NucNews - May 11, 2005



-------- NUCLEAR 


-------- accidents and safety

Radioactive Leak Shuts Down UK Nuclear Reprocessing Plant

LONDON, UK, May 11, 2005 (ENS)

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-11-02.asp

Members of the European Parliament are demanding that the United Kingdom government launch an immediate independent inquiry into the situation at the UK's Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) facility at Sellafield in Cumbria. The nuclear fuel reprocessing facility was closed down April 20 following a leak of radioactive fuel.

About 20 metric tons of plutonium and uranium fuel dissolved in nitric acid leaked from a cracked pipe into an enormous secondary container that is too radioactive for workers to enter. Officials say specialized robots may have to be built to clean up the spill.

Plant managers maintain that no radioactive material has escaped into the environment, although the exact details of the incident remain closely guarded. The European Commission has not received any information about the circumstances of the leak.

Green MEP Dr. Caroline Lucas said the accident highlights the daily health, security and environmental risks of the nuclear power industry. “The reprocessing of spent fuel is just one aspect of an industry that is dangerous, dirty and expensive,” said Lucas, who represents South-East England and is a member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee.

Sir Anthony Cleaver, chairman of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which took over ownership of the plant from British Nuclear Fuels on April 1, said, “Our first priority is always safety, and we have been reassured that there is no immediate concern on that front."

The THORP facility was transferred to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority as part of a reorganization of the UK’s £40 billion nuclear waste liabilities. But the European Commission is investigating the transfer under rules governing illegal state aid, and THORP’s future is uncertain.

The facility is designed to separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel for customers from various countries, though it has been beset by problems and has never functioned at full capacity.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is tasked with cleaning up the UK's nuclear legacy, but the THORP accident has slowed that process because its contribution to the cleanup budget will not be available as long as it is shut down.

Sir Anthony Cleaver is chairman of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority that is responsible for THORP. (Photo courtesy NDA)

“This year’s budget of £2.2 billion is likely to take a hit but it is too early to be absolutely clear by how much and consequently how we will manage the impact and the consequences for the future of the plant," Cleaver said.

About £560m of the budget total was to come from the THORP plant.

Laurence Williams, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s director of nuclear safety and security, is an observer on the Board of Inquiry set up by British Nuclear Group to carry out a detailed investigation into the incident.

But that investigation does not satisfy Members of the European Green Party. They want an independent examination of the spill.

German Green MEP Rebecca Harms said, “The European Commission and the UK government must immediately launch an independent inquiry into both the causes and the consequences of the accident. Considering the inherent risks and the absence of any economic future of the plutonium industry, these plants in both the UK and in France should be abandoned.”

The spill casts a shadow of doubt on the Blair government's renewed interest in building nuclear power plants.

The government has always said it is right to “keep the nuclear option open” along with the drive to boost renewable energy sources, the government's chief scientist said Tuesday.

Sir David King was speaking before a two day G8 Energy Research and Innovation Workshop at Oxford University that opens today.

It was reported on Sunday that Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett has been resisting attempts to place new nuclear power stations on the government’s agenda.

On the other hand, some have warned that the UK faces electricity and gas shortages, leading to steep price increases, unless action is taken to replace the UK's aging nuclear plants.

Lucas said, “Tony Blair has raised the spectre of building new nuclear power stations as a way of meeting the UK’s international legal obligations to reduce CO2 emissions. Not only is this misguided - as this accident has amply demonstrated - it is based on a fallacious assumption that nuclear energy is carbon free."

“The reality is that over its full life cycle a nuclear power plant is responsible for significant CO2 emissions," said Lucas.

"If he is serious about safely reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Tony Blair must abandon the dirty and dangerous nuclear power industry in favor of renewable sources such as wind, wave and solar power - and invest heavily in energy conservation measures,” she said.

“This incident has served to close the plant for the foreseeable future - the government must take the next step and keep it closed for good," said Lucas. "The government shouldn’t even be talking about commissioning new nuclear plants while we remain stuck with the mess of the last 50 years,” she said.

"The deadly by-products of the nuclear energy industry must in no way be used as a raw material for new industrial processes," said Lucas.

A decision on whether or not to build a new generation of nuclear power plants is among the most controversial which Prime Minister Tony Blair faces at the start of his third term.

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EU Seeks New Nuclear Safety Rules After UK Incident

REUTERS BELGIUM: May 11, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30753/story.htm

BRUSSELS - The European Union's executive Commission renewed its call for tougher EU nuclear safety standards on Tuesday after part of Britain's Sellafield nuclear site was closed down after a broken pipe leaked.

The Commission is trying to push through new EU legislation that would create unified standards on safety at nuclear installations throughout the 25-nation bloc, but has faced opposition from countries like Britain and Germany.

"The recent Sellafield incident shows once more that the EU should be allowed overall framework control for the safety of nuclear installations," Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said in a statement.

"It is not possible to continue to function efficiently in relation to the varying national legislation in force. In an area as sensitive as nuclear energy, it is essential to show the greatest form of transparency."

Piebalgs' predecessor on the energy brief, Loyola de Palacio, amended the Commission's controversial proposals for nuclear safety and waste management legislation in September.

The revised rules would require member states to create plans for dealing with radioactive waste, though a Commission-imposed deadline for those plans was dropped from the proposal to win backing from some sceptical EU governments.

British Nuclear Group on Monday confirmed it had shut part of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant after engineers discovered faults in some pipework.

Sellafield's managing director Barry Snelson said the plant was in a safe and stable condition.

"Safety monitoring has confirmed no abnormal activity in air and there has been no impact on our workforce or the environment," he said in a statement.

The Commission has been at odds with Britain over Sellafield before. Last autumn the EU executive said it was taking Britain to court for failing to grant EU inspectors full access to part of the site that stores highly radioactive waste.

(additional reporting by Stuart Penson in London)

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Europe stages nuclear crisis test
The exercise tests lessons learned since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster

Wednesday, 11 May, 2005 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4535899.stm

Nuclear experts are simulating a major accident at a power plant in Romania to test the global response to a disaster.

More than 60 countries are taking part in the 36-hour test, organised by the UN atomic energy agency and centred on the Cernavoda nuclear power station.

The test began at 0600 (0300 GMT) when nuclear fuel was said to have spilled from a pipe in the core of the reactor.

Emergency response teams in Romania are tackling the situation, while other countries are tracking nuclear fallout.

Full details are being kept secret to make the simulated accident as real as possible for emergency teams.

The exercise was set to last through Wednesday night and for much of Thursday.

Disaster unfolding

In the test scenario at Cernavoda - some 180km (120 miles) south-east of the Romanian capital, Bucharest - a containment vessel failed after a fuel leak in one of 300 pipes in the reactor's nuclear core.

That allowed a major release of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Police cars toured the streets with a megaphone message to people to stay at home, keep windows shut and drink only bottled water.

The BBC's Nick Thorpe, watching the exercise, said most people appeared to ignore the warning, knowing it was a false alarm.

He said the distribution of "iodine tablets" (in truth, sweets) at schools was more enthusiastically received.

Cernavoda mayor Gheorghe Hansa said they were learning where improvements needed to be made.

"I personally hesitated for half an hour to give orders. I realised later that I had hesitated," he said.

Lessons of Chernobyl

Romania's five international neighbours have been placed on alert, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva were also contacted.

The last similar test was one held at the Gravelines nuclear power plant on the northern coast of France in May 2001.

Planners hope to incorporate lessons learned in the 19 years since the devastating Chernobyl accident in Ukraine.

Experts involved in planning the exercise have stressed the likelihood of a major nuclear accident is very low, but contingency plans must be in place.

Chernobyl was the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster and led directly to the deaths of 30 workers at the reactor site, while hundreds of others were treated in hospital.

About 6.7 million people were exposed to radiation fallout, according to the WHO, which led to a 10-fold increase in thyroid cancer among children in affected areas. 

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G7 Seeks Ukraine Clarity on Chernobyl "Sarcophagus"

Story by Ron Popeski
REUTERS UKRAINE: May 11, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30752/story.htm

KIEV - Western countries urged Ukraine on on Tuesday to make clear how it intended to help build a new shelter enclosing and sealing off the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's fourth reactor, which exploded nearly two decades ago.

G8 industrial countries, together with the European Union have long proposed building a new "sarcophagus" to guard against leaks of radioactivity at the plant, scene of the world's worst civil nuclear accident.

Donor countries meet this week in London to raise funds to replace the concrete and steel structure hurriedly erected after the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which contaminated vast tracts of land and sent clouds of radioactivity across Europe.

The plant was entirely closed in 2000.

British ambassador Robert Brinkley, representing G8 countries, told Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko that Western countries wanted close cooperation with Kiev in ensuring the mothballed site remained safe.

"We are now close to raising the full sum of money required to build the Chernobyl shelter. We hope that this will be achieved at the pledging conference in London on May 12," Brinkley said at the meeting, requested by diplomats.

"We would very much welcome clarification from you ahead of that meeting in London of Ukraine's intentions. Is your government going to contribute to the Chernobyl shelter fund?"

Liberal President Viktor Yushchenko, catapulted to power after street protests last year against election fraud, last month called on the government to speed up the shelter project.

He said plans should be completed and construction started by next year's 20th anniversary of the disaster in what was then the Soviet Union.

But Brinkley said G8 was concerned the plan might be thrown off course by the government's transfer of responsibility for Chernobyl from the Energy Ministry to its Emergencies Ministry.

"We hope to receive, prime minister, your reassurance that this changeover of responsibilities will be conducted without any negative impact on the shelter project," he said.

"It is important for us to know who are our partners on the Ukrainian side in this project -- within the government and at expert level."

Diplomats say delays have prompted a reassessment of costs, with the original budget of $716 now standing at about $1.1 billion ahead of Thursday's conference, overseen by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Thousands of people are believed to have died from the effects of radiation since the accident and research continues into the long-term health effects, particularly the incidence of thyroid cancer.

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Eyewitness: Nuclear accident test

Wednesday, 11 May, 2005 (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4537953.stm

More than 60 countries have been taking part in an exercise simulating a major accident at a nuclear power station in Romania.

BBC correspondents watched the exercise on the ground at the Cernavoda power station and from the International Atomic Energy Agency control room in Vienna.

The BBC's Nick Thorpe at Cernavoda nuclear power station, Romania:

A two minutes past six on Wednesday morning, the mayor of Cernavoda, Hansa Gheorghe, received the phone call he had always dreaded the most.

A nuclear accident had taken place at the Cernavoda nuclear power station, only 3km from the centre of his town of 20,000 inhabitants by the river Danube in eastern Romania.

But it was only a test.

Fifty-seven countries and eight international organisations are involved in what is only the second time a major nuclear accident simulation has been staged.

Mr Gheorghe put the emergency plan into operation, summoned a crisis response team and informed the national authorities in Bucharest.

On the streets of Cernovada, police cars broadcast loudspeaker messages telling people to stay in their homes, close their windows and tune into radio and television to await further instructions. They were also told not to drink water or allow their animals to drink it from open sources.

Meanwhile in Bucharest, an emergency response team was established at the national nuclear regulatory authority, within 90 minutes of the mayor's phone call. By mid-morning, Florian Baciu, head of the crisis team in Bucharest, said the test was going quite well.

"All the communication channels are open and all the necessary authorities have been informed. I think we're on the right track," he said.

Police presence

Back at Cernavoda, the mayor identified the first problem. While the distribution of iodine tablets had gone well at schools and workplaces, local doctors had not distributed tablets to households as efficiently as had been hoped.

It's now 13 hours after the accident.

Situated in an area of low hills on the shore of the Danube canal, the power station consists of five squat concrete blocks, but with just one reactor in operation.

There is a noticeably larger police presence on approach roads to the plant with officers dressed in distinctive yellow protective clothing, and I can see in several places radiation monitoring equipment, which reassuringly points to zero.

Despite the warnings, people are trying to carry on with their normal lives.

The BBC's Bethany Bell at IAEA headquarters in Vienna:

At 1300 GMT, nuclear safety officials from the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre gathered for the hourly briefing on the simulated accident at the Romanian Cernavoda nuclear power plant.

The centre has been on red alert since the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A member of the technological team reads out the latest weather reports. The wind is now blowing towards the northwest.

"It looks like Moldova and Ukraine will be affected by the radioactive release. Moldova may be affected already and it may reach Ukraine in three hours."

The acting Emergency Response Officer, Marty Hug, turns to the liaison officer.

"Can we prepare a message to both of those countries to inform them that they need to be proceeding with environmental sampling at this time?"

Twenty-five people are on shift in the three small offices that make up the Incident and Emergency Centre at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna.

Updates

It's their job to gather reports about the accident. That information has to be double-checked and then sent out around the world.

Their key tools are eight industrial-sized fax machines, a battery of phones and computers as well as a large presentation screen with all the latest updates.

As the exercise continues, a diplomatic problem arises. Moldova's breakaway region of Trans-Dniestr has requested advice and assistance, but Moldova has not. How is the agency to respond?

Consultations continue. There is talk of bringing in the European security body, the OSCE.

Accurate information can mean the difference between a successful and a failed evacuation. In a nuclear emergency, no-one wants panic to break out. 



<a name="du"></a>

-------- depleted uranium

Soaring Birth Deformities and Child Cancer Rates in Iraq

Wed, 11 May 2005 12:45:48 -0500

http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2792/Soaring_Birth_Deformities_and_Child_Cancer_Rates_in_Iraq

Summary:
In the areas where depleted uranium was used in Southern Iraq, a number of serious health problems have emerged among both soldiers and 
civilians.

For instance, there has been a 66% increase in leukaemias and cancers 
in Southern Iraq. There has also been a marked increase in the numbers 
of children born with birth malformations, with horrific reports of 3 
children in one family being born with severe congenital malformations.

Journalists working with Desert Concerns, have all reported on the 
health crisis in Southern Iraq.

Dr Zenad Mohammed, from a hospital in Basra, herself pregnant, who was so terrified of giving birth to a severely malformed child, that she was doing her own monitoring of the problem. Her notes begin ‘In August we had three babies born with no head. Four had abnormally large heads. In September we had six with no heads, none with large heads and two with short limbs. In October, one with no head, four with big heads and four with deformed limbs or other types of deformities.

[cont'd on site]


The Legacy of Gulf War One Lives On ....

By James Cogan
Republished from http://www.wsws.org

Iraqi doctors are making renewed efforts to bring to the world’s attention the growth in birth deformities and cancer rates among the country’s children. The medical crisis is being directly blamed on the widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the US and British forces in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, and the even greater use of DU during the 2003 invasion.

The rate of birth defects, after increasing ten-fold from 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001, is soaring further. Dr Nawar Ali, a medical researcher into birth deformities at Baghdad University, told the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) last month: “There have been 650 cases [birth deformities] in total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals. That is a 20 percent increase from the previous regime. Private hospitals were not included in the study, so the number could be higher.”

His colleague, Dr Ibrahim al-Jabouri, reported: “In my experiments we have found some cases where the mother and father were suffering from pollution from weapons used in the south and we believe that it is affecting newborn babies in the country.”

The director of the Central Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, Wathiq Ibrahim, said: “We have asked for help from the government to make a more profound study on such cases as it is affecting thousands of families.”

The rise in birth defects is matched by a continuing increase in the incidence of childhood cancers.

Six years ago, the College of Medicine at Basra University carried out a study into the rate of cancer among children under the age of 15 in southern Iraq from 1976 to 1999. It revealed a horrific change between 1990 and 1999. In the province of Basra, the incidence of cancer of all types rose by 242 percent, while the rate of leukaemia among children rose 100 percent. Children living in the area were falling ill with cancer at the rate of 10.1 per 100,000. In districts where the use of DU had been the most concentrated, the rate rose to 13.2 per 100,000.
Sanctions

The results were cited at the time in campaigns to end the UN-imposed and US-enforced sanctions against Iraq, which were held responsible for the death of as many as 500,000 Iraqi children from malnutrition and inadequate medical treatment.

The study noted: “Most doctors and scientists agree that even mild radiation is dangerous and increases the risk of cancer. The health risk becomes much greater once the [DU] projectile has been fired. After they have been fired, the broken shells release uranium particles. The airborne particles enter the body easily. The uranium then deposits itself in bones, organs and cells. Children are especially vulnerable because their cells divide rapidly as they grow. In pregnant women, absorbed uranium can cross the placenta into the bloodstream of the foetus.

“In addition to its radioactive dangers, uranium is chemically toxic, like lead, and can damage the kidneys and lungs. Perhaps, the fatal epidemic of swollen abdomens among Iraqi children is caused by kidney failure resulting from uranium poisoning. Whatever the effect of the DU shells, it is made worse by malnutrition and poor health conditions….

“Iraq holds the United States and Britain legally and morally responsible for the grave health and environmental impact of the use of DU …” (A version of the report is available at: http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du_iraq.htm).
Further Rises

Terrible as these results were, the last six years have witnessed a further rise in the number of children under 15 falling ill with cancer in Iraq. The rate has now reached 22.4 per 100,000—more than five times the 1990 rate of 3.98 per 100,000.

Dr Janan Hassan of the Basra Maternity and Childrens Hospital told IRIN in November 2004 that as many as 56 percent of all cancer patients in Iraq were now children under 5, compared with just 13 percent 15 years earlier. “Also,” he said, “it is notable that the number of babies born with defects is rising astonishingly. In 1990, there were seven cases of babies born with multiple congenital anomalies. This has gone up to as high as 224 cases in the past three years.”

The statistics point to the long-term consequences of depleted uranium contamination. Munitions containing an estimated 300 tonnes of DU were unleashed by coalition forces in southern Iraq in 1991. A decade after the war, DU shell holes are still 1,000 times more radioactive than the normal level of background radiation. The surrounding areas are still 100 times more radioactive. Experts surmise that fine uranium dust has been spread by the wind, contaminating swathes of the surrounding region, including Basra, which is some 200 kilometres away from sites where large numbers of DU shells were fired.
Gulf War Syndrome

A 1997 study into the cancer rate among Iraqi soldiers who fought in the Basra area during the 1991 Gulf War found a statistically significant increase in the rate at which they were stricken with lymphomas, leukaemia, and lung, brain, gastrointestinal, bone and liver cancers, as compared to personnel who had not fought in the south. One in four of the American personnel who fought in first Iraq war—more than 150,000 people—are also suffering a range of medical disorders collectively described as “Gulf War Syndrome”. While the US military denies there is any relationship, exposure to depleted uranium is one of the factors blamed by veterans and medical researchers.

Somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 tonnes of DU was expended during the three-week war in 2003. Unlike 1991, however, where most of the fighting took place outside major population centres, the 2003 invasion witnessed the wholesale bombardment of targets inside densely-populated cities with DU shells. Christian Science Monitor journalist Scott Peterson registered radiation on a simple Geiger counter at levels some 1,900 times the normal background rate in parts of Baghdad in May 2003. The city has a population of six million.

Given that it was two to four years after the 1991 war before cancer and birth defect rates began to rise dramatically, the fear among medical specialists is that Iraq will face an epidemic of cancers by the end of the decade, under conditions where the medical system, devastated by years of sanctions and war, is unable to cope with the existing crisis.

Dr Amar, the deputy head of the Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Basra, one of the main hospitals treating Iraqi cancer patients, told the Sydney Morning Herald on April 29: “We don’t have drugs to treat tumours. I have a patient with tumours who is unconscious and I don’t have drugs or a bed in which to treat him. I have two women with advanced ovarian cancer but I can give them only minimum doses of only some of the drugs they need.

“Two or three days ago we had to cancel all surgery because we had no gauze and no anaesthetics. Our wards are like stables for horses, not humans. We can’t properly isolate patients or manage their diets. We don’t have proper laboratory facilities….

“If you are sick don’t come to this hospital for treatment. It is collapsing around us. We’re going down in a heap.”

See Also:
Unborn children of the region are being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity of their DNA.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/VISIE/extremedeformities.html

Child malnutrition almost doubles after US invasion
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/mal-n26.shtml

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What Is Depleted Uranium?

May 11, 2005 Lone Star Iconoclast (Texas)

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news02.htm

CRAWFORD — The Lone Star Iconoclast last week conducted a test by asking 20 Texans, representing all walks of life and from different territories of the state, “What are your views on depleted uranium?”

Nineteen had no clue what the interviewer was talking about. One offered, “Isn’t that the stuff that’s hauled away from nuclear power plants?”

None knew that depleted uranium (DU) is radioactive material being used in military ammunition and none knew that the U.S. military is utilizing weapons to launch these nuclear DU projectiles in Iraq.

Likewise, not one of the queried Texans was aware that DU poses significant health threats not only to Iraqis, but to Americans as well, for the radioactivity spreads from continent to continent through the atmosphere and is brought home through soldiers to their families and associates.

Uranium is one of the heaviest elements found in nature and increases in radioactivity as it decays. After enriched uranium which is to be used for nuclear fuel is extracted from natural uranium, the leftover nuclear waste, commonly known as depleted uranium, is stored in steel cylinders for public protection.

