.
"I confirm this, though I do so with bitterness," Yushchenko, who will make an official visit to Washington next week, told NBC.
He said the X-55 missiles were exported under a forged contract that had Russia as the country of destination, but did not say when the sale took place.
A copy of the contract obtained by NBC appeared to bear clearance stamps for the export of 20 missiles to the Russia, which has denied any role in the sale, NBC said.
No nuclear warheads were sold with the missiles, made in 1987 which have a range roughly of 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) and were poorly maintained, according to a Ukranian source familiar with the investigation.
US intelligence officials quoted by NBC said China and Iran each obtained six missiles. Ukrainian officials have offered conflicting accounts of the number of rockets delivered.
Despite lacking nuclear warheads, the rockets could advance Iran's alleged quest for nuclear weapons -- they could reverse engineer the missiles, and double the range of its most powerful rocket, the Shahab-3, US intelligence officials told NBC.
Yushchenko is due to meet with President George W. Bush at the White House on Monday, and will address a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday, during his visit to Washington that ends April 7.
The pro-Western Yushchenko defeated his pro-Russian rival Viktor Yanukovich in rerun presidential elections in December, which followed a popular uprising sparked by two previous fraudulent rounds of elections.
-------- asia
Okinawans criticize plan for offshore air station
April 01, 2005
By Takehiko Kambayashi
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050331-104927-6216r.htm
NAGO, Japan — Sixty years ago today, the subtropical island of Okinawa became one of the last killing fields of World War II as American troops fought their way ashore after a naval bombardment. Now, say residents and environmentalists, the United States and Japan are assaulting its emerald-green sea.
The 1945 Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest of World War II, killing more than 200,000 people, including 12,520 Americans. But after the war, the U.S. military presence continued here.
American bases on Okinawa's main island take up 20 percent of its area. Although this forward deployment has played a key role in U.S. military strategy in East Asia, to the Japanese islanders it means crowding, government subsidies, an oppressive burden, and occasional accidents and crimes involving the U.S. garrison.
Having repeatedly promised to reduce this burden, the United States and Japan are trying to construct a big offshore floating military base.
"The U.S. and Japan are acting as if Okinawa were a deserted island — as if no one lives here," said Etsuko Urashima, a writer who has lived in the region for 15 years. "It seems Americans still have an occupation mentality, since the land was captured at the price of their blood."
Washington and Tokyo have agreed to replace U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located amid crowded residential areas of central Okinawa, with an offshore airfield off Nago, in northern Okinawa. The plan has provoked criticism from islanders near the proposed site, anti-base activists and international environmental groups. The environmentalists say the construction will destroy coral reefs and sea-grass beds and threaten the survival of rare species, including dugongs — large, gentle mammals that spend their entire lives in the sea.
Seeking to prevent this, U.S. and Japanese environmental groups and some Okinawans sued Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in a U.S. court in September 2003.
In its ongoing military reconfiguration, the Pentagon "tends to lack environmental concern and ignores the voices of local residents," said Junichi Sato, a member of Greenpeace Japan, who says Americans make up 40 percent of those who joined the group's "cyber action" to oppose construction of the offshore base.
The project also could end up costing Japanese taxpayers more than $9.5 billion but benefit only some politicians and politically connected contractors, critics contend.
In August, a U.S. military helicopter crashed into a building at the Okinawa International University near the Futenma base. Many had long warned of dangerous situations in the area. Mr. Rumsfeld reportedly was shocked to see the congested location from the air.
"I believe the accident had a significant impact on public opinion," said Masao Kishimoto, president of the Okinawa Times, the island's major paper.
In 1996, the United States and Japan promised to close the air station within five to seven years, on the condition that an alternate facility be found on the island. They proposed that it be built offshore east of Nago.
Then, more U.S. and Japanese officials started calling for the review of the plan because it would take about 15 years to complete the project. Because of the growing opposition, Nago Mayor Tateo Kishimoto and Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine emphasize it would be best if the Futenma air station were relocated outside Okinawa.
"To make it more rational and less costly, the functions of Futenma should be shifted to other bases," said Mikio Shimoji, a former member of the House of Representatives from Okinawa, who predicted a big move would be made next month.
Some also have suggested that the air station be under the control of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and that the United States could use the facility during emergencies.
In late February, about 1,800 local supporters of the government's plan for Okinawa held a pep rally. Because Tokyo had promised to pump a large amount of money into Okinawa, they had supported the plan. But some now doubt whether the measures really benefited residents.
"Large corporations from the mainland seem to have reaped the benefit," said Masaki Kamiyama, a councilor in Nago and president of a local fishery association. The measures "didn't make the city's contractors and service sector flourish."
As was the case 60 years ago. "I feel Okinawa is still sacrificed for the mainland," Mr. Kamiyama said. Then, Okinawa and its people were sacrificed with the Japanese military garrison to protect Japan's home islands.
-------- spies
Panel Warns of 'Headstrong Agencies'
Bush Is Urged to Intervene to Break Adherence to 'Irrelevant' Status Quo
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17131-2005Mar31.html
The report released yesterday contains a devastating portrayal of intelligence officers who often cannot be counted on to do their best without discomforting pressure from policymakers, and who are more concerned about preserving the status quo than with finding better ways to safeguard the nation.
The commission explicitly warned President Bush that he should expect intelligence agencies to attempt to undermine the authority of the new director of national intelligence. "They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies," the commission wrote Bush. "Sooner or later, they will try to run around -- or over -- the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways."
As policymakers search for ways to improve U.S. intelligence, one of the toughest obstacles they confront is the hardened psychological attitude against change, born of the spy business's secretive, insular nature, according to the commission's report.
This was revealed to the commission by "many insiders" who "admitted to us that [the intelligence community] has an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations," the report said.
"I'm sure there are people plotting right now," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, a former CIA clandestine service officer who recently published a book about her experiences.
