NucNews - April 19, 2005
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted Uranium Situation Requires Action By President Bush and Prime Minister Blair
Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D.
April 19, 2005
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Bush-Blair-Rokke12jul04.htm
While U.S. and British military personnel continue using uranium munitions - America's and England's own "dirty bombs" - U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of Defense officials continue their unrelenting personal attacks against me, a lawyer who serves as a United Nations Special Rapporteur, physicians who are conducting research and providing medical care, nurses, political leaders, and others who have spoke out regarding the documented adverse health and environmental effects of depleted uranium munitions. They want to disrupt our efforts to ensure compliance with mandated medical care and environmental remediation requirements because they want to be always able to use effective depleted uranium munitions during combat. These same officials still continue to deny that there are any adverse effects to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material - depleted uranium. They arrogantly refuse to comply with their own regulations and directives. They willfully ignore existing U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) directives that require prompt and effective medical care Be provided to "all" exposed individuals [Medical Management of Unusual Depleted Uranium Casualties, DOD, Pentagon, 10/14/93 and Medical Management of Army personnel Exposed to Depleted Uranium (DU) Headquarters, U.S. Army Medical Command 29 April 2004)]. They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive Contamination as required by Army Regulation- AR 700-48: "Management of Equipment Contaminated With Depleted Uranium or Radioactive Commodities" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., September 2002) and U.S. Army Technical \ Bulletin- TB 9-1300-278: "Guidelines For Safe Response To Handling, Storage, And Transportation Accidents Involving Army Tank Munitions Or Armor Which Contain Depleted Uranium" (Headquarters, Department Of The Army, Washington, D.C., JULY 1996).
Army Regulation-AR 700-48 requires that: (1) "Military personnel "identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE" (radiologically contaminated equipment). (2) "Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible." (3) "Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment" and (4) "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" (Note: Maximum exposure limits are specified in Appendix F).
The past and current use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment, and releases of industrial, medical, research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposures. Therefore, decontamination must be completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations. The extent of adverse health and environmental effects of uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones but includes facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured or tested including Vieques, Puerto Rico, Colonie, New York, and Jefferson Proving Grounds, Indiana. Therefore medical care must be provided by the United States Department of Defense officials to all individuals affected by the manufacturing, testing, or use of uranium munitions. Thorough environmental remediation also must be completed without further delay.
In conclusion: the President of the United States- George W. Bush and The Prime Minister of Great Britain-Tony Blair must acknowledge and accept responsibility for willful use of illegal uranium munitions- their own "dirty bombs"- resulting in adverse health and environmental effects. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair also should order: 1. medical care for all casualties, 2. thorough environmental remediation, 3. immediate cessation of retaliation against all of us who demand compliance with medical care and environmental remediation requirements, 4. and ban the future use of depleted uranium munitions.
References:
* http://www.traprockpeace.org/twomemos.html
* http://www.traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html
* http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html
source: email from the author. Thanks Doug! 8apr2005
----
Connecticut Committee vote on AN ACT CONCERNING EXPOSURE TO DEPLETED URANIUM BY MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES.
April 19, 2005
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/fc/2005HB-06008-R000431-FC.htm
General Assembly
File No. 431
January Session, 2005
House Bill No. 6008
House of Representatives, April 19, 2005
The Committee on Public Health reported through REP. SAYERS of the 60th Dist., Chairperson of the Committee on the part of the House, that the bill ought to pass.
AN ACT CONCERNING EXPOSURE TO DEPLETED URANIUM BY MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:
Section 1. (NEW) (Effective from passage) (a) As used in this section:
(1) "Member of the armed forces" or "member" means a member of the armed forces, as defined in subsection (a) of section 27-103 of the general statutes, including the Connecticut National Guard, who is a resident of this state;
(2) "Eligible member" means a member who served in the Persian Gulf War, as defined in 38 USC 101, or in an area designated as a combat zone by the President of the United States during Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom;
(3) "Veteran" means a veteran, as defined in subsection (a) of section 27-103 of the general statutes, who served as an eligible member;
(4) "Depleted uranium" means uranium containing less uranium-235 than the naturally occurring distribution of uranium isotopes.
(b) On and after October 1, 2006, any eligible member or veteran who returns or returned to this state after service in an area designated as a combat zone by the President of the United States and who has been assigned a risk level I or II for depleted uranium exposure by his or her branch or service, or any other member or veteran who has reason to believe that he or she was exposed to depleted uranium during such service, shall have the right to a best practice health screening test for exposure to depleted uranium using a bioassay procedure involving sensitive methods capable of detecting depleted uranium at low levels and the use of equipment with the capacity to discriminate between different radioisotopes in naturally occurring levels of uranium and the characteristic ratio and marker for depleted uranium.
(c) On or before October 1, 2005, the Adjutant General shall submit a report to the select committee of the General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to military and veterans' affairs, in accordance with the provisions of section 11-4a of the general statutes, on the scope and adequacy of training received by members of the armed forces on detecting whether their service as eligible members is likely to entail, or to have entailed, exposure to depleted uranium. The report shall include an assessment of the feasibility and cost of adding predeployment training concerning potential exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic chemical substances and the precautions recommended under combat and noncombat conditions while in a combat zone.
...
The following fiscal impact statement and bill analysis are prepared for the benefit of members of the General Assembly, solely for the purpose of information, summarization, and explanation, and do not represent the intent of the General Assembly or either House thereof for any purpose:
OFA Fiscal Note
State Impact:
Agency Affected
Fund-Effect
FY 06 $
FY 07 $
Military Dept.
GF - Cost
Potential Significant
Note: GF=General Fund
Municipal Impact: None
Explanation
The bill could result in a significant cost to the state. The bill allows Connecticut National Guard service members who have returned from the Persian Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom, a best-practice health screening for uranium poisoning. The bill potentially impacts every member of the Connecticut National Guard, an authorized strength of 5,100. Since September 11, 2001 approximately 3,000 members have been mobilized in support of the Global War on Terror. Exposure testing for uranium poisoning is estimated to cost $1,000 per screen. It is unknown how many individuals would seek a state funded uranium screen but if the number of individuals were numerous, the cost could be significant.
The bill does not clearly identify which agency would be responsible for the cost of the exposure testing. Currently, during the demobilization process, military personnel complete documents from the federal government, to assess their risk of uranium exposure and are screened for potential exposure at the expense of the federal government.
The bill also requires the Adjutant General to submit a report discussing the possibility of predeployment training to identify exposure to uranium. The reporting requirement would increase the workload of the Adjutant General’s office, but is not anticipated to have a fiscal impact on the state.
OLR Bill Analysis
HB 6008
AN ACT CONCERNING EXPOSURE TO DEPLETED URANIUM BY MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES
SUMMARY:
Under this bill, service members returning, or who returned, from active service in the Persian Gulf War or in a designated combat zone during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom have the right, on and after October 1, 2006, to a best-practice health screening test for uranium poisoning.
By October 1, 2005, the bill requires the adjutant general of the National Guard to submit a report to the Veterans’ Committee on the scope and adequacy of the training service members receive to detect whether their service is likely to involve, or to have involved, exposure to depleted uranium. The report must include an assessment of the feasibility and cost of adding predeployment training on potential exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic chemical substances, and the precautions recommended under combat and noncombat conditions in a combat zone.
EFFECTIVE DATE: Upon passage
URANIUM TEST
The bill’s testing requirement applies to (1) Connecticut residents who are members of the U.S. Armed Forces, including the Connecticut National Guard, and (2) veterans honorably discharged from active service. Service members must have served in the Persian Gulf War (August 2, 1990 until a date prescribed by the President or federal law) or during Operation Enduring Freedom or Operation Iraqi Freedom in an area the President designates as a combat zone.
Beginning September 30, 2006, servicemembers who return, or returned, to Connecticut after such service have the right to a best-practice health screening test for exposure to depleted uranium if they (1) are assigned a risk level I or II for depleted uranium exposure by their branch of service or (2) have reason to believe they were exposed to depleted uranium. The test must use a bioassay procedure involving methods sensitive enough to detect low levels of depleted uranium. It must use equipment capable of discriminating between different radioisotopes in naturally occurring levels of uranium and the characteristic ratio and marker for depleted uranium. Depleted uranium means uranium containing less uranium-235 than the naturally occurring distribution of uranium isotopes.
BACKGROUND
Related Bill
sSB 1245, reported favorably by the Veterans’ and Public Health committees, establishes a task force to study the health effects of exposure to hazardous material, including depleted uranium, as they relate to military service, and submit a report to the legislature by January 31, 2006.
COMMITTEE ACTION
Select Committee on Veterans' Affairs
Joint Favorable Change of Reference
Yea 13 Nay 0
Public Health Committee
Joint Favorable Report
Yea 26 Nay 0
-------- europe
Belgian mayors raise voices against nukes
19.04.2005 - 09:56 CET | By Elitsa Vucheva
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=18882
Some two hundred Belgian mayors have responded positively to the call for the worldwide abolition of all nuclear weapons by 2020, and for the withdrawal of US nukes from Europe.
The Belgian mayors are calling on their government to focus on its own disarmament obligations, but also on the need for nuclear disarmament in general, during the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, which begins 2 May, in New York.
Moreover, they would like to see Belgium being the initiator of an international conference aiming to negotiate a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons.
The mayors are also calling for a removal of US nuclear weapons from Kleine Brogel (Belgium) and Europe in general.
The US is the only country to have nuclear weapons stationed in the territory of other countries.
The initial call came from the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hiroshima's mayor, Mr Tadatoshi Akiba, visited Belgium at the beginning of this year, explaining his "2020 vision", and asking for support for a complete abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020.
Following Mr Akiba's visit, some Belgian mayors called on all of their colleagues to join the network of the Mayors for Peace World Conference, presided by Mr Akiba.
Currently, some 1 000 mayors worldwide are said to have joined it.
A delegation of Belgian mayors will meet the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel De Gucht today (19 April), before some of them leave for the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York.
-------- iran
Russia presses Iran on nuclear plans
MOSCOW (AFP) Apr 19, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050419153027.ln6g855j.html
Iran's deputy security chief said Tuesday that Moscow was pressing Tehran to "develop a feeling of trust" with the rest of the world concerning its nuclear ambitions and that the Islamic state planned to follow suit.
Supreme National Security Council deputy head Hussein Musavian said after crisis talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Iran was keeping to its right to enrich uranium despite global fears that this would see it develop nuclear arms.
But he stressed that Iran had no plans to build nuclear weapons -- and that it could have done so some 20 years ago but chose against an atomic weapon at the time.
"Russia is pressing us to develop a feeling of trust with the rest of the world and this is what we plan to do," Musavian told reporters.
Russia is in a sensitive position concerning Iran's atomic program since it is building the Islamic state's first nuclear reactor in the town of Bushehr despite protests from Israel and the United States.
Iran's moratorium on the enrichment of uranium expires in June and Musavian hinted strongly that Tehran would soon resume the program.
"Iran is prepared to give its agreement not to develop nuclear weapons to the whole world, so that the whole world has no worries about our nuclear program.
"At the same time, Iran has a right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology, and we have no intention of ceding this right.
"The enrichment of uranium is a given right of any nation."
Russian media earlier characterized such a position as against Russia's line and one that would complicate Moscow's effort to lobby on behalf of Tehran.
"Russia is prepared to offer Iran help" in its negotiations with Europe over its nuclear program, the Kommersant business daily wrote in its Tuesday editions.
"But it will do so only under the condition that it will not enrich uranium," said the paper.
"Russia wants to win exclusive rights to deliver uranium to Iran. That is why Russia's main goal is to convince Iran to sign an additional protocol with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) stating that Iran will not breach a moratorium on uranium enrichment."
Musavian's visit to Russia came only days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned US President George W. Bush that Iran was approaching a "point of no return" concerning its nuclear program.
He called such charges a "gross mistake" and said that Iran could have developed nuclear weapons in the 1980s when the German industry giant Siemens started to build the Bushehr plant before dropping the project under US pressure.
"This is a very gross mistake," he said in reference to Sharon's comments.
"This has never been a part of our military plans. Back in the 1980s, Iran had the option of acquiring these technologies. But Iran did not do this."
He also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was planning his first trip to Iran in the near future but that a final date has not yet been set.
"We have agreed that a visit will come in the near future ... but we have to prepare well for this visit first so that we have a full agenda."
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Iran awaiting European response to uranium proposal: top official
GENEVA (AFP) Apr 19, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050419165243.7h9tg18m.html
Iran expects Europe to respond to its proposal to allow uranium enrichment, despite Western demands that it abandon such nuclear fuel work to guarantee it will not make atomic weapons, a senior Iranian diplomat said as EU-Iranian talks opened in Geneva on Tuesday.
"We are waiting to hear what the Europeans have to say about our ideas on our fuel production program," senior Iranian negotiator Cyrus Nasseri told AFP as EU-Iran talks began in Geneva. The talks are to continue Wednesday, diplomats said.
European Union negotiators Britain, France and Germany have since March been studying an Iranian proposal that would allow some enrichment, and there have been hints of a crack in their unity over this issue.
But one European diplomat told AFP Tuesday, repeating a comment made last week, that the European trio remains "rock-solid on cessation" by Iran of uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for nuclear reactors but can also be the explosive core of nuclear bombs.
The United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
A US official said: "We trust the EU Three (Britain, France and Germany) but we are also watching closely to ensure they continue to hold firm on insisting that the only objective guarantee acceptable to the international community (that Iran's atomic program is peaceful) is the full cessation and dismantling" of Iran's nuclear fuel activities.
The European diplomat said the Iranians will "not necessarily be getting an answer in Geneva" as the focus is on a more senior-level, steering committee EU-Iran review meeting to be held in London on April 29.
The diplomat said a "grand agreement" is not expected even then in a process which seems on hold ahead of Iranian elections in June.
Gary Samore, a non-proliferation expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, told AFP that the Europeans were considering the Iranian proposal as a tactic to keep the talks in the hope the Iranians will elect a president ready to make a deal on the nuclear dispute.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said however that the United States expects results by summer or it would consider tougher measures, such as working towards sweeping UN sanctions against Iran.
Iran's deputy security chief Hussein Moussavian said Tuesday that Russia was pressing Tehran to "develop a feeling of trust" with the rest of the world concerning its nuclear ambitions and that the Islamic state planned to follow suit.
Moussavian said after crisis talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow that Iran had no plans to build nuclear weapons -- and that it could have done so some 20 years ago but chose against an atomic weapon at the time.
Iran claims its nuclear program is peaceful and that it has the right to make nuclear fuel under the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
According to the text submitted to the Europeans on March 23, and read to AFP by a diplomat close to the talks, the Iranians are proposing the "assembly, installation and testing of 3,000 centrifuges in Natanz," the site where Iran wants to build an enrichment plant and has already built a pilot project of 164 centrifuges.
Centrifuges, placed in sequence, refine increasingly enriched uranium with each cycle. A sequence, or cascade, of about 2,000 centrifuges could make enough highly enriched uranium in a year to make one atom bomb, experts say.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment in November last year as a confidence-building measure to start the EU-Iran talks, which offer Iran trade, security and technology rewards if it abandons enrichment.
The Iranian proposal has been referred to by other diplomats as a pilot project, below what would be industrial levels of tens of thousands of centrifuges.
But the diplomat who read the text to AFP said: "This isn't a pilot enrichment plant they are seeking, it's larger than that."
----
Iran warns Europe to heed its proposal or face collapse of nuclear talks
LONDON (AFP) Apr 20, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050420001344.6iump9ga.html
Europe must heed an Iranian proposal on uranium enrichment or risk a collapse of talks about Iran's nuclear programme, the country's top nuclear official said in an interview published Wednesday.
The warning by Hassan Rowhani, head of the supreme national security council, came as diplomats from Britain, France and Germany -- the EU Three -- began talks with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva, ahead of a more senior-level meeting in London on April 29.
"The Europeans should tell us whether these ideas can work as the basis for continued negotiations or not," Rowhani told the Financial Times, referring to the Iranian proposal made last month that would allow some uranium enrichment.
"If yes fine. If not, then the negotiations cannot continue," he said.