Depleted uranium is heavy, cheap, abundant, and is provided free of charge to arms manufacturers as a way of disposing of the material.

DU rounds are used in a variety of high intensity weapons and is used in a variety of forms. Since the projectiles are so powerful, the DU gets hot and oxides into aerosol-like particles that can be less than 10 microns or smaller than a white blood cell and are, therefore, easily inhalable.

According to a study conducted by Iliya Pesic in a paper entitled “Depleted Uranium — Ethics of the Silver Bullet” http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/StudentWebPages/IPesic/ResearchPaper.htm , there are serious long-term effects of DU in Iraq.

“In regions heavily hit by DU, studies have shown that numerous civilians have extensive problems with their immune systems, malignant cancers (such as ludicrously high leukemia rates), heart problems, and bizarre abnormal birth defects (such as children born without eyes, ears, tongue, etc.). In some regions, leukemia has become one of the main forms of cancer-related death.”

Pesic continues, “Contaminated agriculture and water supplies help spread the DU dust which continues to hurt people in diferent regions where DU ammo was not used.”

Pesic notes that veterans and civilians exposed to DU have experienced extensive irreversible damage to kidney and partial kidney failure. “Cancers related to one’s blood, bone, and immune system become common. There are also various other biological effects claimed from DU, such as chronic fatigue, respiratory problems, heart problems, digestive organ damage (e.g. liver failure and severe rectal bleeding), etc.”

For this edition, The Iconoclast contacted some of the top experts in the field of depleted uranium, who agreed to be interviewed:

• Leuren Moret, a Berkeley-based geo-scientist with expertise in atmospheric dust.

• Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D., Major (retired) United States Army Reserve, former Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project.

• Melissa Sterry, a Gulf War veteran who is surviving the effects of depleted uranium.

The interviews are presented in these formats: A Military Perspective, A Scientific Perspective, and A Survivor’s Perspective.

On the same subject, The Iconoclast is publishing an editorial encouraging the Texas Legislature to provide DU testing for soldiers who are returning from overseas, so that if problems exist, they can be addressed.

A Scientific Perspective
Interview with Leuren Moret, Geo-Scientist
http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news03.htm

A Military Perspective
Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D, former Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project
http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news04.htm

A Survivor’s Perpsective
Interview with Melissa Sterry, Gulf War Veteran who is surviving the effects of depleted uranium
http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news05.htm


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A Scientific Perspective

An Interview With
LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist

Interview Conducted
By W. Leon Smith
and Nathan Diebenow

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news03.htm

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who works almost around the clock educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials on radiation issues. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after witnessing fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. She is currently working as an independent citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities around the world, and contributed to the U.N. subcommission investigating depleted uranium. According to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, Moret testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Japan in 2003, presented at the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and spoke at the World Court of Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India, in January 2004.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: What are the latest developments with reducing depleted uranium exposures on U.S. troops?

MORET: A young veteran named Melissa Sterry of Connecticut has introduced a bill into the Connecticut Legislature requiring independent testing of returning Afghan and Gulf War veterans going back to 2001. She said that she did it because she’s sick, and her friends are dead, and that’s from serving in the 2003 conflict. I have been following the bill and talking to her. Yesterday, she testified twice at the United Nations. I said, “Why don’t we get this bill all over the U.S. in state legislatures because it informs the public and get the local media to cover it.”

The U.S. has blocked any accountability at international and national levels. There’s a total cover-up just like with Agent Orange, the atomic veterans, MKULTRA, the mind control experiments the CIA did. This is more of the same, but the issue is much, much worse because the genetic future of all those contaminated is effected. Now vast regions around our world, as well as our atmosphere, are contaminated with the depleted uranium. They’ve used so much. It’s the equivalent number of atoms, as the Japanese professor calculated it, to over 400,000 Nagasaki bombs that has been released into the atmosphere. That’s really an underestimate.

I went to Louisiana in April. I was invited to speak at the University of New Orleans for three days. One of the veterans asked me to be in their April 19 protest and rally through the City of New Orleans. He took the Connecticut bill straight to the Legislature, and he got two legislators to sponsor it, and he said, “Just whiteout the name ‘Connecticut’ and write in ‘Louisiana’ on the bill.” You’re not going to believe it. It passed 101 to 0 yesterday in the Louisiana House.

I want you to write about it because we want it (the DU testing bill) in Texas. Nevada is going to introduce it. Congressman Jim McDermott is going to put it into the Washington legislature. We want to get the governor of Montana to do it because he’s the first governor to demand his National Guard be returned. I think half of them are back. He said, “I need them in the state.”

The DU issue is just really, really, really, really so awful. I don’t think there’s any greater tragedy in the history of the world in what they’ve done.

ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in weaponry over there, spreading by air over here?

MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. It’s completely mixed in one year. I’m an expert on atmospheric dust. I’m a geoscientist, a geologist, and that’s what I studied and did my research on. It’s really a fascinating subject. We have huge dust storms that are a million square miles and transport millions of tons of dust and sand every year around the world.

The main centers of these dust storms are the Gobi Desert in China, which is where the Chinese did atmospheric testing, so that’s all contaminated with radiation, and it gets transported right over Japan, and it comes straight across the Pacific and dumps all its sand and dust on the U.S., North America. It’s loaded with radioactive isotopes, soot, pesticides, chemicals, pollution — everything is in it — fungi, bacteria, viruses.

The Sahara Desert is another huge dust center, and it goes up all over Europe and straight across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, and up the East Coast. Of course, you get it in Texas with those hurricanes. They all originate in the Sahara Desert.

The third region is the Western United States, which is where the Nevada test site is located. We did 1,200 nuclear weapons tests there, so all this radiation that is already there, which is bad enough, has caused a global cancer epidemic since 1945. All of that radiation was the equivalent of 40,000 Nagasaki bombs. We’re talking about 10 times more.

In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.

Infant mortality is going up again all over the world. This is an indicator of the level of radioactive pollution.

When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963, the infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal.

Now they are going up again. It’s the global pollution with this radiation.

ICONOCLAST: I had one of our correspondents send me a series of photographs of the Al-Asad dust storm in Iraq on April 28.

MORET: That dust is what I’m talking about.

ICONOCLAST: In the picture you can see a gigantic wall of sand.

MORET: I have 16 pictures of that storm. They’re posted with photos from Iraqi doctors of the children of people with cancer and leukemia. So what did you think of that dust storm?

ICONOCLAST: I thought it was really dramatic.

MORET: It remobilizes all the radiation, but those are the larger chunks. The DU burns at such high temperatures. It’s a pyroforic metal which means it burns. The bullets and big caliber shells are actually on fire when they come out of the gun barrel because they are ignited by the friction in the gun barrel. Seventy percent of the DU metal becomes a metal vapor. It’s actually a radioactive gas weapon and a terrain contaminant.

I’ll email you the URL of the 1943 memo to General Leslie Grove under the Manhattan Project. It’s the blueprint for depleted uranium. They dropped the atomic bombs, but they did not use the DU weapons because they thought they were too horrific.

I’ve toured and gone all over Japan with a pediatrician in Basra and an oncologist, a cancer specialist. These poor doctors — their whole families are dying of cancer. He has 10 members of his family with cancer now that he’s treating, and this is just from Gulf War I. They’ve used much, much, much more in 2003. All over the whole country.

ICONOCLAST: What can soldiers expect when they come home?

MORET: If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, they’re coming home with rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young women are reporting terrible problems with endometriosis. That’s the lining of the uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed and bleed. Some of them have uterine cancer — 18 and 19 and 20 year olds.

The Army will not even diagnose it. They send them back to the battlefields. They won’t treat them or diagnose them. A group of 20 soldiers pushed from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 in all the fighting. Eight of those 20 soldiers have malignancies.

ICONOCLAST: Does exposure to depleted uranium effect their psychological background when they come home?

MORET: Depleted uranium are these particles that form at very high temperatures. They are uranium oxides that are insoluble. They are at least 100 times smaller than a white blood cell, so when the soldiers breathe, they inhale them. The particles go through the nose, go through the olfactory and into the brain, and it messes up their cognitive abilities, thought processes.

It damages their mood-control mechanism in the brain. Four soldiers at Fort Bragg came back from Afghanistan, and within two months, those four had murdered their wives. This is part of the damage to the brain from the radiation and the particles.

The soldiers from Gulf War I in a group of 67 soldiers who came back, they had DU in their equipment, in their clothes, in their bodies, in their semen, and they had normal babies before they went over there to war. They came back, and the VA did a study. Of 251 Gulf War I veterans in Mississippi, in 67 percent of them, thier babies born after the war were deemed to have severe birth defects. They had brains missing, arms and legs missing, organs missing. They were born without eyes. They had horrible blood diseases. It’s horrific.

If you want to look at something, Life magazine did a photo essay which is still on the Internet. It’s called “The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm.” You should look at that — oh, my God, the post-Gulf War babies playing with their brothers and sisters who are normal.

Basically, it’s like smoking crack, only you’re smoking radioactive crack. It goes straight into the blood stream. It’s carried all throughout the body into the bones, the bone marrow, the brain. It goes into the fetus. It’s a systemic poison and a radiological poison.

ICONOCLAST: What about the people in the United States that are here? You say that DU is being mixed and spread globally?

MORET: Yes, it’s being mixed globally. We’re getting secondary smoke. It’s the secondary smoke effect. You know the people who inhabit a room with smokers? They are getting that secondary smoke, and so are we.

ICONOCLAST: Is that secondary smoke getting thicker as we speak?

MORET: Yeah, the concentration of the depleted uranium particles in the atmosphere all around the globe is increasing. There are indications that the U.S. will go in June and bomb the heck out of Iran. We’re monitoring the U.S. Army ammunition factories. They have very large orders for those huge bunker buster bombs that have 5,000 lbs. of DU in the warhead.

ICONOCLAST: So the prognosis for America isn’t really good?

MORET: No, it’s really bad.

ICONOCLAST: And if this continues then?

MORET: It’s going to kill off the world’s population. It already is, and it doesn’t just effect people. It effects all living systems. The plants, the animals, the bacteria. It effects everything.

ICONOCLAST: So the things that we eat for instance, if they have DU in them, then we’ll just get it in our systems, and so we’re polluting the oceans, so that could effect all marine life?

MORET: Yes, it’s in the air, water, and soil. The half-life of DU, Uranium 238, is 4.5 billion years the age of the Earth.

ICONOCLAST: With the damage that’s been done to this point, can we turn back? We can’t clean it up?

MORET: There’s no way to clean it up. What happens is these tiny particles float around the Earth. There are still plutonium and uranium floating around the Earth from bomb testing. These particles are so tiny that molecules bumping into them keep them lofted in the air, and so the only way for them to get out of the atmosphere is rain, snow, fog, pollution, which will clear them out of the air and deposit them in the environment. What happens is the surface of these particles gets wetted by the moisture in the air. They come down and land on stuff and stick to it like a glue. You can’t ever get the particles off whatever they’re sticking to because have you ever put a drop of water on a microscope slide and then put another one on top of it? Can you pull those apart?

ICONOCLAST: No.

MORET: Okay, that’s the same effect that happens to radioactive particles. Once they are removed from the atmosphere, they stick to any surfaces they land on. In a way they are removed from circulation from the atmosphere. You can’t wash them off. If it keeps raining or they’re in a creek, you know, if they’re on rocks or stones or something in a creek, they won’t even wash off.

You didn’t know it was this bad, did you?

ICONOCLAST: No, I knew it was bad, but I thought it was fairly isolated.

MORET: No. What is over there (in Iraq) is over here in about four days. I don’t know if you followed Chernobyl. That big bubble of radiation went around and around the world, but this is dust. It becomes a part of atmospheric dust. Like the dust storm you saw in that photo, it goes everywhere.

ICONOCLAST: Is it in the upper levels of the atmosphere or the lower levels?

MORET: It’s in lower orbital space.

They brought the Mir spacecraft back down to Earth when they got done using it, and there was something called a space midge which covered the electronics on the outside of the spacecraft and protected it from radiation that comes from the sun because electronics are real vulnerable to radiation. They analyzed the surface of that space net and found uranium and uranium decayed products which they said came from atmospheric testing or burned up spacecraft with nuclear materials or nuclear reactors on board. Uranium can also come from supernovas, but they thought that the most likely sources were atmospheric testing and the nuclear materials we put in space.

ICONOCLAST: Essentially then, you’re saying that we’re conducting a nuclear war.

MORET: Yes, and that’s exactly what it is. We’ve conducted four nuclear wars since 1991. Yeah, these are nuclear wars. DU is a nuclear weapon.

ICONOCLAST: From the point of view of a scientist, what needs to happen to correct this?

MORET: Well, we need to stop the use of it. We’ve built an international movement to stop the use, the manufacture, the storage, the sales, and the deployment of depleted uranium weapons.

ICONOCLAST: Are the munitions we sell to other countries contained with depleted uranium?

MORET: We have. In 1968 the first depleted uranium weapons systems that we found a patent for suddenly appeared in the U.S. patent office. It was for the Navy. It was sort of a Gatling gun style weapon system that you mounted on ships. It rapidly fires like 2,500 bullets a minute. It’s over 3,000 now. They’ve improved the design. Then in 1973, we gave depleted uranium weapons systems to the Israelis and supervised their use. They used them in the Arab-Israeli war and completely wiped out the Arabs in five days. Then the show was on the road. That was the first actual battlefield demonstration of this new weapon system.

Hughes Aircraft developed the full-length system which is for the Navy. That’s the Gatling gun system. They still use it. That was produced in 1974 and tested. Within six months the U.S. government had sold the DU weapons system to 12 entities which included many branches of the U.S. military and other counties. We’ve sold DU weapons systems to about — we don’t know exactly for sure — it’s been about 12 or 17 countries. The good news is that normally such a weapons system that effective would have been sold to 80, 100, or 120 countries by now. But because of the radiological, biological, and environmental hazard, countries were not only afraid to buy it, the ones who did buy it are afraid to use it. The only countries we know that have used DU are Britain, the U.S., and Israel.

The United Nations in 1996 passed a resolution that depleted uranium weapons are weapons of mass destruction, and they are illegal under all international laws and treaties.

In 2001, the European Parliament passed a resolution on DU. What happened is that the NATO forces went into Yugoslavia in 1998 and ’99 and flew 39,000 bombing runs and completely bombed Yugoslavia into radioactive rubble. Germany and the U.S. made the most money on the destruction of Yugoslavia, and they made sure that countries that didn’t know about the DU, that the peacekeepers from those countries like from Italy and Portugal, were sent to the most contaminated regions in Yugoslavia. Germans and Americans didn’t send their own troops into those areas. They were in the least contaminated areas. These poor soldiers from other countries came back and died within weeks or in a couple of days or months. The parents in Portugal and Italy are furious and went to the Parliament and media, and there was just a huge media storm of articles about DU.

The cat was out of the bag because of the 1998 NATO invasion of Yugoslavia. The cat was out of the bag, but Japanese troops have been sent into Somawa. They’re self-defense forces. It was the most contaminated area where the heaviest fighting happened in Iraq. We can expect those soldiers to be really, really sick.

ICONOCLAST: What about Iraq itself? What’s been done thus far?

MORET: It’s uninhabitable. The whole country. Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are completely uninhabitable.

ICONOCLAST: But people live there, so they’re going to live there suffering?

MORET: Well, you can see from the birth defects and the illnesses that it is pretty severe. Each year the number of birth defects and illnesses will rise because of the total contamination levels in all living things will increase because they are breathing that air and drinking water and eating the food from contaminated soils. It’s just a slow death sentence. The same with Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Depleted uranium is a very, very, very effective biological weapon. This is the primary purpose for using it. Marion Falk (a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab), who is the Manhattan Project scientist I work with, taught me pretty much everything about radiation and particles and DU. He said the purpose of weapons used by the military is not only to injure and kill the enemy soldiers, but the purpose is to kill, maim, and disease the civilian population because it reduces the productivity of a country and pretty soon a lot of their resources are going to be used for taking care of sick people. They will have fewer and fewer healthy workers.

Of course, once you cause mutation in the DNA, that damage is passed on to future generations of that affected person or animal or plant. DNA does not repair itself.

ICONOCLAST: So the mutations would be probably destructive moreso than constructive.

MORET: Oh, the mutations are causing those birth defects.

ICONOCLAST: They’re not evolutionary diseases?

MORET: No, they are evolutionary. They are inherited by all future generations and passed on. It’s like if you have red hair and all of your future generations will have that gene.

ICONOCLAST: So if I had a precondition to heart disease because of the radiation, then the generation that would come after me would have the same problem?

MORET: Well, if you damage the cell or parts of the cell or functioning of cells, that doesn’t necessarily damage the DNA. There are two kinds of damage: one damages the cells of the living organism, and that may not be passed on, but if you damage the DNA in the egg or the sperm, that is passed on to all future generations.

ICONOCLAST: So the guys coming back from the war, their sperm is probably going to be —

MORET: Damaged. Yes. They also have depleted uranium in their semen. When they’re intimate with their partners, they internally contaminate them with depleted uranium. The women become sick themselves. They have depleted uranium in their bodies, and there is something called burning syndrome. Just absolutely horrible. You can read about it in an article by David Rose in the December Vanity Fair. It’s on the Internet.

A friend of mine is the widow of a Canadian Gulf War veteran. David Rose interviewed her, and she griped about the burning semen. She said, “I had 20 condoms full of frozen peas in my freezer at all times, and after we were intimate, I would insert one into my vagina, and that is the only way I could bear the pain from the burning semen.” And it goes through condoms, too.

ICONOCLAST: Gosh, durn!

MORET: Yeah, you should see the high school classes when I talk about the burning semen and the internal contamination. The girls’ mouths go into little round Os, and the boys start panicking because they’re like, “I’ll never get sick!” (laughs) The name of this article is “Weapons of Self-Destruction.”

ICONOCLAST: How much DU will it take to kill off all known life on this planet?

MORET: The amount of radiation released is certainly going to have a very, very profound global impact, and we’re already seeing infant mortality increasing globally. The fetus is the most susceptible to radiation damage because all the cells are rapidly dividing, the limbs and the bodies developing, so when you start introducing toxic chemicals and radiation, it really damages the natural process of fetal development.

The reason they were able to convince the Senate to sign the partial test ban treaty in 1963 was because of the increase in infant mortality. It had been dropping and declining two or three percent for quite a long time each year because of better prenatal care and educating mothers.

Infant mortality started going up after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially in the ‘50s when the big bomb testing started.

By 1963, it was really obvious that the bomb testing globally was having a real impact on the unborn. They signed the partial test ban treaty. Russia and the U.S. stopped atmospheric testing, and the infant mortality rate started going down right away. They’re going up again now. This is global radioactive pollution, and how long it would take to eliminate all life is something nobody knows, but the depleted uranium is a very, very effective biological weapon.

There are two purposes for the military use of weapons. One is to destroy the enemy soldiers, and the other, which is just as important, is to destroy the enemy civilian population. By causing illnesses and disease, long lingering illnesses really impact the productivity and the economy of a country. It was Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters that actually destroyed the Soviet Union because the former Soviet Union is very, very sick from all the radiation that was released. They were much more sloppier than we were.

I have a World Health Organization world health survey which they published in the Journal of American Medical Association last June. The impact of atmospheric testing is very, very apparent by the percentage of population in each country they investigated for some form of mental illness. For instance, Japan is 8.8 percent. Nigeria is very low — 4.7 percent. They have almost no radiation in Nigeria. In the Ukraine where they had the Chernobyl accident, it is 20.4 percent. Spain is at 9.2 percent. Italy is 8.2 percent. It’s pretty low because they don’t have nuke plants. France is 75 percent reliant on nuclear power, so you have mental illness in 18.4 percent of the population. Mexico is at 12.2 percent, and the United States is at 26.3 percent — the highest rate of mental illness in the world.

And George Bush and his siblings were all exposed in utero to bomb testing fallout in the United States. He had a toddler sister who died of leukemia when she was about three.

I worked with a group called the Radiation And Public Health Project. Their website is <www.radiation.org>. We are all radiation specialists, well-known scientists, and independent scientists. We’ve collected 6,000 baby teeth around nuclear power plants and measured the radiation in them, and one of our members is the neighbor of the women who worked with all of the Bush children, including President Bush himself, because they had severe learning disabilities.

ICONOCLAST: How do we know that the Bush children were exposed?

MORET: By the year of their birth. The year they were carried by their mother. You have to look at how much bomb testing material was released into the atmosphere, and there’s a direct correlation to the decline in SAT scores for all teenagers in the U.S. to the amount of radiation that was released into the atmosphere the year their mother was carrying them. These are delayed effects of radiation exposure in utero.

ICONOCLAST: So they were living in Connecticut, but they were still feeling the effects of the radiation in Nevada?

MORET: Two years ago the U.S. government admitted that every single person living in the United States between 1957 and 1963 was internally exposed to radiation. So for any pregnant woman during those years, her fetus was exposed.

ICONOCLAST: What type of radiation levels are we talking about?