The commission thinks so, too. Although the intelligence agencies are full of talented, dedicated people, the report said, "they seem to be working harder and harder just to maintain a status quo that is increasingly irrelevant to the new challenges presented by weapons of mass destruction."
To wring the best work out of the agencies, the commission said, policymakers must pressure the intelligence community "to the point of discomfort."
"Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on key topics . . . no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternative might also be true."
As an example of recalcitrant thinking, the report said one person who drafted the widely discredited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs told the commission, "if he had to grade it, he would still give the NIE an 'A.' "
That, the report said, shows how the "scope and quality of analysis has eroded badly," as have "tradecraft and training."
The commission also discovered that despite presidential directives to share information, "a turf battle raged" for more than a year between the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the newer Terrorist Threat Integration Center (now the National Counterterrorist Center).
In June 2004, the director of the TTIC, which was supposed to function as the government's top threat analysis center, warned George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the center "was at the breaking point" and could not perform its mission because the CIA and other intelligence agencies refused to detail experienced officers to staff it.
Despite numerous communications between Tenet's top staff and the TTIC director trying to clarify roles and responsibilities, the "interagency squabbling" never ended, the report says.
"Time and again we have uncovered instances like this, where powerful agencies fight to a debilitating stalemate masked as consensus, because no one in the Community has been able to make a decision and then make it stick."
Former and current intelligence officials said the report echoed previous criticism by the Sept. 11 commission and a Senate panel's inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq, and that it gave too little credit to the changes the intelligence agencies have already undertaken.
"Whatever the shortcomings, I think the men and women of the intelligence community perform vastly better than this commission's report gives them credit for," said James L. Pavitt, a former CIA director of operations. He said intelligence will never be a perfect science and the report mistakenly implies the administration went to war because of the intelligence.
"The decision to go to war is not an intelligence decision. It's the decision of the commander in chief," Pavitt said. "We didn't go to war because of some refugee given the name 'Curveball.' " Curveball was the code name given to an Iraqi exile who convinced U.S. officials that Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs. It turned out he was a fabricator.
Mahle said the problem is larger than the CIA's culture. "The whole structure is set up to preserve the status quo," she said of the agency's hierarchy. "You have to break the back of the [CIA] chiefs of station" and regional directors, the traditional operations managers, "to force innovative thinking."
--------
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Doubts on Weapons Were Dismissed
By Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17211-2005Mar31.html
As former secretary of state Colin L. Powell worked into the night in a New York hotel room, on the eve of his February 2003 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, CIA officers sent urgent e-mails and cables describing grave doubts about a key charge he was going to make.
On the telephone that night, a senior intelligence officer warned then-CIA Director George J. Tenet that he lacked confidence in the principal source of the assertion that Saddam Hussein's scientists were developing deadly agents in mobile laboratories.
"Mr. Tenet replied with words to the effect of 'yeah, yeah' and that he was 'exhausted,' " according to testimony quoted yesterday in the report of President Bush's commission on the intelligence failures leading up to his decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.
Tenet told the commission he did not recall that part of the conversation. He relayed no such concerns to Powell, who made the germ- warfare charge a centerpiece of his presentation the next day.
That was one among many examples -- cited over 692 pages in the report -- of fruitless dissent on the accuracy of claims against Iraq. Up until the days before U.S. troops entered Iraqi territory that March, the intelligence community was inundated with evidence that undermined virtually all charges it had made against Iraq, the report said.
In scores of additional cases involving the country's alleged nuclear and chemical programs and its delivery systems, the commission described a kind of echo chamber in which plausible hypotheses hardened into firm assertions of fact, eventually becoming immune to evidence.
Leading analysts accepted at face value data supporting the existence of illegal weapons, the commission said, and discounted counter-evidence as skillful Iraqi deception.
The commission's anatomy of failure on Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program is a case in point. It begins in early 2001, as Bush took office, when the CIA got its first report that Iraq was trying to buy black-market aluminum tubes. The agency swiftly concluded, after intercepting a sample in April of that year, that Iraq intended the tubes to be used in centrifuges that would enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear weapon.
The CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) never budged from that analysis, the report said. In the following 18 months, WINPAC analysts won a fierce bureaucratic battle against dissenters from other agencies who said the tubes -- roughly three feet long and three inches in diameter -- were the wrong size, shape and material for plausible use in centrifuges.
The tubes became the principal evidence for a "key judgment" in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which said Iraq had "reconstituted" a nuclear weapons program and could build a bomb before the end of the decade.
To support its assertions about the aluminum tubes, the CIA made a series of arguments that the nation's leading centrifuge physicists described repeatedly as technically garbled, improbable or unambiguously false, the report said.
One WINPAC analyst -- identified previously in The Washington Post as "Joe," with his surname withheld at the CIA's request -- responded by bypassing the Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the nation's only major center of expertise on nuclear centrifuge technology. Joe commissioned a contractor to conduct tests of his own design, then rejected the contractor's results when they did not meet his expectations.
Yesterday's report said the CIA also created a panel of experts to rival the Oak Ridge team. Those experts concluded, based on "a stack of documents provided by the CIA," that the tubes were meant for centrifuges.
The CIA refused to convene the government's authoritative forum for resolving technical disputes about nuclear weapons. The Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee proposed twice, in the spring and summer of 2002, to assess all the evidence. The CIA's front office replied, according to yesterday's report, "that CIA was not ready to discuss its position."
The same summer, then-deputy CIA director John E. McLaughlin brought talking points to a meeting of Bush's national security cabinet, asserting that the tubes were "destined for a gas centrifuge program" and that their procurement showed "clear intent to produce weapons-capable fissile material." The next month, the CIA sent policymakers a report calling the tubes "compelling evidence that Iraq has renewed its gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program."