"These ideas are the very last possible ideas that we could come up with as compromise options."
EU negotiators have been studying the suggestion, and there have been hints of a crack in their unity over this issue.
But one European diplomat told AFP Tuesday, repeating a comment made last week, that the European trio remains "rock-solid on cessation" by Iran of uranium enrichment, which makes fuel for nuclear reactors but can also be the explosive core of nuclear bombs.
The United States charges that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
The Financial Times noted that Britain, France and Germany would be struggling over the next 10 days to find a formula that would keep the talks going, without compromising on uranium enrichment.
It cited Western diplomats as saying that concessions to Tehran would undermine Washington's support for the talks.
Rowhani stopped short of threatening a resumption of uranium enrichment, which Iran agreed to suspend while the talks continued, but the newspaper said a complete breakdown in negotiations would probably end the suspension.
Such a development would also send the matter to the UN Security Council, where Iran could face sanctions -- a prospect that the Europeans would not relish, Rowhani suggested.
"For our dossier to be sent to the Security Council would be a great failure on the part of Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and multilateralism as a whole," he told the Financial Times.
In a bid at a co-ordinated strategy with Europe, the United States dropped objections to Iran joining the World Trade Organisation last month and to the sale of aircraft spare parts to Tehran, the economic daily said.
In return, Britain, France and Germany agreed to support the US bid to send Iran's case to the United Nations if Tehran resumed uranium enrichment.
Rowhani said the recent American steps were symbolic. But he cast doubt on the potential for a thaw in relations with Washington.
"The key is held in Washington itself. A country which expresses interest to hold talks at the same time cannot be working for regime change. So the US must clearly announce its strategy towards my country," he said.
-------- korea
N. Korea arsenal may be growing
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
4/19/2005 5:33 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-04-19-1a-nkorea_x.htm
NEW YORK — North Korea has shut down its nuclear reactor and plans to remove the fuel to make bombs and "increase our deterrent" against a possible U.S. attack, North Korean deputy ambassador to the United Nations Han Songryol said in an interview Monday.
If North Korea carries out the threat, it would mark the second time in two years that it has removed fuel rods from its reactor in Yongbyon to make bomb material. The reclusive nation claims it has nuclear weapons, and the CIA has estimated it possesses from two to eight; reprocessing this reactor fuel could give it an additional six.
North Korea's new declaration could be an attempt to push the United States to negotiate over the North Korean nuclear program on more conciliatory terms.
The Bush administration has demanded that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program and said it will talk with the North Koreans only in the context of six-party talks that also include South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
The North Koreans say they want a one-on-one promise from the United States not to attack it or seek economic sanctions; only after such an assurance would it consider discussing its nuclear program. The six-party talks have been stalled for almost a year because neither side will compromise.
Removing fuel rods from the 5-megawatt reactor is the first step in obtaining the necessary plutonium, and the rods can be removed only after the reactor is shut down.
But it is also possible that operations have stopped for routine maintenance and that North Korea is using the occasion for saber-rattling.
Reuters reported that South Korea confirmed the reactor shutdown, citing comments by Kim Sook, director-general of North American affairs at South Korea's Foreign Ministry, to South Korea's KBS Radio.
"The ball is in the U.S. court," Han said in the interview here. "We asked the United States to change its hostile policy. Then we can believe the United States and enter the disarmament process. If the U.S. policy is normal and friendly, (North Korea) will feel safe."
Han, North Korea's No. 2 official at the U.N., is in charge of dealing with the United States. He complained that harsh U.S. rhetoric about his country — such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remark that North Korea is an "outpost of tyranny" — had made it difficult to resume discussions.
The Bush administration has said repeatedly that it has no intention of invading North Korea but has sharply criticized the country's authoritarian government.
The White House said Monday it would consider taking North Korea to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if Pyongyang refuses to return to the talks.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush on a day trip to South Carolina, said North Korea "made a commitment" to return to the talks and "we want to see them follow through on that."
"I don't know that we've set a timetable, but if they refuse to come back to the talks, then we would have to consult with our partners and look at the next steps," he said.
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Korea - Reactor activity raises concern
April 19, 2005
By Barry Schweid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The apparent recent shutdown of a nuclear reactor in North Korea is raising concerns among Bush administration officials that Pyongyang has completed the task of producing spent fuel rods laced with weapons-grade plutonium.
But a U.S. official familiar with the situation said there could be at least two other possibilities, neither of which is troubling: that the reactor has run into mechanical trouble or that North Korea is bluffing in order to raise anxieties.
In the past, North Korea has claimed to have taken major steps in its pursuit of a nuclear-weapons arsenal, and only some of those claims are credited by U.S. analysts as genuine. Even so, North Korea is believed to have already produced at least one atomic bomb, and the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia are trying to negotiate elimination of the nuclear-weapons program.
North Korea had agreed to return to the bargaining table last September after a three-month hiatus, but since then has refused to resume the six-nation talks.
Reflecting growing impatience, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration would consult with its partners about taking the issue to the U.N. Security Council if the talks remain sidetracked.
"That's one possibility," Mr. McClellan said, "If they refuse to come back to the talks, then we will have to consult with our partners and look at the next steps."
The shutdown of the reactor in North Korea's main nuclear complex at Yongbyon was detected by what U.S. analysts refer to as "overhead imagery," which could involve spy satellites.
The idea is to look for cessation of smoke or for significant changes in the readings of thermal or radar counts, said a U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity.
"This is entirely feasible, but for us to know for sure, we'd have to be physically there ourselves, and this is no longer the case," said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency.
She confirmed that the reactor would have to be shut down for the fuel rods to be extracted.
In Seoul, meanwhile, Kim Sook, director-general of North American affairs at South Korea's Foreign Ministry, told KBS Radio that a shutdown of a nuclear reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex had been confirmed.
Yongbyon houses a 5-megawatt reactor that generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium, but they must be removed and reprocessed to extract the plutonium for use in an atomic weapon. They can be removed only if the reactor has been shut down.
North Korea restarted the reactor after expelling U.N. monitors at the end of 2002.
A U.S. scholar who recently visited North Korea said earlier this month that officials there told him they were preparing to unload fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor during the next two months, adding to the urgency of resuming nuclear talks.
-------- terrorism
Terrorists' weapon of choice
'Atomic Iran' describes how Tehran could help with bomb
Posted: April 19, 2005 WorldNet Daily
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43816
Editor's note: Written by the best-selling author of "Unfit for Command," Jerome Corsi, "Atomic Iran," WND Books' latest release, presents clear and convincing evidence of Iran's goal to acquire nuclear weapons and the risk such a scenario poses to the U.S. and the West. In this second excerpt from his blockbuster, Corsi describes how Iran could help terrorists in the U.S. use an improvised nuclear device to wreak untold havoc.
Suitcase nukes made great television when Congressmen Dan Burton and Curt Weldon held up the mock suitcase nuke. The device looked lethal, but also shiny and professional. The whole deal was a neat package, even if most of us had no idea how the silver-looking apparatus inside really operated. The mechanics of the device were not the point. The packaging was the image.
That a terrorist might carry a suitcase bomb that looked like a photographer's equipment case and simply leave it in a public location (New York's Grand Central Station or Washington, D.C.'s Union Station) was a frightening idea. The terrorist could simply walk away, maybe even escape, and the device would explode before any bomb squad could decide what to do first. Even at one kiloton of yield, the image created was that the suitcase bomb could leave at least a minor mushroom cloud in the center of New York or Washington and vaporize a building or two, maybe even a few blocks, spraying the aftereffects of subsequent radioactive death for miles.
The problem was that as serious researchers looked into the question, suitcase nukes were problematic. Maybe the former USSR had let a few get away. Still, their yield was low, and the devices required constant maintenance to remain operational.
What has emerged as a more serious threat, especially with the mad mullahs going nuclear, is what is known as the improvised nuclear device (IND). The IND has become the preferred choice of serious terrorists.
Why? The answer is a simple one. An IND requires the terrorists to get their hands on a quantity of fissile nuclear material for the purpose of fabricating a crude nuclear bomb. The IND does not have to be small enough to fit in a suitcase. The size can be considerably larger, maybe even large enough to fill the back of a truck, to take a page from Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing. A larger mass of fissile material can cause a larger explosion, producing more serious damage. That is important, because terrorists are theatrical and they crave massive destruction for its image value and its shock quotient.
Also important is that the IND can be detonated with a crude mechanism, especially if the bomb relies on enriched uranium, which is much easier to detonate than plutonium. An IND produced on this model can be driven into a major city and parked. If the terrorists are smart enough not to use a rental truck, they might even drive it through the Lincoln Tunnel or over the George Washington Bridge without getting stopped by the police for an inspection.
How realistic is it to assume that terrorists could produce an IND? This is the critical question.
First, there are huge quantities of fissile nuclear material available all over the world, frequently without adequate inventory control or protection safeguards in place. The threat is real simply because "the amount of fissile material that might theoretically be accessible to terrorists is staggering." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) defines the quantities of fissile material needed to be weapons significant as the amount of highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium needed to make a nuclear weapon roughly equivalent to the explosive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. This translates into the requirement to have available about 25 kilograms of weapons-grade HEU and a much smaller quantity of plutonium, only eight kilograms.
There is "substantial and credible evidence that both terrorist groups and hostile states are actively seeking to acquire stolen fissile material for nuclear weapons." The U.S. military has uncovered in post-Taliban Afghanistan a significant quantity of al-Qaida writings and drawings illustrating how to construct crude nuclear devices. U.S. analysts believe that al-Qaida's alleged WMD commander, Abu Khabbab, was focused on efforts to obtain nuclear weapons capability. On Sept. 11, 2002, the first anniversary of 9-11, ABC News smuggled a 15-pound (6.8-kilogram) cylinder of depleted uranium, on loan from the National Resources Defense Council, into the United States and televised the story. On Sept. 11, 2003, ABC News successfully repeated the experiment to smuggle the same cylinder of depleted uranium into the United States; again, the test was nationally televised. ABC News came to a frightening conclusion: "Security procedures at U.S. borders cannot detect highly enriched uranium."
How hard is it to make an IND? Again, the simplest mechanism involves uranium. The Hiroshima bomb was basically a "gun-type" bomb, a design that "involves slamming masses of highly-enriched uranium together in a gun barrel-like tube." Manhattan Project physicist Luis Alvarez affirms that making such a bomb is not complicated: "With modern weapons-grade uranium ... terrorists, if they had such material, would have a good chance of setting off a high-yield explosion simply by dropping one half of the material onto the other half. ... Even a high school kid could make a bomb in short order."
A successful IND would need to have yields in the 10- to 20-kiloton range, which would be equivalent to 10,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. A 20-kiloton yield would be roughly the size of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. A bomb of this size would devastate the heart of any major U.S. city and would cause fire and radiation damage over a much wider area.
By comparison, the conventional explosive that Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 involved five thousand pounds of fertilizer. The truck bomb used in the 1993 attempt to destroy the World Trade Center used about 1,500 pounds of fertilizer. Their TNT equivalent yields were 1.8 tons and 0.5 tons, respectively. "Thus even a nuclear yield of a few tons could, under certain circumstances, cause the destruction of a number of skyscrapers potentially resulting in many thousands of casualties, as well as widespread contamination."
Critics on the political left have been making a case that the obstacles to successfully creating and detonating an IND make the likelihood pretty remote that a terrorist group could pull off a nuclear explosion in a major U.S. city. The easiest way for terrorists to get their hands on a nuclear weapon would be to steal or buy an existing bomb from the arsenal of some nuclear country, such as Pakistan or Russia. Consider this objection voiced in December 2004 in the pages of the Washington Post:
It is unclear how quickly either country (Russia or Pakistan) could detect a theft, but experts said it would be very difficult for terrorists to figure out on their own how to work a Russian or Pakistani bomb.
Newer Russian weapons, for example, are equipped with heat- and time-sensitive locking systems, known as permissive action links, that experts say would be extremely difficult to defeat without help from insiders.
"You'd have to run it through a specific sequence of events, including changes in temperature, pressure and environmental conditions before the weapon would allow itself to be armed, for the fuses to fall into place and then for it to allow itself to be fired," said Charles D. Ferguson, science and technology fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "You don't get it off the shelf, enter a code and have it go off."
The argument from the political left continues to examine how difficult it would be for terrorists to get their hands on enough HEU and how technically difficult it would be to create an IND from scratch. For the sake of argument, the critics assume that the terrorists would want at least 50 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium. That would mean buying and smuggling into the United States about 150 pounds of HEU. Reviewing the history of what we know about black market transactions to date, the successful transactions have been for much smaller quantities; besides, most often the terrorists simply get scammed by con artists who see an easy opportunity to make a quick buck. Assembling the IND would require a complex team of chemists and engineers experienced with nuclear technology. Then the assembly team would have to have a secure location where it could work covertly to put the device together.
Even if the IND were pre-assembled, shipping it into the United States represents problems. Conceivably, an IND with about 50 kilograms of bomb-grade uranium could be made small enough to fit into a corner of a shipping container. The device could be transported on an oil supertanker; the thickness of steel used in a supertanker's hull and the use of double hulls would make detection more difficult. Still, to get through customs, the device would probably have to be packed in a lead-shield container. So getting a prefabricated IND into the United States represents additional problems.
Then critics point to the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, a group that was "intent on world destruction when it began its 1993 quest for a nuclear weapon, [and] had all the means to pull it off, on paper at least: money, expertise, a remote haven in which to work, and most important, a private uranium mine." Yet the group made so many mistakes in judgment and planning that the plan to develop an IND was abandoned. Instead the group attempted the technically easier task of a chemical attack, which was executed in 1995 when members released the deadly poison sarin on the Tokyo subway.
Yet, given all these obstacles, the same critics acknowledge that a "primitive device could be assembled in a small garage using machine tools readily available at an auto shop and concealed in a lead-plated delivery truck about the size of a delivery van." The technical problems are, according to the critics, the reason we have not yet seen a terrorist-delivered nuclear explosion in one of our major cities.
As comforting as the critics' analysis is, one major factor has come upon the scene that fundamentally alters the equation: The atomic mullahs have now come upon the world.
Operation IND: How the mullahs could detonate a nuclear bomb in New York City
A good reason that the mullahs and al-Qaida might decide to work together is that the mullahs are about to have plenty of enriched uranium, and al-Qaida has the operational network to deliver a bomb. Moreover, as we have seen, there is good reason to believe that both Hezbollah and Hamas have operatives in place today within the United States. This gives Iran some operational resources on the ground to assist the al-Qaida terrorists who may be in charge of actually driving the bomb into the city and detonating it. The Hezbollah- and Hamas-linked individuals indicted to date suggest that both organizations have managed to plant some highly educated individuals who might be able to recruit associates from within the ranks of American companies working right now on nuclear technology.
Studying how the 9-11 plan was executed gives us a blueprint for how the terror masters would put together an operational IND to deliver a nuclear attack on a U.S. city. The 9-11 Commission Report presents a reasonably complete step-by-step summary of how al-Qaida proceeded.
For discussion purposes, we will code-name the plot Operation IND. The mastermind behind 9-11 was Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), whose nephew was Ramzi Yousef, the planner of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. KSM had spent time getting an education in the United States. He was also well traveled, with ties to terrorists in areas of the world ranging from Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, Indonesia and Malaysia. He also had experience with a large selection of different terrorist schemes, including "conventional car bombing, political assassination, aircraft bombing, hijacking, reservoir poisoning and, ultimately, the use of aircraft as missiles guided by suicide operators."
The 9-11 plot also evolved as KSM studied the 1993 bombing of the WTC and decided he did not want to use a bomb to attack his target. He worked on the "Bojinka" plot to bomb 12 U.S. commercial jets over the Pacific during a two-day span, which triggered his thinking about coordinating multiple simultaneous attacks involving commercial airplanes. KSM considered himself a "terrorist entrepreneur," and he applied the "one idea leads to another" model as he evolved the 9-11 plot.