MORET: It’s low levels, and the main pathways are drinking water and dairy products. It even killed the baby fish in the Atlantic. Strontium-90 is a man-made isotope that comes out of nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. They measured the levels of strontium-90 in milk in Norway from the 1950s up until the 1970s, and they measured the decline in the fishing catch in that same period, and as the strontium-90 increased in the milk in Norway, fishing catches declined.
By 1963, when the U.S. tested a nuclear bomb almost every day (they did 250 tests in one year because the treaty was going to be signed), the fishing catch declined by 50 percent. In the Pacific, it declined 60 percent because there was Russian, Chinese, French, and U.S. testing in the Pacific.

ICONOCLAST: So we’re still eating those contaminated fish today. Has the genetic code been changed?

MORET: The oceans are getting whatever is getting rained down, snowed down, or fogged down from the atmosphere. It’s getting into the oceans. This big frog die-off, which is global, is certainly related to the radiation in the rainwater. It’s a global nuclear holocaust. It effects all living things. That’s why they call it “omnicide,” which means it kills all living things — the plants, the animals, the bacteria. Everything.

ICONOCLAST: You think we ought to have the Weather Channel report on the current sand storm conditions in Iraq so we can prepare four days in advance for the radiation?

MORET: I’ll tell you what I did when 9/11 happened.

I called all the doctors with Radiation And Public Health Project, and I said, “Get out of town, and don’t come back until it has rained three times.” One lived 12 miles downwind from the Pentagon. She went out on her balcony with her geiger counter. I said, “Get that geiger counter out of your purse.” We had just done a press conference in San Francisco, and I knew she had it in her purse. Well, the radiation levels were 8-10 times higher than background.

We called the EPA, HAZMAT, FBI, and said, “Get all those emergency response workers suited up. They need to be protected.” Two days after 9/11, the EPA radiation expert for that region called back and said, “Yup, the Pentagon crash rubble was radioactive, and we believe it’s depleted uranium, but we’re not worried about that. It’s only harmful if it’s inhaled.”

He said, “We’re worried about the lead solder in the plane.” Well, you know what’s in Tomahawk missiles? They have depleted uranium warheads. The radioactive crash rubble contaminated with DU is evidence of a DU warhead.

ICONOCLAST: I did not think about that, but going back to my original question: Should the Weather Channel report for us on the toxic dust storms in Iraq?

MORET: But how could people get away from them? These dust storms are a million square miles. They’re huge, and they come right across the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and Texas coast line, and right up the East Coast. There are people who are going to leave the state every time there’s a hurricane It’s in the food, drinking water, dairy products, and then the problem with Uranium 238, which is 99.39 percent DU, is that it decays in over 20 steps into other radioactive isotopes.

That’s why I call it the “Trojan Horse.” It’s the weapon that keeps giving. It keeps killing. This is like smoking radioactive crack. It goes right in your nose. It crosses the olfactory bulb into your brain. It’s a systemic poison. It goes everywhere. These particles that form at very high temperatures — 5,000-10,000 degrees C — are nanoparticles. They are a 10th of a micron or smaller. A 10th of a micron is 100 times smaller than a white blood cell. They get picked up in the lipids and probably the cholesterol and go right through the cell membranes of the cell. They screw up the cell processes. They screw up the signaling between the cells because the cells all talk to each other and coordinate what they’re doing. It messes up brain function.

ICONOCLAST: Do you know what Iraq was like before the first Gulf War?

MORET: Iraq prior to the 1991 Gulf War was the most advanced in the entire Middle East. They had scrupulous databases of the health problems and disease rates, which is why the U.S. bombed all of the offices in the Ministry of Health. We destroyed all those records so that a pre-Gulf War health base could not be established to show how much these diseases have increased. This would concern the U.S. in terms of compensation for war crimes.

In these horrible U.N. sanctions, they (the Iraqis) could never get all of the protocol medicine for the treatment of leukemia. They (the U.N.) would say, “These steps of the leukemia treatment were components in weapons, so you can’t have that.” They never gave the people the full proper protocols in the areas of treatment they needed to get rid of the leukemia. It hid the effects of the depleted uranium because the children were starving. They had malnutrition. They had the healthiest population in the Middle East (prior to Gulf War I).

ICONOCLAST: Let’s talk about the children of Iraq.

MORET: After the Gulf War, they had maybe one baby a week born with birth defects in the hospitals in Basra. Now they are having 10-12 a day. The levels of uranium are increasing in the population every year. Every day, people are eating and drinking while the whole environment is contaminated. Just what you’d expect. There are more babies born with birth defects, and the birth defects are getting more and more severe.

An Iraqi doctor told me that babies are being born now that are lumps of flesh. She said that they don’t have heads or legs or arms. It’s just a lump of flesh. This also happened to populations that were not removed from islands in the Pacific when the bomb tests occurred. Basically, governments were using them as guinea pigs. 

ICONOCLAST: So all the countries that were equipped with nuclear weapons are guilty of those atrocities.

MORET: They were all doing it. France, Russia. China, and the U.S. And I’m not sure if Britain did bomb testing. They were real low key about it.

ICONOCLAST: Where are the radiation hot spots in the United States?

MORET: In the United States, it would be within a 100 miles of nuclear power plants. We have 110 nuclear power plants in the U.S. We have the most of any country in the world, but only a 103 are operating. Almost all of the entire East Coast.

What we did was we took government data from the Centers of Disease Control on breast cancer deaths between 1985 and 1989. Anywhere from within a 100 miles of a nuclear power plant is where two-thirds of all breast cancer deaths occurred in the U.S. between 1985 and 1989.

It’s also around the nuclear weapons laboratories. That would be Los Alamos in New Mexico, the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Lab in Idaho, and Hanford in Washington State, which is where they got the plutonium for all the bombs. They contaminated the entire Columbia River watershed and almost the whole state of Washington.

It gets into the water and into the plants and into the vegetation. If you eat clams or mussels or crabs or things like that, even certain kinds of fish that eat off of the mud at the bottom of the river, you have much higher levels of radiation in your tissues. It depends on each person and on how healthy they are, but this man from Washington State died suddenly. He was in his late 40s. They did an autopsy, and he was full of radioactive zinc. They went, “Where in the world did he get this? It only comes from nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors.” They studied his diet and discovered he loved to eat oysters. They found out where he bought his oysters and found the oyster beds. They were 200 miles off shore, from Washington State. The radiation was being carried off out to sea from the coastline. It was passing over this oyster bed. The oysters were just gobbling them up.

ICONOCLAST: What are the symptoms of DU poisoning?

MORET: Soldiers on the battlefield have reported a metallic taste in their mouth. That’s the actual taste of the uranium metal. Then within 24-48 hours, soldiers on the battlefield have reported that they felt sick. They start getting muscle aches, and they lose energy. Some of them came back incontinent. In other words, in adult diapers.

One woman reported that the first night home, she wanted to be intimate with her husband, but she had absolutely no feeling. She couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. This particulate matter damages the neuromuscular system, the nerves; it just goes everywhere. And there’s no treatment for it. These particles are very, very insoluble, so they can’t even dissolve in body fluids, so they can be excreted from the body. Then they keep releasing. Even when uranium decays, it turns into another radioactive isotope. So it’s a particle that just sits there shooting bullets until you die.

Another problem is that soldiers have crumbling teeth. Teeth just start falling apart. The uranium replaces calcium in the calcium-phosphate structure of the teeth. Some have complained about grand mal seizures, cerebral palsy. Some diseases reported at very high rates in Air Force and Army soldiers are Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and Hodgkin’s disease. This is damage to the mitochondria in the cells and the nerves. The mitochondria make all the energy for the body, so when you damage mitochondria, another symptom is chronic fatigue syndrome. There’s just not enough energy produced by the body to function normally.

I found a study in the SanDia Nuclear Weapons Laboratory employee newsletter in September 2003. They are doing major studies in mitochondrial disfunction related to Lou Gehrig’s, Hodgkin’s, and Parkinson’s diseases for veterans. Since it’s at a nuclear weapon’s lab, they are fully aware of the health damage.

ICONOCLAST: Tell me about the tests that detect for DU in the body.

MORET: The chromosome test in the best indicator. It’s $5,000. The urine test is a $1,000. If you test positive with the urine test, you know you’re contaminated. If you test negative, it does not mean that you’re not contaminated. It just means that you may or may not be contaminated but enough hasn’t dissolved in your blood stream to go through your kidneys to be excreted in your urine. Anyone who goes now cannot avoid being contaminated. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone. Everyone who goes to the Middle East and Afghanistan will be contaminated.

The DU issue affects every single living thing on this planet. What else has that impact? They have altered the genome for the entire planet forever with this DU. The Pentagon people say, “You’re exaggerating or you use the uranium word to scare people.” I don’t care if people believe me or not. All I can say is that over time what I am saying will actually be an underestimation of the long term effects.

----

A Military Perspective

An Interview With
MAJOR DOUG ROKKE, Ph.D
Former Director of the
U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project

Interview
By W. Leon Smith

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news04.htm

Major Doug Rokke, PhD, is a retired Army combat officer who served as the director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project at the start of Gulf War I. His job was to prepare soldiers for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. He was in charge of cleaning up American tanks hit by friendly-fired depleted uranium (DU) munitions as well as helping casualties contaminated with DU.

His own health has suffered from the effects of uranium poisoning. Reports indicate that he has 5,000 times the acceptable level of radiation in his body and that he suffers from reactive airway disease from DU.

Prior to deployment to the Perisan Gulf, Dr. Rokke worked with the University of Illinois Physics Department and served in Vietnam. His PhD is in health physics. His original training was in forensic science. Today, he travels the global informing people and governments of the dangers of DU exposure.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: How do you view depleted uranium?

ROKKE: DU…interesting nightmare.

ICONOCLAST: Actually, it’s a lot more widespread and damaging worldwide than I had realized before talking to Leuren Moret.

ROKKE: Absolutely. The United States gave it to Isreael. The first time it was used that I can document, for which I have the reports that I base my work on — it was 1973, during the Arab-Israeli conflict, and U.S. Army guys actually went on-site. We’ve got all the photographs, measurements. We’ve got trash medically, and equipment was trashed, so we know that for a fact.

And then we used it extensively, probably close to 375 tons — now this is solid uranium, not uranium plus explosives or casings, but solid uranium, the amount of munitions in Gulf War I. In ’94 and ’95 we used three tons in the Balkans, and I was specifically asked to write the clean-up procedures and emergency management procedures for that for the Army. I’ve still got them. In December of ’95 and January of ’96, the U.S. Marines shot the hell out of Okinawa, Torishima Island. We didn’t tell the Japanese for a year.

And then we used it getting ready for the Balkans in ’99 down in Puerto Rico. When I found out about that, I tried to activate our Army emergency response team called Army Contaminated Equipment Recovery team. That’s by the Army regulation 700-48 that I wrote that was adopted, accepted, and implemented.

The Army refused to do that. Then I tried to get medical care for them down there, and they refused to do that.

Then, on April 16 of ’99, we got called up to the White House to meet with what’s called Bill Clinton’s Presidential Oversight Board and that was under Senator Warren Rudman and Navy Admiral Elmo Zumwalt. Our team met with them and told them we’re going to see all these health effects in the Balkans. We were still trying to deal with health effects from Gulf War I. At that time, I still got all the emails, copies of all the letters sent.

They said we won’t use it (DU) in the Balkans, and lo and behold, they were already using it. They used 30-40 tons in the Balkans in ’99.

Since then, we’ve been shooting it up, as U.S Congressman James McDermott from Seattle, Washington, has confirmed. The Coast Guard’s been shooting it up in the Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, off the coast of Texas, every place.

ICONOCLAST: Why have they been doing that?

ROKKE: They’re just crazy. They want to make sure their guns work. Real simple. They’re crazy.

And, then, we came along with Gulf War II.

We started planning Gulf War II back in ’95. That had nothing to do with 9/11 at all. Zero. Not a thing. What’s real interesting, if you go to the actual 9-1-1 report, General Franks totally acknowledges in the report in his testimony, that, yeah, they took and dusted off the invasion plans for Iraq and implemented it, which everybody knows because all that stuff was based on lies. So, anyhow, we went into Afghanistan based on a Feb. 12, 1998, Congressional discussion to overthrow the Taliban because it wouldn’t go along with the Unicol oil deal, so that’s why that happened.

We probably dumped a thousand tons or more in Afghanistan, and God knows how many, thousand, two-thousand tons in Iraq, and we’re still using it as we speak.

ICONOCLAST: You have no idea how much exactly?

ROKKE: Not really. Nobody can get a solid estimate. We do know from on-site measurements and videos and photographs, there’s stuff laying all over the place.

We shot up water treatment facilities. I’ve got live video and photographs. Apartment buildings, tanks, everything just left there…kids climbing all over them.

Scott Peterson with the Christian Science Monitor reported it. The Japanese reported it. Ted Wayman who works for Uranium Medical Research Center went over there and measured it and reported it, not just took somebody’s word for it, but went over and did the stuff.

Medical reports coming out of Iraq on birth defects probably two or three days ago are just catastrophic, much less what’s happened to our own troops. It’s just incredible because the U.S. Army had required since I issued the initial order back after the ground war in 1991 that medical care in the form of testing be provided to everybody that was exposed within 24-72 hours. Still not happening.

The government Department of Defense is trying to prevent information from getting out. They’ll say thousands of people have been tested since ’92. If you go to the local VA and pick up a brand new issue of the Gulf War Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, or you can get it online <www.va.gov>, go to page 12 of it. It states since 1992 only 270 people have ever been tested. (laughs). I can’t get my own staff tested yet, 14 years after the fact.

ICONOCLAST: What do you know about the munitions?

ROKKE: There are two different types of DU rounds. We have the kinetic energy penetrator, and that’s fired by an Abrams tank, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and HN Warthog aircraft, the Navy Phalanx, and then the machine gun. Those are all basically gigantic darts of solid uranium, contaminated with all the other junk from DOE’s facility down at Paducah, Oakridge, and Portsmouth where they make the stuff.

The Abrams tank round is a solid rod of uranium about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 18 inches long. Each and every rod is over 10 pounds of solid uranium. The A-10 fires one that’s three-quarters of solid uranium at 4,000 rounds a minute. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, that’s a chain gun that’s pretty fast, too, fires thousands of rounds. Each and every one of those rounds is half a pound. Those are kinetic energy penetrators. The machine gun is a giant bullet, too.

Then we have submunition landmines. These are cluster bombs. The casing is uranium, DU, with high explosives inside. I mean it’s the absolute perfect dirty bomb.

And then we have the bunker busters where you’ve got the uranium casing from the McAlester army ammunition plant. The guys got sick putting these things together just about six months ago. I mean, real sick, and they had to shut the line down.

ICONOCLAST: Where do they make these?

ROKKE: The DUs are made all over the place. I mean Aerojet … we got health effects where they shut the whole thing down, up at Albany, New York. That was National Lead. They’ve got horrible effects all around Concord, Mass. where it’s manufactured. 60 Minutes did a story back in 1981 about all the adverse health effects that were at the Aerojet facility in Tennessee. They make it up in Minneapolis at Twin Cities. I mean, all over the place. This stuff’s a nightmare.When you get to Oakridge and Paducah and Portsmouth where they have this stuff, and the health effects around there are just legendary, with all the respiratories and the cancers and everything.

The best report that’s out is called Discounted Casualties. It was written by a Japanese journalist who’s an expert on Hiroshima, you know, the atomic bomb. Akira Tashiro was his name. You could just go online, and type Discounted Casualties, and pull the whole book up in English. Just read through it. There are interviews. Leuren Moret did the forward on it, and I talk about all my work as director of the DU Project when I was health physicist with the assessment team after Gulf War I.

You won’t find hardly anything on the web. If you go to the Department of Defense website, and you put in the “Depleted Uranium Project” for which I was director, you won’t find any of this stuff. You won’t find any report on the depleted uranium assessment team from Gulf War I, and all the reports we did. It’s just not there.

We had all these orders mandating medical care, going way back to day one. I issued the initial one and have a whole shitpot of medals. In ’91, the commanding general issued the order to provide medical care for everybody, identifying those who needed it. It never happened.

And then General Shinseki, who is retired as the head Army general, issued the order himself Aug. 14, 1993, mandating medical care, thorough environmental clean-up and remediation, and education and training. As a consequence of that, as director of the DU Project, we developed all the regulations, environmental clean-up, all the training and education, videotapes to support it, and in September of 2002 General Shinseki signed Army regulation AR700-48 making it mandatory. But they just ignore it.

And then General Peake on April of last year issued the same order mandating medical care for everyone exposed. But they ain’t doing it.

ICONOCLAST: Why won’t they do it, if they received an order from the General?

ROKKE: They’re above the law. They’re just simply above the law.

ICONOCLAST: These guys issued the orders on behalf of the DOD, right?

ROKKE: They are the commanding generals of the DOD.

ICONOCLAST: If they issued the order, who has the authority to stop the orders?

ROKKE: Dickie Cheney. It stopped way up there because when you go through this, and you find they aren’t complying with the order, not giving the medical care, they haven’t told the truth, then you have to figure it out.

You’ve got Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Winkenwerder who’s in charge of all medical. He issued an order himself in 2003 to do it, but they don’t do it.

If you come down the medical line, you’ve got Georgie Bush, Dickie Cheney, and then you come on down from that to Don Rumsfeld. Then you’ve got Bill Winkenwerder, then you’ve got Mike Kilpatrick, Department of Defense.

These guys are absolved from telling the truth or complying or doing anything like this. And the only one that’s got the authority and knowledge and who’s been there from day one who can do that stuff is Dickie Cheney.

Rumsfeld’s new. Georgie Bush is new. He didn’t have any clue what’s going on until after his 2000 election. He called me and had me go up there and speak to the U.S. Senate on all this stuff. Real interested to get ushered into the U.S. Senate as keynote speaker for a Veterans Day breakfast. It’s a fascinating experience. It’s pretty neat.

But you have all this stuff happening, so you figure, but we continue to use it. It violates United Nations laws and regulations. It doesn’t even pass common sense to take tons and tons of solid radioactive material and throw it in someone else’s back yard, refusing to give medical care although it’s been ordered, refusing to clean up the environmental contamination, although it’s required. And they keep getting away with it.

When you look at the commanding generals who can do this shit, although Shinseki signed off on the order, as the head of the Army, and Kirpatrick and Winkenwerder can get away without doing the medical care, who’s got the authority above them that can do it? Well, Rumsfeld’s an idiot. He’s only been around a short while, and George Bush didn’t know, so it points at Dickie Cheney, because when you figure Dickie Cheney back in 92, we got a directive sent down from a lady named Madeleine Albright, secretary of state, down through General Paul Greenberg to the U.S. Army corps research lab. We were ordered at that time to write a no-bid contract for Halliburton.

ICONOCLAST: Really?

ROKKE: Uh-huh. We did. And we did it, and they got it. You know, Brown and Root … Halliburton. So we hired them, and they went over to Kuwait and pushed a whole bunch of junk into a big hole at one of the camps and then walked away.

Now they’ve had all the no-bid contracts, as everybody’s heard about. How much money’s been wasted and can’t be accounted for? It’s real easy. When you trace the whole thing, who was involved in the beginning to allow this stuff … it all points to Dickie Cheney. I mean, just 100 percent. And then you still have all the generals who knew what was going on, and they’ve never done anything.

ICONOCLAST: Why would Dick Cheney want there to be —

ROKKE: Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

ICONOCLAST: Is DU cheaper to produce or something?

ROKKE: Yeah. It’s free. You have to understand, this is an incredible weapon. It kills and destroys everything. I mean, it’s absolutely incredible. When I had to clean up the mess following Gulf War I, I learned how good this stuff was. There’s no two ways about it. It’s incredible. It’s the best we’ve got.

And then we did all the testing in ‘94 and ‘95, and we saw it again. In ‘94 we did what was called a Bradley Fighting Vehicle burn test. I loaded a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with munitions and explosives, and I set it off. And I found that the contamination was so extensive within 50 meters that you absolutely had to wear full respiratory and skin protection.

Well, the Army adopted those recommendations I put in, absolutely implemented them. They’re in place now. So with every single incident where they use it you have to wear full respiratory and skin protection within 50 meters by U.S. Army specific guidance adopted by the Navy and everybody else.

When you get the stuff destroyed, it’s like a checkerboard. It’s all over the place.

And we know also from our experience that all respiratory and skin protection required within 50 meters’ radius, that’s about 160 feet, but the stuff goes out to about 400 meters. Now I did not measure any farther than 400 meters, because I couldn’t out of my pad called the Nevada test site area 25. God knows how much farther it went. We know, absolutely totally confirm, no question about it, that at the National Lead site where they were manufacturing it in Albany, N.Y., it went 30 miles, in sufficient quantities to cause health effects.

So, we put tons and tons and tons of solid radioactive materials all over the place. This stuff, when it hits, it breaks up, forms fine dust and oxides, and some of these dusts are so small, they are smaller than the inner diameter of a red blood cell. That’s always been known.