Within weeks of the tubes' interception, the report said, Energy Department experts told the CIA that they matched precisely the materials and dimensions of an Italian-made rocket called the Medusa, a standard NATO munition. They also pointed out that Iraq was building copies of the Medusa and declared a stockpile of identical tubes to U.N. inspectors in 1996.
The CIA asked the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center for an analysis of the tubes but withheld the information about the Medusa and the 1996 discovery. The Army analysts said, among other things, that no known rocket used that particular aluminum alloy -- disregarding not only the Medusa but also the U.S.-built Hydra rocket.
"The intercepted tubes were not only well-suited, but were in fact a precise fit, for Iraq's conventional rockets," the commission said yesterday, but "certain agencies were more wedded to the analytical position that the tubes were destined for a nuclear program."
Even the Energy Department did not hold fast to its analysis. Although it dissented on the tubes, it went along with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in concluding that Iraq had resumed a nuclear weapons program, based on arguments the commission called insubstantial and illogical. One analyst told the commission, "DOE didn't want to come out before the war and say [Iraq] wasn't reconstituting."
Another key piece of evidence came from an Iraqi defector who told the DIA that Iraq had built a secret new nuclear facility. U.S. intelligence could not verify the report, or locate the alleged facility, which did not exist. After the war, the CIA concluded that the defector was "directed" in his claims by the Iraqi National Congress, led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi. To this day, however, the DIA has not withdrawn the defector's reporting from national databases, the report showed.
Nor has the DIA withdrawn assessments provided by defectors such as "Curveball," whose tales of mobile laboratories in which scientists cooked up biological weapons were pure fabrication, according to the commission.
Concerns over Curveball had been floating around the CIA for more than three years by the time Powell shared his claims with the world. No CIA officer even met Curveball before the war, although on the night before Powell's presentation, a defense intelligence officer wrote an e-mail to colleagues noting that in his meeting with the defector, Curveball appeared "hung over" and unreliable.
"These views were expressed to CIA leadership," the commissioners wrote, including to McLaughlin and his assistant. But they were also watered down as they moved up within the intelligence community, and were never shared with outsiders. "We found no evidence that the doubts were conveyed by CIA leadership to policymakers in general -- or Secretary Powell in particular."
In fact, the more Curveball's credibility came into question, the more his allegations were used to bolster the case for war, the report said.
Even after Powell's now-famous presentation in the chamber of the U.N. Security Council, the CIA tried to find out more information about Curveball, whose stories had been relayed to the Pentagon through German intelligence. Five days after Powell's presentation, the CIA sent an e-mail to a senior defense intelligence official seeking more information about the defector.
What followed, in the commission's account, highlights the terrible working relationships within the intelligence community, the lack of interest in getting the truth about Curveball and the ease with which the DIA discarded concerns about the case against Iraq.
The defense intelligence division chief who received the CIA e-mail forwarded it to a subordinate in an e-mail that was inadvertently copied back to the sender. In it, the division chief expressed shock at the CIA's suggestion that Curveball might be unreliable. The "CIA is up to their old tricks" and did not "have a clue" about how the source had been handled, the division chief wrote in excerpts quoted in the commission's report.
Only in March 2004, one year after the invasion of Iraq, did the CIA confront Curveball over his prewar claims.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
President Nominates Cheney's Son-in-Law
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16318-2005Mar31.html
President Bush has nominated Vice President Cheney's son-in-law, a prominent Washington lawyer who represents companies in the homeland security field, to be the general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security.
Philip J. Perry, who is married to Cheney daughter Elizabeth Cheney Perry, is a partner at the Washington law office of Latham & Watkins, and has represented Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp. in dealing with the department.
In Bush's first term in office, Perry was general counsel to the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he helped draft the 2002 legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security.
Earlier, Perry, of Virginia, was acting associate attorney general.
After a stint in mid-2003 with the Bush reelection campaign, Perry rejoined Latham & Watkins as a litigator and a leader of its homeland security practice. In 2003 and 2004, he was registered as a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin.
Lobby registration documents he filed with Congress state that he helped the firm secure liability protection from lawsuits prompted by terrorist attacks, under the 2002 SAFETY Act. The department granted the liability protection in June, making the firm one of only about eight whose products have been certified for coverage.
Among Perry's other clients in the last two years were private prison firm Corrections Corp. of America and hospital proprietor HCA Corp., but he did not represent them on any work with Homeland Security, the congressional filings said.
If he is confirmed, government ethics experts said, Perry would likely have to recuse himself from decisions involving his former clients for some period of time.
----
Anti-terror measure casts too wide a net
Friday, April 1, 2005 Toledo Blade
Letters to the Editor
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050401/OPINION03/504010352/-1/OPINION
I was sorry to see the passage of so-called anti-terror measures by the Ohio State Senate. I certainly hope it is not passed when it goes to the state House of Representatives.
The provision for Soviet-style checkpoints is in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated." By sponsoring this bill, Sen. Jeff Jacobson has violated his own oath of office and should be removed.
The job of the police is to pin-point and arrest those who harm the rest of us, not to cast a wide net and confuse citizens with terrorists. If they cannot do their jobs without violating our freedoms, then someone else should be doing their jobs.
Carl R. Goodwin
Norwalk, Ohio
-------- investigations
Panel: U.S. Ignored Work of U.N. Arms Inspectors
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21854-2005Apr2?language=printer
Of all the claims U.S. intelligence made about Iraq's arsenal in the fall and winter of 2002, it was a handful of new charges that seemed the most significant: secret purchases of uranium from Africa, biological weapons being made in mobile laboratories, and pilotless planes that could disperse anthrax or sarin gas into the air above U.S. cities.
By the time President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein of the deadly weapons he was allegedly trying to build, every piece of fresh evidence had been tested -- and disproved -- by U.N. inspectors, according to a report commissioned by the president and released Thursday
The work of the inspectors -- who had extraordinary access during their three months in Iraq between November 2002 and March 2003 -- was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration and the intelligence community in the run-up to the war, according to the commission led by former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and retired appellate court judge Laurence H. Silberman.
