NucNews - May 2, 2005 -------- NUCLEAR -------- accidents and safety Keeping That Special Glow Safe at Home By C. J. CHIVERS May 2, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/international/europe/02russia.html?pagewanted=print&position= MOSCOW, May 1 - The man carrying the hidden radioactive material passed among airline passengers at Sheremetyevo Airport here on an afternoon this year. His briefcase, holding the contraband, was indistinguishable from anyone else's carry-on bag. Then, as he approached the check-in counter, lights flashed and an alarm sounded. A mounted video camera captured the man's image. Uniformed guards seized the briefcase and took it to a lead-lined booth where it could be inspected without harming other passengers. So passed a drill of a quietly expanding nuclear security initiative in the former Soviet Union. The man, a Russian customs employee, had tripped a silent sentinel - an electronic radiation detector that had been installed by the Russian government, underwritten in part by the United States. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States and Russia have been accelerating the installation of automated radiation detectors at Russian shipping ports, border crossings and airports, hoping to deter or detect the movement of radioactive material through Russia, a land where law and order is a deeply inconsistent affair. Officials in the two nations hope the program, called Second Line of Defense, will complement security measures at former Soviet nuclear storage sites by providing a means to detect material that is already loose, or that in the future makes it to the wrong side of the fences. Its principal tools are banks of sensors now visible at airports and borders in Russia, typically installed beside luggage inspection points. The program augments efforts at cooperative detection programs by the United States and former Soviet states. The United States has spent about $35 million on the program in Russia since 1998. Some details of the program are not publicly known, including the locations of all the sensors and the schedule for installing more, because the program managers do not want to give smugglers a map. (Russian and American officials agreed to discuss the Sheremetyevo sensors because their existence is thought to be widely known.) But information already made public provides insight into the ambitions and limits of efforts to safeguard the public from nuclear and radioactive stockpiles left from the cold war. Nonproliferation specialists in and out of government say that although much of the former Soviet Union's nuclear and radioactive material has been consolidated into upgraded storage sites since the union dissolved in 1991, worrisome security gaps remain. Moreover, Russia has quarreled with the United States over access to its most secret facilities. Specialists also say that no matter the level of security and cooperation at storage sites now, uncertainty remains about the historical accuracy of Soviet nuclear inventories. That means that how much material disappeared before security was improved is anyone's guess. The dangers have been clear since at least 1994, when a smuggler with plutonium for sale passed through this airport and flew on a passenger jet with the nuclear material to Munich, where he was arrested. Paul M. Longsworth, deputy director of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, a semiautonomous agency in the Department of Energy, said that given those security concerns, the sensors were part of "defense in depth," a strategy of trying to create layers of security between nuclear material on foreign soil and the United States. "It's better to have your defense somewhere other than on the one-yard line," Mr. Longsworth said in a telephone interview from Washington. To this end, the United States has helped underwrite the installation of the sensors at about 60 Russian ports, airports or border crossings; 15 more sites are planned by Sept. 30. The program has expanded beyond Russia. Sensors were installed in Greece before the Olympics last year, and a project has begun in Lithuania. Negotiations have begun to place sensors in Kazakhstan, said Tracy Mustin, the program's director in Washington. Ukraine recently agreed to join the program. Nikolai E. Kravchenko, chief of Russia's Service for Customs Control of Nuclear Materials and Radioactive Sources, said the sensors installed frequently picked up radioactive material, and recorded 14,000 "hits" last year. Of those, about 200 involved cases of possible smuggling, including people who apparently had material but did not realize it. In some cases people carried money that had become irradiated, military equipment collectors carried aviation dials and other lightly radioactive souvenirs, and women wore radioactive jewelry. Mr. Kravchenko said culpability or ignorance had been harder to determine in many cases, as when truck drivers were caught at borders with radioactive material among scrap. Almost invariably, he said, drivers claim not to know dangerous material is in their loads. Since 1995, no weapons-grade material has been discovered, Mr. Kravchenko said. He said, however, that nuclear fuel pellets and raw uranium had been intercepted. There have also been hints of organized smuggling. Vladislav Bozhko, who supervises the program at Sheremetyevo, said that in 2002 all the sensors at one terminal were set off in sequence, as if someone had made a dry run. "We think they were just testing how well it worked, looking for a gap in the defensive line," he said. No one was caught. The officials say the sensors are extremely sensitive, picking up faint traces of radioactivity. (The claim withstood an unintentional check. This correspondent's wife, recently returning to Russia after undergoing medical scans in the United States, set off two sensors when entering the country. Remnants of isotopes in her bloodstream set off the alarm.) Still, nonproliferation specialists warn that for all of their abilities, the sensors and the Second Line of Defense program have limits. "A layered defense is really smart and important," said Laura Holgate, a regional vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization that works on nonproliferation. "But the best and most efficient use of resources is to make sure the material stays put, and that it is ultimately destroyed." "No matter how effective any other layers are," Ms. Holgate said, "none of these has any pretense of being as hermetically sealed as a site barrier." Mr. Kravchenko said Russia hoped in time to install the sensors at every Russian border point, although it did not yet have a financing plan. For now, busy border crossings, or those near stored nuclear material, have received the sensors rather than those in remote or lightly trafficked areas. Similar plans are being developed in the United States, where the Customs and Border Protection has been installing more stationary sensors - known as radiation portal monitors - at shipping ports and land border crossings, and intends to expand their use to cover almost all entry points to the country, said Barry Morrissey, a spokesman for the agency. The National Nuclear Security Administration said it would continue to help Russia, but would conduct cost-benefit analyses for proposed additions to decide whether the United States should help pay. "The goal of 100 percent is something we do support, if they can get there," Mr. Longsworth said. "But it does not mean that the U.S. taxpayers will pay for it." -------- britain Revealed: Blair to upgrade Britain's nuclear weapons PM secretly signs up to new deterrent as UN tries to cut global threat By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor 02 May 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=634934 Tony Blair has secretly decided that Britain will build a new generation of nuclear deterrent to replace the ageing Trident submarine fleet at a cost of more than £10bn - a move certain to dismay thousands of Labour Party loyalists in the approach to polling day. The disclosure that the decision has already been taken will expose Mr Blair - who has struggled throughout the election campaign to fend off accusations that he lied over the Iraq war - to fresh allegations of deception. He said last week that the decision would be taken after 5 May. But The Independent has learnt that he has already decided to give the go ahead for a replacement for Trident to stop Britain surrendering its status as a nuclear power when the Trident fleet is decommissioned. The choice over the type of nuclear missile system that Britain will deploy is yet to be made. One Labour candidate described the new deterrent as "Blair's weapons of mass destruction". The revelation comes as the United Nations hosts a five-yearly review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to which Britain is a signatory. The five nuclear powers in the treaty promise to work towards global nuclear disarmament. Mr Blair will therefore face accusations of hypocrisy, for pressing other states, such as Iran and North Korea, to renounce their suspect nuclear weapons programmes while planning a new British deterrent. The Independent can also reveal that Britain is involved in a plan to build a uranium enrichment facility in the New Mexico desert, with British Nuclear Fuels involved in a consortium to develop a $1.2bn (£630m) plant. The UN's nuclear watchdog wants a five-year moratorium on such facilities. Critics argue that the twin developments make it more difficult for Britain to take a principled stance against states accused of building nuclear weapons in breach of the treaty. Fuelling those concerns, the White House said yesterday that it believed North Korea had test-fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan. A senior defence source said: "The decision [to replace Trident] has been taken in principle very recently. US law does not allow the US to build bombs for us. We have to build our own." Although Trident is not due to be decommissioned until 2024, "there is a very long lead time," the source said. "That is why the decision in principle had to be taken now." Aldermaston, Britain's nuclear bomb-making facility, has been hiring physicists and mathematicians for the past year to retain the capability to build a new nuclear weapon when a new system is agreed. The source explained: "If you looked at the scientific press over the past year you would have seen an increase in advertisements for everything. It's mostly physicists and mathematicians, but it's a sign we are gearing up." A small group of ministers including Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, is understood to be involved. Mr Hoon recently began studying papers on the options for a replacement. Defence experts said the replacement for Trident would still be based on submarines, which are less vulnerable to counter measures. New submarines could be built in British yards, saving thousands of jobs. Britain could buy the missiles "off the shelf" from the US. The front-runner is a new generation of cruise missiles, based on the RAF's air-launched weapon, Storm Shadow, with its range increased. But nuclear non-proliferation agreements forbid Britain from exchanging nuclear technology with the US, and so they would have to be equipped with British-made nuclear warheads. Britain supplies its own weapons-grade plutonium from the nuclear power plant at Sellafield. Mr Blair hinted at the decision when he said on BBC Newsnight last week: "We have got to retain our nuclear deterrent. That decision is for another time. But I believe that is the right thing." Both the Liberal Democrats and the Tories support the retention of a nuclear deterrent, but Mr Blair will face a battle with his own party. Rows over the British nuclear deterrent split the Labour Party in the 1980s and made it unelectable, until Mr Blair took over as leader and finally ditched any lingering support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. But since the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, the nature of the threat has dramatically changed. Many Labour members believe Britain faces a greater threat from terrorists with a "dirty" nuclear bomb than a rogue state firing sophisticated nuclear weapons. Trident is virtually useless against such a terrorist threat, because the enemy does not present a target. The US is converting some of its Trident missile submarines to fire conventional cruise missiles, armed with tactical warheads, instead of the unwieldy ballistic nuclear missiles. The US is also developing a new range of nuclear bombs, including smaller devices that could be used on the battlefield. This is controversial because it could lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Clare Short, the former cabinet minister, said before the general election campaign began that she was "astonished" by the "quietness" of the party on the issue. "This will wake up the party," she said. "It's just a symbol saying that Britain is in the big league, but if you need nuclear weapons to be in the big league, it's no wonder India and others want them. But when is Britain ever going to use a nuclear weapon when the US isn't? I would favour Britain becoming a leader in getting the non-proliferation treaty updated and back on course rather than going along with American breaches of it." Tam Dalyell, the former father of the Commons, who is not standing at the election, said: "If Blair was wrong about Iraq, why should we trust him with updating Trident?" Alan Simpson, a leading member of the left-wing Campaign Group, said: "These are Tony's weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix, the UN weapons inspector could have looked no further than Downing Street before identifying the threat to international stability. "There will be widespread resentment about this decision, taken in secret. This amounts to a £10bn first strike against better state pensions, school building and hospitals. If we build a new bomb, how can we tell Iran or North Korea they are wrong to do the same?" Labour left-wingers are also gearing up to oppose the basing of America's national defence system in Britain, and any plans to site US missiles on British soil, which some claim would breach non-proliferation treaties. Replacing Trident is one of several issues the Government has been keen to keep out of the political spotlight during the election campaign. Others are pensions, council tax and nuclear power, all of which have been kicked into the political long grass after reviews were ordered. How successive governments have kept up in the global arms race Does Britain need nuclear bombs of its own? There is a chasm between those who say "yes" and those who say "no". For much of the past 50 years, the UK's independent nuclear deterrent has been controversial. But every government since the last war has deemed it necessary. Under the 1945 Labour administration of Clement Attlee, crucial decisions were taken about Britain's first atom bomb, which was eventually exploded in the desolate Monte Bello islands off Australia on 3 October 1952. Britain thus became the third member of the nuclear club, following the United States (1945) and the Soviet Union (1949). A new generation of bombers to carry the threat was developed, the V-bombers - the Valiant, the Victor and the Vulcan - and when Britain stepped up a level in the club and developed the much more powerful hydrogen bomb, it was a Valiant that dropped the first British H-bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific, in May 1957. The attack technique switched to using "stand-off" bombs - early cruise missiles which could be launched 100 miles from the target. One short-lived version of that was the Blue Steel missile. Britain had counted on buying a US missile to do it, Skybolt. In 1962 the US cancelled Skybolt, thereby hoping, many thought, to deprive the UK of its independent capability. British strategic defence policy was suddenly in tatters. The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, appealed to John F Kennedy to think again. After a walk with Kennedy he succeeded - astonishingly - in persuading the Americans to make available to Britain the submarine-based missile Polaris, on which they were basing their offensive capability. The first British Polaris submarine went on patrol in 1968, an event signalling two changes that are still in effect to this day - the UK "independent" deterrent began to be operated by the Royal Navy, instead of the RAF, and became directly dependent on the Americans. In the mid-1970s, under Labour governments, Polaris was secretly updated with a British multiple warhead, codenamed Chevaline. When it became obsolete, in the 1980s, the Thatcher government persuaded the Americans to share their submarine missile technology and sell the UK a replacement system, Trident. The first of four giant British Trident missile submarines, HMS Vanguard, went on patrol in 1994. These four boats are each equipped with 16 American Trident missiles, with multiple warheads capable of vaporising targets more than 4,000 miles away. At least one is always on patrol. But at some time in the coming 20 years, Trident will go the way of Polaris - ministers are thinking about its replacement. Michael McCarthy -------- europe Germany Pressures US Over Nuke Removal 02.05.2005 Deutsche Welle http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1570884,00.html Germany is using a meeting to review the effectiveness of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on Monday to urge the United States to remove its nuclear missiles from German soil. Germany will take the opportunity of a meeting in New York on Monday on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to officially increase pressure on the United States to remove its Cold War-era nuclear weapons from German soil. The meeting of some 190 nations, convened to address how seriously the world's fight against the spread of atomic weapons has been imperiled since the NPT went into effect in 1970, will give Germany the chance to directly air its concerns over the 150 or so land-based US nuclear weapons still deployed on German soil. "The nuclear weapons still housed in Germany are a relic from the Cold War," said leader of the Green Party Claudia Roth in Monday's Berliner Zeitung newspaper. "There is no need for them to be there. They should be removed and destroyed." She added that while nuclear states continued to hesitate in disarmament issues, the NPT would be weakened further. Roth was not alone in calling for the missiles to go. Social Democrat Gert Weisskirchen from the German foreign ministry and Liberal Democrat leader Guido Westerwelle echoed the call for the missiles, mostly based at the Rammstein and Büchel air bases, to be removed. The removal of the missiles would "add credibility and strengthen negotiations with other countries," Westerwelle said. German politicians join in call for nuke removal Last week, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called for progress to be made on strengthening disarmament measures -- but an opposition demand that the US pull its nuclear weapons from Germany fell on deaf ears. Ahead of Monday's five-yearly review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called Thursday for progress on strengthening disarmament measures. "We have two expectations from the talks," Schröder said in reference to the NPT conference. "The first is that we reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as it is now and we need to put all our efforts into that," he said. "The second is that there is a credible disarmament mechanism and we hope we will see movement from countries on this point." Continued purpose of missiles in question But the opposition Liberal Democrats (FDP), with backing from the Green Party, went further and called for an immediate withdrawal of the US nuclear weapons from Germany -- a surprise move from a party generally known for its staunchly pro-American stance. "It's time to reconsider whether their presence still serves a relevant purpose," Liberal Democrat MP Werner Hoyer told German weekly Der Spiegel. Harking back to the days of the Iron Curtain, most of the 480 US nuclear weapons stored in Europe are located in Germany, strategically closest to Eastern Europe. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer will be attending the NPT meeting on behalf of Germany and politicians are urging him to make an official case for the removal of missiles will fall to him. The call, however, is likely to go unheeded as Washington has more pressing concerns as the dual crises in North Korea and Iran worsen and threaten to undermine the treaty further. Rogue states offering new threats The treaty seems increasingly flawed if not outright ineffective ahead of the conference at the United Nations. Since the treaty was signed, the world has faced a new era of "rogue" states, international nuclear smuggling rings, and trans-national terrorist groups seeking weapons of mass destruction. "The world has changed but the regime has not changed with it," the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a recent study. Events over the past few days have shown how critical the situation is. The United States reported that a short-range missile was fired early Sunday from the east coast of North Korea. It flew about 100 kilometers (62 miles) until it fell into the Sea of Japan, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told CNN. North Korea ups the stakes with missile test US State Department spokesman Kurtis Coope said: "We have long been concerned about North Korea's missile program and activities and urge North Korea to continue its moratorium on ballistic missile tests." North Korea shocked the world in August 1998 by firing a long-range missile over Japan that landed in the Pacific Ocean. On Thursday, US Defense Intelligence Agency director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby told US lawmakers that North Korea is believed capable of arming a long-range missile that could each the United States with a nuclear warhead. North Korea is currently free of international surveillance of its nuclear activities. It kicked out International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in December 2002, withdrew from the NPT the following month and now claims to have made atomic bombs. Iran complains of EU ineffectiveness in talks Iran is showing the strains in the non-proliferation treaty in another way as the United States claims the Islamic Republic is secretly developing atomic weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear power program that is under IAEA safeguards. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday dismissed Washington's concerns over Tehran's nuclear program, the day after Iran said it was unhappy with the progress of nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany, and warned it may resume uranium conversion activities in defiance of a November agreement. The European Union, backed by the United States, wants Iran to halt all nuclear fuel cycle activities. In return, the EU is offering in talks that began in December a package of trade, security and technology incentives. Iran has said repeatedly that its current enrichment suspension is temporary and voluntary, as it insists on its right under the NPT to conduct nuclear activities for peaceful purposes. DW staff / AFP (nda) ---- German government party demands withdrawal of US nuclear weapons BERLIN (AFP) May 02, 2005 http://www.terradaily.com/2005/050502130813.zmyddszl.html Members of Germany's ruling coalition on Monday demanded that all US nuclear weapons in Europe be scrapped, ahead of a major non-proliferation meeting in New York. Amid Greenpeace protests against the weapons in front of the German foreign ministry, Greens leader Claudia Roth told the daily Berliner Zeitung that the missiles were a relict of the Cold War. "They should be withdrawn and destroyed," she said. An estimated 150 atomic weapons are stationed on German soil out of a total of about 480 in Europe. In a case of self-defense after a nuclear attack, they would be carried by German Tornado jets under current pacts. The foreign affairs spokesman for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, Gert Weisskirchen, told the paper that Washington could "send a message in Russia's direction to revive the non-proliferation process" with a full withdrawal. And the leader of the liberal opposition Free Democrats, Guido Westerwelle, said the nuclear weapons in Europe were futile because they were all relatively short-range and would only be able to target states that are allies today. He urged Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who is in New York for an international meeting to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to call on Washington to withdraw the weapons. Members of the environmentalist group Greenpeace on Monday erected a six-meter-tall (20-foot-tall) mock nuclear weapon in front of the foreign ministry in Berlin demanding Germany's complete withdrawal from what it called "the nuclear war scenario." Greenpeace spokesman Wolfgang Lohbeck said Germany was in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) because it would aid in a counter-attack by providing aircraft and pilots to the United States in the case of a nuclear strike. The conference at the United Nations beginning Monday is aimed at overhauling the NPT, which went into effect in 1970. Since the treaty was signed the world faces a new era of "rogue" states, international nuclear smuggling rings, and trans-national terrorist groups seeking weapons of mass destruction. -------- japan Hiroshima Mayor Calls on All Countries "Including U.S." to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Monday, May 2nd, 2005 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1348206 A large anti-nuclear rally in New York calls for global nuclear disarmament ahead of a United Nations meeting to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We speak with the mayor of Hiroshima - where 60 years ago the U.S. dropped one of two atomic bombs. [includes rush transcript] Representatives of 189 countries are meeting at the United Nations today to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a month-long Review Conference that takes place every five years. The treaty calls for nations without nuclear weapons to pledge not to pursue them and for those that acknowledge having nuclear weapons to pledge to move toward eliminating them. But some say the meeting appears deadlocked even before it begins. Tensions rose this weekend between the United States and two countries it has repeatedly accused of illegally pursuing nuclear weapons. On Saturday, Iran declared that it might end its voluntary halt on enriching uranium and resume producing nuclear fuel. Meanwhile, North Korea apparently launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday and lashed out at President Bush calling him a "half-baked man in terms of morality and a philistine whom we can never deal with." The remarks were an apparent response to Bush's news conference Thursday in which he characterized North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a "tyrant" and "dangerous person." The New York Times is reporting that a proposal by Mohamed ElBaradei - the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - to impose a five-year moratorium on all new enrichment of uranium is virtually dead. This past weekend, a large anti-nuclear demonstration was held in New York ahead of the UN meeting. A coalition of over 2,000 organizations around the world, teamed up with United for Peace and Justice to organize a march and rally Sunday to demand global nuclear disarmament. Tens of thousands of protesters marched past the UN building to Central Park. Among those present were the mayors of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 60 years ago the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities killing hundreds of thousands of people. * Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Joining us in our studio today, here in New York is the Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba. Welcome to Democracy Now! TADATOSHI AKIBA: Good Morning. AMY GOODMAN: It’s very good to have you with us. Can you talk about the significance of the meetings that are taking place at the United Nations? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, NPT, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the only international treaty that binds the hands of the nuclear weapon powers. In Article VI, although it is a very mild clause, that’s the only international document which says that these countries must work very hard toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. And therefore, it is very significant, and we would like to strengthen this treaty so that by the year 2020 all nuclear weapons will be abolished. And that’s the wish of hibakusha, Japanese word for the survivors of the atomic bomb. And that’s why we’re here. Oh, by the way, the mayors -- international mayors are here. At least a hundred mayors and city representatives are here to press the United Nations, representing the voices of millions of citizens around the world, and we are here to represent their voices, because that’s the majority opinion in the world. AMY GOODMAN: What about this latest news? On Saturday, Iran declaring it might end its voluntary halt on enriching uranium and resuming producing nuclear fuel, and then what happened with North Korea? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Okay, I’m glad that you bring that subject up, because we don’t want to be taken as simply criticizing the United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Russia, and India, Pakistan. Those countries possess nuclear weapons. Those countries have done all those things, and we have been opposing this because our aim is to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and according to the hibakusha, as long as there are nuclear weapons, that there will be a nuclear war, and then some people will have to suffer the way they did. And that’s exactly what they wanted to avoid. Therefore, what we are calling for is that all countries should not be allowed to do that, and I think the leaders of the world should show to the rest of the world by example that these are not the kinds of things which civilized society should be engaged in. And therefore, we are calling for a universal nuclear weapons convention which prohibits all those activities, and not by just Iran, North Korea, or a few other countries, but all of the countries, including the United States. AMY GOODMAN: What about the significance of North Korea launching a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday? You’re from Japan. TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, I think that people will be voicing some alarm, because it’s Japan Sea, but then again, there are – well, I don’t know exactly how many, but numerous number of missiles all over the world, which are on ‘Launch on Warning’ status, with nuclear warheads, and we are concerned about that because once that is shot, then the entire human race is at jeopardy, and we have been calling that all those systems should be dismantled, and I believe that as part of that picture, showing that one can shoot missiles with or without nuclear weapons and trying to threaten the world with that is just intolerable. But I think that we should look at the whole picture. There are missiles which are aimed at, you know, just many, many cities in the world with nuclear warheads right now, and a false warning at this moment could make those missiles be shot at any moment. AMY GOODMAN: We are talking with the Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, who is here in New York for the meetings that are taking place at the United Nations this week, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and was a part of a large demonstration in Central Park on Sunday. What about the US attitude to enroll in these nuclear non-proliferation talks? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, just we are hoping that, you know, just as a democratic country, and US democracy being emulated by the rest of the world, I hope that the United States will start heeding to the majority opinion of the Americans. In a recent poll, 66% of Americans felt that no nations should have nuclear weapons for the safety of the world, and therefore, just as a democratic country, if the government starts listening to this voice and to the rest of the world, which overwhelmingly want nuclear weapons eliminated, I think that the world would be a much safer place and happier place. AMY GOODMAN: How concretely is the US lobbying? TADATOSHI AKIBA: I don’t know. I’m not in the diplomatic circle, so I have no knowledge. You’d better ask those people who have the direct knowledge of that. AMY GOODMAN: But the effect that you are seeing then, of the lobbying, of the pressure? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, the United States still has the most numerous number of nuclear weapons, missiles and so forth, technological capabilities far superior to anything else, and as the leader in the international arena, I think the United States should take the initiative in eliminating nuclear weapons. The first step is to start a negotiation with other countries toward that goal. AMY GOODMAN: What are you specifically calling for? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, we are saying that nuclear weapons should be eliminated by the year 2020, some hibakusha say that that’s too far. Some -- very few of them would be alive. That’s what they’ve been telling me. But that’s just about the amount of time I think will be necessary for the elimination, but as an interim goal, we would like to have a nuclear weapons convention signed by the year 2010. And that’s basically to prohibit nuclear weapons in the form of a treaty and that should be abided by all the nations. This year, as the beginning step of all of these, we would like to have the United Nations adopt a resolution or some kind of decision by which they declare that they will get into a serious, good faith negotiation toward that goal. AMY GOODMAN: Mayor, how is Hiroshima planning for the sixtieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb? TADATOSHI AKIBA: We have various events this year: symposium, concerts, and other events, but we are aiming at achieving three things. One is the consolation of the souls of the deceased hibakusha, and we would like to also sort of increase the amount of support we give to the living hibakusha. The second one is our efforts toward the abolition of nuclear weapons and international cooperation. And the third aim we are making in the sixtieth anniversary is that we would like to make this year the beginning of a creative and prosperous future for the city and the world. So all these things will be combined in the effort of the Mayors For Peace. That’s the organization created in 1982, which now has 1000 membership. AMY GOODMAN: What year were you born? TADATOSHI AKIBA: 1942 AMY GOODMAN: In Hiroshima? TADATOSHI AKIBA: No, I was born in Tokyo. AMY GOODMAN: And what is your earliest recollection of that period? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well actually, I moved to an outskirt of Tokyo, but when I was two and a half, actually that city was air raided. And one of my first memories was that of an air raid. That experience tied into a movie I saw about Hiroshima when I was in the elementary school. That movie was so shocking, I stayed away from school for a couple days. And that became the basis of my, you know, just concern for Hiroshima and for the future of humankind. AMY GOODMAN: When did you first come to Hiroshima? TADATOSHI AKIBA: In 1963, as part of a team of interpreters working for the world conference against A and H bombs. I met hibakusha then, and they were impressive. AMY GOODMAN: Hibakusha being the survivors of Hiroshima. TADATOSHI AKIBA: The survivors, and I learned their message, and since then I’ve been trying to spread the message. The message is very simple. It’s, “No one else should suffer the way we did.” Therefore, they have been advocating that no nuclear weapons should exist in this world, because as long as there are any of them, then a nuclear war will inevitably occur at some point. It may not be tomorrow, but maybe the day after tomorrow. AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond to those who say if the bomb hadn’t been dropped, then the war would not have ended, and from the US military point of view, tens of thousands of US soldiers would have died? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, that question has been settled by the research of American historians a long time ago, and also there has been a study by the Strategic Bombing Survey, that entered Japan right after the end of war in 1945, and their findings clearly tell you that that’s false. Japan would have surrendered anyway. I remember as a child that materialistically, Japan really did not have anything when I was growing up, and during the war it was worse. So without doing anything, their prediction was that at the latest, Japan would have surrendered by November. AMY GOODMAN: So then what is your understanding of why the bombs were dropped? TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, again, that there are just good research by American scholars, including Marty Sherwin, a good friend of mine, as to why. But I think it is important to understand that, but I believe that what we do about that kind of information for the future is more important, and that’s contained in the simple expression of the hibakusha: “No one else should suffer the way I did or we did.” Then that leads naturally to the elimination of all nuclear weapons. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, The Independent of London is reporting today that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has secretly decided that Britain will build a new generation of nuclear weapons to replace the aging Trident submarine fleet. Your response. TADATOSHI AKIBA: Well, I think that’s crazy. I think that the leaders of the world should pay attention, at least humbly listen to the voices of the hibakusha, who actually went through this. They are the only ones who know what it is like when a nuclear war actually occurs. And if we don’t listen to them, if we don’t remember what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the same thing will happen on the human beings again. That will easily lead to the extinction of the human race. As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And Mr. Blair or other people who are trying to increase the nuclear arsenal is saying that they don’t care about the memory, they don’t care about the human race. Hibakusha do, and I think that during the sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at least the people should start to listen to their voices. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us, as we speak with the Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba. Thank you for joining us. TADATOSHI AKIBA: Thank you. ---- Japan may agree to ITER nuclear reactor in Europe: EU Mon May 2, 1:03 PM ET (AFP) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050502/wl_asia_afp/eujapanresearchiter_050502170347 PARIS - Japan may drop its bid to host the revolutionary ITER nuclear reactor and agree to it being built in Europe, the European Union presidency said. "Japan has agreed to accept the possibility that ITER be sited in Europe, which previously had been impossible for them (the Japanese)," Jeannot Krecqe, the economics minister of Luxembourg, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters here. "We hope to arrive at an agreement in a few weeks," he added. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who met with EU leaders in Luxembourg, said he hoped to resolve the dispute as soon as possible. "We agreed that we should engage in efforts so that an earliest possible agreement can be achieved," said the Japanese leader at a joint news conference with EU leaders including foreign policy chief Javier Solana. The 25-member EU wants the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be built in France, and has threatened to go it alone unless Japan drops its rival bid, leaving six-party talks in deadlock for months. The United States and South Korea support Japan's offer to build ITER in Rokkasho-mura, a northern Japanese village near the Pacific Ocean, while the EU, China and Russia back the bid of the southern French town of Cadarache. -------- korea Rice warns North Korea on nukes Tuesday, May 3, 2005 Posted: 0517 GMT (1317 HKT) CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/03/nkorea.test/index.html WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has issued a tough warning to North Korea that the United States is well able to defend itself and its allies against nuclear and missile threats. And South Korea on Tuesday dismissed claims that North Korea is preparing to conduct an underground nuclear test, Yonhap news agency reported. South Korea's Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung told reporters in Seoul: "We've not yet seen any signs (of a nuclear test)." He was responding to a report in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper that claimed the United States had told South Korea that U.S. intelligence authorities recently detected signs North Korea was preparing for an underground test in the northeastern region of the isolated communist state. Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon had dismissed the possibility of North Korea conducting a nuclear weapons test in the near future. Also on Monday, Rice -- responding to North Korea's apparent launch of a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday -- said in Washington: "I don't think there should be any doubt about our ability to deter whatever the North Koreans are up to." Rice told reporters: "This is not just between the United States and North Korea." Sunday's short-range missile launch is the latest twist in a string of incidents over the past week that has refocused international attention on the nuclear standoff in the Korean peninsula. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told CNN Sunday, "It appears that there was a test of a short-range missile by the North Koreans, and it landed in the Sea of Japan." State Department spokesman Curtis Cooper issued a statement saying the test apparently took place Sunday. "We are continuing to look into this," he said. "We are consulting closely with governments in the region. We have long been concerned about North Korea's missile program and activities, and urge North Korea to continue its moratorium on ballistic missile tests." Card, on "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," said, "We're not surprised by this. The North Koreans have tested their missiles before. They've had some failures." North Korea tested missiles in 2003, and in 1998 it test-fired a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Both triggered a great deal of concern in Japan. Card said the United States was working to restart stalled six-party talks aimed at reaching an accord, which began in 2003 but have yielded no breakthrough. "We have to work together with our allies around the world -- especially the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Russians and the Chinese -- to demonstrate that North Korea's actions are inappropriate," he said. "We don't want them to have any nuclear weapons, we don't want the Korean peninsula to have any nuclear weapons on it." But Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, told "Late Edition" the latest test showed the U.S. refusal to hold talks directly with Pyongyang was leading to an even greater nuclear threat. In addition to the multilateral talks, Levin said, the Bush administration should "talk directly to the North Koreans. That's what's been missing. ... It has led to real failure in these policies. The nuclear threat is increasing from North Korea as a result." Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said North Korea lied to the United States in the bilateral talks during the Clinton presidency. Rice said North Korea's missile program should be put on the agenda when and if the talks were resumed, AP reported. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said after a 40-minute meeting with Rice at the State Department that they hoped China would try harder to get six-party negotiations resumed. The United States, Japan, China, South Korea and Russia hope to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for security assurances and economic benefits. Talks were supposed to be resumed last September, but North Korea withdrew its promise to attend. Since then, North Korea and the United States have been exchanging angry rhetoric. ---- Japan, EU urge N. Korea to scrap nuclear reactors Mon May 2, 2005 09:09 AM ET (Reuters) By Teruaki Ueno http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=DXAITOKOVN1AUCRBAE0CFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8360390 LUXEMBOURG - Japan and the European Union joined forces on Monday in urging North Korea to return quickly to six-party talks on its nuclear ambitions, scrap its nuclear reactors and improve its human rights record. "They urged the DPRK (North Korea) to completely dismantle its nuclear programs subject to credible international verification and, to that end, return to the six-party talks process expeditiously and without preconditions," a joint statement issued at an EU-Japan summit said. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, on a six-day tour of Southwest Asia and Europe, discussed Asian security with an EU team led by Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the 25-nation bloc's rotating presidency. The two sides also urged North Korea to respect a resolution adopted by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights last month on alleged abuses in the reclusive communist state. The resolution expressed deep concern at torture, public executions, arbitrary detention, "infanticide," imposition of the death penalty for political reasons, the existence of a large number of prison camps and extensive use of forced labour. China, a neighbor and communist ally of North Korea, has hosted three inconclusive rounds of nuclear negotiations, the last in June 2004. The talks involve the United States, North and South Korea, China, Japan and Russia. Japanese officials have suggested that after June, patience would be wearing thin. One option would be to take the matter to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, while another would be to hold five-party talks excluding North Korea, they said. TOUGHER MOVES The United States has acknowledged it may consider tougher moves against North Korea, such as referring its nuclear programs to the Security Council for possible sanctions, if Pyongyang continued to stay away from talks. North Korea said explicitly for the first time in February that it had nuclear weapons, ratcheting up a crisis that began in 2002 over what Washington said was its enrichment of uranium that could be used to make weapons. North Korea appears to have launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, U.S. officials said, a move that stoked fears Pyongyang may be heading toward a possible nuclear test. The White House criticized North Korean leader Kim Jong-il by name and called the missile launch a bullying tactic while the State Department said it was consulting closely with governments in the region about the incident. In Washington on Thursday, the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency told a Senate committee that North Korea had the ability to mount a nuclear device on a long-range missile and that the communist state could hit U.S. territory. Asked about the issue at a White House news conference, President Bush said: "There is concern about his capability to deliver a nuclear weapon. We don't know if he can or not but I think it's best, when you're dealing with a tyrant like Kim Jong-il, to assume he can." ---- Japan Reports Missile Test By North Korea Anthony Faiola and Dafna Linzer Monday, May 2, 2005 Washington Post; A11 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/01/AR2005050100204_pf.html PUSAN, South Korea, May 1 -- North Korea appears to have test-launched a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday morning, according to Japanese government officials investigating the incident. Officials in Tokyo could not immediately confirm the type of missile used but said it did not appear to be a type of longer-range missile that could threaten Japan's security. North Korea periodically test-fires land-based anti-ship missiles, but in 1998, it shocked the world when it test-fired a longer-range ballistic missile over Japan. Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported that the missile was fired around 8 a.m. and traveled about 60 miles before falling into the Sea of Japan not far from the North Korean coast. U.S. officials have expressed growing concern that North Korea may be preparing to a carry out a nuclear test and may have mastered the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that could reach Japan and the West Coast of the United States. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that because the missile tested Sunday was short-range, its firing did not violate a moratorium on testing the longer-range Taepo Dong missile that North Korea announced in 1999. ---- N. Korea test-fires missile into sea May 02, 2005 By Soo-Jeong Lee ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050502-121429-4908r.htm SEOUL -- North Korea apparently test-fired a missile into the East Sea/Sea of Japan yesterday, raising new fears about Pyongyang's nuclear intentions just days after a U.S. intelligence official said it had the ability in theory to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead. News of the test launch first appeared in Japanese press reports, which said U.S. military officials had told the Japanese and South Korean governments that the missile flew about 65 miles off the North Korean coast. Later, the White House chief of staff confirmed the incident in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer. "It appears that there was a test of a short-range missile by the North Koreans and it landed in the Sea of Japan. We're not surprised by this. The North Koreans have tested their missiles before. They've had some failures," Andrew H. Card Jr. told the cable network. On Thursday, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the U.S. Senate that the North Koreans knew how to arm a missile with a nuclear weapon, a potentially significant advance for the communist state. He did not say whether he was talking about a short-range or long-range missile; the latter is thought capable of hitting western parts of the United States. Two defense officials later said U.S. intelligence analysts think North Korea is several years away from being able to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that could reach the United States. Yesterday's test-firing occurred on the eve of a major gathering at the United Nations to review global progress on curbing nuclear proliferation. North Korea withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003. The United States, however, is expected to seek a consensus at the U.N. session for tough action against the North Koreans, as well as the Iranians. Both are accused by Washington of having nuclear weapons or ambitions to build them. North Korea has test-fired short-range missiles many times. In 2003, it test-fired short-range land-to-ship missiles at least three times during a period of heightened tension over its nuclear-weapons program. Yesterday's test, however, occurred at an especially worrisome time as the North appeared to have resumed efforts to move forward with its nuclear-weapons program. South Korean officials said last month that Pyongyang recently had shut down a nuclear reactor, possibly to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium. North Korea shocked the region in 1998 by test-firing a Taepo-Dong 1 missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. The North said that was an attempt to put a satellite into orbit. U.S. and South Korean officials are more concerned about a possible North Korean test of a Taepo-Dong 2 missile, which analysts think is capable of reaching parts of the western United States, though there are widespread doubts about its reach and accuracy. Washington says North Korea is a top global exporter of missile parts and technology. The Japanese Cabinet in February approved legislation that would allow the defense chief to order the military to shoot down incoming missiles. Six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions have been stalled since June. ---- White House says North Korea missile launch 'provocative' WASHINGTON (AFP) May 02, 2005 http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050502143435.5b7hobx5.html The White House on Monday called North Korea's weekend missile test the latest in "a series of provocative acts," and urged Pyongyang to return to six-country talks on its nuclear program. "This is a continuation of a series of provocative acts by North Korea, and they only serve to further isolate North Korea," spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "There is a consensus among all parties in the region that the only viable path for North Korea is to return to the six-party talks and to abandon its nuclear weapons program," the spokesman said. The negotiations, involving the United States, Russia, Japan, China and the two Koreas, have been stalled for nearly a year since a third round of negotiations in June last year. Japanese media first broke the news about the North's test-firing of a missile on Sunday, with broadcaster NHK saying it flew 100 kilometersmiles) from North Korea into the Sea of Japan (East Sea). The North has boycotted the nuclear disarmament talks since it failed to show up at a fourth round scheduled for Beijing last September, citing "hostile" US policy toward the communist state. ---- Neighbors Play Down N.Korea Missile Test By SOO-JEONG LEE The Associated Press Monday, May 2, 2005; 1:33 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050200176_pf.html SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea and other Asian governments on Monday played down the significance of North Korea's latest missile test, saying it involved a short-range weapon unable to reach as far as Japan and with no link to the communist North's nuclear program. North Korea apparently test-fired a missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, raising new concerns about its nuclear intentions just days after a U.S. intelligence official said the secretive state had the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead. "The missile that North Korea recently fired is a short-range missile and is far from the one that can carry a nuclear weapon," Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said in an interview with South Korea's Yonhap news agency. "This isn't a case to be linked to the nuclear dispute." Song, who is South Korea's top envoy to the nuclear dispute, also commented on reports that Washington warned allies that North Korea might be ready to conduct an underground nuclear test as early as June, with Song saying South Korea had received no such warning. South Korean officials have said they have not yet detected any signs to suggest that North Korea is preparing for a nuclear test. The United States and Japan, meanwhile, agreed Monday in Washington to defer U.N. action to harness North Korea's weapons programs and appealed to China to try harder to get six-party negotiations resumed. Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, speaking after a 40-minute meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said the emphasis should be on using diplomacy to try to reopen six-party negotiations and Japan would press the point with China. News of the test launch first appeared in Japanese media reports, saying U.S. military officials had informed the Japanese and South Korean governments of Sunday's test launch. White House press secretary Scott McClellan emphasized on Monday that it was a test of a short-range missile. "This is a continuation of a series of provocative acts by North Korea," McClellan told reporters. "They only serve to further isolate North Korea." "I think there is a consensus among all parties in the region that the only viable path for North Korea is to return to the six-party talks with a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear weapons program. And we will continue to seek a peaceful, diplomatic solution," he added. Talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., Russia, China and Japan aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear ambitions have been stalled since last June. In Japan, a Defense Agency official said Monday Tokyo believes the missile flew only an extremely short distance and would not pose an immediate threat to Japan's national security. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said he believed it was part of North Korean domestic military exercises and was not aimed at Japan. The missile was believed to be a Russian-made SS21 with a 75-mile range, or an upgraded version of the 62-mile Silkworm, Japan's Asahi newspaper said. On Thursday, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the U.S. Senate that the North Koreans knew how to arm a missile with a nuclear weapon _ a potentially significant advance for the North. He did not specify whether he was talking about a short-range or long-range missile. North Korea has test-fired short-range missiles many times. In 2003, it test-fired short-range land-to-ship missiles at least three times during heightened tensions over its nuclear weapons program. Sunday's test occurred at an especially worrisome time, with concerns that the North is moving forward with its nuclear weapons program. South Korean officials said last month that North Korea had shut down a nuclear reactor, possibly to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium. North Korea shocked the region in 1998 by test-firing a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. The North said it was an attempt to put a satellite in orbit. U.S. and South Korean officials are more concerned about a possible North Korean test of a Taepodong-2 missile, which analysts believe is capable of reaching parts of the western United States, though there are widespread doubts about its reach and accuracy. -------- terrorism Stolen Nuclear Gauge Raises Terrorism Concerns Mon May 2, 2005 12:30 PM ET http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/wjxt/20050502/lo_wkmg/2698648 A nuclear density test gauge, which is on the federal govenment's watch list, was stolen from a secured construction site in Daytona Beach, Fla., according to Local 6 News. Police said the thieves took the item from a site on north Atlantic Avenue Monday morning. A foreman at the location said the thieves knew exactly what they were doing when they took the device, Local 6 News reported. The gauge is used to test the density of soil. It is a common device used in Central Florida, according to the report. However, officials said if the device fell into the wrong hands, it could be used for the wrong reasons, including terrorism, Local 6 News reported. "Contacts have been made," Daytona Beach police spokesman Al Tolley said. "We are required to make contacts that the item is missing because it is a certified item. They are required to report it to the federal government and they have to have a certification to own one." The device was put on the nuclear terrorist watch list following Sept. 11 attacks, according to the report. The Atomic Regulatory Commission has been notified about the theft. Watch Local 6 News for more on this story. -------- treaties Jimmy Carter: Erosion of the Nonproliferation Treaty by Jimmy Carter International Herald Tribune Monday, May 2, 2005 by the http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0502-28.htm http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/05/01/opinion/edjimmy.php ATLANTA - As the review conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty convenes in New York this month, we can only be appalled at the indifference of the United States and the other nuclear powers. This indifference is remarkable, considering the addition of Iran and North Korea as states that either possess or seek nuclear weapons programs. In the run-up to the conference, a group of "Middle States" had a simple goal: "To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the nonproliferation treaty in 2005." Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states - including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members - voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution. Preparatory talks failed even to achieve an agenda because of the deep divisions between nuclear powers that refuse to meet their own disarmament commitments and the non-nuclear movement, whose demands include honoring these pledges and considering the Israeli arsenal. Until recently, all American presidents since Dwight Eisenhower had striven to restrict and reduce nuclear arsenals - some more than others. As far as I know, there are no present efforts by any of the nuclear powers to accomplish these crucial goals. The United States is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including antiballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating "bunker buster" and perhaps some new "small" bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. Some corrective actions are obvious: The United States needs to address remaining nuclear issues with Russia, demanding the same standards of transparency and verification of past arms control agreements and dismantling and disposal of decommissioned weapons. With massive arsenals still on hair-trigger alert status, a global holocaust is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the cold war. We could address perhaps the world's greatest proliferation threat by fully securing Russia's stockpiles. While all nuclear weapons states should agree to no first use, the United States, as the sole superpower, should take the lead on this issue. NATO needs to de-emphasize the role of its nuclear weapons and consider an end to their deployment in Western Europe. Despite its eastward expansion, NATO is keeping the same stockpiles and policies as when the Iron Curtain divided the continent. The comprehensive test ban treaty should be honored, but the United States is moving in the opposite direction. The administration's 2005 budget refers for the first time to a list of test scenarios, and other nations are waiting to take the same action. The United States should support a fissile-materials treaty to prevent the creation and transport of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. The United States should curtail development of the infeasible missile defense shield, which is wasting huge resources, while breaking our commitment to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without a working substitute. Act on nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, an increasing source of instability. Iran has repeatedly hidden its intentions to enrich uranium while claiming that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. This explanation has been given before, by India, Pakistan and North Korea, and has led to weapons programs in all three states. Iran must be called to account and held to its promises under the Nonproliferation Treaty. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge how Israel's nuclear status entices Iran, Syria, Egypt and other states to join the community of nuclear-weapon states. If the United States and other nuclear powers are serious about stopping the erosion of the Nonproliferation Treaty, they must act now on these issues. Any other course will mean a world in which the nuclear threat increases, not diminishes. (Jimmy Carter is a former president of the United States and founder of the Carter Center in Atlanta. This comment was distributed by Tribune Media Services for Global Viewpoint.) ---- Nations Gather to Review Nuclear Treaty By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 2, 2005 Filed at 11:10 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Nuclear-Treaty.html?pagewanted=print&position= UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Amid rising nuclear tensions, more than 180 nations convened Monday to review the nonproliferation treaty, hearing calls from many sides for concessions by Iran and North Korea, America, Russia and others to move toward a world free of the nuclear threat. ''Ultimately, the only way to guarantee that they will never be used is for our world to be free of such weapons,'' Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in opening the monthlong conference. The U.N. chief urged nonweapons states like Iran to renounce potential bomb technology, in return for international guarantees of nuclear fuel. But he also challenged Washington and Moscow to slash their nuclear arsenals irreversibly to just hundreds of warheads. That call was echoed by a spokeswoman for a coalition of disarmament-minded nations. ''We are greatly disappointed'' by ''unsatisfactory progress'' toward disarmament by the big powers, said New Zealand's Marian Hobbs. The U.S. representative rejected such criticism, pointing to recent arms-control agreements. ''We are proud to have played a leading role in reducing nuclear arsenals,'' said Stephen G. Rademaker, an assistant secretary of state. Rademaker made clear the United States would seek, instead, to focus the conference on Iran and its nuclear-fuel program, and on North Korea. Because of such differing priorities, treaty members were unable to agree on a complete agenda before the sessions began. Organizers hope to have agreement before the nuts-and-bolts work of committees begins next week. Under the 35-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), states without nuclear arms pledge not to pursue them, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to move toward nuclear disarmament. Three other nuclear states -- Israel, India and Pakistan -- remain outside the treaty. The NPT is reviewed every five years at conferences whose consensus political commitments are not legally binding, like a treaty, but give valuable support to nonproliferation initiatives. At the 2000 sessions, the nuclear powers committed to ''13 practical steps'' toward disarmament, but critics complain the Bush administration -- by rejecting the nuclear test-ban treaty, for example -- has come up short. In his keynote address, Annan said all nations must work toward ''a world of reduced nuclear threat and, ultimately, a world free of nuclear weapons.'' The nuclear powers must find ways to rely less on nuclear deterrence, the U.N. chief said, and he called on Washington and Moscow ''to commit themselves -- irreversibly -- to further cuts in their arsenals, so that warheads number in the hundreds, not the thousands.'' Under the 2002 Moscow Treaty, the United States and Russia are to cut back their deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 each, by 2012. When it's implemented, Rademaker said, ''the United States will have reduced the number of strategic nuclear warheads it had deployed in 1990 by about 80%.'' But the agreement has been criticized for not requiring destruction of excess warheads taken off deployment, or providing a transparent timetable and open verification of reductions. The Iran question hinges on the NPT's Article IV, which guarantees nonweapons states the right to peaceful nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment equipment to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. That same technology, with further enrichment, can produce material for nuclear bombs, and the United States alleges that's what Iran plans. ''We dare not look the other way,'' Rademaker said. Tehran denies the charge, but Annan said states such as Iran ''must not insist'' on possessing such sensitive technology, but instead should have access internationally to nuclear fuel. Following Annan to the U.N. podium, Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, renewed his call for a moratorium on new fuel-cycle facilities while international controls are negotiated. ElBaradei proposes putting nuclear fuel production under multilateral control by regional or international bodies. Rademaker on Monday reaffirmed President Bush's proposal for an outright ban on nuclear fuel technology, except in the United States and a dozen other countries that have it. Neither idea has generated widespread support. The Tehran government is negotiating on and off with Germany, France and Britain about shutting down its enrichment operations in return for economic incentives. Speaking for the European Union, Luxembourg's foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, cited its endorsement of international guarantees of access to nuclear fuel, on one hand, and at the same time said the EU ''expects further reductions in the Russian and U.S. arsenals.'' Malaysia's foreign minister, representing the 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement, said a ''lack of balance'' -- the U.S. emphasis on nonproliferation over disarmament -- ''threatens to unravel the NPT regime.'' ''The nuclear weapons states continue to believe in the relevance of nuclear weapons,'' said Syed Hamid Albar. ''We must all call for an end to this madness. North Korea, which pulled out of the NPT in 2003, said in February it has already built nuclear weapons. The review conference is not expected to focus heavily on this first NPT defector, however, in order not to complicate efforts, via now-suspended six-party talks, to draw Pyongyang back into the treaty fold. ---- NPT Conference Opens Amid Concerns of Deadlock By Peter Heinlein New York 02 May 2005 Voice of America http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-05-02-voa35.cfm UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan speaks during a conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty A conference on nuclear non-proliferation has opened at the United Nations amid concerns about the nuclear intentions of Iran and North Korea. Representatives of more than 180 countries sat down in the General Assembly Hall for a five-year review of the treaty that is considered the legal cornerstone of international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the gathering with a frank admission that the 35-year old treaty is out of date. He suggested that success of the month-long conference is in danger because of vastly differing expectations. "Some will stress the need to prevent proliferation to the most volatile regions," said Mr. Annan. "Others will argue that we must make compliance with, and enforcement of, the NPT universal. Some will say the spread of nuclear-fuel cycle technology poses an unacceptable proliferation threat. "Others will counter that access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology must not be compromised," continued Mr. Annan. "Some will paint proliferation as a grave threat. Others will argue that existing nuclear arsenals are a deadly danger." Without mentioning any state, the secretary-general made clear his concerns about North Korea, suggesting that Pyongyang's withdrawal from the treaty poses a grave challenge to its credibility. "You must strengthen confidence in the integrity of the treaty, particularly in the face of the first withdrawal announced by a state," added Mr. Annan. "Unless violations are directly addressed, the most basic collective reassurance on which the treaty rests will be called into serious question." Mr. Annan also indirectly rebuffed Iran, which many suspect is using its quest for peaceful nuclear energy as a cover for a weapons program. "States that wish to exercise their undoubted right to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes must not insist that they can only do so by developing capacities that might be used to create nuclear weapons," he said. Mr. Annan also avoided mentioning the United States and Russia, but did make a pointed reference to demands by several countries that former Cold War advsersaries have been too slow to disarm. "An important step would be for former Cold War rivals to commit themselves irreversibly to further cuts in their arsenals, so that warheads number in the hundreds, not the thousands," he reminded. Undersecretary of State Stephen Rademaker is among 17 delegates scheduled to address the conference later on its first day. Mr. Rademaker has previously said that while the United States has no plans to introduce new disarmament initiatives during the conference, it will seek to hold NPT violators accountable. The United States is also seeking political support for a proposal to require nuclear-capable states to refuse to supply enrichment and reprocessing technology to states that do not have functioning nuclear-energy plants. ---- Text of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s address NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY ‘CORNERSTONE’ OF GLOBAL SECURITY BUT CONFERENCE MUST NARROW GAP BETWEEN PERFORMANCE, PROMISE, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL May 2, 2005 United Nations http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/sgsm9847.doc.htm Following is the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s address to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York, 2 May: In 1945, the year that the United Nations was founded, our world entered the nuclear age with the horrific explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Soon after, the cold war was upon us, and the threat of nuclear annihilation hung over humankind. That dangerous epoch may have ended, but nuclear threats remain. Indeed, in the five years since you last met, the world has reawakened to nuclear dangers, both new and old. I firmly believe that our generation can build a world of ever-expanding development, security and human rights -- a world “in larger freedom”. But I am equally aware that such a world could be put irrevocably beyond our reach by a nuclear catastrophe in one of our great cities. In the chaos and confusion of the immediate aftermath, there might be many questions. Was this an act of terrorism? Was it an act of aggression by a State? Was it an accident? These may not be equally probable, but all are possible. Imagine, just for a minute, what the consequences would be. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people would perish in an instant, and many more would die from exposure to radiation. The global impact would also be grave. The attention of world leaders would be riveted on this existential threat. Carefully nurtured collective security mechanisms could be discredited. Hard-won freedoms and human rights could be compromised. The sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful uses could halt. Resources for development would likely dwindle. And world financial markets, trade and transportation could be hard hit, with major economic consequences. This could drive millions of people in poor countries into deeper deprivation and suffering. As shock gave way to anger and despair, the leaders of every nation represented here at this conference -- as well as those who are not here -- would have to ask: How did it come to this? Is my conscience clear? Could I have done more to reduce the risk by strengthening the regime designed to do so? In our interconnected world, a threat to one is a threat to all, and we all share responsibility for each other’s security. If this is true of all threats, it is particularly true of the nuclear threat. We are all vulnerable to the weakest link in nuclear security and safety and in our efforts to promote disarmament and prevent proliferation. And we all bear a heavy responsibility to build an efficient, effective, and equitable system that reduces nuclear threats. Thirty-five years ago, our forebears found the wisdom to agree to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to prevent proliferation and advance disarmament while assuring the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Ever since, it has been a cornerstone of global security, and has confounded the dire predictions of its critics. Nuclear weapons have not spread to dozens of States. Indeed, more States have given up their ambitions for nuclear weapons than have acquired them. States have joined nuclear-weapon-free zones, and I welcome recent progress to establish a new one in Central Asia. The global non-proliferation norm has been firmly established -- and it has been reaffirmed in your last two review conferences. A watchful eye has been kept on the supply of materials necessary to make [nuclear weapons]. Many States have been able to enjoy the benefits of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. We have also seen steps, such as the recent Moscow Treaty, to dismantle weapons and reduce stockpiles. Important multilateral action has also been taken to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism. In resolution 1540, the Security Council has affirmed the responsibility of all States to secure sensitive materials and control their export. And I am sure you take heart, as I do, from the decision of the General Assembly, last month, to adopt the Convention on Nuclear Terrorism. But we cannot afford to be complacent. The plain fact is that the regime has not kept pace with the march of technology and globalization, and developments of many kinds in recent years have placed it under great stress. International regimes do not fail because of one breach, however serious or unacceptable. They fail when many breaches pile one on top of the other, to the point where the gap between promise and performance becomes unbridgeable. As you meet to review the NPT, your urgent task is to narrow that gap. I have no doubt that we will hear many truths about this conference. Some will stress the need to prevent proliferation to the most volatile regions. Others will argue that we must make compliance with, and enforcement of, the NPT universal. Some will say that the spread of nuclear fuel cycle technology poses an unacceptable proliferation threat. Others will counter that access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology must not be compromised. Some will paint proliferation as a grave threat. Others will argue that existing nuclear arsenals are a deadly danger. But I challenge each of you to recognize all these truths. I challenge you to accept that disarmament, non-proliferation and the right to peaceful uses are all vital. I challenge you to agree that they are all too important to be held hostage to the politics of the past. And I challenge you to acknowledge that they all impose responsibilities on all States. If you are to rise to these challenges, action is required on many fronts. First, you must strengthen confidence in the integrity of the treaty, particularly in the face of the first withdrawal announced by a State. Unless violations are directly addressed, the most basic collective reassurance on which the treaty rests will be called into question. Second, you must ensure that measures for compliance are made more effective, to maintain confidence that States are living up to their obligations. For example, universalization of the Model Additional Protocol is long overdue. It has to be made the new standard for verifying compliance. Third, you must act to reduce the threat of proliferation not only to States, but to non-State actors. As the dangers of such proliferation have become clear, so has the universal obligation for all States to establish effective national controls and enforcement measures. Fourth, you must come to grips with the Janus-like character of nuclear energy. The regime will not be sustainable if scores of more States develop the most sensitive phases of the fuel cycle and are equipped with the technology to produce nuclear weapons on short notice -- and, of course, each individual State which does this only will leave others to feel that they must do the same. This would increase all the risks -- of nuclear accident, of trafficking, of terrorist use, and of use by States themselves. To prevent that, you must find durable ways to reconcile the right to peaceful uses with the imperative of non-proliferation. States that wish to exercise their undoubted right to develop and use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes must not insist that they can only do so by developing capacities that might be used to create nuclear weapons. But, equally, those same States should not be left to feel that the only route to enjoying the benefits of nuclear energy is a domestic fuel cycle capability. A first step must be to expedite agreement to create incentives for States to voluntarily forego the development of fuel cycle facilities. I commend the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Director-General, Mohamed ElBaradei, for working to advance consensus on this vital question, and I urge all States to do the same. These steps would materially reduce the risk of the use of nuclear weapons. But, ultimately, the only guarantee that they will never be used is for our world to be free of such weapons. If we are truly committed to a nuclear-weapon-free world, we must move beyond rhetorical flourish and political posturing, and start to think seriously how to get there. Some of the initial steps are obvious. Prompt negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty for all States is vital and indispensable. All States should affirm their commitment to a moratorium on testing, and to early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. The High-Level Panel has also wisely endorsed the recommendation that all nuclear-weapon States should de-alert their existing weapons, and give negative security assurances to the non-nuclear weapon States. But you must go further. Many States still live under a nuclear umbrella, whether of their own or an ally. Ways must be found to lessen, and ultimately overcome, their reliance on nuclear deterrence. An important step would be for former cold war rivals to commit themselves -- irreversibly -- to further cuts in their arsenals, so that warheads number in the hundreds, not in the thousands. We can only hope to achieve such major reductions if every State has a clear and reliable picture of the fissile material holdings of every other State, and if every State is confident that this material in other States is secure. The obligation therefore falls on all States -- nuclear and non-nuclear alike -- to increase transparency and security. Indeed, unless all States recognize that disarmament, like non-proliferation, requires action from everyone, the goal of general and complete disarmament will remain a distant dream. We must, at the same time, take heed of the fact that the attitude of States to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is unavoidably linked to broader questions of national, regional and global security. The more we work to resolve regional conflicts, the less incentives States will have to go nuclear. The more confidence States have in our collective security system, the more prepared they will be to rely on a strengthened non-proliferation regime, rather than on deterrence. And thus, the nearer we will be to the vital goal of universal membership of the treaty. In my report, “In larger freedom”, I have offered Member States a vision of a revitalized system of collective security for the twenty-first century. When world leaders meet here in September, they must take bold decisions and bring that vision closer to reality. This is an ambitious agenda. But the consequences of failure are too great to aim for anything less. At the same time, the promise of success is plain for all to see: a world of reduced nuclear threat, and, ultimately, a world free of nuclear weapons. Our world will not come close to this vision if you accept only some of the truths that will be uttered during this conference. As custodians of the NPT, you must come to terms with all the nuclear dangers that threaten humanity. Indeed, the detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki long ago made your burden abundantly clear. As J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the first bomb, warned: “The peoples of this world must unite, or they will perish…The atomic bomb has spelled [this] out for all men to understand.” ---- An old treaty for a new world? Monday, 2 May, 2005 By Jonathan Marcus BBC Diplomatic Correspondent http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4504511.stm The entry into force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT in March 1970 represented a milestone for a world living in the shadow of the nuclear bomb. Its aim was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five "declared" nuclear armed powers: Britain, France, China, the United States and the then Soviet Union. There were fears that without such an agreement there might be 15 or 20 nuclear-armed states within a similar number of years. In that goal the Non-Proliferation Treaty has been successful. But today, with countries like India, Israel and Pakistan effectively nuclear powers, and with growing worries over North Korea and Iran's nuclear activities, many wonder if the Non-Proliferation Treaty still serves a useful purpose. Strength in numbers Rose Gottemoeller of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington DC - herself a former senior US arms control official - argues emphatically that it does. There are only three countries in the world, she told me, that are not members of the NPT regime - India, Pakistan and Israel. Otherwise, it is almost a universally held treaty, so, she argues, "it is very important to remember that most countries of the world do live up to the regime and most countries do believe it is important". The NPT regime's foundations, she insisted, remained firm. The foundations may be strong, but many people fear that the super-structure is looking shakier than ever. Weaknesses Gary Samore is a non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He argues that a whole series of episodes had highlighted weaknesses in the regime - North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT after it was found to be cheating on its commitments, not to mention what he described as Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability under the cover of a peaceful nuclear programme. None of the nuclear weapon states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals Gary Samore Non-proliferation expert In addition there was the Abdul Qadeer Khan's network in Pakistan, which demonstrated weaknesses in the whole export control system relating to nuclear technologies. All of these events, he told me, had prompted a range of ideas to reform and strengthen the NPT regime. This Review Conference will provide an opportunity for those different ideas to be discussed and debated. But he doubts if any real consensus will be achieved. Grand bargain That is because the essential bargain at the heart of the NPT is under strain like never before. The treaty: Q &A At the heart of the Non-Proliferation Treaty's success lies a "grand bargain". Other than the big five nuclear powers, all other countries joined the treaty as non-nuclear armed states. They gave up any ambition to develop nuclear weapons; they agreed to open up all their facilities to inspection; and in return they were guaranteed the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology. But, as Rose Gottemoeller told me, this 'bargain' is wearing a little thin and for good reason. As she explained, "There is a very close relationship between the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, for energy purposes for example, and the creation of fissile material for nuclear bombs." There was, she said, "great concern about countries like North Korea that can step up to the edge of the treaty constraints and then jump outside it" and this conference will be focused on that issue. Worries on Iran The worries over Iran's nuclear programme are very similar. Could it gain a nuclear capability within the NPT regime and then simply abandon the treaty and press ahead with a weapons programme? Indeed in the on-going talks between Iran and a trio of European countries, Tehran is actually being asked to give up any idea of having a nuclear fuel enrichment programme, something it is entirely within its rights to pursue under the NPT regime. The Non-Proliferation Treaty in fact faces a crisis of compliance. Indeed it is a double crisis. Because, as part of the "grand bargain", the five declared nuclear powers undertook eventually to give up their nuclear arms. And many believe they have simply not been honouring this commitment. Complex problems As Gary Samore told me, "none of the nuclear weapon states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals" and each of them in some ways, perhaps with the exception of the UK, are actually taking measures to prolong their capability or even to find new roles for nuclear bombs. HAVE YOUR SAY The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty certainly still serves a purpose Josh, Traverse City, Michigan, USA Send us your comments The US is investigating new types of nuclear weapons to attack deeply-buried targets; China is busy modernising its nuclear arsenal to make it more mobile; and Russia and China have both altered their nuclear doctrines in ways which might make the use of nuclear arms more likely. "Their collective behaviour", he told me, "will certainly hang as a cloud over the Review Conference." Few of the experts that I've spoken to had any great hopes that this gathering in New York would produce any ground-breaking initiatives. Nonetheless the NPT still provides a basic bench-mark in a troubled world. Its near universality is a great strength. But there are doubts that the NPT is really sufficient to deal with the much more complex problems of non-proliferation in today's world. Trying to re-draft the treaty would probably lead to it coming apart at the seams. Many experts believe that real progress in dealing with the difficult cases like North Korea and Iran can only come from tailor-made diplomatic initiatives outside the treaty itself. ---- Deprive Iran, N.Korea of nuclear energy, U.S. says Mon May 2, 2005 05:34 PM ET (Reuters) http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02294599.htm UNITED NATIONS - The United States said on Monday that states like Iran and North Korea in violation of nuclear nonproliferation obligations should be denied peaceful nuclear energy benefits. At the start of a conference that aims to take stock of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Bush administration said noncompliance by Iran and North Korea was the most serious proliferation threat and played down criticism the United States and other nuclear weapons states had shirked disarmament duties. Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Rademaker, the head of the U.S. delegation, asserted NPT language was explicit and unambiguous. "States asserting their right to receive the benefits of peaceful nuclear development must be in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations under Articles I and II of the NPT," he said. "No state in violation of Articles I or II should receive the benefits of Article IV. All nuclear assistance to such a state, bilaterally or through the IAEA (the U.N. nuclear watchdog), should cease. Again, we hope the deliberations at this Review Conference will endorse this proposition," he added. Thirty-five years ago, the NPT established a "bargain" by which, over time, 183 states renounced nuclear weapons. In return, five declared nuclear states -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- promised eventually to eliminate their own weapons and to allow nonnuclear states access to peaceful nuclear energy. The United States and other countries have accused Iran of a clandestine 18-year effort to build nuclear weapons under the guise of its NPT membership. Tehran says the programs are aimed at producing domestic electric power. North Korea also pursued atomic arms programs while an NPT member but has since withdrawn from the treaty and announced it has nuclear weapons. Rademaker stressed that "some (states) continue to use the pretext of a peaceful nuclear program to pursue the goal of developing nuclear weapons." "We must confront this challenge in order to ensure that the treaty remains relevant," said Rademaker, expressing confidence that "loopholes" in the treaty could be closed without compromising "truly peaceful nuclear programs." Iran warned on Saturday it may end its suspension of uranium enrichment-related work this week after failing to reach a breakthrough in talks with the European Union over the long-term future of its disputed nuclear program. North Korea apparently fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan on the eve of the conference, deepening tensions. Critics complain the nuclear-weapon states, especially the United States and Russia, have fallen short of their disarmament commitments. Rademaker insisted the administration was "fully committed" to fulfilling its NPT obligations. When the 2002 U.S.-Russia Moscow Treaty is implemented by the end of 2012, "the United States will have reduced the number of strategic nuclear warheads it had deployed in 1990 by about 80 percent," he said. "We have also reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our deterrence strategy and are cutting our nuclear stockpile almost in half, to the lowest level in decades," he said. In an effort to communicate that message to foreign audiences, the State Department has produced a mini-disc and glossy brochures detailing U.S. disarmament initiatives. An official estimated the price tag at less than $25,000. ---- Deadlock looms over spread of nuclear arms Rift between America and Iran threatens to stymie attempts to update non-proliferation treaty Julian Borger in Washington Monday May 2, 2005 Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5183884-103681,00.html The global spread of nuclear weapons is at stake today as delegates from 190 countries convene in an attempt to salvage the 1970 non-proliferation treaty, but the chances of success look dim. The rift between nuclear and non-nuclear states, and between the US and Iran in particular, is so serious that a final agenda had still not been agreed on the eve of the month-long conference in New York, despite frantic shuttle diplomacy by its Brazilian chairman, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte. "If we could get out of this conference without a major blow-up we would be doing well," said Matt Martin, a deputy director of the British American Security Information Council, a transatlantic thinktank. Both sides agree the NPT is outdated, but they differ sharply on how it could be strengthened. The US, with support from Britain and France, wants stricter controls on the transfer of nuclear technology. The non-nuclear states, which met separately in Mexico City last week to agree a common position, argue more emphasis should be put on banning the development of new weapons by the existing nuclear powers. And there is disagreement on the NPT's third pillar: the clauses guaranteeing non-nuclear states access to "peaceful" nuclear power technology if they forgo nuclear arsenals. "The politics of the conference make it clear the treaty cannot continue and cannot be strengthened unless all three legs of the bargain can be preserved," said Daryl Kimball, head of the independent Arms Control Association. Iran believes the NPT's nuclear power clauses give it the right to enrich its own uranium or produce plutonium as long as it is - as Tehran insists - intended for peaceful use. The US says Iran is abusing its rights by using the NPT as a cover to go to the brink of weapons production with the intention of withdrawing abruptly from the treaty at a time of its choosing and assembling weapons within weeks. Such a strategy has already been pursued by North Korea. The US will also claim Tehran has forfeited any rights it might have as an NPT signatory by misleading the International Atomic Energy Agency over the extent of its uranium enrichment programme. Britain, France and Germany, which have been pursuing talks aimed at providing Iran with incentives to give up its uranium enrichment programme, are concerned the NPT conference will turn into a shouting match between the US and Iran and destabilise their precarious negotiations. Tehran said on Friday the talks had made so little progress, it might end its temporary uranium enrichment suspension. In an effort to find a compromise, the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has proposed a deal in which states forswearing uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing programmes would be supplied fissile material for civilian reactors by the current members of the nuclear club. But the compromise looks dead on arrival. The one thing the US and Iran agree on is that it would disrupt their nuclear power industries, and they have the support of Japan and France. At their Mexico City meeting, delegates complained that the IAEA spent its time monitoring compliance by the non-nuclear states, while the nuclear powers had failed to live up to the commitments they made the last two NPT reviews, in 1995 and 2000. The Bush administration has been trying for two years to persuade Congress to fund research on a new generation of weapons, including small-yield "mini-nukes" and nuclear "bunker-busters". Britain too has raised the possibility of replacing its Trident missiles. The US signed a bilateral arms control treaty with Russia in 2002, aimed at sharply reducing the number of operationally deployed warheads by 2012. But the weapons do not have to be destroyed, only mothballed, and there are no verification procedures. The Bush administration has also signalled it has no intention of joining the comprehensive test ban treaty, or signing a verifiable accord ending the production of new fissile material intended for nuclear weapons. Both were pledges it made in 2000. "If one state begins to reject commitments it made at past review conferences, other states may start to reject prior commitments. The non-proliferation treaty will quickly erode," Mr Kimball said. "If the states do not take serious action on a number of key fronts in the next five years, it is likely the treaty will not be able to withstand these challenges and we will see additional states withdraw from the NPT. The crisis is not quite here but it's fast approaching." Objectives of the pact · The Treaty on the non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons came into force in 1970. Its objectives are to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament. · A total of 187 countries, including the five declared nuclear-weapon states - the US, Russia, Britain, France and China - have joined. · Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the treaty. · North Korea joined the treaty in 1985, but in January 2003 announced its intention to withdraw. · The operation of the treaty is reviewed every five years. Source: UN/US department of state ---- Agenda for nuke-treaty review unsettled May 02, 2005 By Charles J. Hanley ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050501-095923-8484r.htm NEW YORK -- In a world of growing nuclear fears and mistrust, U.S. negotiators come to New York today to urge a global nonproliferation conference to take action on Iran and North Korea. But the Americans and other nuclear powers will face demands themselves. Non-nuclear states last week complained the big powers were moving too slowly toward nuclear disarmament, described as "not an option, but a legal obligation" under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Because of this clash of priorities, treaty members yesterday still hadn't completed an agenda for the monthlong conference to review the NPT, whose workings are reassessed every five years. Hundreds of protesters made their priorities clear on the eve of the opening, as they marched past the United Nations in blustery New York spring weather. "Abolish nuclear weapons now" and "No more Hiroshimas" read banners carried by a large Japanese contingent in the anti-nuclear march. "No nation, no group should test and make material for nuclear weapons. Everything should be banned," said Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima, the city obliterated by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945. In distant capitals, nuclear tensions heightened over the weekend as the U.N. conference neared. After renewed talks with European negotiators made no reported progress, Iran said Saturday it would probably resume disputed operations this week related to uranium enrichment, a potential step toward an atom bomb. North Korea, meanwhile, denounced President Bush on Saturday as a "hooligan" and said it doesn't expect a solution to the standoff over its nuclear program during his tenure. The escalating rhetoric was followed yesterday by a test-firing of a North Korean short-range missile into the East Sea/Sea of Japan. The North Koreans, who declared in 2003 they were withdrawing from the NPT, have since said they have built nuclear weapons. Under the 35-year-old NPT, North Korea and 183 other states were to have forsworn such arms in exchange for a pledge by five nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to move toward nuclear disarmament. But, under treaty rules, Pyongyang was able to withdraw without penalty. Conference organizers anticipate a low-key approach toward North Korea, to avoid complicating efforts to draw it back into six-party talks aimed at shutting down its nuclear program. But Bush administration officials say they will work to make treaty noncompliance the focus of the review sessions. "The conference should condemn North Korea's egregious behavior," U.S. delegation leader Stephen G. Rademaker told a House subcommittee Thursday. Without targeting Pyongyang, European and Canadian proposals before the conference would make it more difficult for future North Koreas to withdraw from the treaty without sanction. ---- Iran Plans Defense of Nuclear Program U.S. Is Set to Deliver Ultimatum at Meeting By Dafna Linzer Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 2, 2005; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/01/AR2005050100867_pf.html Iran is planning to mount a staunch defense of its nuclear energy program at an international conference beginning today and will insist on rights to the same technology afforded to all members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a senior Iranian official said in an interview yesterday. The high-level counteroffensive, to be led by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, comes in anticipation of a tough speech the Bush administration is preparing to give today calling for international measures against Tehran unless it gives up sensitive aspects of its nuclear program. M. Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, said his country's efforts are peaceful and well within its rights. Kharrazi, who will address the gathering tomorrow, will spend much of this week discussing the issue with diplomats from around the world. The White House decided several days ago to send a mid-level delegation to the United Nations, where diplomats will review ways to strengthen the nonproliferation treaty. But efforts were underway late yesterday to persuade Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to deliver the U.S. address today. U.S. officials did not rule out raising the profile of the delegation but said it would be difficult for Rice, who returned Saturday from Latin America and is scheduled to accompany President Bush to Europe tomorrow. Conference organizers had hoped the crises with Iran and North Korea would remain in the background this week. But the hardening rhetoric and actions on all sides indicate the tensions are escalating and probably would dominate the forum. Diplomats from more than 180 countries will spend the next month reviewing the treaty, which gives nations broad access to nuclear energy technology in exchange for pledges to forgo nuclear weapons. The deal, signed in 1970, also includes a commitment by the five original nuclear states -- the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia -- to eventually eliminate their stockpiles. The treaty is considered one of the most successful arms-control agreements ever. But the basic bargain is often cited as its greatest flaw because countries can peacefully get a pathway to bomb-building and then leave the NPT without penalty, as North Korea did two years ago. And although the NPT is credited with slowing the spread of nuclear weapons, it has not stopped proliferation altogether or led to the eliminations originally envisioned. Pakistan, India and Israel have not signed the pact, and there are fears that more countries could opt out. Several solutions have been offered to address the flaws, but there is no consensus on any. Delegates who have been preparing for the conference for more than a year still have not agreed on an agenda for the meeting. As a result, the conference, which takes place every five years, is mired in turmoil and comes as tensions are gathering over Iran and North Korea. Yesterday, North Korea, which is now believed to have the means for at least six nuclear weapons, unnerved its neighbors with a missile test in the Sea of Japan. Over the weekend, Iranian officials said they could end a suspension of their once-secret nuclear energy program unless there is some progress in talks with Europe meant to resolve concerns about the country's growing nuclear capabilities. U.S. officials, who discussed the White House's strategy, said they did not believe this conference would end with any agreements and instead braced for confrontation and criticism. Bush last week chose harsh language to describe his frustration with Tehran and Pyongyang. North Korea responded by calling Bush "a philistine whom we can never deal with." The U.S. speech, which will be delivered to conference delegates today, focuses heavily on Iran and North Korea "in very tough language," said one U.S. official, who agreed to discuss the details on the condition of anonymity. The speech will also go over proposals Bush made in February 2004 but will not offer any new ideas about how to deal with growing nuclear crises and will avoid mention of a dozen nuclear commitments the United States signed on to, along with other nations, at the previous review conference in 2000. Those commitments, which focus on nuclear disarmament, have become touchstones for nonnuclear states that say the United States is not honoring the treaty's main purpose of eliminating nuclear weapons. But the Bush administration said the 2000 commitments, which did not focus on terrorism, a changed Middle East or a nuclear black market, are not relevant in a world altered by the attacks on the United States a year later on Sept. 11, 2001. Most critics of the administration's position agree that some of the commitments are outdated and say the unilateral decision to walk away from a set of ideas adopted by consensus weakens the treaty and the U.S. position. "If the conference fails and the U.S. is seen as the reason for that failure, it is going to be much harder for the United States to get the international cooperation it needs to deal with Iran, to deal with North Korea and to deal with all the other issues we are concerned about," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Cirincione said U.S. research into new nuclear weapons and new uses for nuclear weapons, coupled with a refusal to ratify a treaty banning nuclear testing, has led countries to doubt the U.S. commitment to the treaty. He said the United States must lead by example if it expects others to sustain their pledges. But the Bush administration has rejected that argument. "This notion that the United States needs to make concessions in order to encourage other countries to do what is necessary to preserve the nuclear nonproliferation regime is at best a misguided way to think about the problems confronting us," Stephen G. Rademaker, assistant secretary of state for arms control, said in congressional testimony last week. Rademaker, who was named to lead the U.S. delegation to the conference, said the United States would use the meeting to focus on Iran's alleged noncompliance with the treaty and North Korea's withdrawal from the agreement. European officials have been concerned about U.S. aims at the conference, saying a toughly worded speech or narrow focus on Iran could inflame rather than alleviate tensions at a sensitive time in their negotiations with Tehran. "The last thing we want is an inflammatory speech from either side," one senior European official said. Zarif said Iran plans to be firm on its rights under the treaty despite the suspicions. "An attempt to make compliance the central issue of this conference is a smoke screen designed to conceal the fact that there were decisions taken at the previous conference, and adopted by consensus, for disarmament," he said. "We know our rights." ---- Annan Urges Global Nuclear Concessions As Nuclear Fears Heighten, U.N. Chief Kofi Annan Urges Concessions on All Sides By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent The Associated Press May 2, 2005 http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=721711 UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the United States and Russia on Monday to slash their nuclear arsenals irreversibly to just hundreds of warheads, and urged nonweapons states like Iran to give up potential bomb technology in return for international guarantees of nuclear fuel. The U.N. atomic energy chief followed with an offer to begin work on a system of international fuel supplies. The two spoke at the opening of a monthlong conference to review the workings of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The session comes at a time of mounting nuclear tensions over North Korea's withdrawal from the 189-nation pact and Iran's program to enrich uranium, a possible step toward a bomb. "Developments of many kinds in recent years have placed it under great stress," Annan said of the treaty. The United States wants the review conference to focus heavily on North Korea, Iran and the nuclear fuel issue. But many states without nuclear arms want equal emphasis on what they see as a softening commitment by the big powers to nuclear disarmament. Because of the differing priorities, treaty members were unable to agree on a complete agenda for the conference. Organizers hope to have agreement before the nuts-and-bolts work of committees begins next week. Under the 35-year-old NPT, states without nuclear arms pledge not to pursue them, in exchange for a commitment by five nuclear powers the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China to move toward nuclear disarmament. Three other nuclear states Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the treaty. The NPT is reviewed every five years at conferences whose consensus political commitments are not legally binding, like a treaty, but give valuable support to nonproliferation initiatives. At the 2000 sessions, the nuclear powers committed to "13 practical steps" toward disarmament, but critics complain the Bush administration by rejecting the nuclear test-ban treaty, for example has come up short. -------- u.s. nuc weapons Toward a Nuclear Strategy To reply - mailto:OPED@washpost.com By John J. Hamre Monday, May 2, 2005 Washington Post; A17 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/01/AR2005050100833_pf.html America is sleepwalking through history, armed with nuclear weapons. The Cold War left us with a massive inventory of weapons we no longer need, an infrastructure we can no longer use or maintain, and no thought of where our future lies. A shrinking community of nuclear experts holds on to a massive and aging inventory as a security blanket for a future they cannot define. That same community now advocates the development of a weapon (the so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or RNEP) that commands no conviction from either the military or the broad policy community. In short, we are nowhere. Last year Congress, led by Rep. Dave Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee, rejected the administration's plan for RNEP. Hobson rightly asked, "What is the administration's overall plan?" and he has yet to get an answer that makes any sense. The plan he seeks is not some micro-agenda for testing components of a new design but rather a comprehensive plan for keeping America a credible nuclear power in the future. We have now gone a decade without one. Before we decide what new things to buy, the country needs a national debate about the role of nuclear weapons and their contribution to our security. The global security environment has changed dramatically, and we need new thinking, thinking that is not mired in the battles over nuclear forces that date from the 1980s and 1990s. To stimulate that national debate, I offer these points. First, there is an important reason the United States must have nuclear weapons: Other nations have them, and more seem to want them. We still must deter potential opponents, avoid nuclear intimidation by other powers and prevent strategic surprise by aspirant nations. America also extends its deterrence to many allies so that they do not feel compelled to build nuclear weapons of their own. Thus we must maintain a credible nuclear deterrent force, as well as theoretical and operational knowledge of nuclear weapons superior to that of anyone else. Second, the current inventory of nuclear weapons is grossly oversized and ill-suited for whatever the future might bring. These weapons were designed for an earlier age. While the force is quite capable today and provides a reliable deterrence, its credibility will erode as it ages. Third, we do better to hedge an uncertain future by maintaining competent design teams and building new weapons at low production rates than by holding on to a massive inventory of aging weapons. Fourth, while many of my colleagues and associates do not share this view, I believe we should commit to retiring all our existing nuclear warheads and building a small number of new-design weapons in their place. I do not believe there is any sustainable political support for building new weapons when we continue to hold on to more than 8,000 warheads. If we start with the premise that the weapons of the past should be retired and dismantled, we can start fresh in our thinking about what kind of force we need for the future and how large it should be. I suspect that it will be a very small inventory. Fifth, we must minimize the risk that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of terrorists. There is no greater priority in the global war on terrorism. We can accomplish this by reducing the availability of nuclear weapons and material on a global basis. This is an urgent requirement. Consistent with it, we should start now to reconfigure the U.S. nuclear production complex to dramatically reduce its size. We should not start producing new weapons until we have a much smaller, safer production complex. Sixth: Russia still holds on to even larger inventories of nuclear weapons than we do, in the false belief that this compensates for its current conventional weaknesses. This is counterproductive. After all, Russia has hostile terrorist forces on its borders and has experienced terrorism directly on its own soil. The greatest danger it faces stems from its huge nuclear inventory. Both the United States and Russia must lead the world to smaller inventories. But the United States has a much better basis for making this argument if it takes the lead. Seventh, any approach to building new warheads for a future arsenal needs to be integrated into a comprehensive program that minimizes the attractiveness of nuclear weapons to nonnuclear countries, encourages the reduction of excessive inventories among nuclear states, and strengthens the controls over nuclear stocks and material. This requires that we return to the fundamental goals that shaped adoption of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty and retool them for today. Simply skimming over things in periodic review conferences -- such as the one scheduled to start today -- is another example of sleepwalking. Finally, I do not believe we need to test the existing arsenal of weapons. The Energy Department's Stockpile Stewardship Program is adequate to that limited task, though I recognize that experts I trust argue that at some point we may need to test in order to validate the knowledge base underlying our current certification process. This problem will disappear, however, as we retire the current inventory. Almost all technical experts believe we probably do not need to test new-design weapons to have high confidence in their effectiveness. But if we completely retire all existing systems, I think we should test the new weapons to demonstrate to the world that they are credible. Such testing need not be extensive. And while I acknowledge that testing is widely seen as a provocative act, it can be made acceptable internationally so long as it is preceded by a commitment to retire our entire existing inventory. The actions I recommend would probably save a considerable amount of money, but that isn't why I support them. They are necessary if we are to have a reliable deterrent in the future and a diminished risk of nuclear terrorism. This is an area in which we need to scrap the past and start from scratch. The time for sleepwalking is indeed over. The writer, a former deputy defense secretary, is president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ---- U.S. may allow nuke strikes over WMD Proposal would reverse 10-year policy Monday, May 2, 2005 Japan Times http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050502a3.htm WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The U.S. military is considering allowing regional combatant commanders to request presidential approval for pre-emptive nuclear strikes against possible attacks with weapons of mass destruction on the United States or its allies, according to a draft nuclear operations paper. The March 15 paper, drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," providing "guidelines for the joint employment of forces in nuclear operations . . . for the employment of U.S. nuclear forces, command and control relationships, and weapons effect considerations." "There are numerous nonstate organizations (terrorist, criminal) and about 30 nations with WMD programs, including many regional states," the paper says in recommending that commanders in the Pacific and other theaters be given an option of pre-emptive strikes against "rogue" states and terrorists and "request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons" under set conditions. The paper identifies nuclear, biological and chemical weapons as requiring pre-emptive strikes to prevent their use. Allowing pre-emptive nuclear strikes against possible biological and chemical attacks would effectively contradict a "negative security assurance" policy declared 10 years ago by the Clinton administration during an international conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Creating a treaty committing nuclear powers not to use nuclear weapons against countries without nuclear weapons remains one of the most contentious issues for the 35-year-old NPT regime. A Pentagon official said the paper "is still a draft which has to be finalized" but indicated that it is aimed at guiding "cross-spectrum" combatant commanders how to jointly carry out operations based on the Nuclear Posture Review report adopted three years ago by the Bush administration. Citing North Korea, Iran and some other countries as threats, the report sets out contingencies for which U.S. nuclear strikes must be prepared. It calls for developing earth-penetrating nuclear bombs to destroy hidden underground military facilities, including those for storing WMD and ballistic missiles. "The nature (of the paper) is to explain not details but cross spectrum for how to conduct operations," the official said, noting that it "means for all services -- army, navy, air force and marine." In 1991 after the end of the Cold War, the United States removed its ground-based nuclear weapons in Asia and Europe as well as strategic nuclear warheads on warships and submarines. But the paper says the U.S. has the capability of reviving sea-based nuclear arms. -------- u.s. nuc facilities Interest in Building Reactors, but Industry Is Still Cautious By MATTHEW L. WALD May 2, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/politics/02nuke.html?pagewanted=print&position= WASHINGTON, April 30 - President Bush may be cheerleading for nuclear power, but the electric industry is not ready to order new reactors. Electric companies have shown more interest in building nuclear reactors in the last few months than they have in the last two decades. But conditions are not yet right to induce companies and investors to gamble the billion or two it would take to build a reactor and see whether the country is ready for a second round of plants, according to industry experts. The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nils J. Diaz, said he expects five or six applications by 2008 and has asked Congress for money to add staff members to handle them. "I have no proof, but that's what they tell me," he said in a telephone interview on Friday. "They come around and whisper, 'You need to have the people there.' " But others remain cautious. John W. Rowe, the chairman of Exelon, the largest nuclear operator in the United States, says that the high price of natural gas is an incentive to build new plants, but that an offsetting factor is the continuing low cost of coal. The lack of a solution for nuclear waste is also a deterrent. Mr. Rowe's company, though, is spending millions of dollars to win early approval from the nuclear commission for a new reactor site next to its existing reactor near Clinton in central Illinois. The company is at least five years from a decision on whether to build there, Mr. Rowe said. Dominion, an energy company based in Richmond, Va., is also applying to have a site approved for a new reactor. But Thomas E. Capps, the chairman and chief executive, said in a telephone interview, "We aren't going to build a nuclear plant anytime soon. "Standard & Poor's and Moody's would have a heart attack," said Mr. Capps, referring to the debt-rating agencies. "And my chief financial officer would, too." Mr. Capps said substantial government aid would be needed, perhaps to pay the interest costs during construction, which could take six and a half years. He said that ideally, Congress would also help prevent the project from being dragged into the federal courts. Both ideas would face substantial resistance in Congress. Some experts also think a revival is much further away. Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the former head of the public service commissions in New York and Maine, said that in the last 20 years, predictions of a revival had "rivaled - in frequency and in accuracy - forecasts of the second coming of the messiah." But the technology is still uneconomic, he said. And there is still the risk of accidents, which could devastate the industry even if no one outside a plant was harmed. "The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of N.R.C.-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes," Mr. Bradford said in an interview conducted by e-mail. The accident at Three Mile Island was 26 years ago, and the far more serious accident at Chernobyl, in Ukraine, was 19 years ago. The industry asserts it has sharply reduced the risk of accidents since then. Environmentalists remain divided. "Many people in the environmental community think it should be off the table," said John Holdren, a professor of environmental policy at Harvard. "On the other hand, if people are as sensitive about climate as they say they are, how can you throw out the window one of the largest carbon-free sources of energy?" The president's suggestion this week that the federal government provide insurance to plant builders against the risk of delays might be helpful, some experts said, but a lot of other factors would have to come into line first. The most prominent is the price of natural gas. Most of the electric plants built in the 1990's were powered with natural gas, but lately gas has sold for between $6 and $8 per million B.T.U., the standard unit in which it is sold. The average price in the 1990's was under $2 per million B.T.U. At that price, a kilowatt-hour of power costs more than 4 cents just for the fuel, and in many hours of the day, that is uncompetitive with coal and other power sources. "The high gas prices are making all the utilities stop and think twice about solid fuel," said David E. Dismukes, an associate professor at Louisiana State University and the associate director of the Center for Energy Studies there. But solid fuel, meaning conventional or lignite coal, carries its own risks because no one is sure what the rules on emissions will be in the decades over which a new plant would operate, experts say. For example, a carbon tax imposed in 2015 could make companies wish they had placed an order for nuclear power instead. But Dr. Dismukes said there were competitors to new reactors, including liquefied natural gas, also proposed by Mr. Bush in the same speech. The Bush administration would like to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authority to approve liquefied natural gas plants over the objections of state and local governments, which often are wary because of safety and security considerations. Liquefied natural gas could push the price of natural gas down to about $3 per million B.T.U., said Dr. Dismukes, who added, "I don't know that nuclear works so well" with natural gas in that price range. Oil prices are up, too, of course, but new nuclear plants would not reduce oil use significantly. Nuclear power also has an unattractive financial history that industry backers say they must overcome to obtain financing for new plants. "There is a perception in the capital markets, and with the general public, that the next generation of nuclear plants needs help in getting past the perception of risk," said Ray W. Ganthner, the senior vice president for new plants at Areva, a French-German company that has sold components for a new plant in Finland and is hoping to do the same here soon. His company recently began the process of obtaining a license for its design here. The nation has 103 operating plants, but about the same number were ordered and then canceled, in some cases after hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on construction, in the 1970's and 80's. The last nuclear reactor ordered in this country that was not later canceled was the Palo Verde plant, in Arizona, in late 1973. The last reactor commissioned was the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar reactor, in 1996 (23 years after the construction permit was obtained). Industry supporters have been predicting a renewal of orders throughout the 