Marion Fulk knew that from day one when he did the work on the Manhattan Project. Marion Fulk is one of the last living gods of the Manhattan Project. He was the particle physicist who spread of all of this stuff in the atmosphere. He’s the last living god. Two or three of the last remaining ones have died during the past few months.

ICONOCLAST: So, to recap?

ROKKE: What we have is deliberate use of solid radioactive materials all over the place and the deliberate refusal to provide the medical care that’s mandated by Army orders and regulations, Department of Defense directives, and a simple refusal to clean up all the environmental contamination that must be done by the direct Army regulation. It’s that easy. There’s no accountability.

Anybody that speaks up becomes persona non grata and the attacks just come flying your way beyond comprehension.

ICONOCLAST: Is this a move toward population control or something?

ROKKE: No. No. Just killing and destroying on the battlefield. It’s real simple. You’ve got to remember the soldier and the warrior. His job is to kill and destroy. And they don’t think anything beyond that.

I’ve heard people say it’s about population control. No. It’s about killing and destroying. How do you do it effectively? That’s it.

I mean, when I was director of the DU Project, when I was still in the good graces of the military and the secretary of the Army and everybody, at that time they loved me. Then they had a real problem. Anyhow, I went in with the intent to insure that if we did use this in combat that we could clean it up and provide the medical care and that everybody had the education: which is knowledge, which is training, which is skills necessary to work with it and respond and clean it up.

Well, what I found out real fast when I got in doing all this work for 15 months was “God Almighty, you can’t clean it up. You can’t provide medical care.”

We knew we had to put procedures in place to minimize the effect as much as we could. That’s why I wrote the Army regulations and put all the training programs together.

ICONOCLAST: Would you list yourself as a whistleblower?

ROKKER: Me? No. I’m an Army officer finishing my job.

I had a direct order to make sure the stuff is cleaned up. Multiple direct orders. Some people might call it a whistleblower because I got fed up with the fact they weren’t complying in 1997 when the guys were sick and dying. I got fed up with it, but no, I’m not a whistleblower. I’m just finishing a job.

I got an order signed by Gen.Schwartzkopf’s chief of staff assigning me to do this for the commander. Schwartzkopf got the order on down from the Pentagon telling him to assign me to clean up the mess. To this day, I have no idea why.

ICONOCLAST: I understand a law just passed in the Louisiana House regarding testing for DU.

ROKKER: You betcha. 101 to nothing, mandating medical care. The individual that was responsible for that is Command Sgt. Major Bob Smith.

ICONOCLAST: What would it take to get Texas to pass something like that, for the health of our soldiers coming home?

ROKKER: I don’t know. I’ve given talks at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. Done the same up in Dallas. We’ve been right there in Crawford. All over the place.

One of the other doctors that works with us is Dr. Ruth McGill. They tried to kill Ruth McGill and I down there on the south side of Dallas a couple of years ago. They tried to run us off the road on that big expressway. We had just finished a radio and television interview, and we were on the way back, and they came right at us. Man, if Dr. McGill hadn’t been a good driver we would have been dead meat.

ICONOCLAST: Who did this?

ROKKER: DOD guys. I had my house broken into a gazillion times when I was in Jacksonville, Alabama. Had windows shot out. I have had direct threats from Army officers in uniform. They bounced me out of the Army Reserve after I testified and forced the Secretary of Defense in England to admit he lied to the House of Lords. That was real interesting. Oh, they don’t like any of us.

The simple thing is, you take tons and tons of solid radioactive waste, and you spread it all over the world, both here in the states and overseas, in combat situations and non-combat situations, do it into the ocean, then refuse to clean it up and provide the medical care. It’s that easy.

You guys are so close to one the largest Army bases in the world that you could spit. I can bet you that if you go over there, even though you had all the orders mandated, thorough training on DU, and it’s in the common task training manual for the Army, which means everybody in the Army must pass the DU test that I wrote, knowing what it is and how to handle it, how to respond — I betcha if you went over you wouldn’t find anyone that knew or did it. And that’s scary as hell.

ICONOCLAST: So what needs to happen?

ROKKER: The President needs to issue an order — he and that idiot over in England, his puppy dog …

ICONOCLAST: Blair?

ROKKER: Yeah, Tony Blair. Just say, “Guys, you are going to comply with the orders that are issued.” When the commanding generals and all the captains and colonels and everybody don’t comply with an order and regulation, an order signed by the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army, and they don’t comply with the Army regulations signed by General Shinseki, they ought to court martial their ass.

ICONOCLAST: But wouldn’t that be the President overriding the Vice President?

ROKKER: No, the Vice President is just the head of the Senate. Cheney runs the thing because George is an idiot.

ICONOCLAST: But you would tell him (Bush) to start running it himself.

ROKKER: Yeah, he needs to run it himself. He’s the Commander-in-Chief. He just needs to tell them to comply with the orders and regulations that are issued. And tell them to stop using DU because it doesn’t even pass the common sense test. Who would want thousands and thousands of tons, who would even want five pounds, of solid radioactive materials thrown in your back yard? It doesn’t even pass the common sense test.

ICONOCLAST: You don’t think Bush is for DU?

ROKKER: Oh, yeah. They just go along with everything that’s happening.

If you look at everything, it’s real interesting. We know the Pentagon was never hit by an airliner, okay? Got hit by a cruise missile. Everybody knows that shit. No evidence of wreckage. No nothing. The hole was only 16 feet across. There’s no way an airliner is going to disappear in a 16-foot hole. When the roof fell down later on and they say in the 9-1-1 report, it was a dive bomb, no trench, no nothing. Hello. You know? Isn’t it astonishing? You go to the photograph of the 9-1-1 report on page 312 and look at it. It’s a little hole, and nothing’s burned and nothing’s along the sides of it. There’s no evidence of an airplane. There’s no trench. There’s no nothing. And then you kind of wonder how can they say that an airliner the size of a 757 did it. Nothing fits.

But you know, it’s the same thing when you come on down. Bush and all those guys, and Powell knew better, okay? They kept saying, “The reason we’re going into Iraq and Gulf War II is because they have WMDs, and they’re going to use them,” right?

Hell, Scott Ritter, Hans Blix, Richard Butler, all of us said we didn’t do it because we blew’em up way back in 1990.

Schwartzkopf’s autobiography on page 390 of It Doesn’t Take A Hero, specifically states that we made the decision.

This is a message from Schwartzkopf, between Powell, Schwartzkopf, Chuck Horner, and Dickie Cheney that we decided to blow up the stuff we gave Iraq in place so it wouldn’t be used on us.

And when we made that decision, we said we’re all going to get sick and guess what? You now have over 325,000 Gulf War I vets, say from August 1990 up till Fall of last year, permanently disabled. Hello? I mean, what more does it take? It’s astonishing.

When you add this all up, it stinks. What I see I don’t like. You have to understand, I’m a red, white, and blue Army officer all the way. I joined the military in 1967, and I just retired. So that’s how many years? Thirty-eight? You know, you’re retired, but you’re still in. It’s a hell of a lot of years.

We got the orders to provide medical care for U.S. military, okay? Well, you can’t under any common sense or international law or Geneva Convention refuse to provide that medical care for anybody else, especially non-combatants. But they do.

ICONOCLAST: It’s unbelievable that medical care is not provided.

ROKKE: That’s what I said when I kept getting these assignments to do it, and every time I got things done, I hit a roadblock, and then when I started yelling and screaming and trying to make them comply, I became persona non grata so fast it would make your head spin.

You know, sometimes, you just have to do what’s right. Boy, they don’t like it. Hell, I’m just finishing a job. I got an order to do it, and I’m an Army officer that does it. If somebody gets wounded in combat, you give him the medical care. If the area gets trashed in combat, you clean up the environment. Because otherwise, it’s useless to go in there.

Everybody’s scared and been lied to so many times. Then all this gets blown apart, like the fact that they’ve had to acknowledge that there were no WMDs — everybody knew that. The guys that said it knew that there weren’t any because they had already made the decision to blow’em up. But you still have people that believe these lies.

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A Survivor’s Perspective

An Interview With
MELISSA STERRY
Gulf War Veteran who served in Kuwait

Interview
By W. Leon Smith
May 11, 2005 Lone Star Iconoclast (Texas)

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news05.htm

Melissa Sterry is a 42-year-old Gulf War veteran who served for six months at a supply base in Kuwait during the winter of 1991-92. Her job with the National Guard’s Combat Equipment Company A was to clean out and prepare tanks and other armored vehicles that had been used during the war for storage. She was also ordered to help bury contaminated parts.
Sterry recently testified before state lawmakers in Connecticut on the effects of depleted uranium in support of a bill, introduced by State Rep. Patricia Dillon, that requires that Connecticut National Guard troops now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be properly screened and treated for depleted uranium contamination.
Sterry lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: Tell me about what is going on in the Connecticut Legislature regarding testing soldiers for depleted uranium.

STERRY: We have two different bills here in Connecticut were working on. We have HB6008 that says soldiers returning have a right for an independent test for depleted uranium. There is a federal law that requires soldiers be tested for exposures to depleted uranium. There are Army regulations requiring it. There are Army publications and technical bulletins explaining how the physicals need to be performed. It is not happening.
The state law is saying soldiers have the right to this test, and that the federal government is not living up to its own laws, so the state is going to take care of it.

ICONOCLAST: The state would conduct the tests?

STERRY: We would ensure that independent testing be done. At this point, we’re not quite sure how the financing of that is going to occur, whether or not the state would pay for it. Whether or not the National Guard will pay for it. Whether or not we would turn around and bill the federal government. The financing of it is up in the air right now, but people are pushing really hard to say it’s federal law. The feds are not doing what they are supposed to be doing; therefore, we’re going to bill them for doing their job.

ICONOCLAST: This passed in the legislature?

STERRY: No. It’s on the docket to be voted on.

ICONOCLAST: It’s already gone through a committee.

STERRY: It’s gone through two committees. It unanimously passed the Veterans Affairs Committee. It unanimously passed the Public Health Committee. The hold-up right now is determining the fiscal note. We’re determining the cost and working it into the budget because Connecticut has a fiscal cap. We have budget issues that we’re working with.

ICONOCLAST: What about the Senate?

STERRY: We have an integrated system. The bill is going to be voted on in both the House and the Senate. The committees are joint committees, so by passing it out of the Veterans Committee and out of the Public Health Commitee, it’s seen by both Democrats and Republicans. It’s been seen by both senators and representatives.

ICONOCLAST: Is there a date in which you expect to have a vote?

STERRY: Probably by the end of next week.

ICONOCLAST: Are the local papers covering that? Can I get online and find a story about this?

STERRY: Sure. You need to reach out to the Hartford Courant and talk to a reporter named Denny Williams.

ICONOCLAST: What’s your stake in this? Are you a victim?

STERRY: No, buddy, I’m a survivor. The only ones who are victims when it comes to depleted uranium are children.

The second bill that is facing Connecticut is Bill 1245. It calls for the formation of a task force, a health study, a conference, and permenant health registry to track veterans health. It recognizes that we need to test to determine the health of veterans. But if we don’t have the additional support structure — just because we know what the health of veterans is doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to respond to it. The second bill takes care of the other piece.

On the one hand, you have to test for things. On the other hand, you have to track veterans’ testing.

You need to understand what is the best kind of test for depleted uranium.
We are also trying to learn from Vietnam. Every war has a signature illness. Every war has soldiers coming home with visible injuries from bullets and bombs, but every war also has soldiers coming home with illnesses that are unique to that war.

In World War I, it was mustard gas.

In World War II, it was extended stays in POW camps.

In Vietnam, it was Agent Orange and Agent Blue.

In Desert Storm and in these wars now, it’s depleted uranium. That’s what 1245 does.

My interest is that I served in Desert Storm. I was exposed to depleted uranium. At that time, we didn’t know about depleted uranium. We didn’t know what it could do to the human body in these extremely low levels of exposure. People didn’t understand what was making us sick.

ICONOCLAST: You didn’t know when you were there that depleted uranium was an ingredient.

STERRY: I had no idea. The depleted uranium issue started to reveal itself in ‘96, ’97, ’98, and ’99. We knew Desert Storm veterans were sick. We didn’t know what was making Desert Storm veterans sick. Then when depleted uranium weapons were used again in Bosnia and Kosovo, we began to understand the connection. We now know what depleted uranium does.

ICONOCLAST: When you were there, you worked in the clean-up?
STERRY: I was involved with logistics. I worked in the prepositioned stocks. These were the supplies that we left behind for the next time we needed to fight. I was involved with cleaning that equipment and putting it in storage.

ICONOCLAST: And it was after this that you realized you started becoming ill?

STERRY: I was injured while I was in Kuwait, so through all of 1992, I was going through surgeries to have my leg rebuilt, and I thought my health problems were related to my injuries. Then by 1993, it was clear that something else was going on. In 1994 and by February 1995, it was clear I was sick, and it was not from my injuries, and there was something wrong with me.

ICONOCLAST: And they determined it was depleted uranium?

STERRY: No. I have never been tested for depleted uranium. No one has ever definitively diagnosed me as having been exposed to depleted uranium. However, there is enough circumstantial evidence in terms of having symptoms, and I have pictures of where I was, what I worked with, and so it’s abundantly clear that I was surrounded by equipment that had depleted uranium in it, and that I was working with the clean-up process, so I was exposed to what is called uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a byproduct of a DU weapon.

ICONOCLAST: So it’s very obvious to you then that DU is the cause of the illness.

STERRY: No. I don’t think it’s the exclusive cause, but I think it’s a contributing factor. Desert Storm veterans have a rather broad collection of symptoms, some of which you see in veterans of Bosnia and Kosovo, where DU weapons were also used, some of which you see in veterans of the current conflict where depleted uranium weapons were used. Some of our symptoms you don’t see in these other groups, and I think those are things that were brought about by other unique environmental factors.

There were a lot of experimental vaccines used on us. There are also some profound questions about the destruction of the various bio-chemical warfare stocks that Saddam Hussein had in place at the time, whether or not we were accidentally exposed from those materials when those stocks were destroyed.

So some of our symptoms meet the critiera of exposure at low levels of sarin gas. Some of our symptoms meet the criteria for reactions to mulitiple vaccines. I’m not saying that depleted uranium is the only thing that made us sick, but clearly, it is a contributing factor.

ICONOCLAST: What do you think needs to be done to correct the problem of DU? Do we quit using it?

STERRY: There are several things we need to do. As a soldier, this is one extrordinary, effective weapon. I dig this stuff.
But I think we need to view it the same way we viewed mustard gas at the end of World War I, that the collateral damage that DU provides outweighs the benefits of utilizing the weapon and that we need to cease usage of this material.

The usage of this material is war on generations not yet born. It wages war on children long after military conflict has ended. It’s not just children of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s the children of American soldiers because we bring this radioactive poisoning back to our families in our genetic material. It’s inside our bodies. We have to stop using it.

I think the second thing we need to do is completely, fully, accurately assess, measure, test, diagnose — pick an verb — our soldiers’ health because doctors can’t heal us until they know what the problem is.

And the third thing is we have to do everything we can to return our National Guard, our Reservists. We have to do whatever we can to bring back people’s health.

ICONOCLAST: I know here in Central Texas, there’s a move to save the Waco Veterans Hospital from being closed..

STERRY: It’s hard to believe what’s happening there, that they would even consider shutting it down. We’re going to need every facility that’s available. It is our duty to care for our veterans when they sacrificed everything in defense of the nation.

ICONOCLAST: Are there tell-tale signs that a person has been exposed to DU?

STERRY: It doesn’t burn your skin the way external exposure does. It’s consuming your major organs on the inside.

ICONOCLAST: Like a microwave oven?

STERRY: Kind of. Depleted uranium gets funky. A bulk of depleted uranium is insoluble. It’s organic in nature. When it slips into that uranium oxide state it attaches itself to other metals and materials that are inorganic. That makes it insoluble. But there are still parts of depleted uranium that are organic, that are soluble. So you can test for depleted uranium with a urine test, but that only gets you the soluble part of DU. A bulk of the DU is insoluble and attaches itself to your bones and your major organs, so it doesn’t wash out with your kidneys.

ICONOCLAST: You can’t test for that in any other way?

STERRY: Not yet. Those tests are being developed by people in Britain and Europe and Japan. Right now, when the government says, “Oh, we’re testing soldiers. We’re testing people. We’ve got this urine test, and we’re not getting positive results, so they weren’t ever exposed,” there’s a fault in that logic. They are using as soluble test for an insoluble item.

ICONOCLAST: Do they have an idea when these other tests will be available?

STERRY: As far as I know, other nations have it. I’m trying to track it down. There are two nations left in the world that utilize depleted uranium — the United States and Great Britain. Everybody else not only doesn’t use the stuff, they’ve forbidden the stuff. Last week, from what I understand, Belgium went so far as to ban all of these materials from their country and are in the process of telling the United States, “Get your garbage out.”

You’ve got a sovereign nation saying, “Get your tanks out. Get your armored personnel carriers out. Get your nuclear warheads out. Get everything out of our country that contains this material.”
There’s a real problem with being able to utilize communication systems to try and find the appropriate test.

On Tuesday, I was at the U.N. for an all-day session of conferences about depleted uranium, part of the nuclear proliferation treaty situation. And, I spoke with a member of the Scottish parliament about what they’re doing. I spoke with Dr. Rosalie Bertell who’s doing a lot of the testing components to try to find out what’s out there. And the Japanese are doing a tremendous amount of this because they’ve had 60 years of living with external radiation poisoning. I’ve been learning about the health situation of hibakusha (radiation victims who were terribly scarred and diseased sufferers of the first atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki),and they’re dealing with what they call “radiation wars.”

People get really freaked out, and they get really scared, and they go into major denial. Part of how we’ve been successful so far (in educating the public) is to keep it real simple. Talk about National Guard. Talk about local troops. Talk about how it impacts people on the local level. Talk about your first responders, your National Guard, or your emergency response people.

Some of the great quotes to come out of people and the best movements that we’ve had in New York State on the subject were because the legislator turned around and asked the local emergency response people for their plans to handle responses to these situations, and their EMS people had no idea that these materials were even being transported through their area.

And they immediately got on board and said, “Oooh, we can’t play with this stuff. You’ve got to ban this. You’ve got to get it out of here.”

ICONOCLAST: Maybe we need to talk to some local EMS personnel to find out if they even know what depleted uranium is.

STERRY: Do they know what it is? Do they know if it is being transported through their area? Do they have any kind of response to it? If you have a 747 crashing in your back yard, you’ve got exposure. It may be extraordinarily small, but you’ve got an exposure. And we’re talking about materials that fluctuate between the size of a tenth of a micron to ten microns, and that’s all aerosol, and that’s all stuff that you can inhale, and it’s stuff that can pass through the pores of your skin.


-------- europe

Germany shuts down nuclear plant
Germany plans to increase use of alternative energy sources

Wednesday, 11 May, 2005, (BBC)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4536203.stm

Germany has shut down its oldest nuclear reactor as part of the country's plan to phase out nuclear power by 2020.

The 36-year-old 340-megawatt plant in the southwestern town of Obrigheim was turned off at 0758 (0558 GMT), said energy firm EnBW.

It is the second of Germany's 19 reactors to be closed down.

To replace the energy demands, the government is proposing investment in other sources such as wind power.

Germany's nuclear programme and its efforts to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels have made it a leader in efforts to fulfil the Kyoto protocol.

But there have been concerns that the country could be creating an energy crisis for itself.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats and their environmentalist Green partners in the ruling coalition reached agreement with Germany's main energy providers in 2001 to phase out nuclear power.

Wind power

Under the current legislation, each of Germany's 19 reactors will be phased out on its 32nd birthday - at which point it is closed.

The first to close was the Stade nuclear reactor, near Hamburg, which is now awaiting decommissioning.

Germany already produces 40% of all the world's wind power and the hope is that by 2010, wind will meet 12.5% of German energy needs.

The country has 16,000 wind turbines, mostly concentrated in the north of the country, near the border with Denmark - including the biggest in the world, owned by the Repower company.

Reuters says the Biblis A nuclear reactor, which has been used since 1975, will be the next one to close in February 2007. 

----

Germany to Shut Second Nuclear Plant Weds

REUTERS GERMANY: May 11, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30755/story.htm

FRANKFURT - Germany will close down a second atomic reactor on Wednesday as part of its policy to phase out nuclear power.

Utility EnBW will disconnect its southern German 340 megawatt (MW) Obrigheim plant on May 11, a spokesman for the state of Baden Wuerttemberg said on Tuesday.

Despite the policy in Germany, nuclear power is back in vogue elsewhere in Europe as atomic reactors produce almost no greenhouse gas emissions, unlike coal and gas power stations.

EnBW had said the 18-year plant, the oldest among 18 working reactors in Germany, would be closed in the first half of May but had not given a specific date.

It will be Germany's second nuclear plant to close over the next two decades under national legislation agreed between operators and the government in the summer of 2000.