But the commission's findings, including a key judgment that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little" about nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, are leading to calls for greater reliance on U.N. inspectors to test intelligence where the United States has little or no access.
"U.N. inspectors are boots on the ground," said David Albright, a nuclear specialist who accompanied the International Atomic Energy Agency to Iraq in the mid-1990s. Albright and others think the IAEA should be given greater access in Iran, and returned to North Korea. It would be up to the agency's board, which includes the United States, to authorize increased powers.
The Bush administration tussled with inspectors before the Iraq war and maintains a hostile relationship with the IAEA, whose director, Mohamed ElBaradei, the United States is trying to replace this year. The administration also wants to shut down a U.N. inspection regime led by Hans Blix that was set up to investigate biological, chemical and missile programs in Iraq.
During more than two years of investigations in Iran, the IAEA has "been critical in uncovering their secret activities so we know the scope and the status of the nuclear programs and the problems," said Albright, who has exposed unknown nuclear sites in Iran and has followed the IAEA's work there. "There is a tremendous amount of detail that the intelligence community didn't have prior to the IAEA going in and intensifying the investigation."
The White House has not publicly presented intelligence to support its assertion that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, as it did with Iraq. Instead, it routinely points to the IAEA investigation, Iran's large oil reserves and the secrecy that surrounded Iran's nuclear program for nearly two decades.
The IAEA has not found evidence that Iran is using its nuclear energy program as a cover for bomb building, as the administration claims. But those findings have been dismissed by some members of the administration.
John R. Bolton, nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has called the findings "simply impossible to believe."
Jonathan Tucker, who was a bioweapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq during the 1990s, said inspectors have limited access and rely heavily on intelligence that can be provided by powerful countries such as the United States.
"What they can provide is ground truth and legitimacy. If you hope to persuade countries to impose sanctions or other measures on proliferators, the word of inspectors is valuable."
North Korea kicked out IAEA inspectors in December 2002, a move that deprived the intelligence community of a key avenue of information about the closed country. The lack of access to North Korea, which has been judged to have the capacity to build six to eight nuclear weapons, has been a source of frustration for the international agency.
But at the time of the IAEA's departure from Pyongyang, attention in Washington and in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, was largely focused on Iraq.
Months before U.S. troops attacked Iraq in March 2003, the IAEA challenged every piece of evidence the Bush administration offered to support claims of a nuclear program there, according to the commission.
In January, IAEA inspectors discovered that documents showing Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger were forged. But the CIA chose to stick to the claim for another six months.
Two years earlier, the IAEA disputed CIA claims that Iraq was trying to buy black-market aluminum tubes for a nuclear program. The IAEA assessment, which turned out to be accurate, was first shared with U.S. intelligence in July 2001, according to the authors of the presidential commission report.
Blix's U.N. group tested evidence supplied by an Iraqi defector codenamed "Curveball," whose tales of mobile bioweapons laboratories turned out to be fabrications, according to the report. Among Curveball's claims was that an Iraqi facility had been redesigned, with a temporary wall, to allow mobile laboratories to slip in and out undetected.
"When United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) inspectors visited the site on Feb. 9, 2003, they found that the wall was a permanent structure and could find nothing to corroborate Curveball's reporting," the commissioners wrote.
"We offered eyes and ears," Blix said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We knew a lot about the country, we examined places, got intelligence tips about where to go and conducted 700 inspections at 500 sites in three months."
UNMOVIC also determined before the war that CIA claims about a fleet of pilotless Iraqi planes were incorrect. The unmanned aerial vehicles did not have the capability to deliver chemical or biological weapons and were probably designed for reconnaissance missions.
The Bush administration has prevented the IAEA from returning to Iraq since the invasion. UNMOVIC will likely be dismantled unless the United States agrees to turn it into an international inspection force for biological weapons and missile programs.
-------- POLITICS
-------- us politics
Analysis: The fight over the Patriot Act
By Christian Bourge
UPI Congressional and Policy Correspondent
April 1, 2005
http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050401-011208-6313r
WASHINGTON -- With the several highly partisan debates likely in Congress in the coming weeks on everything from President Bush's judicial nominees to budgetary issues, the coming debates over reauthorizing portions of the USA Patriot Act are sure to erupt into one of the major fights, but one driven by strange bedfellows.
Quickly approved in wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with no significant congressional debate, the measure is a compendium of provisions aimed at curbing foreign terrorist activities and making domestic law enforcement's ability to eavesdrop and investigate potential prosecutorial targets easier.
Many of the act's provisions had been sought by federal law enforcement officials for years, and it was an immediate target of civil libertarians who said it infringes on constitutionally guaranteed rights and individual privacy.
Critics from across the ideological divide have attacked the measure's scope, including its reduction of judicial discretion to review suspect detentions and monitor private communications.
Although there have been unsuccessful efforts on Capitol Hill to roll back some of the law in the ensuing years, and prospects for the full rollback some hope for in the current political environment an impossibility, the expiring provisions provide the first real opportunity for scaling back what critics argue was a hasty overreaction in a time of crisis.
Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have called for the complete renewal of the act, and Gonzales is to be the opening witness Tuesday in a series of Senate and House hearings on reauthorizing the 16 expiring surveillance and wiretapping provisions that expire at the end of the year.
And despite the claims of overreach and even outright unconstitutionality on the part of critics, Gonzales said last month that the Justice Department could need more authority in the area, the prospect of the administration pushing for which is sure to only further complicate the debate on reauthorizing the controversial law.
"Part of the debate about reauthorization is whether additional tools can be added to the arsenal," he said.