A terrorist mastermind planning Operation IND would clearly study the Oklahoma City bombing, the first bombing of the WTC and the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Assume the target city would be New York. The detonation of a nuclear weapon as a follow-up to the 9-11 WTC attack would be sufficiently spectacular. And the economic damage done to the United States by taking out a large part of Manhattan would have a strong appeal to the terrorists. The second-most logical target would be Washington, D.C. The opportunity to destroy major segments of the U.S. government with one bomb blast would compete for top billing in the terrorists' imaginations.
A weapons team could be assembled in Iran, and a group of operational terrorists could be pulled together from around the world to be dropped in New York. Having access to Iran's many nuclear facilities already in place eliminates several major problems. The work to create an IND could be carried out clandestinely, almost as part of the daily operations of the sites where the work building the IND needed to be done. No one need know exactly what anyone else was working on; the Operation IND team could blend in with the hundreds of other nuclear scientists and technologists already working at Iranian nuclear facilities.
The weapon would most likely use HEU as fuel, with the design built along the gun-type design. Iran has sufficient uranium enrichment capabilities in place. Any permission granted by the IAEA to keep some enrichment centrifuges running for "research and development" purposes would make a perfect cover for some clandestine uranium enrichment to fuel the IND. When the reactor at Bushehr goes on-line, Iran would have fuel by-products that could be devoted to plutonium production. Still the delivery and detonation of a plutonium device is so much more complicated that it decreases the likelihood of a successful weapons-delivery effort in New York. The principle of "keep it simple" would probably dictate making the first IND a uranium device.
A nuclear Iran could keep in-house every part of the IND fabrication, from fuel enrichment to the weapon's design and manufacture. Probably the uranium would be produced in a metallic form for maximum power and minimum size and for ease of transportation. The device itself might be designed in a modular structure, so component pieces could be shipped separately and assembled after they arrive on the East Coast. This way the team on-site in the United States would have no fuel-enrichment or manufacturing requirements – just the need to assemble the parts as they arrived.
Mohamed Atta was the team leader of the operational terrorist group that implemented the 9-11 plan. Similarly, Operation IND would need to select an equally competent team leader. Like Atta, the team leader for Operation IND would have to speak English and have reasonable familiarity with the United States and American customs. Additional requirements would be for the person to be skilled at people management. Keeping a team of terrorists motivated and on purpose, yet comfortable enough to blend in, takes considerable talent not commonly found.
The 9-11 team members had different skill sets and command responsibilities. Some were selected to pilot the planes, others were selected to be the "muscle terrorists" who would subdue passengers and overpower the crews in the cockpits. Operation IND would need terrorists who knew New York and were comfortable presenting themselves as drivers and crew of the types of commercial trucks found every day on the streets of Manhattan. Depending on where the IND was to be delivered and how it was to be made "live," the operational team might need a member with some technical or engineering skills.
The weapon could be shipped to the United States via commercial carrier. Given the embargo currently blocking trade between the United States and Iran, components of the IND would have to be transported from Iran to countries where the pieces could be included in ship cargoes sailing to ports in New York or Newark. Given the Hezbollah and Hamas ties already established in the United States, operatives who could be used in Operation IND might already be working at the ports or in banks where commercial shipping financial records could be created to finance and cover the component shipment. If bribes needed to be paid, the mullahs would wire funds through intermediaries in other nations to fraudulent bank accounts in the United States that had been set up to fund Operation IND, using fake personal identification or "front companies" equipped with business registration papers that made them appear legitimate.
The New York field team would have to be in place some months ahead of H-hour. Providing a sufficient window for arrival time would give terrorist operatives enough time to make one or more attempts at entry into the United States. Operatives would probably be assigned different methods of entry and their attempts staggered so that discovery of one might not tip off U.S. authorities to anticipate the arrival of a team or the beginning of a plot. Team members might not even be told in advance what they were doing or who else was on the team. Lists of arrival locations or Hezbollah-Hamas contact operatives to contact once in the United States might be all the information required prior to transit.
Operation IND would have some go, no-go decision points. These would key on whether all the components arrived on time and were delivered to the assembly point as predetermined. The plan might even involve some redundancy where more than one set of components might be scheduled for shipment, limited only by not wanting to send more redundant parts than absolutely necessary. There would be a trade-off between wanting to send the minimum number of shipments to reduce the odds of detection and wanting to send enough parts so the IND could be assembled even if everything did not arrive on time as anticipated.
Several days or weeks before H-hour, the truck planned to deliver the weapon would begin making scheduled runs into New York to establish a pattern of being seen and known. More than one truck could be used, so even the terrorist operatives would not themselves be sure who was "live," just to reduce nervousness or overreaction during the operation. Also, using more than one truck would always permit an advance truck to go over the delivery route so the mission could be called off if security were especially tight on the day planned for H-hour. Logistics could be made more secure by having components delivered to a location within Manhattan, so the fully assembled IND would not have to be driven through a bridge or across a tunnel for placement as planned at H-hour.
The mullahs may be the driving force behind Operation IND, but the action itself would combine skills sets from across different terrorist organizations. Al-Qaida may be best equipped to provide the delivery team on-site in New York. Hezbollah and Hamas would have responsibility of selecting and coordinating the activities of operatives already on-site in the United States. The nuclear scientists and engineers working at the nuclear facilities in Iran may come from nuclear operations in Iraq or Pakistan, possibly even North Korea.
Iran's involvement as a state-sponsor removes key barriers that critics have identified with IND operations as previously imagined or possibly even attempted. A rogue terrorist group no longer has to go on the black market to purchase HEU or to buy a weapon from an existing arsenal. Instead, the required HEU and the manufacture of the weapon itself would be undertaken as another task to be completed by Iran's state-operated ongoing nuclear operation. Nor would a complex team need to be positioned within the United States. At most, one or two operatives with scientific or engineering skills would need to be included on the U.S. operative team. The U.S. field team for Operation IND would have responsibilities limited to final weapon assembly, weapon delivery and weapon detonation.
Tomorrow: Corsi provides a second-by-second description of the effects of a terrorist nuke attack in Manhattan.
Read Part 1, "Sleeper cells in America."
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43815
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-------- treaties
At the unholy altar of nuclear weapons
Canada has a key role to play in preventing erosion of non-proliferation pact, says Douglas Roche
Toronto Star Apr. 19, 2005
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1113861018376&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 35th anniversary of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was supposed to lead to a nuclear-weapons-free world. Both anniversaries remind us of the stark dangers nuclear weapons still pose to the world.
It is a moment of intense diplomatic challenge for Canada, a country at the centre of the debate over the future of nuclear weapons. That debate will take place at the NPT Review conference May 2-27 at the United Nations.
In recent years, Iran, Libya and North Korea have pursued illegal nuclear programs with the assistance of a secret Pakistani network.
A high-level U.N. panel recently warned: "We are approaching a point at which the erosion of the Non-Proliferation regime could become irreversible and result in a cascade of proliferation." It is truly shocking that the public seems oblivious to the 34,000 nuclear weapons still in existence, most of them with an explosive power several times greater than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The NPT was obtained through a bargain, with the nuclear-weapons states agreeing to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear weapons and share nuclear technology for peaceful purposes in return for the non-nuclear states shunning the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Adherence to that bargain enabled the indefinite extension of the treaty in 1995 and the achievement of an "unequivocal undertaking" in 2000 toward elimination through a program of 13 Practical Steps.
Now the United States is rejecting the commitments of 2000 and premising its aggressive diplomacy on the assertion that the problem of the NPT lies not in the nuclear-weapons states' own actions, but in the lack of compliance by states such as North Korea and Iran.
Brazil has put the issue in a nutshell: "One cannot worship at the altar of nuclear weapons and raise heresy charges against those who want to join the sect."
The whole international community, nuclear and non-nuclear alike, is concerned about proliferation and wants strong action taken to ensure that Iran and North Korea do not become nuclear weapons states.
But the new attempt by Washington to gloss over the discriminatory aspects of the NPT, which are now becoming permanent, has caused the patience of the members of the non-aligned movement to snap.
They see a two-class world of nuclear haves and have-nots becoming a permanent feature of the global landscape. They see the U.S. researching the development of a new, "usable" nuclear weapon and NATO, an expanding military alliance, clinging to the doctrine that nuclear weapons are "essential."
Compounding the nuclear risk is the threat of nuclear terrorism, which is growing day by day. It is estimated that 40 countries have the knowledge to produce nuclear weapons and the existence of an extensive illicit market for nuclear items shows the inadequacy of the present export control system.
The task awaiting the 2005 review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty is to convince the nuclear-weapons states that the only hope of stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to address nuclear disarmament sincerely.
This is precisely the stance taken by foreign ministers of the New Agenda Coalition (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden), who recently wrote:
"Nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament are two sides of the same coin and both must be energetically pursued."
The New Agenda, which showed impressive leadership at the 2000 NPT review in negotiating the 13 Practical Steps with the nuclear weapons states, is now clearly reaching out to other middle-power states to build up what might be called the "moderate middle" in the nuclear weapons debate.
Eight NATO states — Belgium, Canada, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway and Turkey — voted for the New Agenda resolution at the U.N. in 2004, an action that effectively built a bridge between NATO and the New Agenda. The new "bridge" shows that a group of centrist states may be in position to produce a positive outcome for the 2005 NPT review.
Here is where Canada can shine.
In 2002 and 2003, Canada was the only NATO nation to vote for the New Agenda resolution. That was an act of courage, for Canada likes the "good company" of its alliance partners when it takes progressive steps. But the action was rewarded in 2004 when seven other NATO states joined Canada.
I recently held meetings with the governments of some of these key countries — Germany, Norway, The Netherlands and Belgium — to discuss how to make a success of the NPT review conference. These countries look to Canada, as an important centrist state, to maintain its leadership position in upholding the integrity of the disarmament and non-proliferation goals of the NPT.
When I was in Europe, news came of the Canadian government's decision not to join in the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defence system.
This move won the unanimous admiration of the officials I talked to. Clearly, they would like to work with Canada in proposing workable solutions to the NPT crisis.
For Canada, working in a collegial manner with other centrist states is much easier to do than the action it boldly took in confronting the U.S. alone on missile defence.
In the present political climate, no "grand solution" is possible. Rather, a set of incremental steps could be achieved if the moderate middle states use their influence to convince the U.S. that it is in American interests to protect the NPT's ability to curb would-be nuclear proliferators.
These steps include: the start of negotiations for a ban on the production of fissile materials; the striking of a new committee at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva to deal with nuclear disarmament questions; the U.S. and Russia taking their strategic nuclear weapons off "alert" status, and beefing up the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that nuclear fuels for civilian purposes are not diverted to nuclear weapons.
This is a modest program. Many nuclear weapons abolitionists will not be satisfied with it, for it falls far short of negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
The world is a long way from obtaining such a treaty, which would need a strong verification system to ensure the safe elimination of all nuclear weapons. But the interim program would at least save the NPT.
By working diligently and diplomatically with key NATO states and the progressive New Agenda states, Canada can live up to its own values of making the world safe from the spread of nuclear weapons.
Douglas Roche is the former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and Senator Emeritus in Alberta. He is chairman of the Middle Powers Initiative.
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The U.S. Approach to the 2005 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review
Conference: An ACT Interview With Assistant Secretary of State
Stephen Rademaker
April 19, 2005 Arms Control Today
Wade Boese and Miles Pomper
http://www.armscontrol.org/interviews/20050419_Rademaker.asp
n the verge of an important month-long meeting of states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker met April 19 with Arms Control Today Editor Miles Pomper and Arms Control Association Research Director Wade Boese to discuss the U.S. approach to the upcoming meeting, which will take place May 2-27 in New York. Rademaker has served as the head of the Department of State'sArms Control Bureau since August 2002.
ACT: As you know, the seventh review conference of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) will take place in May. We understand informal discussions have failed to produce an agreement on a possible conference agenda, in part because of U.S. positions. What issues from the U.S. perspective are preventing an agenda from being completed?
Rademaker: We are confident that in the end there will be agreement on an agenda and that this will not prove to be an obstacle to a successful meeting. There was a disagreement at the Preparatory Committee[1] [PrepCom] last year about one element of the agenda. The question essentially revolved around how to refer to conclusions reached at the end of previous review conferences.[2] Since that time, a lot of thought has been given to the matter, and a number of creative suggestions have been made. I am not too worried that we will be able to reach agreement on an agenda by the time of the review conference.
ACT: Who will lead the U.S. delegation to the conference on a daily basis, and will Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attend or speak?
Rademaker: Ambassador Jackie Sanders[3] will be the head of the U.S. delegation on a day-to-day basis. Who the titular head of the delegation will be is a matter that has yet to be decided.
ACT: What is the United States hoping to achieve at the conference, and what is your strategy for accomplishing those objectives?
Rademaker: The most important challenge facing the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is the threat of noncompliance, which we have seen many instances of in recent years. These developments have to be truly alarming to anyone who cares about the nuclear nonproliferation regime. We have had North Korea announce its withdrawal from the treaty [in January 2003], resume nuclear weapons related work, and announce that it has produced nuclear weapons. We have a situation with Iran where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has documented an 18-year history of deception and violation by Iran of its safeguards obligations,[4] all of which in our view is clear evidence that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program. We think delegates to the review conference need to take a careful look at that situation. We also have the case of Libya, which was covertly pursuing a nuclear weapons program until evidence emerged of that program. Once [Libyan leader Moammar] Gaddafi was confronted with that evidence, he chose to renounce his nuclear ambitions. Still, Libya is another example of the compliance problem that we think needs to be the focus of attention.
Of course, underlying all three of these particular compliance issues was the Abdul Qadeer Khan network.[5] We learned in Libya of the existence of the Khan network and the fact that a covert operation was underway worldwide to supply countries, including NPT states-parties, contrary to their treaty obligations, interested in developing nuclear weapons. We think we have put the Khan network out of business, but we have to be concerned about the emergence of similar networks in the future.
These are the kinds of developments that have emerged since the last review conference in 2000, and we think the principal focus of attention at the upcoming review conference has to be these problems and what can be done to prevent them from undermining the foundations of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
ACT: When you say these are the problems that need to be looked at, what are you asking other countries to do to address these compliance concerns?
Rademaker: We would like to see a consensus emerge that this is in fact a major challenge and that there is a shared interest among all treaty states-parties in remedying this problem. Once we can achieve agreement that this is a problem that needs to be remedied, then we can begin to talk about what those remedies might be. We do believe it would be important to try and reach agreement about the proper interpretation of Article IV of the treaty, which sets forth the right of non-nuclear-weapon states to peaceful nuclear cooperation. We think that it is clear from the text of Article IV that peaceful nuclear cooperation is an inalienable right for those parties that are in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations under the treaty. But for countries that are not in compliance, obviously their right to peaceful nuclear cooperation needs to be implemented in a manner consistent with the simultaneous requirement that they not be seeking nuclear weapons.
ACT: How do you convince other states to sign on to this consensus to bolster compliance?
Rademaker: Well, the review conference will go on for four weeks and will consist largely of speeches, meetings, dialogue, and lots of conversation. We have been active in the run-up to the review conference in explaining to other countries our views of what needs to be accomplished in New York, and we are going to continue throughout the course of the review conference to promote our views. This is the work of diplomacy.
ACT: Other countries are going to want more than just U.S. statements about this being the right thing to do. They will want the United States to pledge or take further actions. What is the United States willing to do to show that it is also complying with fulfilling its treaty obligations?
Rademaker: We are doing a lot to reinforce compliance with Articles II and III of the treaty.[6] For example, we were instrumental in helping create the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).[7] PSI is a useful reinforcement to the nuclear nonproliferation provisions of the NPT. We also think UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which endorsed PSI and imposed additional obligations on all member states of the United Nations to take national measures to discourage proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, is an additional useful step.[8]
ACT: Just one aside if I could. Why did the United States advocate only having a two-year time frame on the 1540 committee?
Rademaker: I do not know.
ACT: My understanding was that other countries wanted a more permanent committee length, like the UN terrorism committee, but the United States suggested that it only be a two-year time frame for the 1540 committee.