The first to close was E.ON's 672 MW Stade reactor, which was switched off in November 2003.

The Baden Wuerttemberg ministry said in a statement that the 37-year old plant would be phased out in three stages lasting until around 2020 under a programme costing around 500 million euros ($641.8 million).

The policy of phasing out nuclear is still subject to debate. Industry and political opposition want it to be reviewed but the government stands firmly by the decision.

The southern German state's environment minister Tanja Goenner said in the statement she wants a discussion on the possible lengthening of running times of EnBW's remaining nuclear facilities in Baden-Wuerttemberg.

They are the Neckarwestheim plant, with two blocks of 840 and 1,365 MW, which is scheduled to close by 2009, and Philippsburg, with two blocks of 926 MW and 1,458 MW, which is meant to shut by 2011.

The south-western German state relies on nuclear energy for 55 percent of its electricity.

Replacing lost local nuclear power with imported nuclear power from France or restarting idled coal plants did not make sense, especially if Germany wanted to meet climate protection targets, Goenner said.

----

FACTBOX - Key Facts About Nuclear Power In Germany

REUTERS GERMANY: May 11, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30759/story.htm

BERLIN - Germany will close down a second atomic reactor on Wednesday as part of its policy to phase out nuclear power.

The closure of the 340 megawatt (MW) plant at Obrigheim in southern Germany will be followed by the winding up of the remaining 17 reactors over the next 16 years.

Here are key facts about nuclear power generation in Germany:

* Germany is Europe's second biggest producer of nuclear power after France, which meets nearly 80 per cent of its electricity requirements from nuclear sources.

* The 18 existing nuclear power plants in Germany have an installed capacity of around 20,600 megawatts - about 16 percent of the country's total power generating capacity.

* Germany imports all its uranium for power plants from countries such as Canada, Australia and Russia.

* In 2000, the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition government agreed with energy companies to gradually close down all nuclear power stations, fulfilling an election pledge.

* The companies also agreed to limit the average life-span of the reactors to 32 years and not build any new nuclear plants.

* The first nuclear power station to close down was the 672 MW Stade reactor in November 2003.

* The Biblis A reactor, which has been operational since 1975, will be the next one to close in February 2007. The last one to be switched off - in April 2021 - will be the Neckarwestheim 2 reactor, operational since 1989.

Sources: Reuters, International Atomic Energy Agency, World Nuclear Association



-------- india 

US gradually coming to accept India as a nuclear power

PTI	PRINT   
WASHINGTON, MAY 11, 2005 (PTI)

http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=297527

Seven years after denying visa to eminent nuclear scientist R Chidambaram following India's nuclear test in which he was a key figure, the United States has allowed him to travel to the country. Chidambaram, principal scientifc advisor to the Indian government enjoying the rank of a minister of state, is coming over for a conference in Tuscon and would "possibly meet with academic folks in Washington," US officials said. "He is not here for any official visit," they added. Analysts say the US is gradually coming round to accept India's status as a nuclear power state though there may be hurdles for the battered American nuclear industry to sell some nuclear reactors to India. Chidambaram was the chairman of the Atomic Energy commission in May 1998 when India had conducted the nuclear test. 


-------- iran

Bombs Won't 'Solve' Iran

By Joseph Cirincione
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 11, 2005; A17

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001185_pf.html

Iran is threatening to restart its suspended uranium enrichment program. If it does, negotiations with the European Union will collapse and the crisis will escalate. Does the United States -- or Israel -- have a military option?

Vice President Cheney seems to think so, or at least he did in January. "Iran is right at the top of the list," he told radio host Don Imus on Inauguration Day. Cheney came close to endorsing military action, noting that "the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."

A bit of history: Back in June of 1991, then-Defense Secretary Cheney gave a photograph of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak to the man who had commanded the Israeli air force during the raid on the site in 1981. "With thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi Nuclear Program in 1981," Cheney wrote, "which made our job much easier in Desert Storm." Cheney may have forgotten that the Reagan administration condemned the raid when it took place, as did most nations. And he may not be aware that the Israeli raid, far from crippling Iraq's nuclear program, actually accelerated it. The raid was a tactical success but a strategic failure.

After Israel bombed the Iraqi reactor on June 7, 1981, using U.S.-supplied F-16s and F-15s, the Reagan administration said, "The United States government condemns the reported Israeli air strike on the Iraqi nuclear facility, the unprecedented character of which cannot but seriously add to the already tense situation in the area." Most other nations joined in denouncing the action.

Israel defended the raid by saying that the Osirak reactor "was intended, despite statements to the contrary, for the production of atomic bombs. The goal of these bombs was Israel." The Israelis were right, at least about Saddam Hussein's plan to use the reactor to make bomb fuel. He intended to use the research reactor Iraq had purchased from France in 1979 to irradiate uranium, producing plutonium that could be extracted for the core of a bomb. The 40-megawatt reactor was near completion at the time of the raid, but it had not yet been fueled with uranium rods.

The raid was hotly debated in the government of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Many, such as Yehoshua Saguy, the head of the intelligence division of the Israeli Defense Forces, argued that Israel should continue to try to find a nonmilitary solution to the threat, as it would take Iraq five to 10 years to produce the material needed for a bomb. In the end, Begin went with the worst-case estimate of a bomb within one to two years and ordered the attack.

The raid, however, speeded up the Iraqi program. According to former Iraqi nuclear official Khadir Hamza, "Israel made a mistake." Hussein had planned to slowly divert plutonium from the reactor, which was under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. His diversion plan might have escaped detection, but with what we now know, it also probably would have taken much longer than even the 10 years Saguy and others estimated at the time. The program was proceeding slowly and had run into numerous technical problems, while Iraq's intense war with Iran was diverting resources from the project. The raid, however, energized Saddam Hussein. He launched a new effort to secretly construct gas centrifuges and other devices (particularly electromagnetic isotope separation units) to produce weapons-grade uranium. The program went underground and mushroomed. "At the beginning we had approximately 500 people working, which increased to 7,000 working after the Israeli bombing," Hamza explained to a Washington audience in November 2000, "The secret program became a much larger and ambitious program."

Israel had pulled off a remarkable military raid, striking targets with great precision over long distances. But the bombing set back Israel more than Iraq. It further harmed Israel's international reputation, later worsened by the ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon, while making Iraq appear a victim of Israeli aggression. Officials heralded the "Begin doctrine" of preemptive strikes, but the attack made Israel complacent. In the words of Israeli-born scholar Avner Cohen, author of "Israel and the Bomb," "The operational success proved to be profoundly and strategically deceptive," as Israel remained unaware of Iraq's new efforts throughout most of the 1980s. Internally, Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions went from a side project to an obsession. Ten years later, in 1991, he was closer to producing a nuclear bomb with uranium than he might ever have been pursuing a plutonium path through Osirak.

The raid had not, despite Cheney's praise, made "our job much easier" but had complicated an already difficult problem. Hussein dispersed and hardened his secret new facilities and protected them with air defenses. In the 1991 war, 43 days of coalition bombing failed to destroy the program, which ended only when U.N. disarmament teams methodically destroyed the equipment on the ground. The real lessons of the Osirak raid are worth remembering as optimistic plans for "solving" Iran now come across the vice president's desk.

The writer is director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He will be available to answer questions at 2 p.m. on http://www.washingtonpost.com.



-------- korea

North Koreans claim a provocative nuclear move

5/11/2005 11:59 AM                                         
	
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-05-11-nkorea_x.htm

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday it has completed removing spent fuel rods from an atomic reactor, enabling it to harvest more weapons-grade plutonium. It was the communist state's latest provocation amid deadlocked talks over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said the country had "successfully finished" removing 8,000 fuel rods from the reactor at its Yongbyon complex, which was shut down last month, so it can "bolster its nuclear arsenal." (Related video: North Korean claim)

North Korea kicked out international nuclear inspectors in late 2002, making it impossible to verify the claim.

While experts previously said an earlier batch of 8,000 rods could yield enough plutonium for five to eight bombs, South Korean media reported the current batch would likely yield material for only a couple of bombs because of the shorter time it was inside the reactor. To get the plutonium, the rods would need to cool and then be reprocessed, which takes months.

The announcement came a day after China rejected using sanctions to prod Pyongyang to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear ambitions, with a spokesman saying Beijing's political and trade relations with its neighbor should be kept separate.

"We stand for resolving the issue through dialogue. We are not in favor of exerting pressure or imposing sanctions," China foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a regular briefing. "We believe that such measures are not necessarily effective."

A Bush administration official said the United States has asked China to redouble its efforts to lure North Korea back to negotiations.

The U.S. appeal, disclosed by a State Department official Tuesday on condition of anonymity, reflects a growing frustration over North Korea's refusal to reopen six-nation talks for nearly a year and rhetoric from Pyongyang that U.S. officials consider alarming.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said "all parties in the region want to see a nuclear-free (Korean) peninsula. And we stay in close contact with our partners in the region on these matters and work closely with them."

"China has made it clear North Korea needs to come back to the six party talks. That's where our focus remains," McClellan said.

The talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions have been stalled since June, with Pyongyang insisting it won't return until Washington drops its "hostile" policy. North Korea says the United States is planning an invasion, a claim Washington denies.

North Korea — which claims it already has at least one atomic weapon — is boosting its arsenal "for the defensive purpose of coping with the prevailing situation," the unnamed North Korean spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry expressed "serious concern" at the development.

"North Korea should immediately halt actions that have a negative impact" on efforts to resume disarmament talks, the ministry said, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. "We strongly urge North Korea to return to the six-party talks without delay."

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi noted North Korea has made such statements in the past to bolster its negotiating position.

"We must work to show that North Korea will benefit the most from returning quickly to the six-nation talks and disposing of its nuclear program," he told reporters.

The North Korean spokesman emphasized Pyongyang's desire to have a self-reliant nuclear power industry.

He noted the country already announced plans to operate its 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, some 50 miles north of Pyongyang, and resume construction on a bigger reactor there because the United States pulled out of a 1994 deal on the North's nuclear program.

U.S. officials accused the North of running a secret uranium enrichment program in 2002 in violation of the earlier deal made under the Clinton administration, sparking the latest nuclear crisis. Under that deal, North Korea agreed to forgo nuclear weapons development in exchange for energy aid and the construction of nuclear reactors that couldn't be diverted for weapons use.

Worries also have grown that the North is preparing a nuclear test, with U.S. officials saying last week that spy satellites show activity in northeastern Kilju — including tunnel digging and the construction of a reviewing stand a sufficient distance away — that could indicate such a move.

On Tuesday, the North's main newspaper alleged the United States was making a "fuss" by spreading reports of alleged test preparations. However, the commentary in the state-run Rodong Sinmun daily didn't deny the North was planning a test.

Amid the tension, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said last weekend that Pyongyang already had enough plutonium to make up to six bombs from an earlier batch of fuel rods at the reactor. 

----

Text of North Korean government nuclear statement

Wed May 11, 2005 07:49 AM ET (Reuters)

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UPHRFYTFK2F2YCRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8455008

SEOUL - North Korea announced on Wednesday it had finished extracting nuclear fuel rods from its Yongbyon plant and increased the size of its atomic weapons arsenal which has raised alarm across the region and beyond.

Following is the text of a statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry carried in the English-language service of the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). DPRK stands for the state's official title, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The relevant field of the DPRK has successfully finished the unloading of 8,000 spent fuel rods from the 5MW pilot nuclear plant in the shortest period recently.

"The DPRK had already declared in Dec. 2002 that it would re-operate the above-said plant and resume the construction of two other nuclear plants, one with a capacity of 50,000 KW and the other with a capacity of 200,000 KW, which had been frozen according to the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework, the keynote of which is the provision of light water reactors to the DPRK because the Bush Administration threatened the DPRK with nuclear weapons in violation of the AF.

"Accordingly, the DPRK keeps taking necessary measures to bolster its nuclear arsenal for the defensive purpose of coping with the prevailing situation, with a main emphasis on developing the self-reliant nuclear power industry." 

----

North Korea says completes nuclear fuel extraction

By REUTERS
Published: May 11, 2005
Filed at 9:02 a.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north.html

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea sharply raised the stakes in its nuclear standoff with regional powers on Wednesday, announcing it had finished extracting nuclear fuel rods at its Yongbyon plant and taken steps to expand its atomic arsenal.

It was the first time North Korea had effectively confirmed it had been working on its reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex north of the capital Pyongyang. Regional powers, notably South Korea, voiced concern and urged it to return to talks designed to end its nuclear ambitions.

The North said in February it was pulling out of the six-country talks and confirmed for the first time it had nuclear weapons. It has since said it would enhance its deterrent force, and Washington fears Pyongyang could be preparing a nuclear test.

``The relevant field of the DPRK has successfully finished the unloading of 8,000 spent fuel rods from the 5 mwpilot nuclear plant in the shortest period recently,'' the North's Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a English-language version carried by the official KCNA news agency.

DPRK is short for the state's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Officials in Seoul said in April the North had suspended the operation of its reactor in Yongbyon. Analysts said this would allow it to extract spent fuel rods, which could be turned into weapons-grade plutonium. Outside experts say the North could already have up to eight nuclear weapons.

``The DPRK had already declared in Dec. 2002 that it would re-operate the above-said plant and resume the construction of two other nuclear plants,'' the North's spokesman added.

The North did not say whether reprocessing of fuel rods -- necessary to make material for nuclear weapons -- had started.

South Korean officials have said they are more concerned about the possibility of reprocessing than a nuclear test.

SEOUL VERY CONCERNED

Pyongyang and Washington signed the Agreed Framework agreement in 1994 in Geneva to mothball the North's plutonium-based nuclear program in return for energy aid, including two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors.

The agreement was effectively broken in late 2002, igniting a new crisis. The United States accused the North of running a covert uranium-based program, a charge Pyongyang denies.

The North's spokesman said it had resumed operations at the plants frozen under the deal because ``the Bush Administration theatened the DPRK with nuclear weapons in violation of the AF.''

``Accordingly, the DPRK keeps taking necessary measures to bolster its nuclear arsenal for the defensive purpose of coping with the prevailing situation, with a main emphasis on developing the self-reliant nuclear power industry,'' the spokesman said.

He added that construction of two other nuclear power plants had also resumed, one with a capacity of 50 megawatts and another with a 200-megawatt capacity.

Three rounds of talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China aimed at dismantling the impoverished North's nuclear programs made little progress, and the process has stalled since the last meeting in June 2004.

South Korea said on Wednesday it was very concerned about the North's announcement and urged Pyongyang to return to talks..

``Such a move by North Korea runs counter to moves to make the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, the government is expressing deep concerns,'' the Seoul Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

China, the North's main ally which has come under pressure from Washington to get the North back to talks, urged restraint.

``We ask all the parties to exercise restraint and we hope that they will do nothing that is detrimental to the resumption of the six-party talks,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told Reuters.

NEGOTIATING PLOY?

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also urged the North to resume talks, but suggested Pyongyang's announcement might be a bargaining ploy.

``These are strategic comments. We have to work on North Korea so they will respond to the six-way talks and realize that abandoning their nuclear programs is very much to their benefit,'' he told reporters. A Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo described the North's announcement as brinkmanship.

Analysts say the North often uses shock negotiating tactics in its international relations. Pyongyang's latest announcement comes after it appeared to hint earlier this week it might be willing to return to the negotiating table.

Media reports that U.S. officials fear the North may be preparing a nuclear test have added fresh urgency to efforts to restart those negotiations, which Pyongyang has boycotted because of what it says is Washington's hostile policy.

On Sunday, a North Korean spokesman appeared to soften Pyongyang's rejection of talks outright by saying it wanted to meet U.S. officials to confirm reports that Washington was ready to recognize the North as a sovereign state and to hold bilateral talks within the six-party process.



-------- missile defense

Military uses threaten to derail Alaska railroad link

May 11, 2005
By Jeremy Hainsworth
ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050510-094956-7325r.htm

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- A rail link between Alaska and Canada, proposed as a faster way to transport natural resources, also would enable the United States to support anti-ballistic missile silos and military bases, a study says.

    While supporters are playing up the economic advantages, and the Alaskan and Yukon governments have signed an agreement to study the idea, critics say the military uses are likely to stir opposition in Canada, where the continental missile shield project is unpopular.

    The report by a Boston firm says the link would benefit the Canadian and U.S. economies, and make it easier for the U.S. military to move its troops through Canada to worldwide theaters of operation such as North Korea.

    The link, which has been debated for years, would require 1,150 miles of new track, from the current Alaska railroad terminus near Alaska's Eielson Air Force Base to Fort St. John or Fort Nelson in northeastern British Columbia. Those two cities already are linked to Canada's national railroad system.

    It would enhance support of missile-defense interceptor silos being built at Fort Greeley in Alaska, and missile-tracking radar on Shemya, one of the Aleutian Islands, says the report by Charles River Associates, prepared for the Yukon Territory provincial government and obtained by the Associated Press.

    Steve Staples, a defense analyst with the Polaris Institute, an Ottawa think tank, suggested Prime Minister Paul Martin would be seen as "duping Canadians" and "allowing participation in missile defense through the back door" if he signed on to a rail link serving U.S. military bases.

    Mr. Martin's office declined to comment.

    Many Canadians fear the anti-missile scheme would lead to the weaponization of space. Mr. Martin confounded Washington by opting out of the project in February, saying Canada was committed to the continent's security through the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the U.S.-Canadian early-warning system.

    The Charles River report said the missiles in Alaska were a buffer against the perceived threat from North Korea, which claims it has nuclear weapons and is said to be working on a missile that could reach North America.

    The railroad, costing $1.15 billion to $2.3 billion, would allow Washington to develop an Alaskan port to station up to three missile defense ships in the northern Pacific, outside Korean territorial waters, the report said.

    "An effective defense requires stationing at least one missile defense ship, and more likely two or three, in the northern Pacific outside North Korean territorial waters," it said.

    Last week, Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie and Alaska Gov. Frank H. Murkowski, a Republican, signed a memorandum of understanding, agreeing to split the estimated $5 million cost of the study, which begins this month and will be finished by June 2006. 



-------- pacific

Indigenous Presentation to the Delegates of the Seventh Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty

By Tony de Brum, Lolelaplap Trust
11 May 2005

From: David Krieger <dkrieger@napf.org>
Date: Mon May 16, 2005 7:33pm 

It is an honor for me to be able to speak to you today on  behalf of indigenous people throughout the world whose lives have been dramatically affected by the proliferation of weapons. I  bring you the greetings of the people of the Marshall Islands, and more  specifically the paramount leaders of the Ralik chain, Iroijlaplap Imata  Kabua, and Iroijlaplap Anjua Loeak, whose domains have borne the brunt  of United States military weapons development – from the nuclear bombs  of the Cold War to the missiles that carry them today.

I lived on the island of Likiep in the northern Marshalls  for the entire 12 years of the US atomic and thermonuclear testing program  in my country. I witnessed most of the detonations, and was just  9-years old when I experienced the most horrific of these explosions,  the infamous BRAVO shot that terrorized our community and traumatized our  society to an extent that few people in the world can imagine.

While BRAVO was by far the most dramatic test, all 67 of the  shots detonated in the Marshall Islands contributed one way or  another to the nuclear legacy that haunts us to this day. As one of our  legal advisors has described it, if one were to take the total yield of the  nuclear weapons tested in the Marshall Islands and spread them out  over time, we would have the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima shots, every day  for twelve years.

But the Marshall Islands’ encounter with the bomb did not  end with the detonations themselves. In recent years, documents released  by the United States government have uncovered even more horrific  aspects of the Marshallese burden borne in the name of international  peace and security. US government documents clearly demonstrate that its scientists conducted human radiation experiments with  Marshallese citizens. Some of our people were injected with or coerced  to drink fluids laced with radiation. Other experimentation involved the purposeful and premature resettlement of people on islands  highly contaminated by the weapons tests to study how human beings  absorb radiation from their foods and environment. Much of this human experimentation occurred in populations either exposed to  near lethal amounts of radiation, or to “control” populations who were  told they would receive medical “care” for participating in these  studies to help their fellow citizens. At the conclusion of all these  studies, the United States still maintained that no positive linkage can be established between the tests and the health status of the  Marshallese. Just in the past few weeks, a new US government study has  predicted higher than 50% higher than expected incidence of cancer in  the Marshall Islands resulting from the atomic tests.

Although the testing of the atomic and thermonuclear weapons  ended 48 years ago, we still have entire populations living in social  disarray. The people of Rongelap Atoll, the inhabited island closest  to the ground zero locations, remain in exile in their own country. I  might also add that although the people of Rongelap were evacuated by the  US government for earlier smaller weapons tests, the US government  purposefully decided not to evacuate them prior to the detonation of the  BRAVO event – a thermonuclear weapon designed to be the largest device ever detonated by the United States. The people of Rongelap were  known to be in harms way but were not warned about BRAVO in advance and  had no ability or knowledge of how to protect themselves or reduce  their exposure.