An unlikely coalition of ACLU-aligned civil-liberties activists, libertarians and gun advocates have banded to oppose the reauthorization of the expiring provisions, calling for a thorough and honest vetting of the law's use and impact, particularly in curtailing the Fourth Amendment right to unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant or probably cause.
Calling themselves Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances and headed by former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the group consists of several interests including the liberal American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the conservative Americans for Tax Reform and the conservative Free Congress Foundation.
The group announced its intentions to influence the coming debate last week, sending a March 22 letter to the president urging him "to reconsider your unqualified endorsement of the most intrusive, unchecked powers temporarily granted by the act."
Barr said last week that the groups support the overall law, but they are calling not only for proof that the provisions up for renewal are effective and do not intrude on constitutional rights, but also for the removal of other powers granted under the act not up for reauthorization.
Specifically, they seek the repeal of the so-called sneak-and-peek provision of the law, which allows law enforcement to conduct secret searches without advanced notice as was previously required under U.S. law.
The group has also established its opposition to expiring provisions that allow the government to collect personal information -- including medical, library, purchasing and firearms records -- that could be relevant to terrorist activity, complaining that the definitions in the law are so broad as to allow the powers to be used on anyone.
The law's definition of terrorism is also viewed as too broad by critics, potentially applicable by federal law enforcement to activities outside the purview of actual terrorist activity.
The disparate groups hope that their broad views from across the ideological spectrum will help stave off the sort of attacks that have been used to discredit critics of Bush administration policy in the past: that they are un-American or not helping in the fight against terrorism.
"We don't want this argument to be obscured by those who would suggest that anyone who is for more and more government power is somehow on the side of the right, and those who are against it or are skeptical of such grants are on the side of the wrong," said David Keene of the American Conservative Union. "This is an important question of all Americans on the left, the right or in the middle."
The Bush administration and proponents of the Patriot Act's importance argue that it has helped in the fight against terrorism. They point to the fact that there has not been an attack on U.S. soil since those on the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks in 2001.
James Jay Carafano, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act must be reauthorized because they give law enforcement the tools required to effectively fight terrorism.
Citing the limited information released by the Justice Department to promote the importance of the powers and his own conversations with officials at the agency, Carafano says there are signs that expiring provisions are useful in investigating potential terrorist activity.
"Not all of them lead to prosecutions, but in terms of effectively conducting investigations they are something important," he told United Press International, adding the argument often used by the law's proponents that such powers are needed to be proactive in fighting such threats.
A 29-page report from the Justice Department's inspector general last summer made the case for the act's streamlining of the process of sharing information between intelligence and law-enforcement agencies as well as the process of watching potential terrorists, using some of the tools up for renewal.
However, critics pointed out that the report ignored the "sneak-and-peak" provision in the law and other controversial provisions set to sunset, including one giving federal investigators access to personal medical information without a warrant.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and other critics of the Patriot Act note that the law gives the Justice Department much greater powers of secrecy over its actions, frustrating attempts to see exactly how the law has been enacted and what its actual impact has been.
Rotenberg, the coalition of interest groups and other critics contend that Justice has yet to demonstrate the need to maintain the expiring provisions.
The Sept. 11 commission report specifically called on the administration to justify the need to extend the expiring provisions and show that adequate oversights have been applied.
Although the Justice Department has made claims of its importance and Rotenberg's group has had some success in petitioning for information about the use of the act, particularly in pressuring for the rollback of a passenger-profiling system that critics said extended the powers provided in the law too far, little is ultimately known about how the law has been used.
So despite arguments from the Department of Justice and Patriot Act supporters like Carafano that abuse or direct constitutional harm have never been proven, the lack of transparency makes examining claims of effectiveness and constitutionality next to impossible to investigate.
Carafano noted that such concerns could easily be addressed in congressional hearings, potentially in closed-door sessions if national security concerns are raised.
He also said that he believed that if a clear bill with no extraneous provisions or attempts to expand the law is taken up by lawmakers, it would gain relatively easy approval by Congress.
Although Democrats are likely to press the issue, the GOP leadership in the House and Senate has not been inclined toward significant, detailed oversight over Bush administration actions in the past, and key figures like House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., support reauthorizing the act.
In addition, Gonzales already has raised the specter of further extending the powers given to law enforcement and House leaders having shown an inclination toward expanding the Patriot Act in the past. Given these factors, the prospects for a clean bill addressing only the expiring provisions, much less a detailed accounting of the impact of the act, would appear unlikely.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Big Hopes For Tiny, New Hydrogen Storage Material
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 31, 2005
SpaceDaily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-05zd.html
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are taking a new approach to "filling up" a fuel cell car with a nanoscale solid, hydrogen storage material.
Their discovery could hasten a day when our vehicles will run on hydrogen-powered, environmentally friendly fuel cells instead of gasoline engines.
The challenge, of course, is how to store and carry hydrogen. Whatever the method, it needs to be no heavier and take up no more space than a traditional gas tank but provide enough hydrogen to power the vehicle for 300 miles before refueling.
One approach is to find a solid chemical material that can hold and then release hydrogen as needed. Recently, PNNL researchers Tom Autrey and Anna Gutowska found a way to release hydrogen from a solid compound almost 100 times faster than was previously possible.
They will present their findings at the American Physical Society Meeting in Los Angeles on March 21, as part of The Grand Challenge of Hydrogen Storage symposium.
"The compound ammonia borane is known to release hydrogen at temperatures below 80 degrees Celsius, but the rate of release is extremely slow," said Autrey.
"In the nanophase, the hydrogen comes off very fast – approximately 100 times faster compared to conventional bulk ammonia borane."
The PNNL team used a nanoscale mesoporous silica material as scaffolding for ammonia borane to achieve a high rate of hydrogen release at a lower temperature than is found at the conventional scale.
A lower temperature reaction, 80 degrees Celsius (170 degrees Fahrenheit), or below, is important because additional energy is not required to maintain the reaction.