Rademaker: I do know that we are taking this committee for a test drive, so to speak. There have been some difficulties in the implementation of [Resolution] 1540, so I do think that whatever our reasons were initially, it’s clear today that the two-year mark would probably be a good time to reassess how things have been working, revisit the question of how we want them to work, and go forward from there.[9]
ACT: As I am sure you know, the UN high-level panel that included Brent Scowcroft [President George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser] noted in its report [“ A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility”] that “lackluster disarmament by the nuclear-weapon states weakens the force of the nonproliferation regime and thus its ability to constrain proliferation.” The report further stated that the nuclear-weapon states have only a “mixed grade in fulfilling their disarmament commitments” and that past progress has been “overshadowed by recent reversals,” specifically citing the renouncement of the “13 practical steps.” What can the United States do to turn this tide of opinion at the NPT review conference?
Rademaker: I would disagree with the notion that the United States is in any way lacking in its compliance with its obligations under Article VI of the NPT or is in any way lacking in its commitment to fulfillment of Article VI. Certainly, I am aware that there are countries that register complaints, but in our view, those complaints are not well founded. The record of U.S. compliance with Article VI is unassailable. The obligations of Article VI are clearly stated within the NPT. It’s a one-sentence provision that in relevant parts says that all parties to the NPT, not just the nuclear-weapon states, are obligated to engage in good faith negotiations in the direction of nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. Quite honestly, I do not think there is any country in the world that can point to a better record of compliance with those obligations than the United States.
Just three years ago, we signed with Russia and have since ratified the Moscow Treaty, which provides for a two-thirds r eduction in the number of strategic nuclear warheads that we deploy.[10] I simply do not know how a negotiated two-thirds r eduction in strategic nuclear warheads is not good faith negotiations by the United States on effective measures leading to nuclear disarmament. I simply do not understand how anyone can make that contention, and I think, people frankly will not make that contention. Instead, they will talk about other things that are a bit more removed from the actual obligations set forth in Article VI.
ACT: What do you mean by that? What issues do you think that they are going to raise?
Rademaker: What did the UN panel report?
ACT: Well, they talked about the renouncement of the 13 steps
Rademaker: I am not aware that we have renounced the 13 steps. We are prepared to talk about our record. But the 13 steps do not encapsulate the obligations of Article VI in the NPT. The obligations of Article VI are encapsulated in Article VI.
ACT: You are well aware that the 13 steps will be raised at the conference. How does the United States plan to address the matter when other countries raise it? Would the United States agree to a final document that refers to the 13 steps or elements of them?
Rademaker: I have not seen a proposed final document that either refers or does not refer to the 13 steps. We think the 13 steps reflect a statement of views that were relevant to the year 2000, when that statement was agreed to. A lot has changed since the year 2000, and we think it is time for the upcoming review conference to address the situation that exists in the year 2005. As I noted at the outset, the most important change since the last review conference is the emergence of this problem of noncompliance. Those of us who actually care about the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime need to focus on the real problems of today, not a historical discussion of problems that were identified five years ago.
ACT: But is the United States concerned about the consequences that its position on the 13 steps might have in terms of other states’ views on their political commitments made at previous review conferences? One can cite the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995 and the linkage of Article IV with Articles II and III in 2000. Are you concerned about the consequences for those political commitments by taking this view of the 13 steps as a historical commitment?
Rademaker: I am not sure that I would agree that the decision to extend the NPT was a political commitment. I think that, if you look to the text of the treaty, it was more than just a political decision. And, the linkage between Articles IV and II and III is a linkage that rests not on a political ground, it rests on the actual language of Article IV. There is explicit reference in Article IV to this linkage. We think that we can stand on our record, which we think is unassailable.
ACT: Still, even though the United States states that its record is unassailable, other countries are going to still raise questions and ask why can’t you do more. Are there steps the United States is willing to take to try and meet those concerns that other countries are going to raise? What steps could the United States take to satisfy the demands of other countries at the review conference to make them more willing to deal with the noncompliance issue?
Rademaker: The most important step we can take is to implement our obligations under Article VI, which we have done with the Moscow Treaty with its two-thirds r eduction in strategic nuclear warheads. It is a negotiated measure that will effectively lead in the direction of nuclear disarmament. It’s indisputable compliance by the United States with Article VI.
We have done additional things outside of negotiated processes that have been equally effective. With regard to nonstrategic nuclear weapons, we have fully implemented the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives,[11] dismantling more than 3,000 nonstrategic nuclear warheads. Last May, the president decided on an almost 50 percent r eduction in the U.S. nuclear stockpile to be implemented between now and the year 2012.
Taken as a whole, it is very hard to find fault with the U.S. record. None of the other countries at the upcoming review conference, if asked what they have done under Article VI—and I am speaking not just of the nuclear-weapon states but of the non-nuclear-weapon states that also have Article VI obligations—will be able to point to a record anywhere near as compelling as the United States can point to.
ACT: You are basically saying that the U.S. record cannot be challenged.
Rademaker: Yes. There will be criticisms. Countries will accuse us of not doing as much as they would like us to do. But these are ill-founded criticisms. These are not countries that will be able to answer very effectively what they have done to implement their obligations under Article VI.
ACT: In terms of the Article VI commitments and the Moscow Treaty, one criticism that is likely to be raised is that the r eductions are not irreversible or transparent. In addition, the United States has not been that active over the past year in making r eductions. For instance, the U.S. arsenal has apparently been r educed by two warheads in the past year under START[12] counting rules. What can the United States do to address the concerns that it is not doing enough to r educe its nuclear arsenal?
Rademaker: These additional criteria [irreversibility and transparency] are not specific criteria you will find outlined in Article VI. But we do think that there is tremendous transparency about the r eductions we have made. They are all a matter of public record. They are subject to verification under the START inspection regime. You have not heard any complaints by the Russian Federation that we are failing to provide transparency under that regime with regard to the Moscow Treaty r eductions. The point about START counting rules are just sophistry because START counting rules impute levels to delivery systems. They have nothing to do with the actual levels of warheads deployed on delivery systems. The Moscow Treaty refers to actual levels, not counting rules. And, with regard to irreversibility, I find it truly remarkable that anybody is going to come to the upcoming review conference expressing concern that in the year 2012 that, after we implement a two-thirds r eduction in our level of strategic nuclear warheads, we are going to somehow want to reverse course and build up. That is a purely hypothetical or conjectural concern.
Meanwhile, North Korea is building up and proudly declaring that it has become a nuclear-weapon state. Iran is clearly moving in that direction. Those are problems that exist today. Rather than focusing on hypothetical problems that some fear may emerge in seven years, we think it’s of much greater relevance to focus on the problems that we know exist today.
ACT: At the Conference on Disarmament, Dutch Ambassador Chris Sanders recently noted, “Effective multilateral presupposes a genuine attitude to take each other’s proposals seriously.” What proposals from other countries are the United States considering seriously?
Rademaker: I think that the French and the Germans have made some very interesting proposals about Article X of the NPT, which is the withdrawal provision. I think that we will come with an open mind to those proposals. We look forward to the proposals that other governments have to make about the problem of noncompliance. IAEA Director-General [Mohamed] ElBaradei has made some proposals about the nuclear fuel cycle that we have not embraced in the exact form that he has put forward, but we think that he has correctly identified a major problem facing the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the nuclear nonproliferation regime. We look forward to working with him and others who have an interest in trying to develop solutions to the concern about the spread of [uranium-] enrichment and [plutonium] reprocessing technologies.[13]
ACT: The United States has put forward its own proposals about the fuel cycle with regard to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).[14] Do you see the NPT review conference as a forum to build support for those proposals, and do you see the NPT review conference as the forum from which you want to do more on the fuel cycle?
Rademaker: The president’s February 11 proposals of last year were to work with the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The NPT review conference bears no direct relationship to the Nuclear Suppliers Group, so it is not a forum where we will seek to achieve some decision to foster the president’s NSG proposals. That said, we do think that the review conference is an occasion to talk about the threats and challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Since the spread of enrichment and reprocessing capability is a challenge and Director-General ElBaradei has been very outspoken in trying to draw attention to it as a challenge, we think the upcoming review conference is an opportunity to continue the international conversation about this particular problem.
ACT: Reportedly, the five nuclear-weapon states are not going to issue a common statement or position prior to the conference as they have in the past. Why not?
Rademaker: It is my understanding that in the past the statement has not always been issued prior to the conference. There have been some times it has been issued during the conference. With that being the case, I am not sure your statement will prove correct.
ACT: So, there is an effort to craft a common statement?
Rademaker: It’s something that is under consideration.
ACT: We have talked about noncompliance and Article VI. What other difficult issues do you anticipate might arise at the review conference, and how will the United States try to resolve them so they do not negatively impact the conference outcome?
Rademaker: We are hoping for a successful conference, so I do not want to speculate about additional problems. We are working in a constructive matter with [Review Conference President and Brazilian Ambassador] Sergio Duarte to overcome the problems that emerged at the end of PrepCom last year. As I have said, we are hopeful that an agreement will be reached on an agenda. We think that there inevitably will be a discussion of this problem of noncompliance. We think the evidence of noncompliance is so overwhelming and the threat that it poses to the nonproliferation regime so manifest that most countries will want to talk about this at the review conference. We are not anticipating profound disagreements. I will be surprised if many countries come to the review conference championing the decision of North Korea to withdraw from the treaty.
ACT: Speaking of North Korea, are you looking for specific language at the review conference for dealing with the North Korean question?
Rademaker: I would be surprised if there is a desire at the review conference to deal with the decision by North Korea to withdraw. On the other hand, I would be surprised if there was not a strong desire to speak to the problem that other countries may decide to follow suit. In other words, I would expect North Korea’s withdrawal to be addressed in a more generic manner as potentially part of a systemic problem. The way it is likely to be viewed in New York is from the perspective of, what can we do to discourage other countries from withdrawing from the treaty pursuant to Article X? That is the general thrust of the French and German proposals. There should be widespread consensus at the upcoming review conference that withdrawal from the NPT is a bad idea and it’s something to be discouraged.
ACT: You said that you are hoping for a successful outcome to the conference. What would you consider a successful outcome?
Rademaker: A renewed commitment by all states-parties to the importance of the NPT. A general consensus that noncompliance with the NPT poses a threat to the regime and it’s something that needs to be taken very seriously and addressed. Effective action needs to be taken in cases of noncompliance, both to reverse the noncompliance that we know about and to discourage others from contemplating noncompliance.
ACT: Could the review conference be considered a success without a final document?
Rademaker: Absolutely. Three of the six review conferences concluded without final documents. I am not aware that there is a widespread belief that 50 percent of the review conferences have been failures. There is ample precedent for having a successful conference that does not result in a final document. We will work toward achieving agreement on a final document, but it is important to bear in mind that this is a collection of almost 190 countries that will act on the basis of consensus. Any one country at this conference will be in a position to block agreement on a final document. Should that happen, it would not necessarily follow that the conference as a whole was a failure.
ACT: How important is it for the administration that the review conference be viewed as a success?
Rademaker: We see the review conference as an opportunity because the problem of nuclear proliferation is viewed by this administration as, if not the top threat to our national security, one of the top threats to our national security. This review conference is an important opportunity to build international will to combat that problem.
ACT: On the flip side, what would you consider a failed outcome to the conference?
Rademaker: The conference would be a failure if it chose to dwell on the past rather than the present and the future, for instance, if, in the discussion on the problem of noncompliance, the review conference spent disproportionate time focusing on Article VI, where as illustrated by the Moscow Treaty all the movement is in a positive direction, rather than on Articles II and III, where all the movement is in a negative direction.
ACT: We touched on this a little bit, but are there additional measures or steps that the United States is willing to take to avoid this kind of outcome? Obviously, there is diplomacy, but in terms of strategy, how do you avoid that kind of failed outcome?
Rademaker: I take it that you are inviting me to announce today that the Bush administration has reconsidered its position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty?
ACT: Well, beyond specific policy steps, is there a diplomatic strategy that might be more likely to be successful?
Rademaker: We are not approaching this review conference from the cynical perspective of, we are going to toss a few crumbs to the rest of the world and by doing that try to buy goodwill or bribe countries into agreeing to the agenda that we think they should focus on rather than some other agenda. We will stand on our record. We are proud to stand on our record. We do not think that we need to make apologies for our record. An objective analysis of our record will lead to a very brief discussion of Article VI, which can be a small sidelight to the much larger and more important discussion that needs to be had about the noncompliance problems we have under Articles II and III.
ACT: Thank you.
1. Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meetings are two-week conferences of NPT states-parties that take place during each of the three years preceding an NPT Review Conference. They are used by the NPT states-parties to prepare for the review conferences. See Wade Boese, “NPT Meeting Marked by Discord,” Arms Control Today, June 2004, pp. 28-29.
2. At the heart of the dispute to which Rademaker is referring was U.S. opposition to acknowledging the “13 practical steps” agreed to at the end of the 2000 NPT Review Conference. The 13 steps called for a series of actions toward nuclear disarmament, such as bringing the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) into force and strengthening the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The Bush administration opposes the CTBT and withdrew the United States from the ABM Treaty in June 2002.
3. Ambassador Jackie Sanders serves as U.S. representative to the 65-member UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and as special representative of the president for the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.
4. Safeguards are mechanisms, such as inspections, seals, and remote monitoring, used by the IAEA to verify that countries are not illicitly diverting nuclear materials and technologies intended for peaceful purposes to build nuclear weapons.
5. Abdul Qadeer Khan is the “father” of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program and ran a proliferation ring that spanned a number of countries and provided nuclear expertise and technologies to Iran, Libya, North Korea, and possibly others. Khan publicly confessed February 4, 2004, to his proliferation activities on Pakistani television.
6. Article II of the NPT obligates non-nuclear-weapon states not to seek, acquire, manufacture, or receive nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices or control over them. Article III requires all non-nuclear-weapon states to subject their nuclear technologies and facilities for peaceful purposes to international verification to ensure that they are not diverting materials toward developing nuclear weapons.
7. President George W. Bush announced May 31, 2003, the creation of the PSI. The voluntary initiative calls on participating countries to use existing national and international authorities to intercept shipments of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, as well as related materials and delivery vehicles, at sea, on land, and in the air.
8. Passed unanimously April 28, 2004, by the UN Security Council, Resolution 1540 requires all states to institute “appropriate” and “effective” measures to deny terrorists and other nonstate actors biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, as well as related materials and delivery vehicles. Resolution 1540 does not explicitly refer to PSI, and China succeeded in removing the word “interdiction” from the resolution. Nevertheless, U.S. officials assert that Resolution 1540 and PSI are complementary, citing paragraph 10 of the resolution, which “calls upon all [s]tates, in accordance with their national legal authorities and legislation and consistent with international law, to take cooperative action to prevent illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, their means of delivery, and related materials.”
9. The committee took several months to hire experts to help evaluate national reports on activities to comply with the resolution. That review process just started in March. See Wade Boese, “Slow Start for UN WMD Committee,” Arms Control Today, April 2005, p. 41.
10. Signed by Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin on May 24, 2002, the Moscow Treaty is formally titled the Strategic Offensive R eductions Treaty (SORT). The agreement commits the United States and Russia to r educe their operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to less than 2,200 apiece by December 31, 2012.
11. The Presidential Nuclear Initiatives were voluntary pledges made by President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the fall of 1991 to eliminate certain types of tactical, or “battlefield,” nuclear weapons.
12. Signed on July 31, 1991, by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Strategic Arms R eductions Treaty (START) committed Washington and Moscow to r educe their “accountable” strategic warheads down to 6,000 apiece by December 5, 2001. The two sides established specific criteria for what was “accountable,” so figures for START “accountable” warheads do not necessarily reflect weapons operationally deployed.
13. Uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing can be used in making fuel for civilian power reactors and producing nuclear weapons.
14. Established in 1975, the NSG is comprised of 44 nuclear supplier states, including China, Russia, and the United States, that have voluntarily agreed to coordinate their export controls governing transfers of civilian nuclear material and nuclear-related equipment and technology to non-nuclear-weapon states.
The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization. If you find our resources useful, please consider joining or making a contribution. Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor.