Throughout the years, America’s nuclear history in the  Marshall Islands has been colored with official denial, self-serving control of information, and abrogation of commitment to redress the  shameful wrongs done to the Marshallese people. The scientists and military  officials involved in the testing program picked and chose their study  subjects, recognized certain communities as exposed when it served their interests, and denied monitoring and medical attention to  subgroups within the Marshall Islands. I remember well their visits to  my village in Likiep where they subjected every one of us to tests and  invasive physical examinations which, as late as 1978, they denied  every carrying out. In later years when I was a public servant for the RMI  I raised the issue requesting that raw data gathered during these visits  be made available to us. United States representatives responded by  saying that our recollections were juvenile and did not consider the  public health missions of the time.

For decades, the US government has utilized slick  mathematical and statistical representations to dismiss the occurrence of exotic anomalies, including malformed fetuses, and abnormal  appearances of diseases in so called “unexposed areas,” as coincidental and  not attributable to radiation exposure. We have been told  repeatedly, for example, that our birthing anomalies are the result of  incest or a gene pool that is too small – anything but the radiation. These  explanations are offensive, and obviously wrong since these abnormalities  certainly did not occur before we became the proving ground for US  nuclear weapons. Selective referral of Marshallese patients to  different military hospitals in the United States and its territories  also made it easier for the US government to dismiss linkages between  medical problems and radiation exposure. The several unexplained  fires that led to the destruction of numerous records and medical charts  for the patients with the most acute radiation illnesses further  underscores this point. In spite of all these studies and findings, we  were told that positive linkage was still impossible because of what  they called “statistical insignificance.”

I have been a student of the horrific impacts of the nuclear  weapons testing program for most of my life. I served as interpreter  for American officials who proclaimed Bikini safe for  resettlement and commenced a program to repatriate the Bikini people who for  decades barely survived on the secluded island of Kili. I  accompanied the American High Commissioner of the Trust Territory just a few  years later to once again remove the repatriated residents from Bikini  because their exposure had become too high for the US government’s  comfort. I was also personally involved in the translation of the Enewetak  Environmental Impact Statement that declared Enewetak safe for  resettlement. I voiced my doubts in a television interview at the time by  describing the US public relations efforts associated with the Enewetak  clean-up as a dog-and-pony show. Later, during negotiations to end the  trust territory arrangement with the United States, we discovered that certain scientific information regarding Enewetak was being withheld  from us because, as the official US government memorandum stated, “the Marshallese negotiators might make overreaching demands” on  the United States if the facts about the extent of damage in the  islands were known to us.

The outcome of our negotiations was the end of the United  Nations Trusteeship and a treaty, which, among other things,  provided for the ongoing responsibilities of our former trustee for the  communities impacted by the nuclear weapons tests. This assistance  provided by the US government for radiation damages and injuries is based on  a US government study that purports to be the best and most accurate knowledge about the effects of radiation in the Marshall  Islands. Our agreement to terminate our United Nations trusteeship that  the US government administered was based largely on those  assurances. We have since discovered that even that covenant by the United  States was false. Today, not only is the US government backpedaling on this  issue but its official position as enunciated by the current  administration is to flee its responsibilities to the Marshall Islands for the severe  nuclear damages and injuries perpetrated upon them.

After spending decades of my life trying to persuade the US  government to take responsibility for the full range of damages and  injuries caused by the testing of 67 atmospheric atomic and thermonuclear  weapons in the Marshall Islands, a new global arms system arrived at the  door of the Marshall Islands. After years of ICBM testing, the Marshall  Islands now has the dubious distinction of hosting the US government’s  missile shield testing program. The US government shoots  Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at the Marshall Islands. >From an  area leased by the US Army on Kwajalein Atoll, the Ronald Reagan Missile  Defense Test Site, the US launches interceptor missiles at the  incoming ICBMs to test the ability of these interceptors to track and destroy  incoming missiles. These tests impact every aspect of our lives… from  the local people who are relocated from their homes, to the whales,  sea turtles, and birds that have lived in harmony with human beings in  our region of the world for centuries.

As history repeats itself in the Marshall Islands, the  people of Kwajalein have been removed from their homelands, crowded into unbearable living squalor on a 56-acre island with 18,000  residents called Ebeye. This is the equivalent of taking everyone here in Manhattan and forcing them to live on the ground floor – can  you imagine the density of Manhattan if there were no skyscrapers? The  US Army base depends on Ebeye for housing its indigenous labor force, but  the US Army has also erected impenetrable boundaries keeping the  Marshallese at an arm’s length; Marshallese on the island adjacent to the US  base are unable to use the world-class hospital in emergencies, to  fill water bottles during times of drought, or to purchase basic food  supplies when cargo ships are delayed. One does not have to be a rocket  scientist to suspect that the lands, lagoon, and surrounding seas of  Kwajalein, are being damaged from depleted uranium and other substances.  Unfortunately, our efforts to seek a clear understanding of the  consequences of the missile testing program – data we need to make informed  decisions regarding our future or the prerequisite rehabilitation of  our lands before repatriation – have been spurned by the United States  government. Perchlorate additives in the missiles fired from Kwajalein  have been detected in the soil and the water lenses but to date no  real data has become available for meaningful, independent study. The  lands leased by the United States military are compensated far below market.  Efforts by the Kwajalein leadership to deal with the realities which  face them when the current agreement expires in 2016 have been largely  ignored as the US openly and callously discusses the uses of our lands  beyond 2016 and into 2086…all without our consent. Our Constitution  specifically prohibits the taking of land without consent or proper  compensation.

We call upon the international community to extend its hands  to assist the people of the Marshall Islands to extricate themselves  from the legacy of the nuclear age and the burden of providing  testing grounds for weapons of mass destruction. In the countries that  produce these weapons we have come together to protest, if a person’s land or resources become contaminated, persons so affected have the  option to buy another house and move elsewhere. For indigenous people  it is not that simple. Our land and waters are sacred to us. Our land  and waters embody our culture, our traditions, our kinship ties, our  social structures, and our ability to take care of ourselves. Our  lands are irreplaceable.

When we talk about the importance of non-proliferation of  weapons we also must include in our discourse the essential  non-proliferation of illness, forced relocation, and social and cultural ills in the indigenous communities that pay disproportionately for the  adverse consequences resulting from the process, deployment, and  storage of weapons. A relatively few number of world leaders and  decision-makers do not have the right to destroy the well-being and livelihood  of any society, whether large or small, in the name of global  security. Security for indigenous people means healthy land, resources  and body – not the presence of weapons and the dangers they engender.  Global leaders do not have, nor should they be allowed to assume  the right, to take my security away so that they may feel more secure  themselves.

MAY PEACE BE WITH YOU.

Thank you.   




-------- pakistan

Pakistan: Nuclear deterrence crucial to south Asian peace

Wednesday May 11, 8:27 PM Associated Press

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050511/ap/d8a0vkhg0.html

Pakistan's Prime Minister said Wednesday his nation's nuclear arsenal has become a key deterrent against rival India and has helped keep the peace in South Asia.

"Nuclear deterrence has now become indispensable to our security and a factor of peace and stability in the region," Shaukat Aziz said in Singapore. "However, we are opposed to an arms race and will maintain deterrence at the minimum credible level."

Both Pakistan and India have been fraught by decades of hostility _ mainly over the divided region of Kashmir _ which both countries claim.

Since 1989, more than a dozen insurgent groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan. On Wednesday, two powerful explosions killed at least six people and wounded 40 others in the Indian portion of Kashmir.

Aziz said the Kashmir issue "cannot be put on the backburner or wished away."

He said Pakistan was forced into the nuclear option after India's nuclear tests in 1998.

"In 2002, when India mobilized one million troops along our borders, nuclear deterrence forced India to hold back and review its policy of escalation which then led to the current improvement in relations," Aziz said in a speech on security.

Since wide-ranging peace efforts started a year and a half ago, Pakistan and India have restored transportation links including buses between Lahore and New Delhi, and a historic service across the divided region of Kashmir, and air and rail travel.

Aziz is on a three-day official visit to Singapore, and leaves Thursday.

He had earlier witnessed the signing of an agreement between Singapore and Pakistan to jointly battle transnational crime and terrorism. The two countries will also begin negotiations on a free trade pact in June. 



-------- russia

Russia to allow US inspectors into some nuclear sites, but not all

Wed May 11, 2005 2:59 PM ET (AFP)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050511/pl_afp/russiausnuclear_050511185915

MOSCOW - Russia said it will allow US inspectors to visit nuclear sites whose security systems are financed by Washington but not sites deemed sensitive.

At a summit in Bratislava in February US and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin agreed to work together to enhance what was described as a "security culture" at nuclear sites.

"In sites where technical security means have been installed with US money, we are bound by the agreement to allow American inspectors entry at least three times," Alexander Rumiantsev, head of the Russian Federal Energy Agency, told the daily newspaper Vremia Novostei, quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency.

"But on more sensitive sites, those where we look after security ourselves, access will be closed to the Americans."

The agreement was signed after Washington voiced fears that nuclear materials were being stolen from poorly protected sites and being sold.

Rumiantsev explained several dozen sites would be open to the American inspectors, including those that housed nuclear reactors and research centres, so that they could see for themselves where the money they invested had been spent.

"It concerns tens of millions of dollars," he said.

He also revealed that Russia "would not insist that America allow Russian inspectors to view their sensitive sites" in the United States.

Russian daily Kommersant reported in February that all nuclear sites in Russia, including military ones, would be subject to the inspections.

However, Russian Defence Minister Serguey Ivanov said that no visit to any site was obligatory.


----

Nuclear engineer arraigned in federal court

Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05131/502495.stm

A former Westinghouse Electric Corp. nuclear engineer from Monroeville made his first appearance in federal court yesterday on charges that he helped Russia's former atomic energy minister steal more than $9 million intended to improve nuclear safety in Russia.

Mark M. Kaushansky, 53, was released on a $100,000 bond pending his arraignment next week. He had no comment.

Federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh say he and Yevgeny Adamov, 66, of Moscow, were business partners who conspired to divert money that was supposed to be used to upgrade Russia's atomic power plants.

Kaushansky, a Ukrainian immigrant, was working as an engineer at Westinghouse in the late 1980s when he met Adamov and assisted in translations for company officials during meetings with him.



-------- space

REP. CYNTHIA MCKINNEY TRIES TO DEFUND NUCLEAR ROCKET: YOUR HELP URGENTLY NEEDED
 
On May 5,  Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) sent a "Dear Colleague" letter to all members of Congress urging them to join her in an effort to defund Project Prometheus, the nuclear rocket.  See her letters at this link: www.space4peace.org/articles/cynthis_mckinney.pdf
 
In the letter, Rep. McKinney says, "I write to invite you to join me as a co-signer on the two attached letters.  They are intended to protect our citizens from the potential of a catastrophic nuclear accident posed by the Prometheus Project, a NASA/DoE/Pentagon program to develop and deploy a nuclear propulsion rocket."
 
"The first letter is directed  to the office that will prepare the Preliminary Environmental Impact Statement for the Prometheus Program.  The second letter is to express the support of Members of Congress for shifting Federal funding from the development of nuclear propulsion systems to research and development for solar and other alternative energy systems that can support our space program."
 
This effort by Rep. McKinney is a crucial step in the effort to ensure that we stop the nuclearization of space.  In addition, it is the nuclear rocket that could be used to power weapons in space like the space-based laser so it is also a vital step in ensuring that we cut-off the power source for the weaponization of space.  (In a study Commissioned by Congress called Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years, staffer John Collins reported that "Nuclear reactors thus remain the only known long-lived, compact source able to supply military space forces with electric power.... Larger versions could meet multimegawatt needs of space-based lasers..... Nuclear reactors must support major bases on the moon until better options, yet unidentified, become available.")
 
We urge all our affiliate members and supporters to immediately call your Congressperson in Washington DC and request that they contact Rep. McKinney's office to become a cosigner of her letter calling for the defunding of the nuclear rocket.  Please call the Congressional switchboard right away at (202) 224-3121 and ask for the office of your Congressional representative. 
 
Please help us by passing this e-mail on to your personal lists so that we can expand the numbers of people who see it.  Call me if you have any questions. 
 
It is not often that we get Congressional support to end the arms race in space.  We don't want to let Rep. McKinney down!  Please act today.
 
Thank you.
 
Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 729-0517
(207) 319-2017 (Cell phone)
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Our blog)



-------- treaties

A Nuclear Blunder?

Critics say U.N. Ambassador-designate John Bolton didn't 
properly prepare for a key nonproliferation conference, which could 
be a serious setback in U.S. efforts to isolate Iran.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh and Eve Conant
Newsweek
Updated: 1:37 p.m. ET May 11, 2005

http://g.msn.com/0MN2ET7/2?http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7817986/site/newsweek&&CM=EmailThis&CE=1 

May 11 - George W. Bush has said it often enough. The No. 1 security challenge for America post-9/11 is to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue regimes. In a landmark speech at the National Defense University in February 2004, the president called for a toughened Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other new initiatives. “There is a consensus among nations that proliferation cannot be tolerated,” Bush said. “Yet this consensus means little unless it is translated into action.”

By action Bush meant the hard work of diplomacy, John Bolton, the president’s point man on nuclear arms control, told Congress a month later. For one thing, America needed to lead an effort at “closing a loophole” in the 35-year-old NPT, Bolton testified back then. The treaty’s provisions had to be updated to prevent countries like Iran from enriching uranium under cover of a peaceful civilian program—which is technically permitted under the NPT—when what Tehran really sought was a bomb, according to the administration.

But if the NPT needed so much fixing under U.S. leadership, why was the United States so shockingly unprepared when the treaty came up for its five-year review at a major conference in New York this month, in the view of many delegates? And why has the United States been losing control of the conference’s agenda this week to Iran and other countries—a potentially serious setback to U.S. efforts to isolate Tehran?

Part of the answer, several sources close to the negotiations tell NEWSWEEK, lies with Bolton, the undersecretary of State for arms control. Since last fall Bolton, Bush’s embattled nominee to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations, has aggressively lobbied for a senior job in the second Bush administration. During that time, Bolton did almost no diplomatic groundwork for the NPT conference, these officials say.

“John was absent without leave” when it came to implementing the agenda that the president laid out in his February 2004 speech, a former senior Bush official declares flatly. Another former government official with experience in nonproliferation agrees. “Everyone knew the conference was coming and that it would be contentious. But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on this six months ago,” this official said. “The White House and the National Security Council started worrying, wondering what was going on. So a few months ago the NSC had to step in and get things going themselves. The NPT regime is full of holes—it's very hard for the U.S. to meet our objectives—it takes diplomacy.”

Diplomacy is just a fancy word for salesmanship—making phone calls, working the corridors, listening to and poking holes in opposing arguments, lobbying others to back one’s position. But “delegates didn’t hear a peep from the U.S. until a week before the conference,” says Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There’s no sign of any coordinated U.S. effort to develop a positive program.” One diplomat involved with the conference agrees. “There were a number of the issues Bush raised in his February 2004 speech that needed to be taken up here, like the establishment of a special committee at the IAEA [the International Atomic Energy Agency] to go after [treaty] noncompliers. But painfully little has been done on that a year later.”

A spokesperson for the NSC referred all questions about Bolton and its own role to the State Department. Asked to respond to the criticism, a State Department official denied that the United States had been unprepared for the conference or was underplaying it. He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice couldn’t attend because she was caught in between back-to-back foreign trips to Latin America and to Russia. Bolton himself was preoccupied with his Senate confirmation, and Robert Joseph has yet to be confirmed as Bolton’s replacement as undersecretary, the State official said, adding, “We had several prep conferences for the NPT.”

Bolton, who faces a scheduled confirmation vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, has been savaged by critics in recent weeks over his alleged manipulation of intelligence, his sometimes tempestuous efforts to sideline officials who disagreed with him, his statements under oath and other complaints. Throughout the Bolton controversy, his backers in the Bush administration have argued that though he may need better people skills, he has been very effective as a public official. Yet some critics of Bolton say that his alleged mishandling of the NPT conference and other initiatives show that he has sometimes botched the administration’s business as well.

Bolton, for instance, often takes and is given credit for the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative—an agreement to interdict suspected WMD shipments on the high seas—and the deal to dismantle Libya’s nuclear program (a deal that Bolton had sought to block). But the former senior Bush official who criticized Bolton’s performance on the NPT conference says that in fact Bolton’s successor, Robert Joseph, deserves most of the credit for those achievements. This official adds that it was Joseph, who was in charge of counterproliferation at the NSC, who had to pitch in when Bolton fumbled preparations for the NPT conference, as well. Bush, in his February 2004 speech, also sought to give new powers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which enforces the treaty. But Bolton, says the former Bush official, “focused much more time and attention trying to deny Mohammed elBaradei a third term” as head of the IAEA. The effort failed, and it was considered another international humiliation for the United States. (Ironically, elBaradei has been one of Washington’s chief allies at the NPT conference, pushing for parts of the Bush agenda.)

Critics of Bolton acknowledge that even in the best of times the ongoing NPT review conference—which lasts for a month—is a “painful mess” at which little of substance is achieved, as one international diplomat involved puts it. And today the negative sentiment against the United States is so strong, one Bush official said, that “not even Metternich could win an agreement here.” Mitchell Reiss, the former policy-planning chief at State, says that “one of the real challenges is trying to persuade the non-aligned movement [a caucus of non-nuclear developing countries] that nonproliferation is not a gift to the United States, but that it’s fundamentally in their national-security interests.”

Still, in past decades Washington has signaled its seriousness about the NPT by sending heavy hitters—Vice President Al Gore went in 1995, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000. At the ’95 conference in particular, Washington won kudos for leading the fight to extend the NPT’s life.

The NPT, perhaps the most successful arms-control treaty in history, has been in effect since 1970. It permits the already declared nuclear states—the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China—to keep their nuclear arsenals while forbidding such weapons to everyone else—as long as all parties strive “in good faith” to achieve nuclear disarmament and the non-nuclear states get access to civilian nuclear power. The treaty has 188 signatories and only a few detractors, among them North Korea and potentially Iran (Israel, Pakistan and India also refuse to sign.) But in recent years the “loophole” in this grand bargain has become more apparent: the treaty contains worrisome ambiguities that may allow states like Iran to legally pursue a nuclear arms capability disguised as a civilian program.

All signs are that by the end of the month, that loophole will remain. The Bush administration has achieved, for the moment, a united front with France, Germany and Britain in seeking to pressure the Iranians to open up and cease uranium enrichment. But now the administration finds itself outflanked at the conference as it seeks to win a wider international consensus in favor of a hard line against Iran. Bush officials have said that if they must eventually confront Tehran, they want to correct the unilateralist mistakes made in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Yet in the last week, as the conference began, the United States found it had to concede a key point on the agenda. It had to drop its demands for a veiled reference to the threats from rogue states and terrorism since 2000, including the covert development of an Iranian nuclear program. Talks have been all but paralyzed since, to the point where the delegates can’t even agree on a basic agenda for the conference.

Iranian officials at the conference say they are happily signing onto the agenda of the “nuclear have-nots” led by the non-aligned movement, which insists the United States and other nuclear states hold to their side of the NPT bargain. This includes supplying civilian nuclear technology and committing to an eventual dismantling of their nuclear arsenals. It is this agenda, one Iranian official involved in the discussions told NEWSWEEK, that is likely to dominate the meeting “despite the U.S. attempt to divert attention by focusing on Iran.”

----

Nonproliferation Realities: * McNamara * Ellsberg -- Interviews Available

From: Institute for Public Accuracy [mailto:dcinstitute@igc.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 12:22 PM

Noon ET -- Wednesday, May 11, 2005

With the review conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) continuing 
at the United Nations, commentators available for interviews include:

ROBERT McNAMARA, (202) 682-3200, dcoffice@corning.com, 
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2829&print=1

    Former Secretary of Defense McNamara said today: "The NPT was signed by 
a president. It was submitted to the Senate; it was ratified by the Senate. 
It is today the law of the land. The U.S. government is not adhering to 
Article VI of the NPT and we show no signs of planning to adhere to its 
requirements to move forward with the elimination -- not reduction, but 
elimination -- of nuclear weapons. That was the agreement, these other 
countries would not develop nuclear weapons and the nuclear powers would 
move to elimination. We are violating that." McNamara wrote the article 
"Apocalypse Soon" in the current edition of Foreign Policy.

DANIEL ELLSBERG, cell: (510) 847-4613, EllsbergD@cs.com, 
http://www.truthtellingproject.org, 
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/03/1357233

    Currently in New York City participating in events related to the NPT 
talks, Ellsberg is author of the book "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the 
Pentagon Papers." He said today: "No one has ever characterized current 
U.S. nuclear policy so well, succinctly, as Robert McNamara in the current 
issue of Foreign Policy: 'Immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and 
dreadfully dangerous.' That description has been valid for half a century. 
And not in one year since the NPT went into effect 35 years ago has any 
American administration acted effectively to escape those characteristics, 
nor ever honestly intended even to attempt to fulfill the Article VI 
'commitment' in that treaty to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."