To transform the ammonia borane to a nanomaterial, scientists dissolve the solid compound in a solvent and then add the solution to the mesoporous support material.
Capillary action of the porous material pulls the ammonia borane into the pores of the support. When the solvent is removed, nanosized pores filled with ammonia borane are left. Each pore is about 6.5 nanometers in diameter.
The nanoscience approach to using ammonia borane as a storage material exceeds DOE's weight and volume storage goals for 2010. As a bonus, it also avoids the volatile chemicals produced at the bulk scale.
"We found no detectable borazine, which is harmful to fuel cells, produced by the reaction in the mesoporous materials," said Autrey.
Based on computational thermodynamic analysis, researchers believe the process may eventually be designed to be reversible, which would allow the storage material to be regenerated and provide a sustainable hydrogen storage compound with a longer lifetime.
A patent is pending on this process for hydrogen storage.
----
Global Wind Power Capacity Seen Rising 26 Pct 2005
DENMARK: April 1, 2005
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30191/newsDate/1-Apr-2005/story.htm
COPENHAGEN - New installed global wind-power capacity should rise 16.6 percent on average per year in the next four years, with Europe leading world demand, an industry report showed on Thursday.
In 2005, growth is expected to be around 26 percent.
The report by Danish consultancy BTM showed that total wind-power capacity grew 20 percent to almost 48,000 megawatts last year -- enough to fuel about 16 million homes -- although growth in 2004 was lower than in 2003.
"This is the first time since 1996 that stagnation in new installation has been observed, a temporary event mainly caused by the drop in the US market," it said.
Last year, 8,154 megawatts of new capacity was added, a decrease in annual installation of 2.3 percent compared with the record year 2003. The industry has shown an average growth of 15.8 percent over the past five years.
BTM said the top 10 manufacturers supplied almost 96.1 percent of new power last year.
Denmark's Vestas maintained its leading position and increased its market share to 34.1 percent. Spain's Gamesa Eolica advanced to second place with 18.1 percent of new installations ahead of Germany's Enercon with 15.8 percent, US company GE Wind with 11.3 percent and Germany's Siemens at 6.2 percent.
Europe accounted for 73 percent of all new installations in 2004, but Germany, the world's largest market in terms of installing new capacity for a decade, was overtaken by Spain.
BTM said Europe would maintain its leading role until 2009 and account for 58 percent of the cumulative demand.
----
Solar and Wind Units Bring Energy to Navajos
April 01, 2005
By Brenda Norrell,
Indian Country Today
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7449
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A Laguna Pueblo designer of solar and wind energy components is bringing lights and refrigeration for the first time to 50 homes in the eastern portion of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.
"We are bringing power to them for the first times in their lives. They are ecstatic," said Dave Melton, co-owner of Sacred Power Corp. in Albuquerque.
Thanks to a partnership between Sacred Power and the Navajo chapter houses of Torreon and Ojo Encino, 50 homes, among the 10,000 homes without electricity on the Navajo Nation, are receiving electricity generated utilizing photovoltaic (PV) systems designed, manufactured and installed by Sacred Power.
"It is terrific: more and more people are hearing about the project and hoping to participate," said Melton, who hopes additional funding will be forthcoming from the USDA Rural Utility Service for more homes.
The solar and wind hybrids bring power so Navajo children will not have to study by the dim light of kerosene lanterns. Sacred Power also provides an energy-efficient refrigerator for Navajo families' food and medicines.
"We are the largest Native American renewable energy system integration manufacturer in the country. We manufacture our own designs," Melton told Indian Country Today.
Melton said the units provide good, clean energy and the company is providing jobs for American Indians. During recent installations at Ojo Encino and Torreon chapters, the company hired two Navajos.
Besides the local effect, Melton said the company has a global effect by not adding to greenhouse gasses and pollution from power plants.
"We are able to help the people, especially those who are not in the best situation to help themselves. We feel really good about what we are doing."
Ojo Encino President Ted Mace said many Navajo homes are without electricity and running water and it is frustrating.
"This is no ordinary endeavor, as these homes have never had any source of energy. Now they can turn on the Christmas lights and feel good about it because the power source will be environmentally friendly," Mace said in a statement.
Torreon Chapter President Joe Cayaditto pushed for the project in an effort to jump start tribal businesses. "The potential for restaurants, bed and breakfasts and other businesses could provide much-needed economic development," he said.
Sacred Power is an American Indian-owned company specializing in solar power. Currently there are 14 employees, including Jemez Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, Laguna Pueblo, Navajo, Hispanic and Anglo.
"It is a real New Mexico mix," Melton said.
With power plants surrounding the Navajo Nation and Navajo coal used to produce electricity for the Southwest, Melton is among the energy-wise businessmen realizing Navajos in remote areas have been ignored.
Melton said the high cost of bringing power to rural homes in Indian country has deterred energy providers. As a result, many Indian rural homes have been overlooked and have gone too long without power.
"Local utility companies have high voltage lines within 'throwing distance' of some of the homes, yet cannot afford to install transformers to drop voltages to residential levels and extend the grid," said Sacred Power co-owner Odes Armijo-Caster.
The operation and utilization of PV hybrids is critical, the company said. Sacred Power provides energy-efficient lighting (compact fluorescent) and high efficiency refrigeration units that work well with PV, wind and battery systems.
Sacred Power also provides training and education to recipients. Sacred Power is training new employees and new entrepreneurs at Navajo chapter houses to maintain the systems. Local homeowners will be able to have local assistance with the units.
----
Destroyers into windmills
http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/top/ts_multi/documents/04575469.asp
A statewide campaign kicks off this week to convert Maine's military manufacturing into environmentally sustainable industry for the future
"Now the peace movement has realized that we will never end war until we deal with the jobs issue."