2005 Arms Control Association,
1150 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 620
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: (202) 463-8270 | Fax: (202) 463-8273
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Critics Say OSHA Isn't Protecting U.S. Workers From Beryllium
THE AUTHORITY ON OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY, HEALTH AND LOSS PREVENTION
04/19/2005 - James L Nash
Occupational Hazards
http://www.energy-net.org/is/en/nuke/SAFT/FED/05419176.TXT
In the wake of recent disclosures that 10 current OSHA employees
have developed a sensitization to beryllium, probably while
performing inspections, some critics say the agency is failing
to protect the health of private sector workers who are exposed
to beryllium 40 hours a week.
According to confirmed results of the beryllium blood tests
released by OSHA in March, 3.7 percent out of 271 inspectors
tested are sensitive to beryllium, a widely used carcinogenic
metal that can cause skin and lung disease.
"It's extraordinary how many of the inspectors who were exposed
only briefly to beryllium are sensitized," commented Peter
Lurie, M.D., MPH, deputy director of Public Citizen's health
research group. "These inspectors pop in for a day or two, while
presumably workers are exposed to similar levels 40 hours per
week, every week."
Adam Finkel, Sc.D., an OSHA official who in 2000 began pushing
the agency to offer inspectors beryllium blood tests, thinks
OSHA should release the exposure data for all
beryllium-sensitized inspectors. In the absence of this
information, Finkel believes agency inspectors probably visited
no more than 10 facilities.
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS asked OSHA what the agency is doing to
protect those who work full-time at the facilities visited by
OSHA inspectors who now have beryllium sensitivity.
In a written response, an unnamed agency official stated, "it is
the responsibility of the employer to protect workers." The
statement explained further that OSHA has noted the risks of the
metal through several health bulletins and that employers are
expected to comply with OSHA's current permissible exposure
limit (PEL) for beryllium: not more than 2 micrograms per cubic
meter of air for an 8-hour time-weighted average.
"It's nutty only to say we expect employers to comply with the
standard," commented Finkel. "Even if employers are complying,
the sensitization numbers show the PEL is too high and not
protective. We know workers are exposed to levels thousands of
times higher on a cumulative basis than OSHA inspectors."
Lurie said in 2001 Public Citizen filed an unsuccessful lawsuit
to compel OSHA to cut its beryllium PEL to 10 percent of what it
is currently. "By statute OSHA must maintain a healthy
workforce: It's clear they failed to do so for both private
sector workers and for their own," he added.
Beryllium is listed on OSHA's current regulatory agenda, raising
hopes the PEL will be lowered in the future.
In a March 24 letter to Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who had
asked about the current status of beryllium rulemaking, OSHA
Acting Administrator Jonathan Snare wrote the agency, "is in the
early stages of the regulatory process."
The answer satisfied neither Finkel nor Lurie.
"It means absolutely nothing for OSHA to say rulemaking is
ongoing," said Lurie. "Words are not enough when issued by OSHA:
Concrete action must be shown."
Beryllium first was placed on the regulatory agenda in 1975.
"It's been 30 years -- when will OSHA not be in the early stages
of rulemaking?" asked Finkel.
----
NRC's Jaczko set to appear before panel
By Suzanne Struglinski
LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
April 19, 2005
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/apr/19/518625664.html
WASHINGTON -- Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Greg Jaczko will appear before a Senate committee this week for a belated confirmation hearing.
President Bush appointed Jaczko and Peter Lyons, a former aide to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., to the commission while Congress was not in session. This allowed the two new commissioners to skip confirmation hearings and a Senate vote.
Matt Dempsey, a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff member, said Wednesday's hearing is a confirmation hearing in name only. It is just a chance for the committee members, who have oversight authority of the commission, to ask questions and get statements on the record from both commissioners, Dempsey said.
Controversy surrounded Jaczko's nomination to one of two open commission seats by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The nuclear industry objected to the nomination because Jaczko worked for Reid in 2002 during the height of the congressional debate on the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Jaczko was one of the main people on Reid's staff working toward the defeat of the project.
In addition to regulating commercial nuclear power plants, the commission will ultimately decide to give a license to the Energy Department to build the repository, if the department submits a license application.
During the two-year period between Reid's recommendation for nomination and Jaczko's swearing-in on Jan. 21, Reid placed holds on Bush administration nominees and fought for Jaczko's seat, emphasizing his qualifications and ability to evaluate information objectively.
In the end, the Senate struck a deal for two-year terms for Jaczko and Lyons after Bush nominee Navy Adm. Albert Konetzni Jr. withdrew his nomination. Commissioners usually serve five-year terms.
To secure his seat on the commission, Jaczko also volunteered for a one-year recusal on anything related to Yucca Mountain or geologic disposal of nuclear waste.
The committee before which Jaczko is to be questioned on Wednesday is where Jaczko started working for Reid in 2000 when Reid was a member of the committee. Reid gave up his seat on the committee when he became the Senate minority leader this year.
-------- colorado
Final Transuranic Waste Shipment Leaves Rocky Flats
Cleanup Ahead of Schedule, On Track to Save Taxpayers Billions
April 19, 2005 U.S. Department of Energy
http://www.energy.gov/engine/content.do?PUBLIC_ID=17781&BT_CODE=PR_PRESSRELEASES&TT_CODE=PRESSRELEASE
GOLDEN, CO. – A major environmental victory was achieved at the Rocky Flats Site in Golden, Colo., today when the final remaining shipment of radioactive, transuranic (TRU) waste left the property on a truck bound for an underground waste repository in New Mexico. This major milestone is another step toward the final conversion of the site to a National Wildlife Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"This is great news for all of Colorado, and would not have been possible without hand-in-glove cooperation between the Department of Energy, the Colorado Congressional delegation, local communities and regulators," Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said. "Through these efforts, we’re taking an industrial facility and turning it into a place where animals and other wildlife can flourish. A project of this magnitude and complexity has never before been attempted anywhere in the world. It’s truly remarkable what can be accomplished by hard work, cooperation and innovation."
During the Cold War, components for nuclear weapons were made at the Rocky Flats site using radioactive and hazardous materials including plutonium, uranium and beryllium. In fact, every nuclear weapon in the field today has a part or component that was produced at the Rocky Flats facility.
When operations ceased in the early 1990’s, large amounts of radioactive waste and other hazardous materials, such as the TRU removed today, remained behind. The materials shipped today consist of disposable items contaminated with radioactivity, such as clothing, tools and rags generated during nuclear production and deactivation.
Since cleanup commenced ten years ago, workers faced tremendous challenges in the removal of over 12 metric tons of plutonium, the demolition of hundreds of aging and contaminated buildings, and the disposal of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste materials. The project, despite initial estimates predicting a cost of $37 billion over 60 years, is on track to be completed a year earlier than planned, at the end of 2005, at a total cost of about $7 billion.
"As late as 1999, there were people who thought what we’ve achieved today would be impossible," Secretary Bodman said. "The workers on site were true innovators and problem solvers throughout this project, repeatedly coming up with solutions to the technical challenges they faced."
At Rocky Flats today, workers looked on as the last of the site’s TRU waste left for final disposal at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in Carlsbad, N. Mex. Trucks from Rocky Flats have traveled safely nearly 1.5 million miles since 1999, carrying over 15,000 cubic meters of transuranic/transuranic mixed waste to WIPP.
MEDIA INFORMATION:
Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell will host a call with reporters TODAY, APRIL 19, 2005 at 3:40 EST to discuss the final shipment of TRU from Rocky Flats. Deputy Secretary Sell is number two at the Department of Energy, serving as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the $23 billion agency.
Reporters wishing to participate should call:
TIME: 3:40 PM (EDT)
PHONE: 301-903-6496
Media:
Mike Waldron, DOE HQ, 202/586-4940
Karen Lutz, Rocky Flats, 303/966-4546
-------- new jersey
Uranium missing, Teaneck lab says
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
By ALEX NUSSBAUM
NORTH JERSEY STAFF WRITER
http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2MDYmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY2ODE3NjYmeXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXky
A small amount of enriched uranium fuel is missing from a Teaneck laboratory, triggering a state and federal search for the nuclear material from Bergen County to Virginia.
The 3.3 grams of powdered uranium - about one-tenth the weight of a paper clip - was reported missing Wednesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
Investigators think the powder might have been accidentally thrown in the trash and trucked to a landfill in Pennsylvania or New York State.
The material isn't radioactive enough to harm anyone and the amount in question is too small to create a so-called dirty bomb, an NRC spokesman said. But the agency, along with state regulators, said it was taking the disappearance seriously.
"The safety consequences aren't that great," said the spokesman, Neil Sheehan. "On the other hand, we don't want this material floating around in the public domain. We're moving aggressively to track it."
The Bergen County Prosecutor's Office did not immediately return a call seeking comment, but prosecutors did not think a crime had been committed, said Paul Tiernan, Teaneck police chief.
The lab, LeDoux & Co. on Alfred Avenue in Teaneck, specializes in chemical analyses, largely of materials used by the nuclear industry. The missing powder was part of a shipment of seven canisters of the enriched uranium packed in a 20-gallon drum. The uranium was meant for a university research reactor. LeDoux was testing the purity of the fuel.
BWX Technologies of Lynchburg, Va., a maker of nuclear material, shipped the fuel to LeDoux on March 30 in a "tamper-safe container."
In a statement, BMX said it received verbal confirmation that the uranium arrived on March 30, but it never received a written verification from LeDoux as required by federal regulations.
On April 12, LeDoux discovered it couldn't account for one of the canisters, Sheehan said. The company notified the NRC the next day.
"We went to analyze it and found that it wasn't here," said Charlie Avallone, LeDoux's manager of nuclear services, adding: "We don't believe it's been stolen."
State and federal inspectors visited LeDoux on Thursday. The most likely explanation for the whereabouts of the missing uranium is that someone mistakenly tossed the material in the trash, said Fred Mumford, a DEP spokesman.
Investigators inspected the Miele Sanitation transfer station in Closter, where LeDoux's municipal trash goes. But the search turned up no clues, Sheehan said. Miele, like most transfer stations, has radiation detectors, but the missing uranium probably wasn't "hot" enough to trip a sensor, Sheehan said.
For the same reason, the NRC thinks the risk to the public is small, he added. Standing next to 3.3 grams of enriched uranium for an hour would expose a person to about 1 millirem of radiation, Sheehan said. The average American is exposed to 360 millirems over the course of a year, the agency says.
Joseph Miele, who owns the transfer station in Closter, doubted the uranium came through his property. Not only weren't the radiation sensors triggered, but LeDoux's garbage hauler would have spotted a canister in the midst of the trash, he said.
"Something must have happened [at LeDoux] and somebody must have covered their rear end and said they threw it in the garbage," he said.
If it did pass through the trash, the tiny dose of radiation could be hard to find now, he continued. Miele sends its waste to four landfills in central Pennsylvania and another in upstate New York.
"It's worse than a needle in a haystack," he said.
LeDoux, founded in 1880 as a consultant to the mining industry, has cooperated with the investigation, Sheehan said.
The NRC's last inspection of the company, in June 2003, did find problems, however. LeDoux had not performed a required audit of its radiation program or mandated radiation safety training, Sheehan said. The agency also found problems with monitoring for contamination and an air-filtration system.
Still, the issues were considered "of low safety significance," Sheehan said. LeDoux received no fine but was expected to address the problems, he said. It was unclear if the lab had done so.
The NRC also suspended LeDoux's license for 10 days in 1994, according to articles in "Nuclear Fuel," an industry newsletter. LeDoux reportedly had failed to assure a $125,000 fund for the future decommissioning of the Teaneck lab. The license was reinstated after the money was provided.
Agency inspectors aren't prepared to say whether LeDoux violated any rules this time, Sheehan said.
"They're trying to put together a timeline of what material was supposed to arrive, when it was last seen," he said. "We're still very much in the information-gathering stage."
Tiernan, the Teaneck police chief, said the company followed proper protocol in notifying regulators. But he said LeDoux should have contacted local police as well.
"What we're going to do is set up a meeting with the company ourselves so that if something like this happens again, we can be notified right away," he said.
Staff Writer Mary Jo Layton contributed to this article.
-------- south carolina
Subject: Photos of US plutonium, bomb trucks
From: tom.clements@wdc.greenpeace.org
Date: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:12pm
Photos from April 12, 2005 of US Department of Energy
nuclear bomb, plutonium trucks: http://frodo.greenpeace.org/photos/puphotos/
On the night of April 11, Greenpeace International and other groups in the southeastern US (Charleston Peace, Georgians Against Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Information and Resource Service and the Carolina Peace Resource Center) observed two Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited (PNTL) ships bringing plutonium fuel (MOX) into the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
This was experimental MOX fuel fabricated from 140 kg. of US weapons grade plutonium sent from Los Alamos National Lab to France for fabrication - see http://www.stop-plutonium.org and http://www.charlestonpeace.org for more information. The groups above oppose the MOX program on proliferation, safety and cost grounds.
We observed three US Department of Energy (DOE) SafeGuard Transport (SGT) trucks exiting the Charleston Naval Weapons Station on the morning of April 12 with the MOX fuel, accompanied by security escorts (which looked like "campers" - see them at end of 3-truck convoy.)
We had expected two trucks to go to the Catawba nuclear reactor near Rock Hill, South Carolina but as security conditions (imposed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) for storage of the weapons-grade MOX have not been met, the trucks were diverted to the DOE's Savannah River Site (SRS). One truck went to Los Alamos National Lab with "scrap and archive" plutonium.
DOE security officials who saw us were not too happy that we took photos but did not seize the cameras when they ended up stopping us at later points in the transport.
The trucks used for the MOX transport are the same ones used to transport US nuclear weapons, weapons components, and nuclear materials. I am not aware that photos of the SGTs have been distributed recently, so if you work on US nuclear weapons or DOE issues, want to use these photos of how US nukes are transported, or frequently travel the highways in the US, take a look at the photos at the Greenpeace US site below. All the trucks, with cabs which were bright turquoise, had "US Government" license plates, making them highly visible.
http://frodo.greenpeace.org/photos/puphotos/
(Poke around on this site and you will find some disturbing photos & video of how plutonium is transported in France. If you want to steal plutonium France, not Russia, is the place to go!)
If you use the photos, which I took, I'd appreciate credit to Greenpeace International and also knowing about any use. Happy nuke truck spotting!
Tom Clements
Senior Adviser
Greenpeace international
Nuclear Campaign
tel. 1-202-319-2411
http://www.stop-plutonium.org
-------- us nuc waste
TRAIN SHIPMENTS: Ruling on hazardous cargo hailed
Nevada officials heartened after judge upholds ban
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL April 19, 2005
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/Apr-19-Tue-2005/news/26323114.html
A federal judge's ruling Monday upholding a ban on hazardous rail shipments in part of the District of Columbia gives hope that a 5-year-old Las Vegas law that prohibits nuclear waste shipments within city limits has clout.
"It means the ordinance we passed ... can be considered to be constitutional," Mayor Oscar Goodman said in response to the decision by U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan.
Sullivan rejected an attempt by CSX Transportation Inc. to stop the District of Columbia's ban on hazardous rail shipments within about two miles of the Capitol from taking effect Wednesday.
CSX has vowed to appeal.
Goodman said he was not surprised by the ruling.
"You have to believe local governments are charged with the public's trust that their health and safety are assured," Goodman said.
"As a practical matter, now we can be aggressive in demanding we know when these shipments take place," he said, referring to hazardous, poisonous and explosive cargo transported in rail tank cars.
Gov. Kenny Guinn acknowledged the potential effects of the court's ruling on the government's plans to use trains and trucks to haul 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and highly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"This supports the arguments that communities have been making to prohibit shipments of hazardous materials through their communities," Guinn said through his spokesman Greg Bortolin. "We are especially pleased about the implications this may have for Las Vegas and Reno, which have adopted ordinances banning the shipment of nuclear waste through their communities."
District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams signed the hazardous rail ban in February out of concern that a terrorist attack involving hazardous rail cargo, such as liquid chlorine, could kill up to 100,000 people.
In his 76-page decision, Sullivan wrote, "The court recognizes that the federal government has the ultimate authority and responsibility to provide a safe, secure and efficient rail transportation system in the United States." But, he said, Congress has given local authorities the right to regulate areas of railroad safety if the federal government does not take action to address new risks, such as terrorist threats.
While Sullivan's ruling only deals with CSX's request for an injunction blocking the law until the merits of the case are decided, it might have broader ramifications.