80's and 90's. In the mid-90's, there were persistent rumors that a plant had been ordered, but no one could confirm it; in October 1993, a trade publication, Nucleonics Week, joked that the phantom plant should be called Elvis 1. But industry executives say they are closer now. Gary Taylor, the president and chief executive of Entergy Nuclear, which runs 10 reactors around the country, said in a telephone interview on Friday that there was a high likelihood of a nuclear plant being ordered in the next few years. His company, like Exelon, has applied for early approval at its Grand Gulf site, on the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg, Miss. Dominion is seeking approval for a site at North Anna, Va., about 40 miles northwest of Richmond. And a fourth company, Duke Power, has expressed strong interest in a reactor without naming a site. "With the president saying this is important to the country, that brings us to a whole new level of playing field," Mr. Taylor said. The competition over what type of generating plant to build, he said, is often within a company. In the South, Entergy's biggest area of operation, nuclear competes against gas, the price of which is expected to stay high, he said. Still, he said, the industry would require financial help. The underlying economics would have to be sound, he said, but that would not be enough. "It's got to be shown that it's a business, but it has got to be jump-started," he said. "The only people who can make that happen is the president of the United States and the government." Mr. Taylor said loan guarantees and risk insurance of the kind mentioned by Mr. Bush would be very helpful. The risk of licensing problems has been on the minds of nuclear advocates for decades. To try to limit risk, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a licensing process in 1989 that was meant to avoid the debacles of the mid-80's. The process, known colloquially as "one-stop licensing," is mostly untried. Under it, a utility can apply for "early site approval" with no commitment to build, and vendors can submit completed designs for preapproval. ---- Imagine Enron With Nukes Patrick Doherty May 02, 2005 Tom Paine http://www.tompaine.com/20050504/articles/imagine_enron_with_nukes.php Public Citizen just field an amicus brief with the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. "The brief states that FERC illegally deregulated the electric rates under its jurisdiction, allowing the market to set rates, when only Congress can deregulate rates." The result was an overcharging of consumers billions of dollars. If you recall who actually designed and executed that market manipulation, it was Enron. Who was the primary advocate for deregulation? Enron. Now combine that disastrous reality with the Bush administration's calls for new nuclear power generation capacity. I've written why it's a bad idea before. This morning, we posted an NYT storythat said while there is certainly more interest on the part of nuclear power advocates and from the White House, utiities are, in some cases, five years from making a decision—and then construction would take another six years. In the meantime, we'll have another energy war, a collapsed domestic economy or both. The answer is not to build more centralized power generators. That's a 100-year-old design. The answer is to build energy-independent buildings. New microgenerators are capable of being driven by natural gas, wind or solar—up to and beyond 100 percent of that building's energy needs. The idea is is called distributed generation. You place the energy generator closer to the load: the service you're operating. The closer the generation, the lower the transmission losses—one of the main sources of inefficiency. By forcing building designers to incorporate the cost of energy generation into their designs, rather than externalizing it as an "operating cost," buildings become more efficient. And by having the private sector build their own power generation as it needs it, the rest of us don't get stuck with a dirty, expensive and long-term set of subsidies. Continuing to build centralized power generators is just asking for more monopoly pricing and market manipulation. Of course, looking at the Enron experience, that's exactly what these folks want. Here's a good brief on distributed generation from the previous Department of Energy. [at http://www.distributed-generation.com/Library/FETC.pdf ] -------- new mexico At Los Alamos, blogging their discontent Published: May 2, 2005, 12:39 PM PDT By William Broad The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/national/01alamos.html?pagewanted=print&position= A blog rebellion among scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, the federal government's premier nuclear weapons laboratory, is threatening to end the tenure of its director, G. Peter Nanos. Four months of jeers, denunciations and defenses of Dr. Nanos's management recently culminated in dozens of signed and anonymous messages concluding that his days were numbered. The postings to a public Web log conveyed a mood of self-congratulation tempered with sober discussion of what comes next. "Some here will celebrate that they have been able to run the sheriff out of Dodge," Gary Stradling, a veteran Los Alamos scientist who is a staunch defender of Dr. Nanos, wrote Tuesday on the blog. "It might be a good idea," Mr. Stradling added, "to shut down the celebration and form a work party to clean up Dodge City, because the new sheriff will if we do not." The blogging comes at a delicate moment in the 62-year history of Los Alamos. The University of California, which has helped run the laboratory for the government since the days of the Manhattan Project, faces close scrutiny in Washington as to whether its contract should be renewed. And resignations and fears of a mass exodus have recently roiled the waters. Some analysts believe that now, given the public outcry, the university will have to abandon Dr. Nanos in order to make a credible bid to keep its contract. Dr. Nanos would not comment. A spokesman for Los Alamos, Kevin Roark, said false rumors of the director's resignation had circulated for months. Mr. Roark added that Dr. Nanos was extraordinarily proud of what he had accomplished at Los Alamos, which employs 14,000 people on an annual budget of $2.2 billion. Mr. Roark called the vitriolic blogging unrepresentative of the majority of employees and said it often had the tone of a sophomoric Halloween prank. "Everybody, I think, was a little surprised at how mean it got," he said. Several outside experts said that the director's quick departure was inevitable and that the blog's attacks were playing a significant role. "Nanos is leaving," said Greg Mello, the director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a private organization in Albuquerque that monitors weapons laboratories. "The blog changed the climate, giving people an outlet they didn't have before." Blogs seem to be everywhere. But this one is unusual, in that the Los Alamos National Laboratory, isolated in the mountains of New Mexico, has a long history of maintaining the highest level of federal secrecy. The laboratory's very existence was once classified. Today, barbed wire rings many of its buildings, federal agents monitor its communications, and its employees are constantly reminded that loose lips sink ships. The blog (www.lanl-the-real-story.blogspot.com) went public in January and since then has registered more than 100,000 visits, with more than half a million pages viewed and more than 5,000 comments. Discussions run on a variety of topics, from the sanctity of retirement benefits to the likely identity of the next contractor who will run Los Alamos. Since most messages are anonymous, there is no way to know how many laboratory employees contribute to the blog. Even so, from the sheer volume, detail and differing styles of the messages, the number is clearly many more than a handful. The language, often studded with obscure acronyms, suggests that the authors have a deep knowledge of the laboratory's exotic culture. Furious debate centers on Dr. Nanos, a retired vice admiral of the Navy who holds a doctorate in physics from Princeton and became the laboratory's director two years ago. Many bloggers criticize his decision to shut down most of the laboratory in July, when he cited "egregious" safety and security violations after two computer disks with secret information were reported missing and an intern working with a laser suffered an eye injury. The security alarm turned out to be a clerical error - the disks, in fact, never existed. Still, Dr. Nanos kept many laboratory areas closed for nearly seven months, until late January. In that time, laboratory personnel worked on improving safety and security. Dr. Thomas J. Meyer, a distinguished chemist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who oversaw 2,000 employees as associate director of the laboratory's strategic research, resigned in October during the shutdown and afterward filed a long critique of the episode and the director's acts. "He chose to transfer blame and intimidate individuals even with a staff that was often attempting to implement difficult and complex safety processes," Dr. Meyer said in his critique, which was posted on the blog. He called the director's treatment of laboratory employees "vindictive and abusive." A banner atop the blog site sets the tone, asserting that the shutdown cost taxpayers "approximately $850 million, an exodus of highly talented staff members, and the loss of untold millions of dollars of funding from customers who have taken their business elsewhere." Laboratory officials say the shutdown probably cost $120 million, and federal officials recently put the figure at $370 million. Mr. Roark, the Los Alamos spokesman, said that the laboratory was worried about a recent spike in retirement inquiries. "We're not anticipating a mass exodus," he said. "But that doesn't mean we're not concerned about the possibility. We are." The blog's creator is Doug Roberts, a computer scientist who is a 20-year laboratory veteran. In an interview, Mr. Roberts said he was inspired to start the blog when he and his colleagues had their critical submissions to a forum on the laboratory's online newspaper rejected. Mr. Roberts said it was impossible to know how many laboratory personnel contributed to the blog because it was set up to protect their identities, if so desired. He estimated the vocal population at 200 to 500 employees. The blog runs a petition for Dr. Nanos's removal; it has garnered more than 100 posts, although most are labeled "Anonymous." One who signed openly in February was Dr. Brad Lee Holian, a theoretical physicist who worked at the laboratory for 32 years. Dr. Holian retired a month later. "People were feeling like they were in a pressure cooker," he said in an interview. "Nanos is so abusive, not just to the general staff but his underlings. People were afraid to say anything. On the blog they could vent without fear of reprisal." Jeff Jarvis, who publishes BuzzMachine, a blog that focuses on media issues, said the Los Alamos site showed "a new ethic of transparency" that has come with the explosion of electronic self-publishing. "It's not just the power of the blog," Mr. Jarvis said, "it's the power of the citizen." The battle over Dr. Nanos comes as the University of California is considering whether to bid to renew its contract, which expires Sept. 30. Two leading space and military contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, have announced an interest in running the laboratory. Chris Harrington, a university spokesman, denied that Dr. Nanos was about to resign and defended him as "clearly understanding the mission of the lab." Mr. Harrington added, however, that the university was doing "a thorough review" of its management options for a possible bid on the new contract. John Schwartz contributed reporting for this article. -------- texas Texas Town Mulls Radioactive Waste Storage By BETSY BLANEY The Associated Press Monday, May 2, 2005; 3:31 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/02/AR2005050200126_pf.html ANDREWS, Texas -- This small West Texas town grew its economy on oil but may hang its hopes on what some folks believe is their next boom: storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists owns 14,400 acres about 30 miles outside town near the New Mexico border. About 1,340 acres have been set aside for hazardous waste storage and disposal, and the company will manage tons of federal uranium byproduct waste by year's end. Rather than a "not in my backyard" stance, some residents believe the waste site will generate dozens of jobs from spin-off industries, and city leaders anticipate it will pump millions into the economy. "If we thought we could get an NFL franchise or a Riverwalk, we wouldn't have looked at this industry," said Russell Shannon, vice president of the Andrews Industrial Foundation. "We just believe it will bring us some jobs, bring people to our community to get involved in an industry, like they did with oil." Andrews was incorporated in 1937, about eight years after oil was struck. By 1956, the county led the nation in oil production, pumping more than 60 million barrels annually. The oil boom lasted through the 1960s, fell off and then picked up again. Gradually the oil business dwindled, along with the town's population. In the late 1990s, Andrews hit another national high, this time with double-digit unemployment, as oil prices sunk to $8 a barrel. Many hope the radioactive waste site can turn around Andrews' fortunes. Residents recently learned that it was tapped to store tons of uranium byproduct waste now at the abandoned Fernald federal plant, just northwest of Cincinnati. Shipments could begin later this month. The Ohio plant processed and purified uranium metal for use in reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1989. Waste Control Specialists has an application pending with the Texas Department of State Health Services to dispose of the waste. A decision could come early next year. If approved, some lawmakers want the state to profit from the transfer. However, state Rep. Mike Villarreal, a Democrat, has introduced a bill to limit radioactive waste storage and disposal in Texas. Waste Control has stored, treated and disposed of hazardous waste at the Andrews site since 1997. Earlier this year, the state approved the company's request to expand the storage capacity to 1.5 million cubic feet _ nearly five times its current size _ making it eligible to accept the Ohio waste. The space is the equivalent of about 800 railroad cars. George Dials, president and chief executive officer for Waste Control, said the expansion was necessary for the company's long-term plans to assist federal plants with site clean up and disposal of low-level waste. Andrews appears to have little competition. Nevada officials threatened a lawsuit if the Energy Department sent the waste to a government-run site north of Las Vegas. Residents near a private waste site in Clive, Utah _ west of Salt Lake City _ also rejected it. Meanwhile, environmentalists worry about how the waste will effect the air, soil and water. An 800-foot-deep layer of red clay rises to near the surface at the Andrews waste site, which city leaders and company officials say makes the site geologically sound. But Melanie Barnes, a geology researcher at Texas Tech University, said surface fractures exist. A major concern is that if the waste seeps through the soil, it could affect neighboring aquifers, including a primary source of drinking water in West Texas. Peggy Pryor, 54, has lived in Andrews most of her life, and she believes no good can come from any type of radioactive waste. "It's all about money and how much money they can make, and it's not about the environment at all," said Pryor, a retired cardiac technician. "It just tears me up." Dials countered, saying the clay is sound: "By and large there are no fractures that lead anywhere and we're confident in the design." Cyrus Reed, a Sierra Club lobbyist, said waste sites with clay beds in Maxey Flats, Ky., and West Valley, N.Y., also were touted as impermeable. Years after they opened, contaminated groundwater was found at each. "The point is there were previous sites where people had made predictions that they were good sites, and there would be no problems and there were problems," Reed said. On the Net: Waste Control Specialists: http://www.wcstexas.com Texas Department of State Health Services: http://www.tceq.state.tx.us -------- MILITARY -------- business False Pricing Air Force Base Cleanup Costs Firm $2.5 Million WASHINGTON, DC, May 2, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-02-09.asp#anchor4 Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has agreed to pay the U.S. government $2.5 million to settle allegations that it made false claims and engaged in defective pricing with the U.S. Air Force for environmental cleanup at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. SAIC, a San Diego based research and engineering company, provides information technology to commercial and government customers. The government’s complaint alleged that the corporation knowingly failed to disclose information about its costs during price negotiations with the Air Force, as required by the federal Truth in Negotiations Act. The lawsuit alleged that SAIC, in internally developing its cost and price proposals, utilized hidden management reserves to inflate its estimates of the amount of labor hours it would require to complete the delivery orders, but never told the Air Force about the reserves or the padded hours. The settlement resolves an action under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act, filed by Michael Dwight Woodlee in January 2002. The Justice Department joined the action in August 2004, and filed the government’s complaint one month later. The False Claims Act qui tam statute allows persons who file successful actions alleging fraud against the government to receive a share of any resulting recovery. Woodlee will receive $500,000. The settlement resulted from an investigation by the Civil Division of the Department of Justice, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas, the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the Defense Contract Audit Agency. “Today’s settlement again demonstrates the United States' commitment to protecting the federal government from contractor fraud and abuse,” said Peter Keisler, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Division. "The United States relies on the honesty of its contractors to provide accurate billing information.” -------- china Taiwan's Leader Makes New Overture to China to Avert Conflicts By KEITH BRADSHER May 2, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/international/asia/02cnd-taiwan.html?pagewanted=print&position= TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 3 - A proposal by Taiwan's leader today for the Chinese and Taiwanese militaries to expand communication to reduce the risk of unintended conflicts marked the latest in a series of initiatives driven by a coming election here as well as overtures to China by Taiwan's political opposition. During a state visit today to the Marshall Islands, President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan called for a "cross-Strait military and security mutual trust mechanism as soon as possible," according to the state-owned Central News Agency here. There was no immediate response from the Chinese government, which is closed this week for May Day holidays. Taiwanese officials have been trying for years to persuade China to endorse measures to avoid a conflict in the Taiwan Strait. But China has repeatedly rejected such suggestions, opting instead to keep pressure on the island by adopting a double-digit growth rate in military spending, with a rapid buildup over the last several years in the number of ballistic missile aimed at Taiwan. The two sides still lack a hotline between their militaries to discuss possible scenarios like a collision of military jets or naval vessels, military experts said. But fishermen from one side who stray into the other side's waters are eventually repatriated, although often after a long detention. Small boats go back and forth between the mainland and some tiny Taiwan-controlled islands just off the Chinese coast. The United States had a confrontation with China over an American Navy spy plane that crash-landed on Hainan Island four years ago. But Taiwan and China have managed to avoid comparable showdowns in recent decades, and seem to have informal understandings on such questions, according to the Taipei correspondent for Jane's Defense Weekly, Wendell L. Minnick. President Chen's proposal on military communication came a day after he disclosed that he was enlisting James Soong to send a secret message to China's leaders. Mr. Soong, who heads the small People First Party, which is loosely allied with the president's Democratic Progressive Party, will fly to the mainland on Thursday and stay through May 12. Lien Chan, the chairman of the opposition Nationalist Party, captured international attention last Friday with a historic handshake in Beijing with President Hu Jintao of China. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war, and Mr. Lien's visit was the first time since that a party leader had returned to the mainland. His party, which ruled Taiwan until 2000, still controls Taiwan's legislature, and his meeting in Beijing lifted the Nationalists' standing in the polls back home. The leaders of all three parties are vying for headlines as they prepare for national elections here on May 14 for the National Assembly, an obscure body that has a role only in constitutional decisions and is separate from the legislature. The newly elected members of the assembly will be expected to vote in June on a plan that would cut by half the size of the legislature and allow the constitution to be changed through referendum, instead of the circuitous system now in place. President Chen wants to make a series of changes to the Constitution in the next three years through the simpler referendum route. The Nationalists, the largest opposition party, also favor the plan, which would probably gain them seats in the redesigned legislature. Members would be elected from single-seat, rather than multiseat, districts. The People First Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a small pro-independence party, oppose those moves. Still in dispute is whether the legislation requires only a simple majority to pass or a two-thirds majority, which would make it easier to block. "Many people interpret the May 14 elections as life or death for the small parties," a People First Party lawmaker, Kao Su-po, said. The imminence of those elections has forced President Chen and other politicians to respond more quickly to the accelerating pace of contacts with China than might otherwise be the case. -------- iraq Two Years Ago: Bush Declares "Major Combat Operations" Over May 2, 2005 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1347257 Sunday marked the second-year-anniversary of President Bush's Mission Accomplished speech. On May 1, 2003 Bush said "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Since then, nearly 1,600 coalition troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Agence France Press is reporting 567 Iraqis were killed last month alone. This marks an increase of almost 50 percent over the number killed in March. -- Australian Contractor Held Hostage in Iraq Meanwhile a 63-year-old Australian contractor named Douglas Wood has been kidnapped. A video released last night showed him pleading for his life and calling on the U.S. and its allies to withdraw troops from Iraq. -------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE -------- police First Responders: A Need to Unite May 2, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/opinion/l02rivalry.html?pagewanted=print&position= To the Editor: Re "Too Bitter a Rivalry" (editorial, April 26): The issue of the New York Police Department's taking over hazardous materials incidents is all about money. Federal money. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly knows that getting the hazardous materials mandate means millions to the department, and he fought hard for it. At the end of the day, you'll get an underfinanced Fire Department serving under a "unified command" that will still depend on its expertise during the next attack. There are already rumors that federal money for training Fire Department personnel in rescue and decontamination will not be back next year. I work in an engine company designated for decontamination work should there be a biological, chemical or nuclear attack. It's not comforting to know that my safety will now be resting on the decisions made by people who are less qualified than those they are replacing in the command structure. According to your editorial, I'm supposed to "get in line" and accept this? Just as we had to "get in line" and accept inferior radios? "Get in line" and accept no personal escape ropes? My oath of office was a commitment to protect the people of the City of New York. It wasn't a suicide pact. Christopher Fenyo New York, April 27, 2005 • To the Editor: New York City's emergency services should take a couple of pages out of American military doctrine to help solve its rivalry problems. The first page should come from Defense Department manuals outlining the "combined arms fight," which emphasize the leveraging of various combat specialties and coordinate a number of specialized units in support of the same action. All of these units are trained in this type of maneuver and do not let rivalries interfere with their combined mission. Imagine if police officers and firefighters showed up at the same emergency together. The other page should come from the organization of America's elite special operating units, like the Army Rangers or Special Forces. These units handpick leaders from the Army's conventional ranks who have already demonstrated themselves to be among the best. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg should form a combined-service emergency service special operations unit that handpicks the best police officers, firefighters and paramedics from the city's ranks, assigns them to the same unit and cross-trains them to first-respond to any and all terrorist threats. James Eisenberg New York, April 26, 2005 The writer is a retired Army captain. -------- terrorism Cheney says al Qaeda is still 'very active' May 2, 6:19 PM (ET) (Reuters) http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050502/2005-05-02T221959Z_01_N02300415_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-CHENEY-DC.html WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda is still "very active" recruiting and seeking to attack the United States, although it has been hurt since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday. "The enemy that appeared on 9/11 is wounded and off-balance, and on the run -- yet still very active, still seeking recruits, and still trying to find ways to hit us," said Cheney, who reviews intelligence on threats daily. "As months and years pass, they are hoping that our country will grow complacent, and get lazy, and forget our responsibilities," he said in a speech to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, according to a text released in Washington. "And it's our job, ladies and gentlemen, to make sure the United States of America never lets down its guard." Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan and has evaded capture since the Sept. 11 attacks. But U.S. forces and their allies have captured or killed other senior members of al Qaeda. "In a multinational campaign, we continue to make progress in many categories -- financial, legal, military," Cheney said. "We are dealing with a network that has had cells in countries all over the world -- yet bit by bit, by diplomacy and by force, with our allies and partners, we are acting to shrink the area in which terrorists can operate freely." Despite efforts to improve security, "America is safer, but that we are not yet safe," Cheney said. -------- OTHER -------- environment Mercury-Laden Clouds Threaten Utah May 02, 2005 By Associated Press http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7644 SALT LAKE CITY — Mercury-laden clouds from gold mine smokestacks near Elko, Nev., are floating east and could pose a health threat and damage the ecology of the Great Salt Lake. The mines account for as much as 11 percent of total Mercury emissions in the United States. Mercury is a heavy metal that occurs naturally. Exposure to the element has been linked to neurological and kidney diseases, autism, loss of motor control and death. Young children and pregnant women are most at risk. Congress has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make rules to cut mercury emissions, but the Elko-area mines are not under those regulations. Instead, they enrolled in a voluntary emissions program that has had mixed results, said Justin Hayes, spokesman for the Idaho Conservation League. The organization is ready to sue to force the EPA to impose emissions reductions rules on the Nevada mines. In an Oct. 21 letter to then-EPA Administrator and former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, the Conversation League charged that prevailing winds and atmospheric circulation patterns send huge plumes of mercury into southern Idaho, possibly contributing to mercury-related fish consumption advisories. And what goes for Idaho ought to go for Utah, Hayes said. A March report prepared for the EPA that uses 1998 emissions reports and extrapolates backward to 1985, estimated the 18 Nevada gold mines released between 70 and 200 tons of mercury. That's probably and underestimate, said Glenn Miller, the University of Nevada environmental science professor who prepared the report. Scientists know that mercury can travel great distances and the element's organic form, methylmercury, can get into humans through the consumption of fish and shellfish. Lesser known is how else mercury harms humans, animals and the environment. Consumption of swordfish and shark are high on the risk list in Asia and Africa, and California officials have issued warnings about some fish that populate streams in the Sierra fouled by gold mining. Mercury contamination "is potentially a major impact on the recreational industry in Utah," said Miller. "You're going to be wondering if you should eat the fish you catch." Studies of the Great Salt Lake have found some of the highest levels of mercury in the nation. But to date, Utah has no mercury-related fish consumption advisories. Because mercury is drifting around the globe, it would be difficult to determine exactly where the mercury in the Great Salt Lake, or anywhere else, came from, Miller said. It's unlikely the mining industry is responsible for all the mercury in Utah and Idaho, "but it is fair to say there is a significant fraction," he said. Still, "I would be surprised if in the Uintas you didn't have some pretty significant mercury loads." The Utah Department of Environmental Quality hasn't identified any such loads, although no fish have been tested. Division of Water Quality Director Walt Baker says the state is still developing testing protocols for fish tissue and other freshwater aquatic life, though a "limited number" of tissue samples have been sent to EPA. One sample exceeded the level of what they would consider acceptable, Baker said. -------- ACTIVISTS Thousands Protest on Eve of a U.N. Nuclear Conference By KIRK SEMPLE May 2, 2005 NY TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/nyregion/02protest.html Photo: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/05/01/nyregion/protest.184.1.jpg In a merger of the nuclear disarmament and antiwar movements, several thousand protesters, including a group of survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, marched through Midtown yesterday and rallied in Central Park to call for the end of nuclear proliferation and the withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq. The impetus for the event was a conference at the United Nations, scheduled to begin today, to review the flaws in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Organizers said they hoped the rally would help resuscitate the faded antinuclear movement. "We feel it is important to continue our focus on ending the war in Iraq and strengthening our movement by making the connection to nuclear disarmament," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, which helped to organize the march with Abolition Now!, a coalition of nuclear disarmament groups. "Given that the Nonproliferation Treaty conference is going on, we thought it was the right time to make that connection and re-energize opposition to nuclear weapons." While the turnout was a fraction of that of antinuclear rallies in the early 1980's, the event drew a diverse array of participants from around the country and the world, most notably a contingent of hundreds from Japan, including the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and about 35 survivors of the atomic bomb attacks. Among them was Sunao Tsuboi, 80, who was a university student in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, when that city was destroyed by the first atomic bomb attack. He described how his entire body was burned and said that the aftermath of the bombing was "a living hell on earth." The radiation left him with numerous illnesses, Mr. Tsuboi said, including cancer. "I'm here for the abolition of nuclear weapons," he said in an interview through an interpreter. "And I want all the nations to keep the promise of the Nonproliferation Treaty." Yuko Nakamura, 73, who wore a necklace of colorful origami cranes, said she was working in a factory about 13 miles from the blast and suffered the effects of radiation. "Don't let the children go through that nuclear suffering," she said. "This is not the children's fault. It's the adults' fault. I really care for the future of children." With the end of the cold war, organizers said yesterday, many people believed that the nuclear threat had ended, too. But, they said, most of the world's major powers still maintain nuclear arsenals, and other nations may be getting into the act. The United States says that Iran and North Korea have exploited loopholes in the Nonproliferation Treaty to pursue nuclear weapons programs that threaten world stability. "The public has been complacent," said Ms. Cagan, who called for all nuclear nations to adhere to the treaty. "There really are nuclear weapons in the world. They really are dangerous." Tadatoshi Akiba, the mayor of Hiroshima, told the protesters gathered at the Heckscher ball fields in Central Park to listen to live music and a long slate of speakers: "There is nothing normal, natural or necessary about nuclear weapons. They're a deadly cancer on the planet that need to be removed." Still, as current as the nuclear threat may be, the march yesterday had an anachronistic quality about it, with ardent antiwar chants and dove-festooned peace banners that have changed little in decades. The somberness was at times leavened by carnivalesque episodes that included a Japanese drum-and-cymbal ensemble that periodically broke into a high-stepping jig; bits of political theater involving pranksters wearing President Bush masks; a marching band featuring a banjo and led by a majorette with green hair and lug-sole boots; and a bagpiper playing an endless loop of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." "It's reminiscent of the 60's, without the nudity," commented Lionel Goldbart, 70, a poet and former civil rights activist visiting from his home in Miami Beach. He was distributing fliers for an exhibit of peace sculptures at the United Nations by a self-described "atomic artist." Mr. Goldbart said he was particularly struck by the words of the survivors of the atomic bomb attacks. "There were so many Japanese people," he said. "It really made me feel bad because we dropped those bombs on them." Colin Moynihan contributed reporting for this article. -------- Bob Hunter, Co - Founder of Greenpeace, Dies By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 2, 2005 Filed at 7:38 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Obit-Hunter.html?pagewanted=print&position= TORONTO (AP) -- Canadian Bob Hunter, who co-founded Greenpeace and used his savvy as a journalist to turn the environmental group's fight to an international cause, died Monday after a battle with prostate cancer, the organization said. He was 63. Hunter, a columnist for the Vancouver Sun in the 1960s and most recently an ecology broadcaster for Canadian media, first came to prominence in 1971 with the launch of Greenpeace and its protests against nuclear testing. He brought public attention to the hunting of whales and seals, as well as the dumping of toxic waste into the oceans. The thick-bearded Hunter was once named one of Time magazine's top eco-heroes of the 20th century. ''Bob was a creative force in shaping Greenpeace,'' said Bruce Cox, executive director of Greenpeace Canada. ''His passion and his commitment translated into powerful communications, and his unorthodox approach to communications helped define Greenpeace.'' Hunter, who coined the phrase ''Don't Make a Wave'' to describe his opposition to nuclear testing, boarded a small fishing boat, dubbed the ''Greenpeace,'' in 1971 to set off to Alaska to protest U.S. nuclear testing. ''I thought I was going to be a reporter, taking notes,'' Hunter later said, according to a news release from Greenpeace. ''In reality, I wound up on first watch.'' He remained on board for 45 days. Hunter helped establish the in-your-face communication style that became a Greenpeace trademark. He became the first president of Greenpeace in 1973, and led it through its transformation into an international group present in 40 countries, with more than 2.5 million members worldwide. His media savvy and passion for ecology was critical to the organization, the group said, having adopted the term ''rainbow warriors'' to describe Greenpeace activists. In his most recent role, the Manitoba-born Hunter was the ecology news specialist for CHUM's Citytv and CP24 TV channels. He was perhaps best known to Toronto viewers for Paper Cuts, a segment in which Hunter wore a bathrobe and commented on the stories in the day's newspapers. ''This was a man with a great loving heart, a brilliant mind and a massive spirit,'' said Stephen Hurlbut, vice president of news programming for Citytv. Hunter died surrounded by his wife, Bobbi and his children Will, Emily, Conan and Justine, according to Citytv. Funeral arrangements were yet to be decided. ''Bob was an inspirational storyteller, an audacious fighter and an unpretentious mystic,'' said John Doherty, Chair of Greenpeace Canada. ''He was serious about saving the world while always maintaining a sense of humor.'' Greenpeace said Hunter's spirit would live on ''through the people he inspired, the whales he saved and the organization he helped create.'' -------- Millions Mark International Workers Day May 2, 2005 Democracy Now! Headlines http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/02/1347257 On Sunday, millions around the world marked International Workers Day or May Day. In Cuba, up to hundreds of thousands gathered in the Plaza of the Revolution. Cuban president Fidel Castro took the occasion to criticize the United States for allowing Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles to enter the country even though he has been tied to the bombing of a commercial airliner in 1976. In other May Day events, some 500,000 people took to the streets of Germany. Police reported making 100 arrests there. In Japan, hundreds of thousands rallied to call for a global ban on nuclear weapons. 60 years ago this summer the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A large anti-nuclear rally was also held in New York ahead of this week's gathering at the United Nations to review the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And in Nepal, 10,000 people took to the streets of Kathmandu in the largest pro-democracy march since King Gyanendra seized complete power in February. ---- Bette Midler to Voice Clean Up the World Announcements SYDNEY, Australia, May 2, 2005 (ENS) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-02-09.asp#anchor7 World famous entertainer Bette Midler has pledged her support for Clean Up the World, the global outreach arm of Clean Up Australia, one of the largest international environmental campaigns. An active environmentalist, Midler met with Ian Kiernan, chairman and founder of Clean Up the World and Clean Up Australia, to discuss ways they can work with communities internationally to create a cleaner world. Midler founded the nonprofit New York Restoration Project in 1995 with the belief that clean and green neighborhoods are fundamental to the quality of life and that every community in New York City deserves an oasis of natural beauty. Speaking from her Australian Tour in Sydney today, Midler said, "Clean Up the World is a truly inspirational organization. By empowering people to clean up, fix up and conserve the environment and providing communities with the tools to do this, tons of rubbish have been removed from the world's oceans, parks, forests, cities and beaches." "I look forward to working with Mr. Kiernan and extending the New York Restoration Project's work to help reduce the amount of waste ending up in the environment," Midler said. "Ms. Midler has agreed to feature in our Clean Up the World public service announcement which will be aired globally on National Geographic Channels International throughout the months of August and September," Kiernan said. "The support of such an international figure will help us continue to inspire communities around the world to clean up our precious environment." Clean Up the World, established in conjuction with the United Nations Environment Programme in 1993, is a nonprofit organization which brings together businesses, community groups, schools, governments and individuals to conduct activities that positively improve local environments. Clean Up the World Weekend will be held September 16-18, 2005. Clean Up the World activities include clean up events, recycling, educational and resource recovery projects, water reuse, conservation programs and rejuvenation activities.