Click on the link above for the whole article giving excellent coverage to the start of the statewide economic conversion campaign in Maine.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 729-0517 (207) 319-2017 (Cell phone) globalnet@mindspring.com http://www.space4peace.org http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Our blog)
Article:
A year ago, when activists at Peace Action Maine began planning a campaign to end Maine’s economic dependence on military industry, converting those industries to environmentally sustainable, non-military manufacturing sounded pie in the sky. A year ago, Bath Iron Works, Maine’s largest private employer, had a contract to build seven DD(X) Destroyers for the United States Navy.
Now, the president’s budget proposal has slashed the destroyer order by more than half, and the Navy is considering giving the entire contract to a shipyard in Mississippi. As the Maine delegation fights what may be a losing battle on the Hill, economic conversion is beginning to look like more than an idealistic pipe dream. It is beginning to look necessary for Midcoast Maine’s economic survival.
With more than 6200 employees, BIW is Maine’s largest private employer; however, despite a robust shipbuilding schedule, the yard has been hemorrhaging jobs for years. Over the last six months, with 51 layoffs here, another 137 there, BIW has eliminated nearly 500 positions. And those layoffs barely register compared to what the company, a subsidiary of the Virginia-based General Dynamics Corporation, may be facing in the near future.
Rumors about drastic cuts to the Navy’s shipbuilding budget began circulating before Christmas. It became official on February 7, when the President announced his 2006 budget proposal: The order for 12 DD(X) Destroyers, which had already been reduced to seven last July, was further pared down to five. A few weeks later, the Navy announced that, given the reduced destroyer order, it was exploring the possibility of awarding the entire contract to a single shipyard, rather than splitting the order between BIW and Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, as it had originally planned.
Industry analysts believe that the Navy has been looking to move destroyer production to the Gulf of Mexico for some time. Conspiracy theorists wonder whether Maine isn’t being punished for going to Kerry in the 2004 election. Navy officials simply cite the changing needs of the military in a post-9/11 world.
"We are moving to a smoother, lighter, more agile ship. Rather than a few larger and very expensive ships, we are building more ships that are smaller and more lethal," said Navy Secretary Gordon England at a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing earlier this month. "The Navy is changing and the industrial base needs to change with the Navy."
The new vessel that has captured hearts and minds in the Pentagon is the Littoral Combat Ship, a small, speedy shallow-water craft with interchangeable modular weapons systems. It is ironic that BIW has done much of the design work on these ships, but the LCS building contracts were awarded to other shipyards. The Navy’s shipbuilding budget has been nearly halved since 2001, but it wants to commission more than 50 LCS vessels over the next few years. It appears willing to sacrifice seven Bath-built destroyers to do so.
The Maine congressional delegation is doing everything in its power to push against the carrier-like momentum of Donald Rumsfeld’s vision for leaner, meaner armed forces. Senators Snowe and Collins warn of the grave dangers of single-source destroyer construction in Mississippi, citing everything from terrorist attacks to hurricanes. Congressman Tom Allen rails about the costs of the Iraq war, which he says could purchase a destroyer a week. None of Maine’s elected representatives has been above a little fear-mongering about China.
Regardless of whether the delegation manages to get more made-in-Maine destroyers back on the budget, the protracted wrangling and changing timelines are likely to disrupt BIW’s transition from the nearly complete Arleigh-Burke Destroyer program to its next set of projects, and that could cost thousands of BIW workers their jobs. In the long term, the shrinking military shipbuilding industry no longer provides enough work to sustain all of the nation’s shipyards. As the senators themselves wrote to President Bush this month, "The US shipbuilding industrial base has already endured a 75-percent reduction in employment during the past 15 years."
Perhaps it is time for the Maine delegation to read what activist Bruce Gagnon calls "the writing on the wall."
"Go out there to the Iron Works," says Gagnon. "Take a look at the administrative building, the warehouses. The paint is peeling, broken windows are boarded up with plywood. It’s a sign of disinvestment. General Dynamics has had one foot out the door the whole time."
The General Dynamics Corporation, which purchased Bath Iron Works in 1995, deals almost entirely in military industry.
"We’ve taken a look at what General Dynamics and other corporations have done with these facilities when the military contracts dry up," says Greg Field, Executive Director of Peace Action Maine. "They’ve moth-balled the places, laid everybody off.
"The issue," says Field, "is whether Maine will be proactive, rather than reactive . . . For two decades, Maine has been reactive to the loss of jobs across all manufacturing sectors. We need to develop a healthy Maine economy, and get off the boom and bust of military contracts."
Peace Action Maine (PAM) is a nonprofit activist organization working to provide "a voice of education and a center for all people committed to disarmament and creative responses to conflict." On April 1, they will launch a two-year campaign to shift Maine’s manufacturing base away from reliance on military industry. While PAM would support the introduction of any socially responsible, ecologically sound nonmilitary manufacturing in Maine, their most treasured vision is to make Maine a national leader in the production of sustainable energy technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines.
Economic conversion is not a new idea. "In the 1980s and early 1990s, during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was a big push among activists to convert military industries to civilian manufacturing," says Gagnon. "The Machinists Union led the way. Then George the First invaded Panama, and there was the Gulf War, and conversion talks disappeared.
"Now the peace movement has realized that we will never end war until we deal with the jobs issue."
Maine is certainly facing the jobs issue. Over the last 35 years, the state has faced a 46-percent decline in manufacturing positions, which pay an average of $7000 more per year that the primarily service-sector jobs that are replacing them. From 2000 to 2003, the state lost 5000 manufacturing jobs a year. "And what we’re seeing," says Field, "is that even when military contracts are running high, employment is declining in all military industries here in Maine." The value of shipbuilding contracts in Maine has risen by billions of dollars over the last decade, but since 1994, BIW has reduced its workforce by nearly 3000.