CSX has acknowledged that if Washington succeeds, others could follow. The railroad said in its court filing that Washington's law "invites other local jurisdictions to enact copycat legislation which could, by crazy-quilt coverage, bring to a halt the interstate shipment of critically important materials throughout the United States."
Goodman said he expects the U.S. Conference of Mayors will adopt a resolution at its June meeting in Chicago to back the district's ban as a friend of the court.
Goodman said he will propose that the Las Vegas City Council adopt a more encompassing ordinance against hazardous cargo passing through the city than the one that focused on highly radioactive materials. That ordinance was approved Feb. 2, 2000, in a 6-1 vote over the opposition of then-Councilman Michael McDonald, who doubted the measure was constitutional.
Then on Sept. 6, 2000, the City Council passed a resolution making Las Vegas a nuclear-free zone.
One year later, on Sept. 5, 2001, Goodman spoke at a public hearing on the Yucca Mountain Project, saying he would personally arrest anyone who drives a truck with a cargo of high-level nuclear waste through the city. "Let's see the driver try to get out of jail in my city," he said.
Goodman repeated his stance on Dec. 12, 2001, warning then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham who attended another hearing in Las Vegas that it is illegal to haul high-level nuclear waste through the city.
The mayor said he was shocked by a story and photographs in Sunday's Review-Journal that showed how vulnerable Las Vegas is to the dozens of tank cars hauling everything from weed killer to butane to liquid chlorine that sit daily on sidings and in a switch yard in the valley.
A Union Pacific railroad official said routing hazardous rail cargo away from Las Vegas would result in lengthy detours that would still send the tank cars through Reno or Tucson, Ariz.
The American Association of Railroads, an industry group, says rerouting isn't necessary based on the safety record of railroads: 1.7 million carloads of hazardous materials are shipped annually and 99.996 percent arrive safely.
CSX officials said the company will file an appeal with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking for an emergency order blocking Sullivan's ruling. If the appeals court does not rule before Wednesday, CSX will comply and reroute hazardous materials around the city, CSX spokeswoman J. Anne Chettle said.
CSX and the departments of Transportation and Homeland Security argue that rerouting trains around the city would be costly and interfere with interstate commerce.
Sullivan said they would have to provide more evidence to prove any irreparable harm.
"I see the judge's ruling as an invitation for the U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Transportation to ... step forward with meaningful security measures," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
-------- MILITARY
-------- iran
Facing Sanctions, Iran Uses Oil to Seek Allies
By JAD MOUAWAD
April 19, 2005 NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/business/worldbusiness/19tehran.html?pagewanted=print&position=
TEHRAN, Iran - As it faces the threat of global sanctions from the United States and Europe because of suspicions that it is turning its nuclear program to weapons production, Iran is fighting back with a powerful weapon of its own: its vast oil and gas resources.
Iran's ruling clerics are meticulously arranging energy sales and building partnerships with influential countries, including China and India, as a way to win stronger friendships around the world.
The rising price of oil, nervousness in the energy markets and the scramble by fast-growing countries to secure their own access to oil supplies has lately played into Tehran's hand.
This renewed push to turn underground riches into political power complicates the Bush administration's attempt to isolate Iran, which holds 10 percent of the world's oil deposits and has the second-largest gas reserves.
High-profile talks with European negotiators continue over the future of its nuclear program, as does the threat of United Nations sanctions and American action in the background.
But in the meantime, Iran has approached China and India, two of the largest and most dynamic consumer markets, and promised them long-term supplies of gas and access to oil exploration.
In addition, Iran last year granted Japan, traditionally its largest customer in Asia, even greater access to oil.
"Iran wants to diversify its strategic alliances and is looking to the East," said Ali Ghezelbash, an oil analyst at Atieh Bahar Consulting, a business consultancy in Tehran. "China and India are huge consumers of energy and could be very powerful allies for Iran on the international scene."
As American oil companies are barred from investing in Iran because of unilateral sanctions, Iran's policy is opening the door to their state-owned rivals in Asia to build up oil and gas reserves as a counterweight.
There is no guarantee, though, that Iran's clients will necessarily turn into political allies. Moreover, Iran's ability to buy friendships is undermined by its own limitations. While the country pumps close to four million barrels of oil a day, it spends $2 billion each year to import fuel because of a lack of refining capacity. Then it spends another $3 billion to subsidize gasoline that is sold here at one of the lowest prices in the world - 8 cents a liter, or about 30 cents a gallon.
And nearly a third of Iran's production is unavailable for export because it is tied up in domestic consumption, where much of it is squandered by inefficient cars, badly insulated homes or wasteful industries.
"Iran definitely has geology on its side," said Vincent Lauerman, the editor in chief of Geopolitics of Energy, an industry newsletter based in Calgary, Alberta. "But if you look at the fields that are producing, these tend to be mature and declining."
Still, for all its problems, Tehran is definitely making progress in its geopolitical campaign. In January, Iran said it would provide India with liquefied natural gas for 25 years, an agreement valued at $40 billion. It also gave India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Company, ONGC, a 20 percent stake in the Yadavaran oil field, a 300,000 barrel-a-day project.
That agreement came on the heels of a similar deal signed in October, a commitment to supply China with natural gas over 30 years that also granted China's state-owned oil company, Sinopec, a 50 percent stake in Yadavaran, which holds an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil reserves. This came with a potential value of $70 billion.
Iran is also trying to persuade the strategic rivals India and Pakistan to agree to the construction of a $4 billion pipeline that would carry Iranian gas through Pakistan to India.
In the meantime, after years of fruitless talks, Japan's Inpex last year was granted a $2 billion development contract for the Azadegan field, Iran's largest discovery in the past three decades, with an estimated 26 billion barrels of reserves.
"It is very clear, for example in the case of China, that their energy interest in Iran gives them a stake in the game," said Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy based in New York. "Their position is much more engaged here because of their energy policy."
Oil-rich countries, of course, have long used their resources to expand alliances, make new friends or punish adversaries. Nor is energy diplomacy something new for Iran; in the 1970's when the shah ruled Iran, the country was very active in using its oil to build up political support, particularly with the West.
But Iran's Islamic regime is finding that its oil weapon can be a double-edged sword.
With the bulk of the world's oil reserves concentrated in the Persian Gulf and production elsewhere slowly waning, Iran knows that it has time on its side.
"The world will be consuming growing amounts of oil and only five or six countries can supply this," said Mehdi Hashemi, a son of Iran's former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who maintains ties with the oil ministry. "Iran is one of them."
In 1995, Mr. Rafsanjani, who was president then, even tried to lure the United States into improving relations by granting Houston-based Conoco a $1 billion oil development deal.
But the strategy backfired. Ten days after the announcement, President Clinton banned American companies from contributing to Iran's oil sector.
The following year, Congress passed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, or ILSA, which threatened penalties against American and non-American companies investing more than $20 million in Iran and Libya's energy sectors.
"Whenever Iran has wanted to get closer to a country it has used its oil diplomacy," said Siamak Namazi, a managing director at Atieh Bahar, the Tehran consultancy. "But the history of American-Iranian relations has been that when one opens the window, the other nails it shut."
Iran is counting on outside help to bolster its stagnating production. After nearly two decades of isolation, the clerical rulers of Iran have realized they cannot afford the massive expansion and modernization the industry needs without capital and expertise from abroad.
Since the mid-1990's, foreign investors, mainly European and Asian companies, have poured about $15 billion into Iran's oil and gas industry. But the country's energy resources remain tired and have never really recovered from the Islamic revolution of 1979.
After the clerics toppled the shah, they cut their oil output by two-thirds to demonstrate their resolve to sever ties with the West; the Iranian industry then became a prime economic target in the eight-year war against Iraq. But when Iran signaled it was once again ready to open up access to foreigners, the United States imposed sanctions against its oil sector.
From a peak production of six million barrels of oil a day in 1974, Iran's oil output slumped to two million barrels in the early 1980's, and has since stabilized at around four million barrels a day, or 5 percent of the world's output.
"Iran has obviously suffered from the departure of the expatriates, from sanctions, from poor management, and from political interference," said Manouchehr Takin, an analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London.
Iran's current expansion plans call for increasing oil production to 5.5 million barrels a day by 2010. But since fields have an annual rate of decline of 200,000 barrels a day, Iran actually needs to find an additional 2.5 million barrels a day - as much as what neighboring Kuwait produces - if it wants to meet its target.
Given the country's restrictive investment rules and the tense political environment, foreign investors are not rushing in. Recently, Lord John Browne, the chief executive of BP, angered Iranian oil officials when he said that to do business with Iran at the moment would be "offensive to the United States and therefore against BP's interests."
Energy has been at the center of Iranian politics ever since the first foreign concession was granted in 1901 to William Knox D'Arcy, an English businessman. It still holds a central part in the nation's recent history - from the creation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the nationalization of the oil sector in 1951, and the CIA-led coup to topple the leftist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, two years later.
The question remains very much alive today in Iran, where foreign ownership of petroleum assets is constitutionally prohibited and where energy policy is vigorously debated in Parliament.
"It's true throughout the Middle East, but the public here is very emotional about the oil issue," Mr. Takin said. "In Iran, the memories of the past are still very vivid."
But as with any high-stakes business, Iran's energy diplomacy is partly a bluff. For many oil executives here, the decisive coup would be, as it tried in 1995, to attract American companies back - but this time lock them in.
"We've been in this business for over a hundred years," said Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, a senior adviser to Iran's foreign and oil ministries. "Security of supplies is our bread and butter. If the United States is looking for security of supplies, Iran is an inevitable partner."
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Ministers Fail to Agree on Gaza Pullout Delay
By GREG MYRE
April 19, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-isra.html?pagewanted=print&position=
JERUSALEM, April 19 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has vigorously resisted postponing his Gaza Strip withdrawal plan, but today, the proposed July 20 starting date appeared far from certain.
Mr. Sharon gathered several senior cabinet ministers, but they failed to make a much-anticipated decision on whether to delay for three weeks the evacuation of nearly 9,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza.
Despite several hours of talks, Mr. Sharon and his ministers deferred a decision on the pullout date and plan to consult with security officials. A decision is considered likely within the next few days.
The indecision does not constitute a crisis, and the proposed postponement would delay the start of the evacuation for just a short period, from July 20 to Aug. 15, in order not to overlap with a Jewish mourning period.
But the development comes at a time when several important withdrawal issues remain unresolved. It is still unclear where the uprooted settlers will live when they leave Gaza and four small settlements in the West Bank.
In addition, some opponents of the Gaza withdrawal interpret the government's wavering as a crack in Mr. Sharon's resolve, and they hope to push for additional delays.
Yisrael Katz, the agriculture minister and an opponent of the withdrawal, suggested that the pullout be put off until at least late October after the Jewish high holidays.
Yosef Lapid, leader of the Shinui party, and a supporter of the Gaza pullout, said that the proposed delay was a "trap" and that religious opponents of the withdrawal would soon be calling for a postponement until "the messiah comes."
After a year of bruising political battles, Mr. Sharon recently won final approval for his plan in both the cabinet and in Parliament. He set the evacuation date and rejected talk of delays, and it appeared the issue had finally been settled.
But the target date was suddenly thrown into question at a cabinet meeting Sunday.
Yonatan Bassi, who heads the government body overseeing the withdrawal, suggested that it be delayed to avoid an overlap with the mourning period that commemorates the destruction of the two ancient Jewish Temples in Jerusalem. The period runs from July 24 to Aug. 14 this year.
Mr. Sharon, in remarks on Monday, said he was willing to consider the delay in order to help the settlers get through these "difficult days."
While today's meeting did not resolve the issue, the government hopes to reach a decision this week.
"Things will be put off for a couple days," said Shimon Peres, the deputy prime minister. "The security issue is key, because postponement means prolonging extremely complex security readiness. So I think we have to listen not only to the religious arguments, but to the security arguments as well."
In another development, Israel's interior minister, Ophir Pines-Paz, decided to place an additional 12-month travel ban on Mordechai Vanunu, the former nuclear technician who served an 18-year prison sentence for revealing nuclear secrets.
Mr. Vanunu was released upon completing his sentence a year ago, but the government imposed numerous restrictions, including a one-year ban on leaving the country.
Mr. Pines-Paz intends to extend the ban for another year, saying in a statement that "it is clear to me that his motivation to damage state security and to make public highly secret information has not lessened."
Mr. Vanunu has repeatedly flouted one of his restrictions by speaking with foreign journalists. He was placed on trial last week, and could face additional jail time.
Mr. Vanunu, who discussed his knowledge of Israel's nuclear facilities in a 1986 interview with London's Sunday Times, says he has no additional information to reveal, and wants to move to the United States.
-------- russia / chechnya
Rice: Russia Won't See Totalitarianism
Tuesday April 19, 2005 9:46 PM
By GEORGE GEDDA
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4948966,00.html
MOSCOW (AP) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that Russia is far from the totalitarian state it once was, citing individual freedoms such as a right to protest and the existence of opposition groups ready to challenge the Kremlin.
While acknowledging Russia's setbacks in developing a democracy, Rice's tone as she briefed reporters contrasted with the combative mood two months ago, when President Bush admonished President Vladimir Putin to embrace freedom.
After an overnight flight from Washington, Rice and her party touched down on a cool, rainy afternoon for a 24-hour visit. They were scheduled to go immediately from the airport to their hotel but a bomb threat forced a detour. After a two-hour search, the authorities concluded there was no danger.
Speaking to reporters while en route here, Rice described the Russian internal situation as complex, with obvious signs of increasing centralized control coexisting with democratic trappings that were absent during communist rule.
She noted that Russians are still free to air their grievances.
Russians, she said, ``certainly have had their share of protests concerning pension reform. I think it would be a mistake to somehow think of this as somehow reverting back to Soviet times.''
Rice also pointed to what she said was the number of Russians from opposition groups who are willing to seek the presidency in 2008, calling that ``a positive development.''
During Bush's meeting with Putin in Slovakia two months ago, the tensions were apparent as Bush exhorted the Russian leader to pursue democracy and challenged Putin about his government's behavior.
At the time, Bush said democracies reflect a country's customs and culture but must have ``a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press and a viable political opposition.'' He said he talked with Putin about his ``concerns about Russia's commitment in fulfilling these universal principles'' and about Putin's restrictions on the press.
``I think Vladimir heard me loud and clear,'' Bush said.
But Putin rejected the criticism and insisted there was no backsliding, saying Russia has turned its back on communism.
``Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy,'' Putin declared.
On Tuesday, Rice suggested Russia's transition to democracy ``is very complicated'' given the country's authoritarian past.
Among democratic setbacks along the way, she cited the centralization of state power in the presidency at the expense of the legislative branch.
Also, she said, the absence of independent electronic media outlets is worrisome, calling that a ``principal concern.'' She also said provincial governors are now appointed instead of elected.
Rice said there is no thought of seeking Russia's expulsion from the so-called G-8, the elite group of the world's most industrialized nations. There have been some calls for Russia's exclusion from the group, but Rice said there is ``no reason we would want to see Russia isolated.''
In exchange for the privileges of G-8 membership, Russia should abide by democratic principles and the rule of law, she said.
She said the Bush administration is pushing for democratic progress in Russia because it is the only way a ``deep, broad'' relationship can develop, one that is based on common values.
Rice dined with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Tuesday night and planned meetings with Putin and other officials Wednesday. Among the topics were preparations for Bush's visit here next month for the 60th anniversary of the allies' World War II victory.
After concluding her visit here, Rice will fly to nearby Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, for a NATO foreign ministers meeting.
On the Net:
State Department: http://www.state.gov
CIA factbook on Russia: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html
----
Rice Urges Russia to Embrace Openness
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
April 19, 2005 NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/international/europe/19cnd-dipl.html?pagewanted=print&position=
MOSCOW, April 19 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, reiterating American concerns about authoritarian trends under President Vladimir V. Putin, said today that Russia's upcoming leadership of the Group of 8 industrial democracies next year gave it "certain responsibilities" to guarantee economic and political freedoms.