    Ellsberg added: "No nuclear weapons state could now, or ever, 
persuasively justify in public possessing even as many nuclear warheads as 
Israel has -- some 200 in 1986, perhaps 400 now -- let alone the 2,000 the 
U.S. still deploys, inexcusably, on hair-trigger alert, still less the 
4,000 to 8,000 additional weapons in our stockpile. The same applies to 
Russia, which maintains comparable numbers on alert and in its arsenal and, 
like the U.S., refuses to commit itself not to initiate nuclear war at its 
own discretion. De-alerting, commitment to no-first-use, a ratified 
comprehensive test ban, and cut-off of production of weapons-usable 
materials are rightly defined by a vast majority of nations in the world as 
legal obligations pursuant to Article VI of the NPT and as measures 
urgently owed by all nuclear weapons states to the survival of 
civilization. Along with these, immediate massive reductions in U.S. and 
Russian stockpiles are in order, far below the START II and SORT targets 
which project indefinitely numbers far above the thousand warheads that 
each deployed when the treaty was signed in 1968.

    "But even huge reductions are not a substitute for the Article VI goal 
of elimination of nuclear weapons. The measures above must be implemented 
soon as concrete steps on a definite timetable toward the global, verified 
nuclear abolition. For at least 40 years it has been clear to thoughtful 
scientists and officials that in the long run nuclear disarmament and 
nonproliferation were inextricably linked. That long run will shortly be 
behind us. It will soon be all or none. Either ALL nations -- in particular 
our own -- forego the right to possess and threaten the use of nuclear 
weapons or EVERY nation will claim that right, and many more nations will 
act on it, sharply increasing the chance of regional nuclear wars and 
leakage of nuclear materials and weapons to terrorist groups."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org


-------- ukraine

Israelis to recycle nuclear waste in Chernobyl

05/11/2005 15:38 Pravda (Translated by: Guerman Grachev)

http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/379/15445_chernobyl.html

An Israeli energy company is going to kick off a large-scale project in Ukraine for the treatment and recycling of radioactive waste in Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Israeli company signed an agreement with the Ukrainian government.

Israeli specialists are planning to use their exclusive methods of plasma gasification for storing and recycling the Chernobyl nuclear waste. The methods were developed in collaboration with the Moscow Kurchatov Institute, reports Regnum.

The Israelis are going to build a few small-sized substations to ensure effective treatment of the Chernobyl nuclear waste. According to independent financial experts, Ukraine is estimated to pay about $35 million a year for the project. Despite the substantial costs of the project, it is thought to pay back in the long run as a permanent solution for the treatment and recycling of nuclear waste produced by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.




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

Duke considers building a new nuclear plant

Wed May 11, 2005 08:59 AM ET (Reuters)

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UPHRFYTFK2F2YCRBAELCFFA?type=topNews&storyID=8456045

NEW YORK, May 11 - Duke Energy Corp. on Wednesday said it is considering building a new nuclear power plant and plans to modernize and expand two existing power plants.

The company said it is seeking bids from the wholesale power market for up to 1,500 megawatts starting in 2009, to gauge demand ahead of deciding on its option to build a nuclear plant.



-------- nevada

E-mail scandal doesn't doom Yucca, Bodman tells lawmakers

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Las Vegas Review-Journal

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2005/May-11-Wed-2005/news/26492632.html

WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday the Bush administration will continue to move forward at Yucca Mountain while it investigates e-mail messages that suggest some quality assurance documents on the nuclear waste project might have been faked.

"It has been my judgment that until I see something that indicates the science of this project has been compromised, we're going to go forward," Bodman said after emerging from a meeting with Nevada lawmakers.

"We continue to do our work, and I don't consider Yucca Mountain to be dead," Bodman said.

The energy secretary conveyed the same message to four Nevada lawmakers during a half-hour meeting. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., was in Las Vegas with her son, Max, who underwent an appendectomy on Tuesday.

It was decidedly not the message the state leaders wanted to hear in response to their calls for repository planning to be put on hold while investigators weigh possible effects of the controversial e-mails.

The session was described by participants as cordial turned frosty as Bodman was direct in answering the Nevadans' calls for a project halt, and for DOE to move faster to turn over documents to a House subcommittee investigation headed by Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev.

"I just don't know if he needs better skills on Capitol Hill," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said after Bodman left the meeting. "He just brushed it off like it was no big deal, and we believe it was a big deal."

The gathering in the U.S. Capitol office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., marked the first meeting between Bodman and the Nevada delegation since he became energy secretary early this year.

It also was their first meeting since the energy secretary on March 16 disclosed a cache of e-mail messages from 1998-2000 that suggested one or two scientists might have falsified documents to satisfy quality assurance requirements on hydrology research they were performing.

Inspectors general at the Energy Department and the Department of Interior are investigating with assistance from the FBI. DOE has initiated another internal review to see whether the work being questioned affected decisions to seek a license for Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste burial site.

Bodman said he did not know when the internal reviews would be finished.

"Until the work is completed I have not yet formed a judgment on the validity or the lack of validity of the science," Bodman said. "Everybody is working hard in an effort to make that determination."

Nevada lawmakers charged that Bodman did not convey a sense of urgency to them.

"We thought he would be concerned about e-mails that indicate the science was rigged," Reid said. "Frankly, that was of no interest to him. He said the project was going forward as is. He was not apologetic to us at all."

Porter said DOE has dragged its feet in turning over documents to his subcommittee, saying the secretary's "respect for the legislative process was less than it should be."

According to participants, Bodman said he did not want to take any steps that might jeopardize ongoing investigations, an answer that did not satisfy the lawmakers.

"It was something of an eye-opening experience to realize they have an obvious mandate to license Yucca Mountain despite what the science may say or what they don't know," said Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

Gibbons said Nevada lawmakers might seek to withhold Energy Department money later this year.

"It gets down to playing hardball," Gibbons said. "We control their funding."


-------- new mexico

UC partners on Los Alamos bid

By Ian Hoffman, Tri-Valley Herald STAFF WRITER
05/11/2005 04:03:17 AM

http://www.insidebayarea.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=2727343

Two corporate powers of the nuclear world — Bechtel Corp. and the University of California — are expected today to announce a joint bid for management of the birthplace of the bomb, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The alliance brings the nation's largest research university and one of the world's largest engineering firms head to head in competition with teams headed by the nation's first- and third-largest defense contractors, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Executives at Bechtel National, the federal contracting arm of Bechtel Corp., are expected to shore up the University of California's weaknesses on day-to-day operations and management.

Repeated, high-profile failings in financial control, safety and security prompted the U.S. Department of Energy to open the Los Alamos contract for competition bidding for the first time.

The university had run the lab unchallenged since 1943,   supplying the scientists who designed all of the nuclear explosives in the U.S. arsenal, most of them designed at Los Alamos.

For months, university officials have insisted that their expertise in weapons and scientific management in general warranted a lead role in a team bid to retain the Los Alamos contract.

But after lengthy negotiation, sources said, the university and Bechtel National, agreed to a 50-50 partnership on the Los Alamos bid, which
	
also on the Bechtel side includes the nuclear operations firm BWXT and the engineering and construction firm Washington Group International. BWXT's role in the alliance is considered essential because Los Alamos for now operates the nation's only manufacturing facility for plutonium pits, the crucial fission cores of thermonuclear explosives. The facility also makes plutonium-238 batteries, known as radioisotope thermoelectric generators, for powering NASA spacecraft and various defense missions.  

The UC-Bechtel partnership sets up an intriguing dynamic between the scientists and executives responsible for advising the president on whether to return to nuclear testing and the operator of the nation's nuclear test site in the Nevada desert. Bechtel also manages construction and cleanup work at two other Energy Department sites.

They are pitted against Lockheed, which operates Sandia National Laboratories, designer of the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons,   and manufactures several delivery vehicle components for nuclear weapons.

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.



-------- south carolina

MOX testing should begin within month

By Jason Cato, The Herald, Rock Hill, South Carolina
(Published May 11‚ 2005)

http://www.heraldonline.com/local/story/4853042p-4455017c.html

LAKE WYLIE -- The four mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel assemblies recently delivered to the Catawba Nuclear Station will be loaded into a reactor within the next month, a Duke Power official said Tuesday.

Reactor 1 was shut down Friday for a regular maintenance and refueling period, which typically takes about four weeks, said spokesman Tim Pettit. He would not say when the MOX would be loaded or when the reactor would be back online, due to security and trade secret concerns.

The MOX fuel, which was made in France using weapons-grade plutonium, will be tested in the reactor for approximately three years as part of a test program designed to see if the material can be used safely and effectively in commercial nuclear reactors. The four MOX fuel assemblies will be among 189 uranium-oxide assemblies.

Should the test go well, a full MOX program could begin at Catawba and other Duke Power plants. A full program would use about 40 MOX fuel assemblies.

Catawba is the first U.S. nuclear plant to use MOX fuel and the first in the world to use MOX fuel made with weapons-grade plutonium.

Extra security, monitoring

Tom Clements, the senior adviser to Greenpeace International's nuclear campaign, said Tuesday that Duke would have to have extra security in place until the assemblies are loaded into the reactor. He also said the assemblies must be moved and then monitored with extreme caution. Besides validating the performance of the MOX fuel, Clements said the assemblies' fabrication also is being tested.

Since MOX fuel containing weapons-grade plutonium has never been used before in a commercial plant, Clements said the assemblies must be monitored to make sure the fuel rods do not rupture or the fuel cells expand.

"That will not necessarily lead to an accident, but it wouldn't be good," Clements said.

Duke officials have said they plan to use extreme caution when using MOX fuel, as they do with uranium-oxide, which normally is used. They've also said that they expect the test program to be a success.

The MOX fuel program is the result of an agreement reached between the United States and Russia in 2000 for each country to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium from nuclear weapon arsenals.

Future fuel assemblies for a full program would be made at a MOX fabrication plant to be built at the Savannah River Site. Officials are expected to begin site preparation for that plant this month.

Jason Cato • 329-4071
jcato@heraldonline.com



-------- MILITARY 



-------- arms 

India ends arms ban on Nepal

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1481044,00.html

Hundreds of Maoist fighters attacked two army camps in Nepal, sparking gun battles which claimed the lives of 30 rebels, officials said yesterday as the country's neighbour, India, confirmed it would send a shipment of weapons to the Himalayan kingdom.

The fighting is thought to be the bloodiest since King Gyanendra seized power three months ago in what he described as an attempt to end the insurgency.

India, which supplies most of the weaponry and training to the Nepalese army, had suspended its military assistance after the sacking of the democratically elected government. But, citing the partial lifting of the state of emergency, New Delhi said it had decided to "release some of the supplies currently in the pipeline".

Article continues
India's decision will anger human rights groups. Britain is still refusing to restore its military links with Nepal.

India's move came on the first day of a visit to Nepal by the US assistant secretary of state, Christina Rocca. The US ambassador in Kathmandu had previously said that Washington would decide by the end of the month whether to resume its arms supplies to Nepal. 


-------- asia

India ends arms ban on Nepal

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Wednesday May 11, 2005
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,12559,1481044,00.html

Hundreds of Maoist fighters attacked two army camps in Nepal, sparking gun battles which claimed the lives of 30 rebels, officials said yesterday as the country's neighbour, India, confirmed it would send a shipment of weapons to the Himalayan kingdom.

The fighting is thought to be the bloodiest since King Gyanendra seized power three months ago in what he described as an attempt to end the insurgency.

India, which supplies most of the weaponry and training to the Nepalese army, had suspended its military assistance after the sacking of the democratically elected government. But, citing the partial lifting of the state of emergency, New Delhi said it had decided to "release some of the supplies currently in the pipeline". 

 India's decision will anger human rights groups. Britain is still refusing to restore its military links with Nepal.

India's move came on the first day of a visit to Nepal by the US assistant secretary of state, Christina Rocca. The US ambassador in Kathmandu had previously said that Washington would decide by the end of the month whether to resume its arms supplies to Nepal.



-------- israel / palestine 

Gazans penned in poverty

May 11, 2005
By Ravi Nessman
ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050510-094956-6145r.htm

AL-MAWASI, Gaza Strip -- Trapped between Jewish settlements and the Mediterranean, the Palestinians of al-Mawasi are struggling to survive.

    An Israeli security fence meant to separate Jews from Palestinians has folded the roughly 1,600 families of al-Mawasi into the settlement bloc of 6,000 Jews, and tighter security enforced during 4½ years of conflict has effectively cut them off from their relatives, jobs and markets.

    Some have moved away to find work, attend school or get specialized health treatment. Many who stayed live off foreign aid.

    Although many Palestinians in Gaza -- an impoverished coastal plain and one of the most crowded areas in the world -- eagerly await Israel's withdrawal from the territory this summer, few are as desperate for it as the people of the al-Mawasi region, crammed into a sandy strip 8½ miles long and a half-mile wide.

    "We're stuck in a large prison. It's very frustrating. We can't go anywhere, we can't do anything. We can't work," said laborer Hamad Zourab, 26, who said he hasn't left al-Mawasi in three years.

    The farmers and fishermen here once made a comfortable living. Others worked in the nearby Palestinian towns of Khan Younis and Rafah, in Israel itself, or in the settlement bloc called Gush Katif.

    But after violence flared in 2000, the Palestinians here suddenly found themselves penned in as Israel enforced tight restrictions on their movements to prevent attacks.

    Fishermen needed permission every time they took out their boats, and fishing hours were severely restricted.

    The catch often got held up for days in unrefrigerated trucks at an Israeli army checkpoint at the edge of al-Mawasi. Many fish rotted, and those that made it through the checkpoint had to be transferred to a truck on the other side of the fence, increasing transportation and labor costs. Many fishermen put down their nets and found work in the settlements.

    Farmers also lost much of their crop during long waits in the hot sun at the checkpoint.

    Laborers from al-Mawasi no longer could reach their jobs in Israel, and others were fired from their jobs in the settlements because of new security rules. Those who worked in Gaza's Palestinian towns had trouble crossing through the security fence, and even more trouble crossing back.

    Amina Laham, 40, said she once went shopping in Khan Younis, less than a mile away, and was stuck there for 20 days.

    Even getting U.N. food aid has been a struggle.

    Under restrictions imposed during the conflict, aid had to be delivered to Khan Younis, then trucked -- at the recipients' expense -- to the checkpoint, where it was reloaded onto new trucks and sent into al-Mawasi, said Soren Matz of the U.N. Relief and Works Administration.

    Only in mid-April, with a drop in tension brought on by an Israeli-Palestinian truce, did Israel allow the first truckload of flour, lentils, rice, cooking oil and milk powder to be driven directly into al-Mawasi, Mr. Matz said.

    "They don't have free access to the bare human necessities: education, food, jobs, health care," said Mr. Matz.

    The army calls the restrictions an unfortunate necessity, pointing to the killing of an Israeli civilian and several other attempted attacks that originated in al-Mawasi.

    It says it has to scrutinize Palestinians crossing into al-Mawasi, which offers access to the Israeli settlements.

    "This is an area that needs to be carefully, carefully monitored," said Capt. Yael Hartmann, an army spokeswoman.

    Security checks delay crops and fish because soldiers "have to go through everything, no matter if it's produce or someone's bag. Everything needs to be searched," she said.

    On a recent spring day, Ahmad Zourab, a distant relative of the laborer, parked his ratty pickup truck by the beach and his son Shukri, 16, began throwing 33-pound bags of mushy cucumbers onto the sand. In a few hours, they had dumped 600 bags, about $2,800 worth of cucumbers that had rotted during a three-day wait at the checkpoint.

    Before the fighting, Mr. Zourab earned between $350 and $460 a month growing peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and potatoes on his 12-acre farm and three greenhouses and selling them in Khan Younis.

    Now, he is deep in debt and borrowing from his neighbors.

    "I have 13 kids at home and I can't feed them," he said.

    He pointed to a man driving a tractor.

    "I owe him 5,000 shekels [$1,160] for three months' work. I just don't have enough to pay the bills," he said.

    His pain is exacerbated by the relatively luxurious Jewish settlements.

    "I look at their children and they're driving nice cars and wearing nice clothes. My kid wants an ice cream and I can't get it," Mr. Zourab said.

    Mrs. Laham, the woman who got stuck in Khan Younis, shares a lightless three-room concrete hut with her family of eight. Mattresses are piled in the corner of the cracked floor. The roof of corrugated metal is held down by concrete bricks.

    Mrs. Laham said her husband's income from working in the settlements and on neighbors' farms has shriveled to $7 to $9 a day.

    "We have less money to spend, less food, less clothes, pretty much less of everything," she said.

    The family had not eaten meat in two months and rarely has the money to buy fruit, she said. Her children are losing weight and energy. Their clothes are threadbare.

    Some in al-Mawasi said they worry about the loss of jobs in the Jewish settlements that will be emptied this summer. But Mrs. Laham's face lit up as she talked about the withdrawal.

    "Life will become good again. We can live, we can feel secure," she said. "Life can go back to being a little bit more normal." 


-------- landmines

New Invention Burns, Not Blasts, Landmines

SOUTH AFRICA: May 11, 2005
Story by Peter Apps
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30751/story.htm

PRETORIA - Burning landmines left over from conflicts could be quicker, easier and safer than blowing them up, the developers of a new device said on Tuesday.

Landmines kill or maim some 75,000 people a year in former conflict areas from Angola to Cambodia, with high costs limiting how many can be cleared.

Retired British airline pilot Paul Richard demonstrated his "Mineburner" system at a test range near the South African capital Pretoria. He hopes to test it in the field within six weeks.

The device -- with a gas nozzle -- was placed first next to an antipersonnel mine and then an antitank mine and ignited by radio control.

The gas flame burnt through the casing of the mines before consuming the plastic explosive, eventually igniting the detonators and producing small explosions.

"Mineburner definitely fills a niche in the humanitarian sector where large antitank mines are planted on bridges, power lines, in cities or villages where you can't use the normal technique of just blowing them up," said Theo van Dyk, research officer for South Africa's state-run CSIR Defencetek, which helped develop the project.

Mineburner was also safer because it did not require the transport of explosives, he said.

Inventor Richards said new regulations were making it almost impossible for mine clearance charities to fly explosives into mined areas, where they are placed on top of landmines to detonate them.

The new device was light, reducing air transport costs, he said. In countries such as Angola, road and rail infrastructure has collapsed after decades of civil war, with air transport of equipment often the only option.

"Since 911, transporting explosives in a non-military environment has gone from being difficult to more than impossible," he told Reuters at the test range.

"In Afghanistan, they have been steaming explosives out of landmines to use them to destroy other landmines. That's very dangerous."

Using natural gas - readily available even in countries like Angola where the infrastructure has been destroyed and supplies are difficult to find - was also cheaper, he said.

Richards, who has previously worked on lifejackets and other life saving devices, said he was giving his services for free. The private company which will manufacture the product provided some of the components.

Mine clearance charities, United Nations agencies and military and police forces had all expressed interest in the product, he said. It will cost 75,000 rand ($12,080) for an air compressor, gas tanks and 20 field units. Each reusable field unit will cost 2500 rand.

The first field testing was likely to be in Cyprus against recently found anti-tank mines placed in an urban area with anti-move devices attached, Richards said.

"That could happen within about six weeks," he said. "We're also going into Cambodia in about a week and we're hoping Sri Lanka will ask us to come in."



-------- us

Rumsfeld Seeks Leaner Army, and a Full Term

By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT
May 11, 2005 NY TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/politics/11rumsfeld.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, May 10 - Ask Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to define his legacy, and he cuts the question short: "Don't. Hold off on it. There will be plenty of time."

With a full list of policy initiatives ahead and travel plans penciled in through the Beijing Olympics of 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld gives every indication of serving out the rest of the Bush administration, confounding those who predicted his departure even after President Bush refused, twice, to accept his resignation over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

"I don't think of myself as a short-timer," said Mr. Rumsfeld, who turns 73 in July.

His goal in this pivotal year is to keep Iraq and Afghanistan at bay so he can turn to closing bases at home and realigning global forces even as combat continues; overhauling personnel policy while dealing with a crisis in recruiting; redefining national security strategy while confronting alarming nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran; and drafting a disciplined military budget - one that does not rely on emergency spending to scrape through year after budget-busting year.

But across the Pentagon, officials acknowledge that the twin tasks of building Iraqi security forces and defeating the insurgency stand in the way of Mr. Rumsfeld's longstanding ambitions to fundamentally transform the nation's military into something leaner, more agile and thoroughly modern. Success in Iraq would allow troop withdrawals to begin, relieving strains on budgets and personnel.

Opening up a new front of controversy, Mr. Rumsfeld is to unveil his list of recommended domestic base closings on Friday. It is sure to provoke opposition from communities that stand to lose the economic benefits of being host to the military.

By midsummer, the Pentagon's senior policy aides and top officers will convene a meeting to overhaul military strategy for the next four years. A final report due early next year, a Quadrennial Defense Review required by Congress, will try to balance strategy better with budgets, weapons and troop strength. Everything is on the table, including aircraft carriers, new fighters and broad strategic goals. Here, too, any change that upsets the status quo will meet some opposition.