"We know," says Gagnon, "that nonmilitary manufacturing creates more jobs per dollar spent than military industry. Military manufacturing is incredibly capital-intensive, where other kinds of manufacturing are more labor-intensive." He cites a series of studies for the National Commission for Economic Conversion, conducted by Columbia University’s Seymour Melman.
The idea of developing the green energy manufacturing industry in Maine may be more than wishful thinking. Denmark invested early on in windmill technologies, and currently produces more than half of the world’s wind turbines. One of Denmark’s largest manufacturing sites is a converted shipyard in Copenhagen.
Here in the United States, officials in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, recently announced plans to build a new manufacturing plant in neighboring Ebensburg. This facility will provide windmill blades for the Spanish wind-energy company, Gamesa Corp. The plant is expected to create more than 1000 permanent jobs in the region over the next five years, in an area that has long been depressed by the relocation of manufacturing jobs overseas. Officials attracted Gamesa to their location through an instructive combination of state and local grants, loans, and tax incentives.
With a wind farm in development in Mars Hill, and projects springing up across the gusty Midwest, domestic demand for windmill equipment is growing. "Maine’s going to be left behind," says Gagnon, "because the Maine delegation is clinging to a sinking boat."
PAM’s economic conversion campaign is working on many fronts. It will officially kick off the two-year project with a "Fools No More Parade" in Portland on April 1 (see sidebar).
Another major component of the campaign is a traveling art show, "War Flowers: Swords to Plowshares," which opens at USM’s Area Gallery in Portland on April 8 (see sidebar). Over the next two years, the exhibit will be on display in locations across the state, including the University of Maine at Machias, the College of the Atlantic, and several public libraries. Says project coordinator Jessica Eller, "War Flowers will create the opportunity for discussion in every community where it is displayed."
Another group of PAM activists is putting together a series of presentations on economic conversion in Maine, geared toward a variety of audiences and communities.
Perhaps most important for the long-term credibility of PAM’s campaign is a two-tiered feasibility study currently being developed by a team from Economists for Peace and Security.
"The first tier," says Field, "is looking at the manufacturing capacity that Maine already has. We’re looking at issues of unused capacity with the military contracts, in terms of machines, tools, and skilled labor. We want the experts to give us an overview of the skill sets and capacities available, and examine what kind of retraining would be required and what kind of materials needs we would have. Basically, we want to find out what it would take to begin pilot projects in green energy.
"The broader study would look at how investments in the civilian sector create more jobs than military manufacturing, and what we can expect to see in green energy growth. We want to have real numbers before approaching the state."
To date, PAM organizers have had only informal conversations with Maine state officials. Field expects the figures on Maine’s manufacturing capacity by late spring, at which point he can begin talking to state agencies. More troubling, perhaps, is the absence of labor voices in PAM’s conversion movement. The organizers acknowledge this weakness.
"Ultimately," says Field, "this won’t go anywhere if Peace Action Maine is the only group working on it . . . This is not about taking any happiness in the slow decline of jobs, or in the loss of jobs at Bath Iron Works. And we don’t see this as bringing the answers to labor groups. We have some ideas, and we think they will create better jobs for everyone. We would like to sit down with labor representatives and come up with some ideas together."
Michael Keenan, president of Local S6, BIW’s largest labor union, emphasizes the importance of keeping the destroyer contracts in Bath. Citing the same national security issues that the Maine delegation has raised, Keenan says, "It’s hard to see a future in anything other than Navy shipbuilding, just because the workers here are so damn good at it. They’re the best in the world."
Still, Keenan says that he has never been asked about commercial shipbuilding or conversion before. "Everyone in this yard is working very hard, to support families, and for the insurance. We all want to feel secure in that. Absolutely, we would be interested in anything reasonable. There’s nothing these workers can’t build, nothing they wouldn’t build. The men and women here can build anything, any time, any place. They’re craftsmen."
Commercial shipbuilding would be the most obvious conversion for BIW, and General Dynamics does do some large commercial shipbuilding internationally. However, GD’s director of strategic planning and communications Dirk Lesko is doubtful about the prospect. "We would look at any contracts we think will be profitable," he says, "but the international market is at capacity. We see nothing on the horizon in the commercial sector."
Meanwhile, the Maine delegation is sticking to its guns on the issue of military industry at Bath Iron Works. When asked whether they would support conversion efforts at BIW if the yard lost the destroyer contracts, senators Snowe and Collins issued a joint statement: "We remain committed to working with Bath Iron Works in their mission to enhance our Navy’s fleet strength and size."
Congressman Allen also stresses national security needs, but welcomes any efforts to expand Maine’s manufacturing base. "I believe it’s important to bring manufacturing jobs into Maine, and to protect the manufacturing jobs we have. Bath Iron Works is so important to this region. For both the employees and the contractors in the area, there is no substitute, nothing Bath could bring in, that would be on the scale of BIW.
"In terms of finding other work, if we lose military contracts in Kittery, Bath, or [the Naval Air Station in] Brunswick, we will need to find other forms of work. I’m not clear on what kind of legislation would support that, since it’s private companies coming in, but we need the manufacturing jobs in this state and in this country."
If BIW does not recover any of the destroyer contract, Lesko says General Dynamics would look to secure other Navy shipbuilding options. And if BIW cannot secure another Navy contract?
"I’m not sure any of us are speculating about what we will do if there is no contract. We are committed to structuring ourselves as necessary to compete." When Lesko says "we," it is unclear whether he is referring to Bath Iron Works and the 6200 Mainers it employs, or the General Dynamics Corporation and its shareholders.
If General Dynamics holds true to its history, it will close the shipyards before it converts them, and the Bath waterfront will end up like so many former manufacturing sites in Maine: derelict. However, even Congressman Allen concedes that the renewable energy industries are experiencing increasing demand in the United States. State and local governments have only time to lose, and the salvation of the entire regional economy to gain, by heeding the zeal of the converted.
Christie Toth can be reached at cmtoth@gmail.com