Ms. Rice arrived in Moscow for a brief visit to pave the way for President Bush's trip next month but was immediately forced to adjust her schedule because of a bomb threat at her hotel, the Renaissance, about a mile from the Kremlin, a senior State Department official said. The hotel was declared clear after a two-hour delay.
Speaking on her plane here, Ms. Rice said recent trends in Russia's struggle to become a full-fledged democracy were not positive, citing increasing central control of state governments and broadcast media. But she also said Mr. Putin was not leading the country back to the days of the old Soviet Union.
"I think it would be a mistake to start to think of this as somehow reverting back to Soviet times," Ms. Rice said. "That is certainly not what is happening here."
But she said Russia was under pressure to open its economy in order to enter the World Trade Organization and to keep an open political system as a member of the Group of 8, which it joined in the 1990's. The annual Group of 8 summit meets in Scotland under Prime Minister Tony Blair in June and in Moscow next year.
Some critics of the Bush administration say the United States should effectively threaten Russia with being kicked out of the Group of 8 if it did not improve its human rights and democracy record, but Ms. Rice has repeatedly dismissed that approach as counterproductive, a position she reiterated today.
"I don't see any reason, and the president doesn't see any reason, that we would want to see Russia isolated," Ms. Rice said, adding that "threatening to exclude Russia from various organizations doesn't really make sense."
But she said that "we have to continue to impress upon the Russians that certain responsibilities come with membership in the G-8" and that "Moscow should make every effort to convince the world that they understand those responsibilities that attend inclusion in organizations like the G-8."
The secretary's comments were the latest salvo in what has been an increased tempo of criticism reflecting what some officials say is mounting concern in private by President Bush and his close aides about Mr. Putin.
But American attempts to raise these concerns have met with an icy response from Russian leaders. For example, Mr. Bush's talk about Russian democracy in Bratislava in February was said by some American officials to have prompted a lecture in return about Russian policies and even about supposed American problems with democracy at home.
As examples of Russian "setbacks," Ms. Rice cited Mr. Putin's decision last year to have state governors chosen in Moscow rather than elected by local legislators and what Ms. Rice said was a "virtual absence" of independent broadcast media.
She made no reference to Russia's arrest and prosecution of independent business executives for financial irregularities that administration analysts say were intended to stifle dissent. She also strongly suggested, without saying so directly, that Russia needed to increase oil production to ease global prices and get rid of "inconsistencies" in its treatment of foreign oil producers.
That comment appeared to echo rising complaints being heard by Exxon and other American companies over canceled contracts for oil exploration and production and curbs under former President Boris N. Yeltsin on foreign majority ownership in the oil exploration field.
Ms. Rice also said that some progress had been made on negotiating the dismantling of loose nuclear weapons and fuel in Russia. Talks on the subject have foundered because of American demands that they be exempted from liability in Russia in the event of accidents or damage.
In the area of dissent and free expression, some Western diplomats say they not only fear that the Russian crackdown could hamper the next scheduled presidential election in 2008 but also that Mr. Putin might take the drastic step of changing the Russian constitution to allow himself to run for another term.
Some Russia specialists say the Bush administration needs to make it clear that such a move by Mr. Putin would be unacceptable, but Ms. Rice said she did not expect a problem.
"I think everybody expects that since the Russian constitution prohibits a third term for that president, that the president will respect that," she said. "He has said it several times, and obviously everybody expects that to be the case." Ms. Rice said Russia appeared to be allowing opposition figures to lay plans for running for the office.
Ms. Rice, as she often has in the past, attempted to leaven her criticism with layers of understanding of Russia's complex history, a subject she has studied since her time in graduate school and serving as a Soviet specialist on the staff of the National Security Council. She has traveled to Russia many times over many years, but this was her first visit as secretary of state.
She had a working dinner with Sergei B. Ivanov, the defense minister, who some experts say is a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Putin as president. On Wednesday she will meet with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and President Putin and also do an interview with one of the few independent radio stations with liberal political views.
"Russia is clearly a state that's still in transition," Ms. Rice said. "This is a place with a very complicated history, and we have to remember that it emerged out of the collapse of an empire. This is a very complicated task, to get to a Russian state that is democratic and still capable of managing this big and broad place that ranges over, what is it, 10 or 11 time zones."
----
Rice to push Russia on Iran: report
MOSCOW (AFP) Apr 19, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050419124521.sazs62ch.html
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here Tuesday for talks with President Vladimir Putin and other officials as a newspaper reported she would caution Russia that its support of Iran's budding and controversial nuclear program could come at a high price.
"Ms. Rice's task is to persuade Moscow that, at present, cooperating too closely with Iran could have many setbacks instead of benefits," the respected liberal business daily Kommersant said. "Rice has many arguments to use."
Few details on Rice's agenda during her meetings Tuesday and Wednesday were released, though she told reporters before leaving Washington that the United States would keep up the pressure on Russia to pursue democratic reform.
But while the official purpose of the trip -- the first to Russia by Rice as secretary of state -- was to prepare a meeting next month between Putin and US President George W. Bush, Kommersant said Iran would figure prominently in her discussions.
Western democracies are working furiously to ensure that Iran does not adapt a civilian nuclear power program, currently under construction with heavy assistance from Russia, to the purpose of making nuclear weapons.
The United States has recently deferred to efforts led by three European Union (EU) countries -- Britain, Germany and France -- to persuade Iran through diplomatic means not to undertake any effort to enrich uranium.
But Washington was thought likely to begin ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran again after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to The New York Times, told Bush in private talks last week that Iran was near "a point of no return" in learning how to make an atomic bomb.
Rice "will try to persuade Russia not to hinder US moves" should tensions with Iran again begin to rise, Kommersant said, adding that "Rice has several arguments to use in criticism of the Kremli."
Russia has unique leverage with Tehran on nuclear matters because of its role as chief contractor in construction and launch of the Islamic republic's first atomic power plant at Bushehr and has obtained a pledge from Iran to return to Russia all spent nuclear fuel used in the plant.
Rice was scheduled to have a private dinner with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov Tuesday evening followed by a lunch meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and a session with Putin at the Kremlin.
She was scheduled to fly on to Lithuania on Wednesday to attend a NATO meeting.
----
Rice arrives with new volley of criticism for Russia
MOSCOW (AFP) Apr 19, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050419152848.dw0dirq9.html
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for talks with the Kremlin leadership, delivering a new round of criticism of Russia on issues ranging from democracy to nuclear safety and energy policy.
But her arrival got off on a sour note, with a bomb threat placed to the Moscow hotel in which she was planning to stay, forcing Rice to relocate to the residence of the US ambassador to Russia.
Rice unleashed a round of criticism against the course Russia was taking under President Vladimir Putin, noting a lack of clear alternatives to the current, dominant Kremlin regime.
"There's no doubt when we talk about the trends -- the trends have not been positive on the democracy side," Rice told reporters en route to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin and other officials.
The United States has "continuing concerns about the course of democratization in Russia and issues concerning the rule of law," she said.
There were "also concerns about the state of the media," she added, "electronic media particularly."
She also urged Putin not to test the constitution and run for a third term in 2008 when his second term expires, saying that "we take President Putin at his word" that he would not run again despite his overwhelming popularity in public opinion polls.
Rice said she was particularly concerned about the centralization of power in the Kremlin, the state of the judiciary and a clampdown on electronic media.
She also signaled that the United States was keeping a sharp eye on Putin's pledge to step down after a second term in office in 2008. "Obviously it would not be a positive development if there were some changes in that circumstance. I don't expect that there will be. We take President Putin at his word."
Rice said that Washington was not interested in isolating Russia, which is trying to gain membership in the World Trade Organization and is due to host a meeting of the Group of Eight industrial powers in 2006.
"Isolating Russia and threatening to exclude the Russians from various organizations really makes no sense," she said, adding that Russia had come a long way since its existence in the Soviet Union.
"There have been some setbacks, but I do still think there is a considerable amount of individual freedom in Russia, which is important."
The chief US diplomat also voiced criticism for Russia on several other fronts.
She expressed concern about Russia's cooperation in helping to deal with the disposal of stockpiles of nuclear materials that could potentially fall into terrorists' hands.
"We do have some issues of access, we have some issues of liability that we have to resolve."
Rice said energy would also figure in her talks with the Russians amid worldwide concern about oil supplies. "I do think there has been some inconsistency about how foreign investment will or will not play in some of those efforts to develop."
Rice further said that Russia had to resolve some issues before it becomes a member of the WTO, most notably laws to protect intellectual property rights, what she called "agricultural protectionist measures" and questions on services.
Rice was due to have dinner later Tuesday with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, then meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin on Wednesday before heading to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius for a regular NATO ministerial meeting.
While there she was also due to meet with opposition leaders from the former Soviet republic of Belarus, which is run by hardline President Alexander Lukashenko.
Rice's visit to Moscow got off to a rocky start, when a bomb threat was placed at the Renaissance Hotel at which she was due to stay minutes within her landing in the Russian capital.
Instead, she was diverted to the palatial residence of US Ambassador Alexander Vershbow in a leafy part of central Moscow.
No one took responsibility for the call.
-------- spies
Reporters in CIA Case Lose in Court Again
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 19, 2005
Filed at 8:35 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-CIA-Leak-Reporters.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two reporters facing jail for refusing to divulge their sources about the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name lost on Tuesday in federal court for the third time.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to reconsider a three-judge panel's ruling compelling Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and The New York Times' Judith Miller to testify before a federal grand jury about their confidential sources, or go to jail for up to 18 months.
Both publications will ask the appeals court to put off any sanctions while they pursue an appeal to the Supreme Court.
''We are disappointed with the court's decision and we will seek a stay in order to have sufficient time to seek U.S. Supreme Court review,'' Times spokesman Toby Usnik said.
Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, serving as a special prosecutor in the case, has said the refusal of Cooper and Miller to identify their sources has stalled his investigation into who revealed the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released that information knew of the officer's secret status.
U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan held the reporters in contempt in October, rejecting their argument that the First Amendment shielded them from revealing their sources.
Neither Cooper nor Miller wrote the original story that identified Plame. Her name was first published in a 2003 column by Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as his sources. It is unclear whether Novak has cooperated with the investigation or whether the grand jury hearing evidence has returned any indictments.
The column appeared after Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. The CIA had asked Wilson to check out the uranium claim. Wilson has said he believes his wife's name was leaked as retaliation for his critical comments.
Cooper reported on the Plame controversy. Miller never published a story about the matter, although she gathered material about Plame.
Fitzgerald has said that his investigation is complete except for hearing from Cooper and Miller.
On the Net:
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit: http://www.cadc.uscourts.govinternetinternet.nsf
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks Holds Hearing on Nuclear Detection Efforts
Tuesday April 19, 1:22 pm ET /PRNewswire/
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050419/dctu058.html?.v=6
WASHINGTON, April 19 -- Today, the Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks held a hearing to examine the Department's plan to establish a Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO). The new office would coordinate and develop a global nuclear detection architect, as well as be responsible for coordinating nuclear detection efforts of the Federal, State and local governments and the private sector to ensure a managed coordinated response.
Congressman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Homeland Security stated, "Preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons should be a priority for our nation and for our government. This is a priority that cannot be ignored or put off until tomorrow. If we are to deal with the threat of nuclear terrorism properly, our nation needs a layered defense. The first layer requires securing weapons grade nuclear material at the source. The second and last layer requires that adequate detection systems and response protocols are in place.
"We must move with a greater sense of urgency to make our country more secure from the gravest of all threats facing our country."
Source: House Committee on Homeland Security - Democratic Office
-------- POLITICS
-------- us politics
Power pact meets quietly
April 19, 2005
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Trilateral Commission, a secretive association of the world's most powerful private citizens, met behind closed doors in Washington over the weekend with top Bush administration officials, discussing the rise of China, global currency conflicts and the pending referendum before nations of the European Union.
As usual, the press was not allowed in any of the meetings, which included speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, World Bank President-designate Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
But snippets of their discussions were revealed, including a combative exchange on France and its May 29 referendum on the EU constitution.
"Everyone's beating up on France because of the coming referendum," Francois Sauzey, the European press officer for the commission, was overheard to say about commission discussions.
Nearly a dozen national polls in France indicate the referendum would fail. If just one European nation votes against it, the constitution dies.
Although the commission does not release information on its discussions, The Washington Times obtained "Trilateral Memorandum No. 8," which deals with the ongoing skirmish between Japan and China.
The memo, topped with the name Akira Kojima, a commission member and chairman of the Japan Center for Economic Research in Tokyo, weighed in on the clash between Japan and China, which boiled over when Japan issued revisionist textbooks to students.
"Japan still has a history textbook approval system, and this misguided system is at the root of these unnecessary misunderstandings and must be abolished," the memo said.
The memo also took aim at Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, "a peculiar character in that he is basically stubborn. If he is criticized for one thing, he intentionally sticks to it and repeats it."
None of the group's members spoke to the press after the meetings.
Members include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, Kennedy administration Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a national security adviser in the Carter administration.
Far less luminary members refused to talk to a reporter in the hallway of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Maryland Avenue in Southwest, waving off questions and walking hurriedly.
The Trilateral Commission's annual meetings, held in Warsaw in 2004, Seoul in 2003, Washington in 2002 and London in 2001, have inspired conspiracy theories of powerful puppeteers who secretly pull the strings of world powers as they seek to establish a new world order.
The theories are based partly on fact. Mr. Brzezinski once asserted that the commission came up with the idea to create the Group of Seven industrial nations. The commission boasts three U.S. presidents once among its ranks: Bill Clinton, George Bush and Jimmy Carter, who joined in 1973 and moved into the White House three years later.
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GOP Pushes for Bolton Confirmation to U.N.
Senate Republicans Push for Bolton's Confirmation As U.N. Ambassador; Chafee Pledges Support
By ANNE GEARAN
The Associated Press Apr 19, 2005
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=684772
WASHINGTON — Majority Republicans pushed for swift confirmation of sharp-tongued John Bolton as U.N. ambassador Tuesday in a rancorous committee session. The Senate's top Democrat raised the possibility of trying to block the nomination when it reaches the full Senate.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., claimed the support needed to prevail as he gaveled the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to order. A quick test vote suggested he was correct, as Republicans who have a 10-8 majority on the panel closed ranks to vote down a Democratic attempt to air complaints about Bolton in private.
"We were not born yesterday. The Republicans want to vote for John Bolton. There are 10 Republicans here," Lugar told the eight Democrats on the panel.
* Senate Panel Delays Vote on Bolton to U.N.
* Frist: Filibuster Ban Won't Include Bills
* The Note: Smiling Lately, Dreaming About the World As One
"Is the chairman saying it doesn't matter what we know about John Bolton?" asked last year's defeated presidential candidate, John Kerry, D-Mass. "If you don't know some of the allegations that have come across the transom then you are voting in the blind. Maybe you want to vote in the blind."
Bolton got a crucial boost when a pivotal Republican senator said he would support the nomination. Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who had expressed reservations, said shortly before the panel met that he would support the nomination reluctantly.
"Under the regrettable circumstances, I'm as comfortable as I can be," Chafee told The Associated Press. "The president gets to choose his team. Most importantly for me, he's going to be on a short leash with a choke collar."
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Democrats would consider delaying Bolton's nomination when it reaches the full Senate.
"That's a question we'll have to decide later," Reid told reporters.
Republicans have 55 votes in the 100-member Senate, but Democrats could try to block a vote by mounting a filibuster. It takes 60 votes to halt such a tactic.
At the White House, a spokesman said President Bush had no second thoughts about Bolton despite critics' complaints about his treatment of subordinates and dismissive comments on the U.N.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Call For China To Develop Multiple Energy Sources
Will nature's revenge snatch China's first chance at greatness in centuries
Beijing (AFP) Apr 18, 2005
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-05zo.html
A senior official has called on China to develop multiple energy sources in rural areas in an apparent effort to ease over-reliance on coal to meet the country's huge demand for electricity, state media said.
A senior official has called on China to develop multiple energy sources in rural areas in an apparent effort to ease over-reliance on coal to meet the country's huge demand for electricity, state media said.
In the countryside, there are abundant resources of wind power, solar energy, methane power, geothermal energy and small-scale hydroelectric power, which can be effectively harnessed, Vice Minister of Water Resources Suo Lisheng was quoted by Xinhua news agency saying.