In an interview, Mr. Rumsfeld compared the Pentagon he inherited to a factory where there were "conveyor belts going by and they were loaded four, five, six years ago, and they were not connected with each other." He said budgets did not fit weapons, which did not fit strategy.

Mr. Rumsfeld is opening the Bush administration's second term as if he were an ambitious novice, not five years into his second tour in a job he first held 30 years ago, cognizant that this is perhaps his first year not necessarily dominated by the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath.

Even his sharpest critics - generals and admirals who have endured the wire-brush treatment of his relentless questioning, and senior civilians across the executive branch who have fought bitter internal battles with Mr. Rumsfeld and his policy proxies - agree that he got one thing right: Mr. Rumsfeld is forcing the Department of Defense to think about warfare differently and, just as important, to think in new ways about its daily business practices.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview, "There is not a D.O.D. process of any sort that we haven't turned on its ear in the past four years."

Mr. Rumsfeld produced an eight-page list of initiatives and accomplishments on his watch, many of them beneath the radar of public attention but nonetheless substantial changes in how the military prepares for and wages war, and how the Pentagon gets through the day.

The military's map of the world has been redrawn to divide the globe more rationally among regional combatant commanders, and new responsibilities, financing and personnel were given to the specialized commands, in particular, ones responsible for Special Operations and for strategic planning and targeting.

The United States' nuclear strategy has been rewritten, as have regional war-fighting plans, and efforts are under way to restructure and relocate the forces permanently based overseas. The goal is to reduce the number of large cold-war-era bases, especially in Germany, in favor of access to countries closer to future battlefronts across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.

The military is rebalancing the responsibilities of active-duty personnel and reservists to help ease strains on the Army and Marine Corps, which are experiencing serious recruiting problems.

One set of overwhelming questions remains: whether the American public and Congress are exhausted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whether enough money will be available for transformation to a high-tech military while still supporting a conventional force deployed to combat zones.

"He doesn't have the money to do it," said Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Congressional committees are just starting their detailed review of Mr. Rumsfeld's budget request, work that could take two months or more to complete.

Mr. Rumsfeld says the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not delayed transformation or even been a distraction, but have energized the effort.

"It has been the global war on terror and the tasks that we've been assigned that has provided added impetus to doing the things that absolutely had to be done in this department," he said.

As Mr. Rumsfeld presses his transformation agenda, he still confronts bruised relations with lawmakers and even some in the administration over Iraq policy and the fallout from the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal.

Critics blame Mr. Rumsfeld for invading Iraq with too few troops and embracing overly optimistic assumptions about what would happen once Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

"When it became evident that we were going to face a determined and prolonged insurgency, he was very resistant to increasing troop levels, stepping up production of up-armored Humvees, and modifying the game plan," said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

In the interview, Mr. Rumsfeld exhibited a trademark mix, by turns combative and introspective, as he deflected questions of how history would weigh the troubled aftermath of invading Iraq - particularly the Abu Ghraib scandal - against the changes he is still pressing.

"Anybody who knows anything about history knows that history gets written as a result of a whole series of things being said and aggregated over time, and people with perspective that don't have their nose pressed up against a deadline every five minutes," he said.

He said there was progress in the war on terror, but conceded that Al Qaeda was still able to function, saying, "Goodness knows, it doesn't take a genius to blow up a building."

Mr. Rumsfeld is banking on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan remaining stable enough for him to focus his attention elsewhere. Frequent video-teleconferences with senior commanders in Iraq during the peak of combat operations have dwindled to a few phone calls a week.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers say winning support for his proposed changes has been made more difficult by Mr. Rumsfeld's often rocky relations with Congress. In public hearings and in news conferences, Mr. Rumsfeld, a former congressman from Illinois, can often barely disguise his impatience with lawmakers.

But he has worked hard to cultivate good ties with Congress, setting aside Tuesday and Thursday mornings for breakfast with House and Senate members at the Pentagon.

"It's been up and down," said Representative William M. Thornberry of Texas, a Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. "Some people think he doesn't kowtow to them enough."

Inside the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld is retooling his senior military and civilian leadership team from a war cabinet to corporate-style board of directors.

His new management team is led by Gordon R. England, his new deputy, who fits the traditional model of a No. 2 who oversees daily operations and avoids ideological battles. Mr. England, the Navy secretary, was once executive vice president of General Dynamics.

He will replace Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a lightning rod for critics of the Iraq war, who leaves in June to take over as head of the World Bank. Another senior policy figure criticized during the Iraq war effort, Douglas J. Feith, is also leaving, to be replaced by Eric Edelman, a career Foreign Service officer who previously was a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Rumsfeld is reshuffling his top military advisers, but with familiar faces. Gen. Peter Pace of the Marines who has worked closely with Mr. Rumsfeld for four years as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will succeed General Myers as chairman this fall. Nominated as the new vice chairman is Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., who was Mr. Rumsfeld's top military aide until taking over the military's Joint Forces Command in 2002.

Mr. Rumsfeld works hard to leave his imprint on the bureaucracy, spending up to 10 hours a week on senior officer and civilian appointments. He has seeded like-minded protégés throughout the military's senior ranks to ensure that his priorities outlast him. He routinely reaches down to interview one-star and two-star officers for important jobs, a practice that some officers deride as a politically motivated "Rumsfeld sniff test."

In a conference room just a few paces from his office, Mr. Rumsfeld and 15 of his top civilian and military advisers meet at least twice a month to hammer out the most pressing issues, like budgets or new weapons systems.

"They know each other, they know each other's strengths and weaknesses, they're comfortable talking in front of each other, which in many cases they had not been," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The decisions that flow out of that room are all of the big things that take place in this building."

Mr. Rumsfeld's admirers and critics alike say it is too soon to gauge his permanent stamp on the Pentagon or the military operations he set in motion.

"He hasn't finished the job, either in Iraq or with transformation," said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who has sparred frequently with the secretary. "So I don't know how you would judge him until the results are in."

Mr. Rumsfeld believes in measurements, whether electrical output from Baghdad or how many military jobs civilians could take over or how often a bespectacled defense secretary appears in editorial cartoons, many of which hang in his office.

Each day, he tries to walk five miles through the Pentagon's polished corridors, keeping track with a pace meter on his belt. "He's an inveterate counter with a purpose," said Larry Di Rita, the Pentagon spokesman.

Some evenings, he plays squash with Mr. Di Rita or Vice Adm. James G. Stavridis, Mr. Rumsfeld's senior military assistant. In the fashion of his hometown, Chicago, Mr. Rumsfeld improves his odds against the younger men by putting in the fix: He refuses to allow the livelier, softer rubber ball favored by today's players.

"I play my game," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "I play hardball."

----

States challenge Pentagon on base closings

LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/05/10/national/w233555D40.DTL

States and congressional delegations, fearful the Pentagon will target their military bases for closure, are challenging Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's claim that he can shutter Army and Air National Guard installations without a governor's consent.

Undeterred, the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to release its list of proposed closures Friday.

The list is being kept under wraps, but defense analysts say they expect more than two dozen National Guard facilities to be tapped for closure or relocation. They suspect the Air National Guard will be hit hard, given that the Pentagon wants to scale back the F-16 fighter jet and other older planes located at domestic Air Guard facilities.

At least one state, Illinois, is threatening to go to court to block Rumsfeld.

"Every state is watching to see what Illinois does," said Paul Hirsch, a Washington lobbyist working on behalf of bases in Florida, California and Virginia. "This is something that could impact every state."

Governors in several states including North Dakota, Delaware and Arizona have weighed in on the issue, and the New Jersey congressional delegation has asked that the Pentagon cease any attempt to close National Guard bases. That followed a similar plea by Illinois lawmakers — including House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Sen. Richard Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

"We respectfully request that any and all actions taken" during the base-closing process "against Air and Army National Guard bases without the consent of the governors of those states be stopped immediately," they wrote in a March 24 letter to Rumsfeld.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Tuesday she would sue the Defense Department in federal court on behalf of Gov. Rod Blagojevich if two of the state's National Guard bases — in Springfield and in Peoria — appear on the Pentagon's list and an independent base-closing commission upholds those recommendations.

The Army National Guard numbers 350,000, and units are located at roughly 3,300 armories and other small installations scattered across the country. Roughly 106,000 people are in the Air National Guard. Its units are stationed at 95 Air Force bases and Air National Guard installations and on leased land at 78 civilian spots, including airports where airmen typically also provide firefighting, medical and security services.

The National Guard Association of the United States, a nonpartisan organization representing nearly 45,000 current and former Guard officers, argues that states should be consulted.

"They're using a federal spreadsheet to make decisions on bases that have state missions without including the state," spokesman John Goheen said.

The Pentagon wants to close and downsize some of its 425 major U.S. domestic bases as well as smaller installations to save billions of dollars a year. States are worried because losing a military installation could be a blow to the local economy — and they're doing whatever they can to try to spare them.

States and the Pentagon are relying on different laws as they stake out their positions.

Governors and congressional delegations cite a law that says in part that Army or Air National Guard units can't be "relocated or withdrawn under this chapter without the consent of the governor of the state."

The Pentagon argues that another law that authorizes this round of base closures takes precedence and allows Rumsfeld to close or downsize National Guard bases without getting approval from governors.

Michael Wynne, acting Pentagon undersecretary for acquisition, technology and assistance, said in an April 12 response letter to lawmakers that for the round of closures to be "a truly comprehensive process and to achieve our objective in support of the warfighter, the process must involve all of our installations, including those used by the reserve component."

However, Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said last week in Bismarck, N.D., that the states are correct. "It's a very valid argument. It's exactly the right argument," Blum said.

The commission charged with reviewing the Pentagon's list has suggested a legal opinion may be necessary.

The Guard's unique joint mission contributes to the legal confusion.

On a federal level, the Guard is part of the U.S. military force responsible for national security. The president can activate units for federal missions, including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Pentagon owns the weapons systems.

The Guard also has a state role. Governors, through their adjutant generals, command both Guard forces during statewide emergencies like civil disturbances, floods, hurricanes or forest fires.

On the Net:

Defense Department:
http//www.defense.gov



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


-------- courts / tribunals

Court backs Cheney on energy meetings
Details on private strategy sessions to remain as such

By Charlie Savage, Boston Globe Staff  |  May 11, 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/05/11/court_backs_cheney_on_energy_meetings?mode=PF

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney will not have to release details about the role of energy executives in private meetings Cheney held to craft national energy strategies, a decision that probably brings an end to a long-running and politically charged lawsuit.

The Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled that there was no evidence that energy lobbyists were official participants in Cheney's private energy policy task force meetings, so its records do not have to be disclosed.

''In making decisions on personnel and policy, and in formulating legislative proposals, the president must be free to seek confidential information from many sources, both inside the government and outside," the court wrote.

The decision, which the anticorruption group Judicial Watch called a ''defeat for open government," means that the judicial branch will avoid the political nightmare of ordering the executive branch to produce records against its will. If that order had come, Cheney had vowed to invoke executive privilege, creating a constitutional separation-of-powers battle.

Although the plaintiffs, Judicial Watch and the environmentalist group Sierra Club, could appeal, further litigation appears unlikely. In an earlier phase of the case last June, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 in favor of Cheney. Two appeals court judges who had sided against Cheney in the earlier phase voted in his favor this time.

''The Supreme Court's decision obviously changed the landscape," said Sanjay Narayan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club.

Cheney's task force called for helping the oil, coal, and nuclear industries increase energy supplies by subsidizing them with tax breaks, opening more public lands for drilling, and relaxing air pollution standards at power plants.

Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club sued to open the records of the task force's meetings, saying that the regular participation of energy executives had made them de facto members of the advisory committee.

Under a 1972 law, the White House is allowed to keep policy meetings secret if only government officials are involved. But if private sector advisors participate, such task forces must work in public. A similar lawsuit in 1993 forced the Clinton administration to disclose the meeting records of Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force.

A lower court judge ordered Cheney to turn over enough records to establish the extent of energy executive participation. But Cheney appealed to the Supreme Court last year, declaring that the president needed to preserve the right to receive confidential advice.

The case attracted further attention after the Sierra Club asked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself because he and Cheney had gone duck hunting together on a trip hosted by the owner of an oil rig servicing company. Scalia refused, then voted in Cheney's favor.

After the Supreme Court ruled that Cheney did not have to release the preliminary records, a Cheney aide provided an affidavit swearing that outside participants only provided ''stakeholder" input and did not vote on any recommendations.

Yesterday, the appeals court ruled that because the energy executives and lobbyists had not voted on policy, the task force comprised only government officials and its work was not subject to public disclosure.

A spokeswoman for Cheney, Jennifer Mayfield, said the vice president was pleased. ''The court's decision, like the earlier Supreme Court decision in the case, will help preserve the confidentiality of internal deliberations among the president and his senior advisers that the constitution protects as essential to wise and informed decision-making," Mayfield said.

But Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch said the decision was a blow to open government. The ruling, he said, fits the ''trend" of increasing secrecy and ''stonewalling" in the Bush administration.

And Narayan said that the ruling -- which for the first time defined ''participation" in an advisory committee as meaning having the power to veto or vote -- undermines the law's intent. ''The bottom line of this decision is it returns us to a world where industry can dominate the public process and the public is being left in the cold, and this energy policy is the best example of what happens when that occurs," he said.

Judicial Watch also filed a separate lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act against non-White House participants in the task force. Several Commerce Department records it obtained showed that the task force had developed a map of Iraq's oil fields and oil companies with Iraqi drilling rights in March 2001, two years before the war.

Some task force proposals have been implemented through regulations. Others, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, require congressional approval, and are contained in an energy bill pending in the Senate.



-------- homeland security / national intelligence

15,000 volunteer to help guard U.S. border

May 11, 2005 (UPI)

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20050511-065021-2082r.htm

Washington, DC, May. 11 -- The organizer of last month's Minutemen border protest says more than 15,000 people have volunteered for future citizen patrols along the Mexican border.

"We considerer this a mandate from the citizens of the United States," Chris Simcox will tell a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee Thursday, according to a copy of his prepared testimony obtained by United Press International.

The Minutemen recently held a month long protest in Arizona, with volunteers patrolling the border and reporting suspected illegal crossers to authorities. They say they deployed 857 volunteers along the border, facilitating the apprehension by the Border Patrol of 335 people illegally crossing into the country.

Simcox's prepared testimony indicates the Minutemen have begun "the task of recruiting, training and deploying" the thousands of volunteers it will need to patrol all four states that border Mexico.

"We now consider the movement to be a revival of the Civil Defense movement of the World War II era," Simcox plans to say. "While our troops are fighting on foreign soil ...we the people will take up the slack" by patrolling the border.

----

How Could a Pilot Stumble Into White House Airspace?

As D.C. Incident Shows, It's Easy for a Pilot to Wander Into Restricted Areas

May 11, 2005 ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Travel/story?id=748540&page=1

How on earth could the pilot of a small aircraft in the year 2005 not realize he or she was about to breach the most sensitive no-fly zone in the nation?

The White House and the U.S. Capitol were briefly evacuated today when a small plane entered restricted airspace over Washington, coming within three miles of the executive mansion. Military jets were scrambled to intercept the errant Cessna 152, which landed safely at Frederick Municipal Airport in western Maryland.

It seems bizarre, but the truth is that from the air, downtown Washington, the White House, the Capitol building, and all our central governmental buildings seem pretty small.

After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Washington's Reagan National Airport was closed to general aviation and airspace was within a 15¾-mile radius around the Washington Monument was restricted. Since then, hundreds of small aircraft have wandered into the restricted airspace.

But how can a pilot tell if he or she has gotten too close? From a low altitude and 15 miles out, even an experienced pilot may not visually see the central D.C. area, even on a clear day. When there is a haze or cloudy conditions, it's all but impossible for a pilot using vision alone to remain more than 15¾ miles away. Pilots must instead rely on radio navigation, map reading or Global Positioning Satellite equipment.

And sometimes, because pilots are human and often make mistakes, even all that isn't enough.

Why Mistakes Are Inevitable

It's not that all U.S. certificated pilots aren't aware of the no-fly zone around Washington — they are. The problem lies in knowing where you are in relation to it.

Navigation errors have been greatly reduced by the use of GPS systems, but even some of the small moving map displays may not be enough when a pilot becomes disoriented — or worse, believes he or she is somewhere other than where the aircraft is actually flying.

In an ideal world, no private pilot would ever continue on a course to D.C. if there was any doubt whatsoever where that pilot was in relation to the no-fly circle around the city. But this isn't an ideal world, and the number of errors in the past few years leading to alerts shows graphically that the system itself is not sufficient. 



-------- ENERGY 


-------- alternative energy

Investors at UN Meet Pledge $1 Billion in Clean Energy

Story by Timothy Gardner
REUTERS WORLD: May 11, 2005

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/30757/story.htm

UNITED NATIONS - US and British institutional investors who collectively manage over $3 trillion in assets pledged on Tuesday to invest $1 billion in clean energy companies in an effort to reduce risks posed by climate change.

Steve Westly, controller of California, told reporters the money could be invested in anything from wind power to more efficient turbines at power plants to auto makers, such as Toyota, that make hybrid cars.

"Our job is to encourage companies to think green. We want it to happen before it's too late," said Westly.

"The real answer is diversification in energy," he said during a day-long conference at the UN headquarters of US state treasurers, financiers and major investors on how to deal with the financial risk of climate change.

Institutional investors, including state treasurers from Connecticut and California, labor pension funds, and British pension funds, pledged to make the investment at the Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk.

The institutions have already pledged to invest $450 million in clean energy technologies and the $1 billion includes that previous pledge.

But Westly and other investors said the combination of oil prices trading at over $50 a barrel and growing concerns about possible future US regulations on carbon emissions make it a good time to invest in clean energy and that investments could soon well exceed Tuesday's pledge.

US President George W. Bush withdrew from the international Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, soon into his first term. The pact went into force earlier this year.

Most scientists believe that growing emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the burning of petroleum, coal and natural gas are causing global warming. They say the warming will disrupt farming, tourism in cold climates, raise sea levels by melting icecaps, cause more extreme weather like hurricanes or droughts, and wipe out thousands of animal and plant species by 2100.

NO SILVER BULLET

The institutional investor pledge follows a plan unveiled on Monday by the giant industrial and media conglomerate General Electric Co. to nearly double its annual research and development investment for clean technologies to $1.5 billion by 2010. Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmental leaders, said that is the type of move that can protect companies from liability risks going forward.

Jim Rogers, the top executive of coal utility Cinergy, which pledged in 2003 to reduce carbon emissions by 5 percent by 2010, said his company has taken a multifaceted approach to cutting emissions, including switching from coal to natural gas, investing in renewables and conservation.

"There's no silver bullet, there's no one answer," he said about cutting emissions.

Cinergy agreed on Monday to be bought by Duke Energy Corp., the leading US nuclear utility. Rogers, who will become CEO and president of the new company, said environmental considerations encouraged the merger, which would let the company retire some coal plants older than 50 years old.

Abby Joseph Cohen, a partner and chief portfolio strategist for investment bank Goldman Sachs, said moves by companies to disclose climate risks "represent an enormous move in the right direction."

Her company has created a scorecard of energy firms according to actions they have taken on global warming.

But Cohen cautioned that as clean technologies are new, it is hard to find studies that investment in clean energy companies have led to better returns.

Denise Nappier, the state treasurer of Connecticut, said the longer companies fail to disclose their climate liabilities including possible future regulations and lawsuits, the more they stand to possibly get hurt.

"In the absence of an accurate weather forecast, there is the greater possibility of getting caught in rain without an umbrella," she said.



-------- ACTIVISTS

Military Judge Convicts Anti-War Sailor

By SETH HETTENA
Associated Press Writer
May 11, 9:21 PM EDT

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

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A sailor turned anti-war activist was convicted Wednesday in a special court-martial of refusing to board the USS Bonhomme Richard as it deployed to the Persian Gulf in December.

A military judge found Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes guilty of missing his ship's movement, but dismissed a second count of unauthorized absence, ruling it duplicative.

The proceeding then moved into the sentencing phase. The 23-year-old New Yorker could receive a year in jail, a forfeiture of pay, reduction in rank and a bad-conduct discharge.

Paredes had waived his right to have his trial heard by a military jury.

Paredes, a weapons control technician, refused to board the ship on Dec. 6 as it left for a six-month deployment in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The Bonhomme Richard and two other ships were transporting about 3,000 Marines to Iraq.

At the time, Paredes told reporters he did not want to be part of a war he views as illegal and immoral. He said his military training has taught him to avoid what he views as a war crime.

Navy prosecutors, however, blocked Paredes' plans to put the war on trial during the court-martial. A Navy officer reviewing Paredes' request for conscientious objector status has also recommended that it be denied.

Defense attorney Jeremy Warren said Paredes passed up deals that would have minimized his punishment in exchange for a guilty plea.
	
"He's not backing down from what he did or why he did it," Warren said.