The country currently relies on coal for about 70 per cent of its energy needs, leading to pollution, environmental degradation, and hundreds of fatal mining accidents every year.
Mr Suo said developing alternative energy sources was a "prerequisite" for economic development in rural areas.
He cited small-scale hydroelectric power as an example of insufficiently tapped alternative energy, saying that at least 130 million kilowatts of the energy are unexploited in China's rural area.
The official said the resource was scattered in 1,600 counties in forests and natural reserves.
As a clean and recycled type of energy type, small-scale hydroelectric power can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will not destroy the surrounding environment, Mr Suo said.
He said China would soon enact a law on recycled resources to encourage the use of clean and recycled energies including small-scale hydroelectric power.
China's recent economic boom has highlighted the risks of being overly dependent on one energy source.
As the country's coalmines have been asked to ratchet up production to fuel the nation's production lines, fatal errors have been made, leading to a series of lethal mining accidents in recent months - the worst since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.
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Bush Aide Plays Down Short - Term Fix on Energy
By REUTERS
April 19, 2005
Filed at 2:40 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-energy-bush-speech.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An aide to President Bush on Tuesday played down any short-term fixes to soaring gasoline prices and said Bush remains focused on his long-sought goal of a broad energy bill.
As U.S. drivers face near record-high gasoline prices averaging $2.24 per gallon, Bush on Wednesday will deliver what the White House has billed as a major speech on energy policy.
Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer of New York say the administration must do more now to corral prices that threaten to take a toll on the economy. Public opinion polls also suggest voters are increasingly concerned about fuel prices.
Pressed on whether the speech would unveil major new initiatives, James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the president's proposals were broad and Congress should take action.
``The president has more policies in more areas to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy and improve the environmental profile of energy than has been put on the table in a generation,'' Connaughton told Reuters in an interview.
``We need action at this point,'' he added.
MTBE VIEWS STILL UNKNOWN
Bush was to meet on Tuesday at the White House with House and Senate lawmakers responsible for writing an energy bill.
The House of Representatives is expected to soon vote on a bill with more than $8 billion in tax breaks to encourage more crude oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and other energy production. The Senate has yet to finish writing its version.
Last year's energy bill died in Congress when the Senate balked at a House plan to protect oil companies from lawsuits for making a gasoline additive that pollutes water supplies. The provision, backed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, is worth billions of dollars to makers of the MTBE additive, such as ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp. .
Connaughton declined to say if the White House supported or opposed the MTBE lawsuit protection.
``We're putting a lot of pressure on them to resolve a number of issues,'' he said.
Bush has long pressed Congress to pass a sweeping energy bill with incentives to boost domestic oil and natural gas drilling, as well as increase use of renewable and nuclear energy. He also wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, which Democrats and environmentalists say is a concession to U.S. oil companies.
NO CHANGE IN SPR POLICY
In the meantime, some Democrats are demanding short-term steps to rein in gasoline prices, such as ceasing to fill the nation's strategic oil stockpile, which is now about 10 million barrels short of its 700 million-barrel capacity.
Connaughton said calls to halt the shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are ``a perceived quick fix that doesn't focus on the fundamentals,'' which are high crude oil prices and a shortage of domestic production.
``We've been committed to filling the SPR because it is of high strategic importance,'' he said. ``With our increased reliance on gasoline we have to be sure that we are safe from any significant disruption in supply.''
Connaughton also declined to comment on what energy issues will be discussed next week when Bush hosts Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Saudi Arabia is OPEC's leading producer and the only OPEC nation with substantial spare capacity that can be tapped to tame high crude oil prices.
``We've had very constant and ongoing discussions with all of our strategic partners,'' Connaughton said.
Rising gasoline prices were the subject of high-level White House meetings last week, according to two sources familiar with discussions. New polling data suggests that U.S. voters are increasingly concerned about gasoline pump prices, which averaged a record high $2.28 a gallon earlier this month.
``We've got to get on this because the polls are looking bad for the President,'' said one source on condition of anonymity.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Officials Want to Wire Earth for Continuous Readout of Vital Signs
April 19, 2005 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7563
WASHINGTON — Imagine the planet wired for a nearly continuous readout on its vital signs, shared by all. That's the essence of a White House plan announced Monday.
The new "Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System" envisions linking nearly 60 nations within a decade to gather and share information from satellites, ocean buoys, weather stations and other surface and airborne instruments.
"Whether it's agriculture, or land use, or water planning, or transportation, or energy, there's a lot of data about the environment that has to be collected," said John Marburger III, President Bush's top science adviser.
Marburger said "a surprisingly successful enterprise" at collecting and sharing data already is under way as the result of a United Nations summit on sustainable development in South Africa in 2002.
Many of the measurements already are being gathered. The new effort will focus on linking them in what Marburger called a planetary "system of systems." He released a 150-page plan that cites benefits such as improved weather forecasting and climate modeling, better estimates of crop yields and energy resources, and more knowledge about air and water quality.
As an examples of benefits, officials said better and shared data could save the United States as much as $1 billion in electricity costs each year if winter forecasts prove to be just 1 degree more accurate. As much as $1.7 billion of the annual $4 billion cost of weather-related aviation delays could be saved with better information, they added.
Data tracking disease outbreaks such as malaria or West Nile virus would enable officials to minimize their impact as they spread.
Retired Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, a Commerce Department undersecretary who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said a key step is getting more businesses involved in the project.
"This depends on a lot more people than just the government," he said.
White House strategic plan: http://iwgeo.ssc.nasa.gov/default.asp
-------- ACTIVISTS
Interior Minister extends ban on Vanunu leaving country by one year
19/04/2005
By Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Reuters
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/566908.html
Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz decided Tuesday to ban nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving the country for a further 12 months due to concerns he could harm national security.
Pines-Paz told Army Radio he would prevent Vanunu from obtaining an Israeli passport necessary to leave the country for another year.
MK Zahava Gal-On (Yahad) had asked Pines-Paz to cancel the order preventing Vanunu from getting a passport.
"He collected enormous amounts of information, a large part of which is still relevant, I am sorry to say ... [and] he says 'the moment that I can, I will publish it', Pines-Paz told Army Radio.
"When a man says that he will harm national security, where does that leave us? ... [This is] a preventive step and we have no choice but to use it."
Vanunu was released from prison last April after serving an 18-year sentence for spilling Israel's nuclear secrets to a British newspaper.
Vanunu was due Tuesday to address a session of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee to speak about the restrictions imposed on him since his release from prison. He, however, decided that did not want to appear before the committee, Israel Radio reported.
MK Issam Makhoul (Hadash) called for the meeting, which went ahead without Vanunu. Among those in attendance were Vanunu's adoptive parents, Nick and Mary Eoloff, who came specially from the United States; Vanunu supporter Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Ireland, the 1976 Nobel Peace Laureate; journalist Uri Avneri; and Dan Yakir, chief legal counsel at the Association of Civil Rights in Israel.
Mahoul said that Vanunu did not wish to participate in a "game that was rigged against him." Mahoul told those present that there was no justification for placing restrictions on Vanunu after he had spent 18 years in prison. He added that the fact the interior minister had decided to extend the restrictions on the day that the panel was meeting to discuss the matter showed that the committee had been duped.
The committee chairman, MK Michael Eitan, said Monday that, "I believe in an open-door policy. I am prepared to extend respect to a man convicted of spying, just as I respect someone who has received the Israel Security Prize. I don't believe in shutting people's mouths. Vanunu served his sentence and has a right to present his position."
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Israel to Extend Vanunu Restrictions by 12 Months
Tue Apr 19, 2005 Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8220577
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's interior minister said on Tuesday he would ban nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving the country for a further 12 months due to concerns he could harm national security.
Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz told Army Radio he would prevent Vanunu from obtaining an Israeli passport necessary to leave the country for another year, saying Vanunu had more nuclear secrets to spill.
"He collected enormous amounts of information, a large part of which is still relevant, I am sorry to say ... (and) he says 'the moment that I can, I will publish it', Pines-Paz said.
"When a man says that he will harm national security, where does that leave us? ... (This is) a preventive step and we have no choice but to use it."
Vanunu was released from prison last April after serving an 18-year sentence for revealing to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper nuclear secrets collected from years of work as a technician at Israel's Dimona atomic reactor.
The 50-year-old former nuclear technician has said that he has no additional information about Israel's nuclear program and wants to leave the country and start a new life abroad.
Vanunu is also on trial for violating the terms of his release in which he was forbidden from speaking to foreign reporters. If convicted, he could be jailed for up to two years.
The information and photographs of the Dimona reactor that Vanunu passed on to the Sunday Times has led foreign experts to conclude that Israel has as many as 200 nuclear warheads.
Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity in which it refuses to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons.
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Israel extends Vanunu travel ban
Vanunu is also forbidden to talk to foreigners without permission
Tuesday, 19 April, 2005 (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4459371.stm
Israel has extended a travel ban on former nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu for another year, Israeli interior ministry officials have said.
Vanunu cannot now leave Israel until at least 19 April 2006, said ministry spokesman Gilad Heiman.
Vanunu served 18 years in jail, most of it in solitary confinement, for making public details of Israel's secret nuclear programme.
He was released in April 2004 under strict conditions.
Vanunu has not been allowed to have a passport, is forbidden to approach ports and airports, and is banned from talking to foreigners without permission.
Israel insists Vanunu still poses a security threat.
The Israeli authorities charged Vanunu in March with violating the terms of his release from jail by giving interviews to the foreign media.
Vanunu says his action in revealing Israel's nuclear secrets aimed to avert a nuclear holocaust in the region. Many Israelis view him as a traitor.
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Vanunu's travel ban extended one year
By JPOST.COM STAFF
Apr. 19, 2005
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1113877270826
Citing concerns over "national security," Interior Minister Ophir Paz-Pines on Tuesday extended by one year travel restrictions imposed on nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu.
The renewed limitations come a year after the 51-year-old former nuclear technician was freed from prison after serving an 18-year sentence for revealing Israel's nuclear secrets and a week after he went on trial for repeatedly violating the terms of his release.
"The fact that over the past year Mr. Vanunu has systematically, time after time, acted against the orders imposed on him, forces me to conclude that this behavioral pattern will repeat itself and only increase if and when he is allowed to go abroad, and therefore it would be irresponsible to take upon myself and the country such a risk," Paz-Pines wrote in a letter sent to Vanunu's lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, informing him of the renewed travel restrictions.
"His motivation to undermine national security and publish highly secret information did not decrease, leaving me no other choice," he added.
According to the terms of his release, Vanunu is barred from leaving the country, from meeting with the foreign media and from discussing his work at the Dimona nuclear facility, conditions he has repeatedly and openly flouted as late as Tuesday.
"In spite of the fact that I was released one year ago, I still am not feeling free," Vanunu said at an east Jerusalem press conference, itself a violation of the terms of his release.
Speaking in English to a small group of international supporters and a score of foreign journalists, Vanunu appealed for international intervention to remove the limitations imposed on him, asserting that the Israeli authorities and Israeli media had "destroyed" his image over the past two decades.
Nevertheless, Vanunu said his lawyer would appeal the renewed travel ban to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the Knesset Law Committee on Tuesday met to discuss the restrictions on movement and communication imposed on Vanunu, only to find out that the authorities had decided a few hours earlier to extend them for another year.
MK Issam Mahoul (Hadash), who had initiated the meeting hoping the committee would urge the government to allow the restrictions to expire, said he was angry that the IDF and the interior minister had made up their minds without waiting for the results of the meeting.
No one, including committee chairman Michael Eitan, seemed to know that the original orders issued last year expired on April 18 at midnight, two days before the date Vanunu was released from jail after completing his 18-year sentence, and not on April 21, the date of his release. Thus, the Knesset meeting was a day late.
Even so, it was apparent that most of the committee members were in favor of extending the restrictions.
Deputy State Attorney Shai Nitzan told the MKs that Vanunu had more information about Israel's atomic secrets than he divulged to the Sunday Times in 1986 and had made it clear he intended to publish it as soon as he got the chance.
Nitzan pointed out that Vanunu had ignored the restrictions imposed on him and was on trial in Jerusalem Magistrate's Court for 21 violations. In response to a question by Likud MK Roni Bar-On, Nitzan said Vanunu had divulged new information in at least one of his prohibited communications but had not been indicted for that.
Etti Livni (Shinui) and Zahava Gal-On said they wanted to know for how long the restrictions would be imposed on Vanunu if the state's assessment that he had secret information and wanted to publish it were true. Nitzan indicated that as long as Vanunu continued to declare that he would divulge the information as soon as he were free, he could conceivably be prevented from going free.
Widely held by Israelis as a traitor, Vanunu's press leak and imprisonment made him a hero to international anti-nuclear and far-left activists alike.
Two months after his release from jail, Vanunu petitioned the High Court against the restrictions placed on him by the defense establishment. His appeal was rejected, with the judges ruling that the restrictions were not meant to prevent Vanunu from expressing his opinion regarding Israel's nuclear policy but rather to ensure that he would not reveal any of the state's secrets, which he became privy to during his work at the Dimona facility.
Vanunu, who has repeatedly asserted that he has no more secrets to divulge, has been living in an Anglican Church in east Jerusalem since his release from prison a year ago.
His biological family in Israel cut off virtually all contact with him following his conviction and subsequent conversion to Christianity.
Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity in which it refuses to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons.
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Israel to Extend Vanunu Restrictions by 12 Months
By REUTERS
April 19, 2005
Filed at 2:58 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-israel-vanunu-restrictions.html?pagewanted=print&position=
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's interior minister said on Tuesday he would ban nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu from leaving the country for a further 12 months due to concerns he could harm national security.
Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz told Army Radio he would prevent Vanunu from obtaining an Israeli passport necessary to leave the country for another year, saying Vanunu had more nuclear secrets to spill.
``He collected enormous amounts of information, a large part of which is still relevant, I am sorry to say ... (and) he says 'the moment that I can, I will publish it', Pines-Paz said.
``When a man says that he will harm national security, where does that leave us? ... (This is) a preventive step and we have no choice but to use it.''
Vanunu was released from prison last April after serving an 18-year sentence for revealing to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper nuclear secrets collected from years of work as a technician at Israel's Dimona atomic reactor.
The 50-year-old former nuclear technician has said that he has no additional information about Israel's nuclear program and wants to leave the country and start a new life abroad.
Vanunu is also on trial for violating the terms of his release in which he was forbidden from speaking to foreign reporters. If convicted, he could be jailed for up to two years.
The information and photographs of the Dimona reactor that Vanunu passed on to the Sunday Times has led foreign experts to conclude that Israel has as many as 200 nuclear warheads.
Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity in which it refuses to confirm or deny whether it has nuclear weapons.
---
Israeli nuclear whistleblower Vanunu gets further 12-month travel ban
JERUSALEM (AFP) Apr 19, 2005
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050419080526.6cqv7yv0.html
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower who was released from prison a year ago after serving 18 years, was banned from leaving the country for a further 12 months Tuesday, the interior ministry said.
"Interior Minister Ophir Pines has decided to extend the ban on Mordechai Vanunu from leaving Israel by an additional 12 months," a statement from the ministry said.
Pines believed that Vanunu "possesses information from the time that he was employed at Dimona (a nuclear reactor in southern Israel) that he could reveal if he was allowed to leave the country."
The former nuclear technician was released from prison in April last year at the end of an 18-year sentence for lifting the lid on the inner workings of the Dimona plant to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.
Along with the travel restrictions, Vanunu was also banned from speaking to foreign journalists without prior authorisation.
He was formally indicted by an Israeli court last month for repeatedly violating the terms of his release from prison.
Vanunu has spoken of his desire to start a new life outside Israel and says he has applied for asylum in a string of Western countries but that his applications have been turned down.
While Vanunu became something of an international cause celebre during his time in prison, he is still widely reviled in Israel for converting to Christianity shortly before he was kidnapped and subsequently jailed in 1986.
Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, but is believed to possess an arsenal of about 200 warheads.
Vanunu meanwhile was due to be presented in Jerusalem with an alternative peace award Tuesday that would have been presented to him in the Swedish parliament in 1987 by a former Swedish member of the European parliament.
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